11 ms·

DEA passenger searches halted after watchdog finds signs of rights violations

206 points by perihelions 2y ago

walrus01 2y ago
As always when this sort of topic comes up, "don't talk to the police": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE I wish that American high schools would teach people what their actual 4th amendment rights are. There's certain situations you cannot avoid being searched, and there's ones where you're fully within your rights to refuse.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- micromacrofoot 2y ago
  I agree, but how ridiculous is the overreach of police when we start suggesting that schools include it in curriculum
  - walrus01 2y ago
    Indeed, though I would also hope that it could be included in a more general and varied curriculum about the constitution and bill of rights, all other amendments, civil rights act, etc.
  - bdowling 2y ago
    It’s a joke because most American schools are run by the government.
    - hackernewds 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - alchemist1e9 2y ago
        What do you refer to? I send all my kids to private schools are there anti-private mandates in some places?
        vundercind 2y ago
        Some folks regard the stance that public school taxes are supposed to pay for having a public school system, not for redistribution to parents to spend on any schools they want, as being tyrannical.
        spankalee 2y ago
        They're probably referring to the very reasonable idea that funds for public schools shouldn't be diverted to private and religious schools under the "school choice" banner because it intentionally defunds public schools for private schools that have very little oversight and standards, and acts as an unneeded subsidy for wealthier families.
        rectang 2y ago
        It's whether or not the government subsidizes your private school via vouchers. The consequence is that public school budgets are further diminished, reducing and eventually eliminating the project to educate the whole citizenry, further stratifying society.
      - walrus01 2y ago
        In this case I think "private choice" is a dog whistle for "I want to take funds away from the local public school system by having voucher money from it, for my kids, to give to some ideologically oriented private school". When you start complaining that everything you don't like is fascism/socialism, you're just cosplaying as being oppressed.
        bdowling 2y ago
        It's a shame, because school choice could be a rallying cry for "Tax the rich to pay for private schools for all kids."
    - vundercind 2y ago
      Schools have a lot of local autonomy and are among the easiest institutions to influence, for non-rich citizens. Getting your local schools to include more coverage of rights when encountering the police in the curriculum is among the easiest outcomes to pursue as far as changing what “the government” is doing. … if enough other people in your local community agree with you.
    - criddell 2y ago
      And the government is selected by you and your neighbors.
      - logicchains 2y ago
        Only if you live in a swing county of a swing state.
        brewdad 2y ago
        Sorry but the citizens of Detroit don't select the school board in Alpena. Too many Americans focus on a Presidential election every four years that gets decided by a couple hundred thousand people in 4 or 5 states and ignore all of the elections that actually impact their day to day lives. Get involved in your local elections, even if only becoming an informed citizen. Those are the elections where you can make a difference.
  - wk_end 2y ago
    It’s sort of a foundational principle of the American system that power will always overreach, and adversarial checks and balances are always required to keep power in line. Saying it’s ridiculous to teach kids about their rights is, in that light, roughly comparable to saying it’s ridiculous that the government produces documents (i.e. the Bill of Rights) asserting what it can’t do. Far from being ridiculous it’s about as fundamentally American as it gets.
    - micromacrofoot 2y ago
      It's ridiculous that we have to teach children their rights to avoid them being abused by the government that supposedly enforces them. This is a sign that our checks and balances don't actually work as well as we think they do. It's good for children to receive this education, but uhh... why don't the police?
  - Eumenes 2y ago
    Quit the hyperbole. This seems like a basic Civics class topic.
    - micromacrofoot 2y ago
      Get your tongue off the boot for a second, read this, and come back to tell me it's hyperbole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United... Knowing your rights shouldn't be a prerequisite to avoiding government theft.
  - Nasrudith 2y ago
    Forget schools, we already have to talk to kids about how to act around the police like they are some dangerous animal. Except if they were some dangerous animal we would have done the sensible thing and shot them all already.
- rolph 2y ago
  it all starts in preschool, when officers are modeled as universal friends that always help.
  - immibis 2y ago
    "PAW Patrol's Dark Secret, Explained": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwhUpu9MfZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwhUpu9MfZ0
- barbazoo 2y ago
  As a somewhat recent immigrant to Canada, would the consensus be that this applies here as well?
