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Lawsuit against TSA and DEA over airport seizures achieves first victory
- ficklepickle 6y agoCivil forfeiture is a joke. Either prove a crime occurred or GTFO.
- Irishsteve 6y agoIs there any reason for someone to fly between states with so much money ? It’s not just the tsa that could rob it
- toomuchtodo 6y agoNo reason is necessary. It’s their property. Perhaps they don’t trust banks, or are buying something at auction or a vehicle that requires a cash payment (second hand septic pump truck, for example). We don’t ask folks to declare other financial instruments (cashiers check, money orders) or jewelry on domestic flights. Cash is no different.
- cogburnd02 6y ago> second hand septic pump truck That is waaay too specific for you to have come up with it right off the top of your head; I sense there's a story here.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoSat next to someone on a flight carrying ~$100k in cash to buy one second hand and drive it back to the origin because it was much cheaper than buying a new one. A story for sure, but a boring one.
- quiescant_dodo 6y agoWoah! The idea of carrying that much cash is giving me a lot of third-hand anxiety. Did the person seem overly anxious? I can't imagine sharing that information with someone I just met!
- toomuchtodo 6y agoNope, calm good 'ol boy having a mini gin and tonic. Lots of interesting folks out there waiting to be met.
- midasuni 6y agoDid you see the cash?
- toomuchtodo 6y agoI wouldn’t have shared the tale if I hadn’t.
- midasuni 6y agoI find it amazing that someone carrying that much money would show it off like that.
- o-__-o 6y agoI carried a $20k diamond ring on a transatlantic flight. At the time I was the definition of paranoid because it wasn’t insured at the time. Looking back it wasn’t that big of a deal
- nightcracker 6y agoYou have to be one kind of stupid to casually travel with that much cash and a whole 'nother kind of stupid to tell the person you're sitting next to that you're doing so.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- alasdair_ 6y agoI’ve done it before when moving to California many years ago. I was switching banks at the same time and I wanted the funds to be immediately available (i.e. open the account and deposit the cash at the same time). I also needed to rent a home immediately. Secondly, I play a lot of poker and regularly take $25k or more with me to Vegas, especially if it’s a spur of the moment flight. I keep my bankroll in cash because it’s simpler than having to go to a bank every time I want to play.
- thekyle 6y agoI don't gable so I don't really know how modern casinos work. But do they not allow you to wire the money to your account at the casino from a bank account?
- alasdair_ 6y agoThey do but there is both a wire fee and a 1-2 day delay (and no weekends). I have literally decided “hey, let’s go to Vegas” and been on a plane within three hours, on a weekend. A wire just doesn’t work there. Additionally, I also play locally and it’s tough to get access to tens of thousands in actual cash immediately, especially in a small cardroom or “home” game.
- tartoran 6y agoNot being able to travel with your own cash above a meager limit reminds me of totalitarian regimes in eastern europe when I grew up before communism collapsed. Not very fond of those memories in particular.
- URSpider94 6y agoI usually Pooh-Pooh claims of totalitarianism as being alarmist, but in this case, it is totally deserved.
- mcguire 6y ago"The class action lawsuit was filed in January 2020 on behalf of Terry Rolin and his daughter Rebecca Brown. TSA and DEA officials seized Terry’s life savings of over $82,000 from Rebecca as she was flying from Pittsburgh to her home outside Boston, where she intended to open a joint bank account to help care for her father."
- bsima 6y agobitcoin fixes this
- renewiltord 6y agoTrue, but now you have two problems.
- quiescant_dodo 6y agoBitcoin and other digital assets _hide_ the problem. If the TSA knew you had a bitcoin wallet on the hard drive, they could seize that instead. If you have full-disk-encryption and a crypto-wallet passphrase, you may be held on contempt charges anyways. That might be better, it might not. The underlying problem of "the state can seize your assets if you act 'suspicious'" is still there.
- garmaine 6y agoTo be pedantic, I don’t think they can hold you in contempt without also involving you in the process, giving you some legal say to fight it. The whole issue with civil asset forfeiture is that it divorces the property from its owner, legally speaking.
- cryptonector 6y agoYou should research this. A judge can order you to provide the passphrase to decrypt the storage that contains the bitcoin wallet if it is a foregone conclusion that there is one on there, and if you refuse then you can be held in contempt and jailed until you do provide it. There is no time limit to contempt of court imprisonment because you are free to stop being in contempt whenever you choose. You will have a very hard time getting an appeals court to issue a mandamus order to the judge that jailed you for contempt, and by "hard" I mean "impossible".
