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"The federal agents were armed with a warrant allowing them to seize property belonging to the company as part of a criminal investigation—and even though the w

"The federal agents were armed with a warrant allowing them to seize property belonging to the company as part of a criminal investigation—and even though the warrant explicitly exempted the safe deposit boxes in the company's vaults, they were taken too. More than 800 were seized." Whether the warrant should have been issued is one debate worth having. But the other problem is that the FBI didn't even follow the terms of the warrant. If law enforcement (at every level) won't follow the law even in procedural matters, we're 100x worse off than most people thought. A thoughtful person will also ask: "Wait, when did the FBI begin undertaking clearly illegal activity? What other investigations have been tainted as a result?"

adolph 5y ago
A rememberful person will also ask: "Wait, when did the FBI ever not undertake clearly illegal activity? What investigations are actually clean?"
- Cosmin_C 5y ago
  And somebody may answer "The X-Files, probably".
AlexandrB 5y ago
> A thoughtful person will also ask: "Wait, when did the FBI begin undertaking clearly illegal activity? What other investigations have been tainted as a result?" I don't think this matters at all. The FBI has been rife with controversy[1] and legally dubious actions[2] since just about their founding. Despite this, it's well out of the mainstream to ask if the FBI should exist and very few question whether people convicted by the FBI are actually guilty. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FBI_controversies#Domestic_surveillance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FBI_controversies#Dome... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Defund the FBI really? You can read a history book to find out why the FBI was founded and why every country has its own variation of it.
  - tarsinge 5y ago
    In part to fight communism activism and protect organized crime?
    - alsetmusic 5y ago
      > In part to fight communism activism and protect organized crime? I understand why you used a question mark, but this is a true statement on its own.
  - ASalazarMX 5y ago
    I've just read a Mayan history book. It says nothing about the foundation of the FBI. Do you have a specific book?
  - TomSwirly 5y ago
    The cure is worse than the disease. No matter how desperate I am for heart surgery, I won't go to the surgeon who kills all his patients. The very first director of the FBI was J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the FBI as a lawless private army for literally fifty years. And there has been really no systematic reform since. Systematically corrupt law enforcement is worse than no law enforcement at all. Systemically broken organizations are unfixable, particular ones that have been broken for over a century. If the US really needs the law enforcement that the FBI is supposed to provide and mostly doesn't, they should set up a new, non-corrupt, competent organization to do it, and fire everyone in the FBI. They won't, of course. Accountability is not any sort of value in US government.
rafale 5y ago
The solution is to send some of those FBI agents to jail.
jhayward 5y ago
This is not an honest reading of the article, which itself is of course slanted. The warrant allowed the "nests" of boxes to be siezed, but not their contents. However, the government is supposed to safeguard items that are innocently affected by a seizure. So instead of simply dumping the contents on the floor of the vault and leaving the building unattended and unguarded they inventoried the box contents and stored them. They provided a mechanism, which the article notes is somewhat suspect in its underlying effect, for owners to identify their property and retrieve it. This is basically a dispute about how the government can best respect the rights of "innocent" vault owners while still carrying out their duty under the warrant and established rules. It's not about the government stealing people's property. It's about whether the box holders should have to identify themselves to obtain the contents.
- j16sdiz 5y ago
  The question is… why they need the nest for investigation? It is clearly the nest is not the target…
  - 34679 5y ago
    I assume they were planning on liquidating seized assets. They could sell the nests at auction.
  - caseysoftware 5y ago
    It's the legal acrobatics equivalent to a landlord not being able to evict a tenant so instead they take their front door for "repairs" So they can say "well, it's not our fault that happened, we followed the rules" wink wink
    - TomSwirly 5y ago
      Very good analogy there. In New York City, where I lived for many years, sometimes the landlords remove _the stairs_ when trying to evict people. Sociopaths abound.
- 34679 5y ago
rasz 5y ago
They dont have to follow the law, they have full immunity https://www.motorbiscuit.com/stolen-3-million-ferrari-f50-gets-totaled-by-fbi-agent-during-joyride/ https://www.motorbiscuit.com/stolen-3-million-ferrari-f50-ge... "If you assumed that the FBI got completely off the hook for this Ferrari F50 crash, you’d be correct. According to Jalopnik, Motors Insurance decided to file a lawsuit to recover $750,000, the F50’s market value at the time. However, the U.S. Department of Justice reportedly denied the claim and decided that the insurance company was not entitled to any payment."

adolph 5y ago

A rememberful person will also ask: "Wait, when did the FBI ever not undertake clearly illegal activity? What investigations are actually clean?"

