10 ms·

Judge finds no rights violations in FBI seizure Beverly Hills safe-deposit boxes

159 points by tomohawk 4y ago

allears 4y ago
Paywall.
- ccrush 4y ago
  archive it with archive.ph which has no cookies and gets a free trial every time it archives a page
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    Or use TOR. It's not just for criminals! Lynx also works.
LatteLazy 4y ago
https://archive.ph/BhmFS/again?url=https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-30/judge-backs-fbi-beverly-hills-safe-deposit-box-raid https://archive.ph/BhmFS/again?url=https://www.latimes.com/c... Old news (Sept).
notch656a 4y ago
Keeping things in an anonymous safe-deposit box is in general a terrible idea. They are magnets for thieves, police, usually in urban area where a PI can easily follow you and even when acting fully within the law it could unintentionally look very bad if you are in the middle of some proceedings. A hole in the ground is probably preferable 99 times out of 100.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  I feel for the honest people using the service from the article but when you store your valuables in private safe deposit boxes owned by a criminal who advertised his safe deposit boxes as a way to store the proceeds of crimes, you’re gonna have a bad time.
  - hakfoo 4y ago
    Stupid question: If I wanted a safe-deposit box, where do I go? Traditionally, the answer was "your bank", but does that apply anymore? Chase is discontinuing the service, I'm sure plenty of banks never offered it in the first place, plenty of people use "online-only" banks where there might be a branch for legal reasons, but it's nowhere they could easily stop in and retrieve documents, and entirely too many people are unbanked. This seems like enough of a gap in the market that a third-party service that says "we've got a really secure building with armed guards and lots of cameras and stuff" could reasonably find an audience among the law-abiding. I assume a service like the one raided doesn't advertise to the broad public "store dirty assets here" -- indeed, one would expect advertising the service to non-criminal customers would be an important part of their legal ass-coverage strategy.
    - notch656a 4y ago
      The raid IMO is in part to send the signal such businesses are unacceptable and that your assets are not safe there. I would wager this was done for deterrent effect as much as anything. Anonymous safe deposits threaten the paradigm that assets should by KYC'd and easily visible to creditors/the wife/child support/.gov/privacy-hating-tyrants without resorting to depending on the testimony of the defendant.
      - hakfoo 4y ago
        That feels like a half message though. Saying "anonymous boxes are a problem" is viable if there's a prominent non-anonymous alternative. I don't think that exists-- see my concern about the bank option. Hell, one would think this would be a great opportunity for law enforcement to get a direct line into "normal people's" business. Let them do a safe-deposit service: put my passport/birth certificate/old paper stock certificates in a vault at the police station. It's less likely to be burgled than my house, and if they want to gawk over a 30-year-old certificate for one share of MCD, they can feel free.
  - chiph 4y ago
    > private safe deposit boxes owned by a criminal who advertised his safe deposit boxes as a way to store the proceeds of crimes That is what is alleged, but has yet to be proven. I doubt that the owners put up billboards or bought ads saying "Store your ill-gotten goods here, wink-wink". It is much more likely that the business was taken advantage of by criminals. Like how FedEx and UPS are used to ship drugs. Judging by the lawsuit, there's at least 400 customers who used them for legitimate purposes. And some unknown number of customers who used them for nefarious purposes. At what percentage nefariousness does a business become a criminal enterprise, resulting in a large raid by the FBI? Sweeping up and inconveniencing the innocent customers in their dragnet?
- trevyn 4y ago
  Any best practices for holes in the ground? I can imagine that metal detectors and various animals change the threat model, but I suspect there are also unknown unknowns at play here.
  - LinuxBender 4y ago