  - walrus01 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and... There is also a whole body of precedents and case law in canada specific to charter rights, broadly similar to US rights, but with different terminology.
  - fusivdh 2y ago
    In my experience with both countries, American constitutional rights are stronger, but Canadian police are less corrupt (but universally unpleasant)
  - Scoundreller 2y ago
    Big difference in Canada is that judges can be fully aware of an illegal unconstitutional search but convict you anyway from evidence collected from it if they feel like it. And fewer jury trials (positive or negative depending on your point of view), and the prosecutor is free to appeal a not guilty ruling.
  - MadnessASAP 2y ago
    As walrus01 said, yes the 4th amendment has a almost word for word parallel in the CCRF, specifically section 8: 8. Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure. However, it's important to know that the Canadian courts have interpreted the law differently then American courts. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_8_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_8_of_the_Canadian_Ch...
    - int_19h 2y ago
      Note further that Section 8 of CCRF is one of the sections that are subject to the "notwithstanding clause" (Section 33), meaning that either the federal parliament or the provincial legislature can enact laws in direct contravention to it, so long as they expressly declare it in the text of the law. Such "notwithstanding" declarations have a 5-year term, but legislature can renew them indefinitely. So, in practice, the most important parts of CCRF can be overridden by simple majority vote of the legislators.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  Schools will never teach kids their rights to any useful or applicable extent because schools routinely operate in the gray area at the limits and creating a bunch of students who'll call them out on it would make their jobs harder. Same reason they don't do much to teach critical thinking.
  - BobaFloutist 2y ago
    Schools aren't really subject to the Fourth Amendment and students explicitly have lesser constitutional rights, so they don't really need to worry about gray areas or limits. The main problem with the suggestion is rather that 1. Schools typically do teach students about their Fourth (among other) Amendment rights, usually in a high-school civics class at the very latest, many students just aren't particularly interested or don't particularly care about paying attention in class. 2. Every time there's a skill or pool of knowledge many adults don't have we default to "They should really teach this in school instead of all the other stupid bullshit they waste their time on," but it turns out all the stupid bullshit they waste their time on is other skills or knowledge pools that people have, over the years, agreed that they should really teach in school. So either you're proposing that schools get more funding and students are kept there for more hours to teach all the additional skills you want students to come out with, or you need to choose a subject to cut, and rest assured that any particular subject you choose will have an existing group of advocates leap to its defense - if it didn't, it would have already been cut after Reaganomics, NCLB, the 2008 GFC, COVID19, or the numerous other occasions we've found opportunities to trim school budgets.
    - indrora 2y ago
      I don't know when you went to high school, but my entire district cut their civics course for being "irrelevant to the educational goals of the district". I was part of a group of students that did post-school discussions off-campus of civics with those interested, often discussing how it has become harder and harder for students to retain their rights in the public education system.
      - 2y ago
- jabroni_salad 2y ago
  I do celebrate STFU Friday, every day, but airports are kind of a different situation. If they decide to detain you for a couple hours, you're gonna miss the plane and you aren't going to get a refund or a transfer or whatever. The is so much incentive to play along that doesn't exist at a basic traffic stop. https://youtu.be/uqo5RYOp4nQ https://youtu.be/uqo5RYOp4nQ much shorter version of your video :)
  - LordDragonfang 2y ago
    This is yet another insane thing. If you're detained and not charged, you should automatically be given a transfer, no questions asked - and it should be explicitly mandated so.
  - fusivdh 2y ago
    [dead]
- acdha 2y ago
  One big problem here is that your ability to insist on your 4th amendment rights varies considerably. The further you are from all of affluent, straight, white, and male the more likely it is that you’ll experience pressure or retaliation if you persist in not cooperating, and in extreme cases that includes illegal detention, violence, or fabrication of evidence. If your life is a repeating story of having to situationally decide where you’re likely to fall on that scale, you’re probably going to acquiesce because it’s the least stressful option – especially in this case where the easiest retaliation is almost unprovable by “accidentally” making you miss your flight.
  - UncleMeat 2y ago
    There's also almost no recourse even if your rights are violated. If you are lucky any evidence gets excluded from a future trial. But what about some remedy? It is outrageously difficult to sue individual state police or state police departments. Federal agents are even more protected, with Bivens being slowly crushed into nothingness.