- michaelmrose 6y ago- Distrust of financial institutions - Distrust of government herein obviously justified - Large debts including but not limited to medical debt that would result in the funds enriching creditors instead of serving the individuals needs - Need to do business with individuals with any of the above considerations the best example is probably a car from a private seller. - A transaction related to the marijuana industry that is legal for the majority of Americans and still illegal federally and therefore untouchable by a bank. If you don't carry it in a bag with a large dollar sign or lurk in a bad part of town after dark your chances of getting robbed are statistically small.
- URSpider94 6y agoPeople should not have to have a reason for doing legal things, but reasons might include traveling to a casino to play high-stakes poker, moving to a new city, planning to buy something large in cash, or making the treasury drop for a business. Back in 19(mumble), I drove from VA to IL with all of my possessions in my Civic Hatchback, including my life savings wrapped in a towel, inside a casserole, inside my microwave. Now, my life savings at the time was around $2500... I was moving, so I closed out my old bank account and planned to open a new one when I got where I was going. When I was a kid, my mom was the bookkeeper for a local drug store. She had to make the treasury drop at the bank (deposit the cash from the registers). She would drive her car, and an assistant manager would literally ride shotgun - ok, not literally, he was wearing a pistol.
- salawat 6y agoThis is the part I'm legitimately fearful of society forgetting in this day and age. You are allowed to <except>. Just be ause you don't normally run into X doesn't mean it's illegal; regardless of what law enforcement and the media do their best to have you believe.
- matheusmoreira 6y agoWhy do people need reasons to do things now? Whatever happened to freedom?
- IncRnd 6y agoYes.
- heliodor 6y agoHuman beings are ridiculously diverse in behavior and no one should be asking "why would anyone ...?" This is exactly the kind of thinking uninspiring politicians have when they try to or pass laws that curtail freedom for no good reason.
- leetcrew 6y agoit shouldn't have any bearing on whether the TSA confiscates it, but it's a reasonable question to ask. I too wonder why it makes sense to transport $82k in cash just to open up a new bank account. if you just walk into the branch and say you want to open a new account with that much money, they'd likely pay the wire fee for you.
- sneak 6y agoI think that the legally mandated utter lack of financial privacy in the US is basis enough for why the question is unreasonable. Plenty of people love and use cash, myself included. We don't need a reason for our preferences, but there exist plenty of good ones if you unreasonably demand that one exist.
- leetcrew 6y agoit's unreasonable for me to ask even as a private citizen? I like cash too and frequently use it. I'm really just curious here. under what set of beliefs would it make sense to transport $82k cash across the country just to open a bank account that would be subject to all the usual KYC?
- betterunix2 6y agoIt is not a crime, and the TSA's mission is not to prevent people from taking stupid risks with their money or property (nor is the TSA a law enforcement agency, so it is not really relevant that it is not a crime). What the TSA did was unjustifiable, regardless of whether or not you understand why someone would travel with that much cash.
- FpUser 6y agoYes. There is a reason. It is called freedom.
- Koliakis 6y ago> Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners will detain them and turn them over to law enforcement, who will take their money without any cause for suspicion and without filing any criminal charges This is insanity.
- Shivetya 6y agoWhat is more insane is that only through Class Action can this suit succeed. Why? Because as the current trick by government agencies is that if they think the court case will go against them they return the money before the ruling. This voids the case in the eyes of the court by worse puts the victim on the hook for attorney fees[0] [0]https://reason.com/2019/11/21/with-this-forfeiture-trick-innocent-owners-lose-even-when-they-win/ https://reason.com/2019/11/21/with-this-forfeiture-trick-inn...
- eschaton 6y agoThe US Supreme Court just recently struck this down in a first amendment case, where a university said “Hey, we changed the rules, you now have no standing to sue.” The Supreme Court said “There was still damage, so they still have a cause of action.”
- salawat 6y agoPeople underestimate the impact of that case. 2nd Amendmemt cases can actually have a leg to stand on if a group is willing to push it hard enough. There's still the certiorari hurdle to traverse, but it'd be nice to see the justices set their minds to it.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago4th as well as 2nd will benefit greatly from closing that loophole but it will likely take a decade or more for the courts to hand out a sufficient number of "no you idiots this is covered under our previous ruling X" type of rulings.
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- underseacables 6y agoCivil forfeiture is a cancer driven by greed of elected officials and the bureaucracy. That money pays their salaries and buys their toys so the politicians can pay them less.
- buran77 6y agoWe shouldn't call this euphemistically "greed and bureaucracy" when we can call it what it is: corruption at every level (from the legislator to the guy in the agency setting the policy). As I said in the past, we're trained to think that the pervasive small time corruption is the dangerous one, the small bribe you may give to a cop to get out of a speeding fine. In reality that type has close to no impact on society compared to high level corruption like this. If this had happened in any "3rd world country" nobody would hesitate to call it corruption.