    unknowns at play here This sounds like a fun thought exercise. No idea who we are protecting against but some factors might be: - Moisture. The containers need to be completely sealed from moisture and have resistance to acid from the soil. - Metal detector. Perhaps this could be mitigated using a skid-steer with an auger drill attachment? Some of the larger skid-steers can use an 80 inch bit. Excavators can use even larger bits and drill at angles to get under solid objects. Rock auger bits can get through some rocks. Layers of gravel might obscure detection from ground penetrating radar. - Location should be obfuscated by trees to avoid satellite and aircraft imaging from Keyhole/Google/Others. - Accessibility. If there is a few feed of rocks above the container and a rope passes through the rocks, then retrieval is less likely to damage the container and one would not need dig as deep for extraction. - Drill numerous holes and find some other use for them whilst singing One of these things is not like the other
    - jstarfish 4y ago
      Re: moisture, you also need to account for condensation forming inside the box as your seal fails. For anti-metal detection, ideal spot would be atop/near a buried junkyard. Once they've gone to the trouble of excavating a rusted Dodge Neon, interlopers are not inclined to dig there again.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
    I always assumed the best strategy would be PVC plumbing pipe. You can get 4inch (10cm) diameter sizes cut to any length. Stuff your cash/jewels/drugs + desiccant and use PVC sealant caps with waterproof sealant. Bury as deep as you want. I would expect that to last decades. Plus it should not set off any metal detectors.
    - 4y ago
- dzonga 4y ago
  the fact you separate thieves and police as separate entities is funny. I tend to put them under the same bracket. only that thieves have a full time to steal, whereas for police thieving is an auxiliary activity
kodah 4y ago
> The warrant request omitted a central part of the FBI’s plan: permanent confiscation of everything inside any box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified. We really need to have a reset on law enforcement in this country. I don't think anyone's happy with the police anymore, federal or otherwise.
- tptacek 4y ago
  That's manifestly untrue. There's probably a way to write that sentence to make it much less trivial to refute, but it will make a claim much more specific than "nobody is happy with the police". As written right now, the opposite is closer (somewhat) to the truth.
  - andrejguran 4y ago
    Unless you're a lawyer or a lexicographer, in a good faith conversation with someone smart, you rarely have to talk about the meanings of the words you're using. So if you have to, it's a sign that you're talking to someone stupid or intellectually dishonest. - Paul Graham https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1598272844106174466 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1598272844106174466
    - xtiansimon 4y ago
      Totally disagree with that statement here on HN. The word “conversation” is doing a lot of work. Hehe In face to face conversation with others, word choice is not critical because in conversation you can work out what someone means or intends over time. Written form is just not the same.
  - hanafudafan 4y ago
    No, it's true. Same with domestic intelligence - they're all rotten. Ask anybody.
    - cyanydeez 4y ago
      Unless you identify anything with a political scope and then you're back to adversarial positions. It's mostly meaningless to cite popular support for anything that doesn't clarify how it'll be completed by Congress. People are willingly allowing broken policies as long as their perceived harm is greater on their perceived "enemies"
KingMachiavelli 4y ago
This seems very strange so maybe the article is leaving something out but if a warrant for X but not Y can still lead to confiscating Y, then what actually limits the power of warrants? > In their warrant request, the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Steve Kim for permission to seize the store’s racks of safe-deposit boxes for forfeiture, but “not their contents.” > The warrant request omitted a central part of the FBI’s plan: permanent confiscation of everything inside any box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified. Is the crucial detail that the cash/goods lack any protection under the law? If there was a written and notarized murder confession in a box would that be permissible in court? I thought anything taken/found outside the scope of the warrant would be impermissible. Is the cash now impermissible for prosecuting actual crimes? (i.e. FBI can just keep it and make the owner sue for its return).
- notch656a 4y ago
  It's been awhile since I read it. I was thinking the judge authorized the FBI to itemize the contents of the boxes "for their return" or something of the sort. No idea what happens if police legally obtain access to evidence of a crime as a byproduct of a warrant, although I imagine for a non-publicized case it would not be good for the defendent. [note: not a lawyer]