- bluGill 2y ago
  They are targeting people who are already late. You can demand your 4th amendment rights, and after some "consultation" we will give them to you - but you will miss your flight. Or just let them search your bad, hope they don't take anything and you have a chance to get there on time. In short you don't really have the option to stand up for your rights.
potato3732842 2y ago
Why now? These concerns have been being raised for decades.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  There's been a few very blatant video-captured interactions specifically about the DEA at airports, so has refocused the lens on them. And in both cases, the videos are fairly thorough, high definition, so there's none of the usual "you didn't see the rest of the interaction and context that makes it reasonable" - instead blatant abuses of power by the DEA agents.
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    I would like to think that the heat of public perception is increasing but I'm not sure that's true. Seems like civil asset forfieture was a much more hot button issue 2-4yr ago and has kind of waned since. Maybe, hopefully, you're right.
- fn-mote 2y ago
  Actually a key question. I assume there are politics involved that are not covered in the article. I would also be astounded to find that anything so simple as unilateral DOJ action, no executive order, no consent decree, would be effective in changing this behavior.
  - mrandish 2y ago
    I suspect the trigger was the realization recent especially egregious cases were being prepared for court cases, which were likely to be won. Agencies like this would rather voluntarily pull back to prevent a court ruling setting precedent. The agency can always bring back similar measures in different forms or with different supposed safeguards but a court ruling is beyond their control.
    - potato3732842 2y ago
      >I suspect the trigger was the realization recent especially egregious cases were being prepared for court cases, which were likely to be won. I should've thought of this. Can you reference a specific case? I'd like to follow it. >Agencies like this would rather voluntarily pull back to prevent a court ruling setting precedent. The agency can always bring back similar measures in different forms or with different supposed safeguards but a court ruling is beyond their control. I need to review the federal jurisprudence on this. IIRC there were some finer points that changed so "don't worry we changed the rule" is no longer as good a defense as it once was and that's part of what led to Bruen making it into court in the first place.
nashashmi 2y ago
[flagged]
- fn-mote 2y ago
  By the end am not sure, but I think this comment should have been marked /s.
  - nashashmi 2y ago
    ha. My comment meant to show the oxymoronic state of the system. But I think it offended everyone. -3 points already!
- BobaFloutist 2y ago
  > potential drug possession violators That's literally everyone. Taking rights away from suspects is just an elaborate way of saying that cops get to decide who has rights and who doesn't.
- hunter2_ 2y ago
  Confiscation (and punative consequences) of contraband impacting the immediate safety of passengers should be the only result of submission to warrantless searches at an airport. If there's a warrant (for search or for arrest) then go ahead and execute it at the airport or anywhere else.
  - nashashmi 2y ago
    Confiscation would be a good passive response and it would not need a warrant. The added bonus is intel is widened to include the name of the person for record and tab sheet. Plus, future searches would be given warrant due to previous record.
cmiles74 2y ago
The violation of rights isn't great, the article also mentions seizing cash which may be just as bad or worse in some cases. One person cited in the article was traveling to purchase a truck and the deal fell through ($30k), an elderly man and his daughter had $82k siezed (why they were traveling with that much cash wasn't mentioned).
- throwawaymanbot 2y ago
  [dead]
- perihelions 2y ago
  - "(why they were traveling with that much cash wasn't mentioned)" You can read or watch their story here[0,1]. They're not shy about what happened to them—they sued the US government to get everything back (with the pro bono assistance of the nonprofit IJ). [0] https://ij.org/press-release/pittsburgh-retiree-sues-federal-government-to-get-his-life-savings-back/ https://ij.org/press-release/pittsburgh-retiree-sues-federal... ("Pittsburgh Retiree Sues Federal Government to Get His Life Savings Back" (2020)) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsre7I0UUJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsre7I0UUJA (" DEA & TSA Take $82,000 Life Savings From Pittsburgh Retiree") - "Terry, 79, is a retired railroad engineer born and raised in Pittsburgh. For many years, he followed his parents’ habit of hiding money in the basement of their home. When Terry moved out of his family home and into a smaller apartment, he became uncomfortable with keeping a large amount of cash. Last summer, when his daughter Rebecca was home for a family event, Terry asked her to take the money and open a new joint bank account that he could use to pay for dental work and to fix his truck, among other needs..."