Cosmin_C 5y ago
And somebody may answer "The X-Files, probably".

AlexandrB 5y ago

> A thoughtful person will also ask: "Wait, when did the FBI begin undertaking clearly illegal activity? What other investigations have been tainted as a result?" I don't think this matters at all. The FBI has been rife with controversy[1] and legally dubious actions[2] since just about their founding. Despite this, it's well out of the mainstream to ask if the FBI should exist and very few question whether people convicted by the FBI are actually guilty. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FBI_controversies#Domestic_surveillance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FBI_controversies#Dome... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Defund the FBI really? You can read a history book to find out why the FBI was founded and why every country has its own variation of it.
- tarsinge 5y ago
  In part to fight communism activism and protect organized crime?
  - alsetmusic 5y ago
    > In part to fight communism activism and protect organized crime? I understand why you used a question mark, but this is a true statement on its own.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  I've just read a Mayan history book. It says nothing about the foundation of the FBI. Do you have a specific book?
- TomSwirly 5y ago
  The cure is worse than the disease. No matter how desperate I am for heart surgery, I won't go to the surgeon who kills all his patients. The very first director of the FBI was J. Edgar Hoover, who ran the FBI as a lawless private army for literally fifty years. And there has been really no systematic reform since. Systematically corrupt law enforcement is worse than no law enforcement at all. Systemically broken organizations are unfixable, particular ones that have been broken for over a century. If the US really needs the law enforcement that the FBI is supposed to provide and mostly doesn't, they should set up a new, non-corrupt, competent organization to do it, and fire everyone in the FBI. They won't, of course. Accountability is not any sort of value in US government.

rafale 5y ago

The solution is to send some of those FBI agents to jail.

jhayward 5y ago

This is not an honest reading of the article, which itself is of course slanted. The warrant allowed the "nests" of boxes to be siezed, but not their contents. However, the government is supposed to safeguard items that are innocently affected by a seizure. So instead of simply dumping the contents on the floor of the vault and leaving the building unattended and unguarded they inventoried the box contents and stored them. They provided a mechanism, which the article notes is somewhat suspect in its underlying effect, for owners to identify their property and retrieve it. This is basically a dispute about how the government can best respect the rights of "innocent" vault owners while still carrying out their duty under the warrant and established rules. It's not about the government stealing people's property. It's about whether the box holders should have to identify themselves to obtain the contents.

j16sdiz 5y ago
The question is… why they need the nest for investigation? It is clearly the nest is not the target…
- 34679 5y ago
  I assume they were planning on liquidating seized assets. They could sell the nests at auction.
- caseysoftware 5y ago
  It's the legal acrobatics equivalent to a landlord not being able to evict a tenant so instead they take their front door for "repairs" So they can say "well, it's not our fault that happened, we followed the rules" wink wink
  - TomSwirly 5y ago
    Very good analogy there. In New York City, where I lived for many years, sometimes the landlords remove _the stairs_ when trying to evict people. Sociopaths abound.
34679 5y ago

rasz 5y ago

They dont have to follow the law, they have full immunity https://www.motorbiscuit.com/stolen-3-million-ferrari-f50-gets-totaled-by-fbi-agent-during-joyride/ https://www.motorbiscuit.com/stolen-3-million-ferrari-f50-ge... "If you assumed that the FBI got completely off the hook for this Ferrari F50 crash, you’d be correct. According to Jalopnik, Motors Insurance decided to file a lawsuit to recover $750,000, the F50’s market value at the time. However, the U.S. Department of Justice reportedly denied the claim and decided that the insurance company was not entitled to any payment."