- cperciva 4y ago
  Never mind murder confessions -- what happens if there's legally privileged information in a safe deposit box? Seizing documents without providing any opportunity to litigate privilege is a legal Pandora's box.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    This happens all the time in searches, and, unsurprisingly, there's a bunch of very well-defined processes in the DOJ for handling privileged information found in searches. You should follow Ken White's podcast and Twitter feed if this is an interesting topic for you.
    - 4y ago
chriscappuccio 4y ago
Search warrants allow you to search an area that might reasonably contain the items listed in the warrant. Once they are in the safe deposit box, it sounds as if they are using civil asset forfeiture to steal the money. Not long ago people were joking on Steve Lehto's YouTube videos that the police might as well do forfeiture on armored cars. In California, the police started doing exactly that. You can hear them lamenting in one case that they only seized $300,000 and not the $1,000,000 they were expecting. This practice is being fought but it is still common in the US for police to seize assets just because they feel the assets might have been used in a crime, or might be proceeds of a crime. No criminal charges are necessary, and you have to sue to get assets back.
rkagerer 4y ago
Klausner’s ruling did not mention the privacy invasion documented by the plaintiffs: Federal agents took photos and made video recordings of password lists, bank statements, pay stubs, immigration records and many other private papers of box holders who are not criminals. How is this possibly kosher?
- rvba 4y ago
  Because the justice system does not work and has norhing to do with justice
vegetablepotpie 4y ago
1. Judge Steve Kim gave the FBI a warrant to search US Private Vaults in Beverly Hills, but did not grant agents permission to search the contents of safe deposit boxes. 2. FBI raided US Private Vaults, investigating the company for drug trafficking and money laundering in March 2021. FBI opened 700 safe deposit boxes on the assumption that their contents were associated with crimes. 3. 400 Owners of the boxes filed a class action suit, saying the FBI violated their 4th amendment rights. 4. September of 2022 U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner found no impropriety in the way the government obtained or executed the warrants
- rsync 4y ago
  I'd like to learn more about this because it's genuinely interesting ... If you have a warrant for a building, or suite, and there's a bunch of little boxes inside ... what difference does that make ? It seems to me that a savvy deposit box operator would create office space leases for every individual box such that you would have to enter a "premises" for each box, just as you would for individual offices in an office building ... ... or, at the very least, subdivide the box rooms such that every 50 boxes is in a different office with a different master tenant ...
  - vegetablepotpie 4y ago
    The Savviness of this safe deposit boxes owner was using their business to obscure crimes. Their legitimate customers got caught in the middle. If you’re looking at ways to prevent this from happening to you, the question is, would the FBI do something like this with the banks? The answer is no. They are much larger and politically connected than a private safe deposit company. I recommend checking out a video by Steve Lehto if you want to learn more https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt5g3g2JHpQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt5g3g2JHpQ Bottom line is that you do not have any real privacy in society. Law enforcement is willfully ignorant of constitutional rights, and when they overstep, they often get away with it.
    - nullc 4y ago
      > Bottom line is that you do not have any real privacy in society. The only rights you have are the ones you are willing and able to fight for. "Always has been."
jmyeet 4y ago
Courts are political. That's the lesson i want people to take from this. The idea that there is an objective or absolutist interpretation of the Constitution is not true and has never been true. That too is a political ideology. This case is just another example of how the Fourth Amendment is essentially dead. This decision is just more overreach in the same vein as civil asset forfeiture, which gets around "unreasonable search and seizure" by basically saying the money and the property seized has no rights and uses some twisted logic that allows a civil action against property for a perceived criminal violation even though no criminal complaint is made. It's ludicrous. An originalist interpretation fo the Constitution is propaganda, nothing more. The idea was also invented in the 1970s and 1980s. Don't fall for it. Courts as a general rule side with prosecutors, law enforcement (qualified immunity anyone?) and the wealthy. The pseudo-intellectual hand-wringing is just a pretense for political views.