  - plagiarist 2y ago
    In a functioning justice system the government might be able to place a temporary hold on the money, but would need to promptly return it when declining to press charges or on an acquittal. Literal theft.
    - bsimpson 2y ago
itishappy 2y ago
> In a management directive issued on Thursday, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General said it had been hearing complaints about the searches for years — and had recently learned new information that suggested there were significant problems with them, including potential constitutional violations. For years... The recent info is (of course) a passenger recording their encounter. > The IG said investigators could not come to any conclusions about whether the searches involved racial profiling because the DEA does not collect data on all the people it stops — only on the cases in which money is seized. Data on seizures seems like a solid start. Why don't they have data on searches? > “The Department has long been concerned — and long received complaints — about potential racial profiling in connection with cold consent encounters in transportation setting,” the report said, adding that the DEA between 2000 and 2003 “collected consensual encounter data on every encounter in certain mass transportation facilities as part of a Department pilot project to examine the use of race in law enforcement operations.” > But neither the DEA nor the Justice Department “drew any conclusions from the data collected about whether the consensual encounters were being conducted in an unbiased manner, and in 2003 the DEA terminated its data collection efforts,” the report said, and “its consensual encounter activities continued.” Complaints for years, yet decided to stop recording data... That's sketchy as hell. > The IG found that the search was based on a tip by an airline employee who passed on the names of passengers who had purchased flights 48 hours before departure. > That employee was being paid by the DEA a percentage of the cash seized, the IG found, and had received tens of thousands of dollars over several years. That arrangement is problematic, investigators concluded. "Fight crime with crime" seems to be a fairly widespread attitude amongst government agencies (reminded of the TSA article yesterday), but this seems particularly egregious. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228795
- ramblenode 2y ago
  > Complaints for years, yet decided to stop recording data... That's sketchy as hell. The motivation could also be practical. Studies are canceled for a variety of reasons unrelated to the conclusion: flawed design, poor data collection process, data doesn't generalize, data isn't specific enough, study has run out of budget, something significant changed in the middle of the study, etc.
reverendsteveii 2y ago
Government to temporarily stop robbing people after watchdog determines that the way they rob people may be a violation of their civil rights as the law says that the police must rob people without regard to their membership in protected classes.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  [flagged]
PittleyDunkin 2y ago
Given that the war on drugs was such a massive failure (and seems to fail harder each year), I consider their continued existence to facilitate parallel reconstruction and bypass what protections we have from our government.
- dfxm12 2y ago
  From the perspective of preventing people from using drugs, it is a failure, but it is clear that was never the goal from the start. It is successful in systemically and extra-judiciously oppressing a lot of peoples, often to the benefit of the prison-industrial complex. The war on drugs has also benefitted the military-industrial complex and helped to quell leftist insurgencies in foreign countries, like Colombia. Wars against vague notions, like drugs or terror, let the government pinpoint its enemies and deal with them how they see fit.
zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
My brother was robbed of over $80k like this at an Amtrak station several years ago. They made up some story about following him from Chicago to Portland and it was from heroin sales. 1. He got on the train 3 states away from Chicago, I know this because I gave him a ride to the station. 2. He never had anything to do with heroin sales. They were charging him with 3 felonies of 10+ years each and eventually got a plea deal for them to keep the money and he had like a couple years probation. All for carrying some money on a train.
- tptacek 2y ago
  I'm sure he wasn't a heroin dealer, but why was your brother carrying $80k?
  - fusivdh 2y ago
    [dead]
  - zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
    It's a free country and people should be allowed to transport money with them. He was on his way back to Northern California to pay someone for some stuff that had been fronted + re-up
    - tptacek 2y ago
      In cash? Did you tell him "this is a bad idea, you should wire the money instead"? What if he had been mugged? What if he lost the suitcase? I arranged the transportation of $25,000 in cash (I sold a car, it was a gag, I was very young, and it was an extraordinarily bad idea that cost me thousands of dollars), and just as a physical object that's pretty big. Also: where did he get the cash from? I had trouble getting it.