- grecy 6y ago> If this had happened in any "3rd world country" nobody would hesitate to call it corruption And it's the same for unlimited campaign contributions and lobbying.
- craftinator 6y agoCorruption? Nah, corruption is the cause. Unlawful search and seizure, theft, and illegal detainment are the actual crimes. Time to put some badge carriers in jail.
- buran77 6y agoThat's exactly what I meant. Bureaucracy is a result of large administrative systems and it's hard to avoid. Civil forfeiture (among many, many other things) is the result of massive systemic corruption at high levels. The kind of corruption that shapes every fiber of society. It's not an accident that laws don't look at the deed but rather at where the person sits in society. There's not enough room in a book, let alone a comment to show just the most obvious evidence of this. But when someone can use an "affluenza" [0] defense to kill people and get away with it, you know where that country stands. [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/02/us/ethan-couch-affluenza-accused-of-probation-violation/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/02/us/ethan-couch-affluenza-...
- indigochill 6y agoIANAL, but I'm worried that a defense attorney could fight this on the wording of point 2: > the TSA violates the Fourth Amendment by detaining travelers and their cash without reasonable suspicion of criminality Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives Association[1] was the Supreme Court case that set precedent for random drug testing of public employees in sensitive positions, which would otherwise also be a fourth amendment violation. It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to say that precedent applies just as well (in the general sense) to searches/detainment of airline passengers in the name of public safety. The defense would need to sweep the fact the money in this particular case was "detained" (ahem, stolen) for six months (as opposed to, like, one minute to check it for hazards) under the rug, but since this is a class action lawsuit rather than a lawsuit about this particular incident, isn't that detail irrelevant to the class action suit? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinner_v._Railway_Labor_Executives_Ass%27n https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinner_v._Railway_Labor_Execu...
- betterunix2 6y agoThe issue I see as far as civil rights goes is that the TSA reports evidence of crimes, real or imagined, to law enforcement. The TSA is allowed to perform invasive, non-optional searches of the traveling public that no law enforcement agency could perform; that should leave no room for any "cooperation" with law enforcement. Right now we have a back door that law enforcement agencies can use to avoid meeting the legal requirements for searching a person or their belongings: relying on a non-law-enforcement agency that follows a completely different set of rules. To put it another way, the reason we allow drug tests of railroad workers is to ensure employees are sober when they are operating dangerous equipment. The reason we allow the TSA to search people and their belongings is to prevent terrorism. In neither case should there be any form of "cooperation" with law enforcement agencies based on a search that the law enforcement agency itself could not have performed.
- salawat 6y agoIronically, this is the same reason law enforcement has to jump through extra hoops to get IRS data. If that financial data were shared without protections, no one would declare anything. Which hamstrings the capability of the service to operate. The same logic should be applied to TSA. If they must violate the 4th Amendment to keep airlines able to do business, they should not be able to tag in law enforcement, and more importantly, they should not be acting as an extension of DEA or Customs. It should be strictly limited to disarmament/destructive device detection. But lets be honest with ourselves, That is too sane and principled to ever be executed on.
- pjc50 6y agoAmazing that this is so long after the establishment of the TSA and their arbitrary seizure practices.
- Arubis 6y agoBoth these TLAs have spent decades burning taxpayer money on theatre while failing at their purported charters and both ad-hoc and systematically abusing citizens and non-citizens alike. Their behavior in this case is reprehensible and completely unsurprising; by and large, these organizations are jobs programs for bullies.
- divbzero 6y agoHow do TSA and DEA’s airport seizure policies compare to agencies in other countries? I would be pleased with a victory here but even happier if the victory could be replicated elsewhere.
- K0balt 6y agoThe real reason this is allowed to persist is to limit people’s behavior. If you aré carrying a big wad of cash, it’s safe to say you aren’t performing a service for the ruling class. You are probably defying your servile status and must be made an example of. Rich people carry large amounts of cash without suspicion or difficulty. It’s only peasants that get their assets seized just because they have them.
- 2bitencryption 6y ago> You are probably defying your servile status and must be made an example of. By Joe Blow, minimum-wage TSA agent #24601?
- edoceo 6y agoSo he can advance his station. See guys, I can oppress, can I join the rich people club?. I'm not rich now, but when I am then people like me better watch their step!
- mauvehaus 6y agoI have a hard time imagining Jean Valjean as a TSA agent. That seems rather more Javert's role.
- SturgeonsLaw 6y agoYes, one of the great paradoxes of society's class structure is that most of the dirty work of enforcing it is done by people who are not in the club themselves.
- otterley 6y ago> Rich people carry large amounts of cash without suspicion or difficulty. Like whom?
- BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 6y agoThere needs to be a RICO prosecution of TSA & DEA.