pdonis 4y ago
I found this link to what appears to be Judge Klausner's actual order and its basis here [1], linked to from an article at reason.com [2]: [1] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23115856/092922-uspv-district-court-decision.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23115856/092922-uspv-... [2] https://reason.com/2022/09/30/federal-judge-decides-safe-deposit-boxes-arent-safe-from-fbi/ https://reason.com/2022/09/30/federal-judge-decides-safe-dep...
cmer 4y ago
I guess "not your keys, not your coins" also applies for safe-deposit boxes.
- coffeebeqn 4y ago
  They usually have two keys (one for you to keep, one for the institution) and you need both. The boxes can of course be brute forced open
anm89 4y ago
Lets just call it what it is. If you are involved in law enforcement in the USA, many if not most laws simply don't apply to you in many if not most circumstances. The courts have signed off on this, it's really not a secret or something anyone should be surprised by at this point.
emodendroket 4y ago
> The ruling did not address some of the most controversial aspects of the raid, such as the FBI’s attempt to confiscate assets from box holders on the presumption they were criminals, even in cases where agents had no evidence to validate their suspicions. This seems like the most salient issue so that's rather unfortunate. > “Unfortunately for plaintiffs, the mere presence of such a motive is not by itself enough,” he wrote, citing a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in another search and seizure case. “An impermissible investigatory motive must be the only reason the agents conducted the inventory.” This would seem to almost give carte blanche to craft warrants on the flimsiest means possible and then wildly overstep the original scope of investigation.
sacnoradhq 4y ago
By this argument, civil-asset forfeiture "should be legal" too. "Prove that you're not a criminal (assumed guilt without a trial or due process), and we'll return property we stole from you." Since "Orwellian" and "Kafkaesque" inadequately encapsulate the evil this represents, I think we need new adjectives to describe this insidious and corrosive abuse of rights in the name of the color of law. Disgusting.
metacritic12 4y ago
As part of the ruling, the judge notes "Through the pendency of this litigation, nearly all Plaintiffs and class members have had their seized property returned". Basically, the FBI in this case actually did give nearly all the property back. Seems like a win right? Not actually -- I don't think the FBI necessarily expected this case to blow up like this, so they're going back to their favorite playbook. Make the facts of the case most favorable, so the judge will be inclined to rule on the law itself. In other words, the FBI wanted a favorable ruling, so it returned everything. If there was no suit, was no publicity, would the FBI have returned nearly as much? I doubt it. Civil asset forfeiture needs an examination in this country.
- danuker 4y ago
  > In other words, the FBI wanted a favorable ruling, so it returned everything. How and why does the FBI work against the interests of the public (i.e. property rights)? Do they simply get to keep the proceeds of the seizure, which would be a perverse incentive?
  - metacritic12 4y ago
    The DoJ gets to keep the money from what I understand. On the Federal level this is the better version, because at least it needs to be reappropriated to the department through institutions. At many local level states, literally the police dept gets to keep the money and fund e.g. bonuses using them, which is really a peverse on the ground incentive.
salawat 4y ago
The Ninth Circuit strikes again! Jesus. "It is not enough for an impermissible investigatory motive to be present to invalidate a search and seizure. It can only invalidate it if that is the only motive behind the search." So apparently the 9th Circuit endorses the issuing of flimsy warrants for fishing expeditions, and once again, ignores the requirement whereby the warrant must describe that which is to be searched and seized. Firthermore, this catalog of other, no evidence present, but still anonymous customers, is an implicit nod that anonymity is criminal in character according to law enforcement.
Giorgi 4y ago
But government is your friend, they take care of you, like a father.