      - mixmastamyk 2y ago
        At larger banks, there’s usually a teller that has their own cubicle with a locked door. They buzz you in in and you ask for amounts > 1k.
alsetmusic 2y ago
Here’s the watchdog org that first made the video go viral: https://ij.org/press-release/department-of-justice-suspends-controversial-airport-interdictions-after-viral-footage-showing-dea-agents-threatening-abusing-innocent-traveler/ https://ij.org/press-release/department-of-justice-suspends-...
- bsimpson 2y ago
  We just did holiday donations at work. If I saw this last week, I probably would have earmarked some for them.
AyyEye 2y ago
> The IG found that the search was based on a tip by an airline employee who passed on the names of passengers who had purchased flights 48 hours before departure. I have bought last-minute airline tickets three times in my life -- all to buy a car that was a good deal. All three times I had cash to buy said car. Glad I never got snared.
- baxtr 2y ago
  48 hours is not uncommon for business trips.
  - pas 2y ago
    this was simply a targeted operation at people who use cash instead of credit cards, right? (I mean business trips, corporate people usually use credit cards.)
    - Scoundreller 2y ago
      A lotta corporate people are forced into using some (annoying and often useless) corporate travel agent. I’d guess messing with those bookings would… quickly fix the problem.
- chatmasta 2y ago
  I purchase most of my tickets last minute simply because I tend to procrastinate. And they’re usually one way tickets because I procrastinate deciding my return date, too. I’ve never been flagged for SSS though. Maybe that’s because the behavior isn’t anomalous for me.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    I never flew before 9/11, the few times I've flown, I've always been "randomly selected".
    - bdangubic 2y ago
baxtr 2y ago
I bet this will go viral on X…
AcerbicZero 2y ago
I love watching the feds scramble to stop committing crimes whenever someone with a camera happens to walk by. Really makes me believe they're behaving when we're not looking.
hammock 2y ago
> The IG found that the search was based on a tip by an airline employee who passed on the names of passengers who had purchased flights 48 hours before departure. That employee was being paid by the DEA a percentage of the cash seized, the IG found, and had received tens of thousands of dollars over several years. That arrangement is problematic, investigators concluded. You don't say? > USA Today reported in 2016 that, over a decade, the DEA seized more than $209 million in cash from at least 5,200 people at 15 busy airports Assuming the top 15 airports account for 50MM annual travel, that means, on average, 1 in 100K traveler-trips have cash seized: 3 seizures per airport per month, with a per-seizure haul of $4K
1024core 2y ago
> That employee was being paid by the DEA a percentage of the cash seized, the IG found, and had received tens of thousands of dollars over several years. That arrangement is problematic, investigators concluded. What a perverse incentive! Flag every passenger possible; your expected payout is positive. You have nothing to lose!!
insane_dreamer 2y ago
> f the agents found cash, they seized it through civil forfeiture — a legal process that places the onus on the passenger to prove it was not connected to drugs in order to get it back one of the absolutely most horrible laws that exist in the U.S. today that goes totally against the presumption of innocence that is (supposedly) the bedrock of our legal framework
- m463 2y ago
  > The IG found that the search was based on a tip by an airline employee who passed on the names of passengers who had purchased flights 48 hours before departure. > That employee was being paid by the DEA a percentage of the cash seized, the IG found, and had received tens of thousands of dollars over several years. That arrangement is problematic, investigators concluded. I think this goes even beyond civil forfeiture (which shares revenue with police departments, etc) I think sharing it with an airline employee is out and out corruption.
  - nicoburns 2y ago
    Civil forfeiture is also out and out corruption. But I agree that this goes beyond the usual bounds of that process.
    - uoaei 2y ago
      Some people just assume that legal == good. Too many of them comment on conundrums of morality without making that clear.
      - Gud 2y ago
        But is it really legal??? Seems pretty unconstitutional to me
- beej71 2y ago
  I honestly don't understand how this has been allowed to stand all these years.
