4 ms·

This was so much worse than I imagined. It was a physical dragnet at a private safe deposit box business and the FBI is trying to claim all the customer's belon

This was so much worse than I imagined. It was a physical dragnet at a private safe deposit box business and the FBI is trying to claim all the customer's belongings under civil asset forfeiture because a dog smelled marijuana. Meanwhile two legitimate businesses who cannot legally transact with banks were customers and the boxes were not airtight This is brazen overreach and needs to be reigned in

DisjointedHunt 5y ago
I’d say it’s criminal abuse of power. Sadly, I don’t expect any thing as serious as even a slap on the wrist for this act that makes a joke out of the laws of the country.
- quantified 5y ago
  I’d go a step and say that civil asset forfeiture laws make a joke out of the country.
  - jbuhbjlnjbn 5y ago
    "civil asset forfeiture laws". It's plain legalized stealing, no fancy wording could change that.
- sneak 5y ago
  > I’d say it’s criminal abuse of power. That's exactly what it is, but there's generally no enforcement against police in the USA, and there's definitely no real enforcement against federal police as a group in the USA. (Sometimes individual federal police get busted, but nothing happens to medium-to-large criminal conspiracies within the FBI/DEA/BATFE/etc.) It's a known bug that nobody with the power to fix really cares about fixing.
  - landemva 5y ago
    USSC created fiction of "government immunity", so government actors are generally allowed to make any mistakes they want. If someone had put a wheel loader in there and scooped up the boxes and contents, it would be criminal premeditated theft.
quantified 5y ago
IIRC a nontrivial fraction of bills in circulation test positive for other drugs too, one coke- or meth-snorting bill can contaminate many more in cash drawers and wallets.
- techdragon 5y ago
  If I recall the factoid I read correctly it’s correlated with the value of the bill with the maximum sensitivity “wet/solvent sampling” methods they were basically able to always produce a trace from at least one substance considered to be a “narcotic” by federal law on lower denominations like $1 and $2. Were talking amounts so low normal that field testing swabs will miss them, but it’s clear evidence of how random the distribution of drug related chemicals on US currency is. It’s not a tainted or not situation… for small denomination bills it’s really just a question of how tainted. If I recall their conclusion section correctly, the issue is with these chemicals becoming macroscopically embedded into the fibres of a bill along combined with repeated exposure to liquids (mostly sweat and other water exposure) dissolving them in to the fibres at the microscopic scale
AzzieElbab 5y ago
the dog must testify, preferably in congress
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Yeah I have a lot of issues with Libertarians but stressing personal freedom and innocent until proven guilty (and by extension CAF injustice) I am behind them 100% .

DisjointedHunt 5y ago

I’d say it’s criminal abuse of power. Sadly, I don’t expect any thing as serious as even a slap on the wrist for this act that makes a joke out of the laws of the country.

quantified 5y ago
I’d go a step and say that civil asset forfeiture laws make a joke out of the country.
- jbuhbjlnjbn 5y ago
  "civil asset forfeiture laws". It's plain legalized stealing, no fancy wording could change that.
sneak 5y ago
> I’d say it’s criminal abuse of power. That's exactly what it is, but there's generally no enforcement against police in the USA, and there's definitely no real enforcement against federal police as a group in the USA. (Sometimes individual federal police get busted, but nothing happens to medium-to-large criminal conspiracies within the FBI/DEA/BATFE/etc.) It's a known bug that nobody with the power to fix really cares about fixing.
- landemva 5y ago
  USSC created fiction of "government immunity", so government actors are generally allowed to make any mistakes they want. If someone had put a wheel loader in there and scooped up the boxes and contents, it would be criminal premeditated theft.

quantified 5y ago

IIRC a nontrivial fraction of bills in circulation test positive for other drugs too, one coke- or meth-snorting bill can contaminate many more in cash drawers and wallets.

techdragon 5y ago
If I recall the factoid I read correctly it’s correlated with the value of the bill with the maximum sensitivity “wet/solvent sampling” methods they were basically able to always produce a trace from at least one substance considered to be a “narcotic” by federal law on lower denominations like $1 and $2. Were talking amounts so low normal that field testing swabs will miss them, but it’s clear evidence of how random the distribution of drug related chemicals on US currency is. It’s not a tainted or not situation… for small denomination bills it’s really just a question of how tainted. If I recall their conclusion section correctly, the issue is with these chemicals becoming macroscopically embedded into the fibres of a bill along combined with repeated exposure to liquids (mostly sweat and other water exposure) dissolving them in to the fibres at the microscopic scale

AzzieElbab 5y ago

the dog must testify, preferably in congress

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Yeah I have a lot of issues with Libertarians but stressing personal freedom and innocent until proven guilty (and by extension CAF injustice) I am behind them 100% .