159 points by tomohawk 4y ago

allears 4y ago

Paywall.

ccrush 4y ago
archive it with archive.ph which has no cookies and gets a free trial every time it archives a page
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Or use TOR. It's not just for criminals! Lynx also works.

LatteLazy 4y ago

https://archive.ph/BhmFS/again?url=https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-30/judge-backs-fbi-beverly-hills-safe-deposit-box-raid https://archive.ph/BhmFS/again?url=https://www.latimes.com/c... Old news (Sept).

notch656a 4y ago

Keeping things in an anonymous safe-deposit box is in general a terrible idea. They are magnets for thieves, police, usually in urban area where a PI can easily follow you and even when acting fully within the law it could unintentionally look very bad if you are in the middle of some proceedings. A hole in the ground is probably preferable 99 times out of 100.

mikeyouse 4y ago
I feel for the honest people using the service from the article but when you store your valuables in private safe deposit boxes owned by a criminal who advertised his safe deposit boxes as a way to store the proceeds of crimes, you’re gonna have a bad time.
- hakfoo 4y ago
  Stupid question: If I wanted a safe-deposit box, where do I go? Traditionally, the answer was "your bank", but does that apply anymore? Chase is discontinuing the service, I'm sure plenty of banks never offered it in the first place, plenty of people use "online-only" banks where there might be a branch for legal reasons, but it's nowhere they could easily stop in and retrieve documents, and entirely too many people are unbanked. This seems like enough of a gap in the market that a third-party service that says "we've got a really secure building with armed guards and lots of cameras and stuff" could reasonably find an audience among the law-abiding. I assume a service like the one raided doesn't advertise to the broad public "store dirty assets here" -- indeed, one would expect advertising the service to non-criminal customers would be an important part of their legal ass-coverage strategy.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    The raid IMO is in part to send the signal such businesses are unacceptable and that your assets are not safe there. I would wager this was done for deterrent effect as much as anything. Anonymous safe deposits threaten the paradigm that assets should by KYC'd and easily visible to creditors/the wife/child support/.gov/privacy-hating-tyrants without resorting to depending on the testimony of the defendant.
    - hakfoo 4y ago
      That feels like a half message though. Saying "anonymous boxes are a problem" is viable if there's a prominent non-anonymous alternative. I don't think that exists-- see my concern about the bank option. Hell, one would think this would be a great opportunity for law enforcement to get a direct line into "normal people's" business. Let them do a safe-deposit service: put my passport/birth certificate/old paper stock certificates in a vault at the police station. It's less likely to be burgled than my house, and if they want to gawk over a 30-year-old certificate for one share of MCD, they can feel free.
- chiph 4y ago
  > private safe deposit boxes owned by a criminal who advertised his safe deposit boxes as a way to store the proceeds of crimes That is what is alleged, but has yet to be proven. I doubt that the owners put up billboards or bought ads saying "Store your ill-gotten goods here, wink-wink". It is much more likely that the business was taken advantage of by criminals. Like how FedEx and UPS are used to ship drugs. Judging by the lawsuit, there's at least 400 customers who used them for legitimate purposes. And some unknown number of customers who used them for nefarious purposes. At what percentage nefariousness does a business become a criminal enterprise, resulting in a large raid by the FBI? Sweeping up and inconveniencing the innocent customers in their dragnet?
trevyn 4y ago
Any best practices for holes in the ground? I can imagine that metal detectors and various animals change the threat model, but I suspect there are also unknown unknowns at play here.
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  unknowns at play here This sounds like a fun thought exercise. No idea who we are protecting against but some factors might be: - Moisture. The containers need to be completely sealed from moisture and have resistance to acid from the soil. - Metal detector. Perhaps this could be mitigated using a skid-steer with an auger drill attachment? Some of the larger skid-steers can use an 80 inch bit. Excavators can use even larger bits and drill at angles to get under solid objects. Rock auger bits can get through some rocks. Layers of gravel might obscure detection from ground penetrating radar. - Location should be obfuscated by trees to avoid satellite and aircraft imaging from Keyhole/Google/Others. - Accessibility. If there is a few feed of rocks above the container and a rope passes through the rocks, then retrieval is less likely to damage the container and one would not need dig as deep for extraction. - Drill numerous holes and find some other use for them whilst singing One of these things is not like the other
  - jstarfish 4y ago
    Re: moisture, you also need to account for condensation forming inside the box as your seal fails. For anti-metal detection, ideal spot would be atop/near a buried junkyard. Once they've gone to the trouble of excavating a rusted Dodge Neon, interlopers are not inclined to dig there again.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
  I always assumed the best strategy would be PVC plumbing pipe. You can get 4inch (10cm) diameter sizes cut to any length. Stuff your cash/jewels/drugs + desiccant and use PVC sealant caps with waterproof sealant. Bury as deep as you want. I would expect that to last decades. Plus it should not set off any metal detectors.
  - 4y ago
dzonga 4y ago
the fact you separate thieves and police as separate entities is funny. I tend to put them under the same bracket. only that thieves have a full time to steal, whereas for police thieving is an auxiliary activity

kodah 4y ago

> The warrant request omitted a central part of the FBI’s plan: permanent confiscation of everything inside any box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified. We really need to have a reset on law enforcement in this country. I don't think anyone's happy with the police anymore, federal or otherwise.

tptacek 4y ago
That's manifestly untrue. There's probably a way to write that sentence to make it much less trivial to refute, but it will make a claim much more specific than "nobody is happy with the police". As written right now, the opposite is closer (somewhat) to the truth.
- andrejguran 4y ago
  Unless you're a lawyer or a lexicographer, in a good faith conversation with someone smart, you rarely have to talk about the meanings of the words you're using. So if you have to, it's a sign that you're talking to someone stupid or intellectually dishonest. - Paul Graham https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1598272844106174466 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1598272844106174466
  - xtiansimon 4y ago
    Totally disagree with that statement here on HN. The word “conversation” is doing a lot of work. Hehe In face to face conversation with others, word choice is not critical because in conversation you can work out what someone means or intends over time. Written form is just not the same.
- hanafudafan 4y ago
  No, it's true. Same with domestic intelligence - they're all rotten. Ask anybody.
  - cyanydeez 4y ago
    Unless you identify anything with a political scope and then you're back to adversarial positions. It's mostly meaningless to cite popular support for anything that doesn't clarify how it'll be completed by Congress. People are willingly allowing broken policies as long as their perceived harm is greater on their perceived "enemies"