HDThoreaun 2y ago
> USA Today reported in 2016 that, over a decade, the DEA seized more than $209 million in cash from at least 5,200 people at 15 busy airports Absolutely unacceptable
guiambros 2y ago
> The IG found that the search was based on a tip by an airline employee who passed on the names of passengers who had purchased flights 48 hours before departure. That employee was being paid by the DEA a percentage of the cash seized, the IG found, and had received tens of thousands of dollars over several years. That arrangement is problematic, investigators concluded. How come this is not a fireable offense in any company? This person is leaking a customer's PII to a third party (DEA, in this case). It doesn't really matter if it's to a government official, unless there was a warrant and the airline's Legal council involved. Am I missing anything? This feels outrageous that airlines are letting this happen. Is there a law that allows employees to break any company's policies under the guise of "suspicion of a crime being committed, even without a warrant"? And it's even worse that the "profits" are being shared with said employee, and this is not seen as bribery and corruption.
- alphan0n 2y ago
  Presumably the airline is unaware of the practice by employees. How would they know? Not like the the employee or DEA is going to make them aware and confidential informants aren’t named in court documents.
  - kyleee 2y ago
    Actually a great side hustle for similarly situated employees who don’t mind fucking over other humans. I wonder how common it is? Big enough where people with these jobs discuss it in a forum on the net somewhere?
    - alphan0n 2y ago
      There are likely hundreds of employees with access to this information within the company, and thousands of third party employees. I work as an analyst for a marketing company that fulfills gift/award points/miles for people who have opted into the loyalty programs for all the major airlines, hotel chains, fuel reward affiliates. We have data granular to the minute in a continuous feed. I can only imagine that there are numerous opportunities for exfiltration along this chain. Personally, I make enough to never consider breaching protocol, but there are a dozen contacts in my sphere that are temps or contractors that deliver the data to us, I could imagine that the DEA offering double or more than their base salary with little danger of discovery would be tempting. *I think that by becoming an informant you would be dissuaded from public discourse or lose your anonymity, so there’s probably aren’t any serious forums dedicated to the practice.

206 points by perihelions 2y ago

As always when this sort of topic comes up, "don't talk to the police": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE I wish that American high schools would teach people what their actual 4th amendment rights are. There's certain situations you cannot avoid being searched, and there's ones where you're fully within your rights to refuse.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
micromacrofoot 2y ago
I agree, but how ridiculous is the overreach of police when we start suggesting that schools include it in curriculum
- walrus01 2y ago
  Indeed, though I would also hope that it could be included in a more general and varied curriculum about the constitution and bill of rights, all other amendments, civil rights act, etc.
- bdowling 2y ago
  It’s a joke because most American schools are run by the government.
  - hackernewds 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - alchemist1e9 2y ago
      What do you refer to? I send all my kids to private schools are there anti-private mandates in some places?
      - vundercind 2y ago
        Some folks regard the stance that public school taxes are supposed to pay for having a public school system, not for redistribution to parents to spend on any schools they want, as being tyrannical.
      - spankalee 2y ago
        They're probably referring to the very reasonable idea that funds for public schools shouldn't be diverted to private and religious schools under the "school choice" banner because it intentionally defunds public schools for private schools that have very little oversight and standards, and acts as an unneeded subsidy for wealthier families.
      - rectang 2y ago
        It's whether or not the government subsidizes your private school via vouchers. The consequence is that public school budgets are further diminished, reducing and eventually eliminating the project to educate the whole citizenry, further stratifying society.
    - walrus01 2y ago
      In this case I think "private choice" is a dog whistle for "I want to take funds away from the local public school system by having voucher money from it, for my kids, to give to some ideologically oriented private school". When you start complaining that everything you don't like is fascism/socialism, you're just cosplaying as being oppressed.
      - bdowling 2y ago
        It's a shame, because school choice could be a rallying cry for "Tax the rich to pay for private schools for all kids."
  - vundercind 2y ago
    Schools have a lot of local autonomy and are among the easiest institutions to influence, for non-rich citizens. Getting your local schools to include more coverage of rights when encountering the police in the curriculum is among the easiest outcomes to pursue as far as changing what “the government” is doing. … if enough other people in your local community agree with you.
  - criddell 2y ago
    And the government is selected by you and your neighbors.
    - logicchains 2y ago
      Only if you live in a swing county of a swing state.
      - brewdad 2y ago
        Sorry but the citizens of Detroit don't select the school board in Alpena. Too many Americans focus on a Presidential election every four years that gets decided by a couple hundred thousand people in 4 or 5 states and ignore all of the elections that actually impact their day to day lives. Get involved in your local elections, even if only becoming an informed citizen. Those are the elections where you can make a difference.
- wk_end 2y ago
  It’s sort of a foundational principle of the American system that power will always overreach, and adversarial checks and balances are always required to keep power in line. Saying it’s ridiculous to teach kids about their rights is, in that light, roughly comparable to saying it’s ridiculous that the government produces documents (i.e. the Bill of Rights) asserting what it can’t do. Far from being ridiculous it’s about as fundamentally American as it gets.
  - micromacrofoot 2y ago
    It's ridiculous that we have to teach children their rights to avoid them being abused by the government that supposedly enforces them. This is a sign that our checks and balances don't actually work as well as we think they do. It's good for children to receive this education, but uhh... why don't the police?
- Eumenes 2y ago
  Quit the hyperbole. This seems like a basic Civics class topic.
  - micromacrofoot 2y ago
    Get your tongue off the boot for a second, read this, and come back to tell me it's hyperbole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United... Knowing your rights shouldn't be a prerequisite to avoiding government theft.
- Nasrudith 2y ago
  Forget schools, we already have to talk to kids about how to act around the police like they are some dangerous animal. Except if they were some dangerous animal we would have done the sensible thing and shot them all already.
rolph 2y ago
it all starts in preschool, when officers are modeled as universal friends that always help.
- immibis 2y ago
  "PAW Patrol's Dark Secret, Explained": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwhUpu9MfZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwhUpu9MfZ0
barbazoo 2y ago
As a somewhat recent immigrant to Canada, would the consensus be that this applies here as well?
- walrus01 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and... There is also a whole body of precedents and case law in canada specific to charter rights, broadly similar to US rights, but with different terminology.
- fusivdh 2y ago
  In my experience with both countries, American constitutional rights are stronger, but Canadian police are less corrupt (but universally unpleasant)
- Scoundreller 2y ago
  Big difference in Canada is that judges can be fully aware of an illegal unconstitutional search but convict you anyway from evidence collected from it if they feel like it. And fewer jury trials (positive or negative depending on your point of view), and the prosecutor is free to appeal a not guilty ruling.
- MadnessASAP 2y ago
  As walrus01 said, yes the 4th amendment has a almost word for word parallel in the CCRF, specifically section 8: 8. Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure. However, it's important to know that the Canadian courts have interpreted the law differently then American courts. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_8_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_8_of_the_Canadian_Ch...
  - int_19h 2y ago
    Note further that Section 8 of CCRF is one of the sections that are subject to the "notwithstanding clause" (Section 33), meaning that either the federal parliament or the provincial legislature can enact laws in direct contravention to it, so long as they expressly declare it in the text of the law. Such "notwithstanding" declarations have a 5-year term, but legislature can renew them indefinitely. So, in practice, the most important parts of CCRF can be overridden by simple majority vote of the legislators.
potato3732842 2y ago
Schools will never teach kids their rights to any useful or applicable extent because schools routinely operate in the gray area at the limits and creating a bunch of students who'll call them out on it would make their jobs harder. Same reason they don't do much to teach critical thinking.
- BobaFloutist 2y ago
  Schools aren't really subject to the Fourth Amendment and students explicitly have lesser constitutional rights, so they don't really need to worry about gray areas or limits. The main problem with the suggestion is rather that 1. Schools typically do teach students about their Fourth (among other) Amendment rights, usually in a high-school civics class at the very latest, many students just aren't particularly interested or don't particularly care about paying attention in class. 2. Every time there's a skill or pool of knowledge many adults don't have we default to "They should really teach this in school instead of all the other stupid bullshit they waste their time on," but it turns out all the stupid bullshit they waste their time on is other skills or knowledge pools that people have, over the years, agreed that they should really teach in school. So either you're proposing that schools get more funding and students are kept there for more hours to teach all the additional skills you want students to come out with, or you need to choose a subject to cut, and rest assured that any particular subject you choose will have an existing group of advocates leap to its defense - if it didn't, it would have already been cut after Reaganomics, NCLB, the 2008 GFC, COVID19, or the numerous other occasions we've found opportunities to trim school budgets.