KingMachiavelli 4y ago

This seems very strange so maybe the article is leaving something out but if a warrant for X but not Y can still lead to confiscating Y, then what actually limits the power of warrants? > In their warrant request, the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Steve Kim for permission to seize the store’s racks of safe-deposit boxes for forfeiture, but “not their contents.” > The warrant request omitted a central part of the FBI’s plan: permanent confiscation of everything inside any box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified. Is the crucial detail that the cash/goods lack any protection under the law? If there was a written and notarized murder confession in a box would that be permissible in court? I thought anything taken/found outside the scope of the warrant would be impermissible. Is the cash now impermissible for prosecuting actual crimes? (i.e. FBI can just keep it and make the owner sue for its return).

notch656a 4y ago
It's been awhile since I read it. I was thinking the judge authorized the FBI to itemize the contents of the boxes "for their return" or something of the sort. No idea what happens if police legally obtain access to evidence of a crime as a byproduct of a warrant, although I imagine for a non-publicized case it would not be good for the defendent. [note: not a lawyer]
cperciva 4y ago
Never mind murder confessions -- what happens if there's legally privileged information in a safe deposit box? Seizing documents without providing any opportunity to litigate privilege is a legal Pandora's box.
- tptacek 4y ago
  This happens all the time in searches, and, unsurprisingly, there's a bunch of very well-defined processes in the DOJ for handling privileged information found in searches. You should follow Ken White's podcast and Twitter feed if this is an interesting topic for you.
  - 4y ago

chriscappuccio 4y ago

Search warrants allow you to search an area that might reasonably contain the items listed in the warrant. Once they are in the safe deposit box, it sounds as if they are using civil asset forfeiture to steal the money. Not long ago people were joking on Steve Lehto's YouTube videos that the police might as well do forfeiture on armored cars. In California, the police started doing exactly that. You can hear them lamenting in one case that they only seized $300,000 and not the $1,000,000 they were expecting. This practice is being fought but it is still common in the US for police to seize assets just because they feel the assets might have been used in a crime, or might be proceeds of a crime. No criminal charges are necessary, and you have to sue to get assets back.

rkagerer 4y ago

Klausner’s ruling did not mention the privacy invasion documented by the plaintiffs: Federal agents took photos and made video recordings of password lists, bank statements, pay stubs, immigration records and many other private papers of box holders who are not criminals. How is this possibly kosher?

rvba 4y ago
Because the justice system does not work and has norhing to do with justice

vegetablepotpie 4y ago

1. Judge Steve Kim gave the FBI a warrant to search US Private Vaults in Beverly Hills, but did not grant agents permission to search the contents of safe deposit boxes. 2. FBI raided US Private Vaults, investigating the company for drug trafficking and money laundering in March 2021. FBI opened 700 safe deposit boxes on the assumption that their contents were associated with crimes. 3. 400 Owners of the boxes filed a class action suit, saying the FBI violated their 4th amendment rights. 4. September of 2022 U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner found no impropriety in the way the government obtained or executed the warrants

rsync 4y ago
I'd like to learn more about this because it's genuinely interesting ... If you have a warrant for a building, or suite, and there's a bunch of little boxes inside ... what difference does that make ? It seems to me that a savvy deposit box operator would create office space leases for every individual box such that you would have to enter a "premises" for each box, just as you would for individual offices in an office building ... ... or, at the very least, subdivide the box rooms such that every 50 boxes is in a different office with a different master tenant ...
- vegetablepotpie 4y ago
  The Savviness of this safe deposit boxes owner was using their business to obscure crimes. Their legitimate customers got caught in the middle. If you’re looking at ways to prevent this from happening to you, the question is, would the FBI do something like this with the banks? The answer is no. They are much larger and politically connected than a private safe deposit company. I recommend checking out a video by Steve Lehto if you want to learn more https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt5g3g2JHpQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt5g3g2JHpQ Bottom line is that you do not have any real privacy in society. Law enforcement is willfully ignorant of constitutional rights, and when they overstep, they often get away with it.
  - nullc 4y ago
    > Bottom line is that you do not have any real privacy in society. The only rights you have are the ones you are willing and able to fight for. "Always has been."

jmyeet 4y ago

Courts are political. That's the lesson i want people to take from this. The idea that there is an objective or absolutist interpretation of the Constitution is not true and has never been true. That too is a political ideology. This case is just another example of how the Fourth Amendment is essentially dead. This decision is just more overreach in the same vein as civil asset forfeiture, which gets around "unreasonable search and seizure" by basically saying the money and the property seized has no rights and uses some twisted logic that allows a civil action against property for a perceived criminal violation even though no criminal complaint is made. It's ludicrous. An originalist interpretation fo the Constitution is propaganda, nothing more. The idea was also invented in the 1970s and 1980s. Don't fall for it. Courts as a general rule side with prosecutors, law enforcement (qualified immunity anyone?) and the wealthy. The pseudo-intellectual hand-wringing is just a pretense for political views.

pdonis 4y ago

I found this link to what appears to be Judge Klausner's actual order and its basis here [1], linked to from an article at reason.com [2]: [1] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23115856/092922-uspv-district-court-decision.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23115856/092922-uspv-... [2] https://reason.com/2022/09/30/federal-judge-decides-safe-deposit-boxes-arent-safe-from-fbi/ https://reason.com/2022/09/30/federal-judge-decides-safe-dep...

cmer 4y ago

I guess "not your keys, not your coins" also applies for safe-deposit boxes.

coffeebeqn 4y ago
They usually have two keys (one for you to keep, one for the institution) and you need both. The boxes can of course be brute forced open

anm89 4y ago

Lets just call it what it is. If you are involved in law enforcement in the USA, many if not most laws simply don't apply to you in many if not most circumstances. The courts have signed off on this, it's really not a secret or something anyone should be surprised by at this point.

emodendroket 4y ago

> The ruling did not address some of the most controversial aspects of the raid, such as the FBI’s attempt to confiscate assets from box holders on the presumption they were criminals, even in cases where agents had no evidence to validate their suspicions. This seems like the most salient issue so that's rather unfortunate. > “Unfortunately for plaintiffs, the mere presence of such a motive is not by itself enough,” he wrote, citing a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in another search and seizure case. “An impermissible investigatory motive must be the only reason the agents conducted the inventory.” This would seem to almost give carte blanche to craft warrants on the flimsiest means possible and then wildly overstep the original scope of investigation.

sacnoradhq 4y ago

By this argument, civil-asset forfeiture "should be legal" too. "Prove that you're not a criminal (assumed guilt without a trial or due process), and we'll return property we stole from you." Since "Orwellian" and "Kafkaesque" inadequately encapsulate the evil this represents, I think we need new adjectives to describe this insidious and corrosive abuse of rights in the name of the color of law. Disgusting.

metacritic12 4y ago

As part of the ruling, the judge notes "Through the pendency of this litigation, nearly all Plaintiffs and class members have had their seized property returned". Basically, the FBI in this case actually did give nearly all the property back. Seems like a win right? Not actually -- I don't think the FBI necessarily expected this case to blow up like this, so they're going back to their favorite playbook. Make the facts of the case most favorable, so the judge will be inclined to rule on the law itself. In other words, the FBI wanted a favorable ruling, so it returned everything. If there was no suit, was no publicity, would the FBI have returned nearly as much? I doubt it. Civil asset forfeiture needs an examination in this country.

danuker 4y ago
> In other words, the FBI wanted a favorable ruling, so it returned everything. How and why does the FBI work against the interests of the public (i.e. property rights)? Do they simply get to keep the proceeds of the seizure, which would be a perverse incentive?
- metacritic12 4y ago
  The DoJ gets to keep the money from what I understand. On the Federal level this is the better version, because at least it needs to be reappropriated to the department through institutions. At many local level states, literally the police dept gets to keep the money and fund e.g. bonuses using them, which is really a peverse on the ground incentive.

salawat 4y ago

The Ninth Circuit strikes again! Jesus. "It is not enough for an impermissible investigatory motive to be present to invalidate a search and seizure. It can only invalidate it if that is the only motive behind the search." So apparently the 9th Circuit endorses the issuing of flimsy warrants for fishing expeditions, and once again, ignores the requirement whereby the warrant must describe that which is to be searched and seized. Firthermore, this catalog of other, no evidence present, but still anonymous customers, is an implicit nod that anonymity is criminal in character according to law enforcement.

Giorgi 4y ago

But government is your friend, they take care of you, like a father.