  - indrora 2y ago
    I don't know when you went to high school, but my entire district cut their civics course for being "irrelevant to the educational goals of the district". I was part of a group of students that did post-school discussions off-campus of civics with those interested, often discussing how it has become harder and harder for students to retain their rights in the public education system.
    - 2y ago
jabroni_salad 2y ago
I do celebrate STFU Friday, every day, but airports are kind of a different situation. If they decide to detain you for a couple hours, you're gonna miss the plane and you aren't going to get a refund or a transfer or whatever. The is so much incentive to play along that doesn't exist at a basic traffic stop. https://youtu.be/uqo5RYOp4nQ https://youtu.be/uqo5RYOp4nQ much shorter version of your video :)
- LordDragonfang 2y ago
  This is yet another insane thing. If you're detained and not charged, you should automatically be given a transfer, no questions asked - and it should be explicitly mandated so.
- fusivdh 2y ago
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acdha 2y ago
One big problem here is that your ability to insist on your 4th amendment rights varies considerably. The further you are from all of affluent, straight, white, and male the more likely it is that you’ll experience pressure or retaliation if you persist in not cooperating, and in extreme cases that includes illegal detention, violence, or fabrication of evidence. If your life is a repeating story of having to situationally decide where you’re likely to fall on that scale, you’re probably going to acquiesce because it’s the least stressful option – especially in this case where the easiest retaliation is almost unprovable by “accidentally” making you miss your flight.
- UncleMeat 2y ago
  There's also almost no recourse even if your rights are violated. If you are lucky any evidence gets excluded from a future trial. But what about some remedy? It is outrageously difficult to sue individual state police or state police departments. Federal agents are even more protected, with Bivens being slowly crushed into nothingness.
bluGill 2y ago
They are targeting people who are already late. You can demand your 4th amendment rights, and after some "consultation" we will give them to you - but you will miss your flight. Or just let them search your bad, hope they don't take anything and you have a chance to get there on time. In short you don't really have the option to stand up for your rights.

potato3732842 2y ago

Why now? These concerns have been being raised for decades.

FireBeyond 2y ago
There's been a few very blatant video-captured interactions specifically about the DEA at airports, so has refocused the lens on them. And in both cases, the videos are fairly thorough, high definition, so there's none of the usual "you didn't see the rest of the interaction and context that makes it reasonable" - instead blatant abuses of power by the DEA agents.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  I would like to think that the heat of public perception is increasing but I'm not sure that's true. Seems like civil asset forfieture was a much more hot button issue 2-4yr ago and has kind of waned since. Maybe, hopefully, you're right.
fn-mote 2y ago
Actually a key question. I assume there are politics involved that are not covered in the article. I would also be astounded to find that anything so simple as unilateral DOJ action, no executive order, no consent decree, would be effective in changing this behavior.
- mrandish 2y ago
  I suspect the trigger was the realization recent especially egregious cases were being prepared for court cases, which were likely to be won. Agencies like this would rather voluntarily pull back to prevent a court ruling setting precedent. The agency can always bring back similar measures in different forms or with different supposed safeguards but a court ruling is beyond their control.
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    >I suspect the trigger was the realization recent especially egregious cases were being prepared for court cases, which were likely to be won. I should've thought of this. Can you reference a specific case? I'd like to follow it. >Agencies like this would rather voluntarily pull back to prevent a court ruling setting precedent. The agency can always bring back similar measures in different forms or with different supposed safeguards but a court ruling is beyond their control. I need to review the federal jurisprudence on this. IIRC there were some finer points that changed so "don't worry we changed the rule" is no longer as good a defense as it once was and that's part of what led to Bruen making it into court in the first place.

nashashmi 2y ago

[flagged]

fn-mote 2y ago
By the end am not sure, but I think this comment should have been marked /s.
- nashashmi 2y ago
  ha. My comment meant to show the oxymoronic state of the system. But I think it offended everyone. -3 points already!
BobaFloutist 2y ago
> potential drug possession violators That's literally everyone. Taking rights away from suspects is just an elaborate way of saying that cops get to decide who has rights and who doesn't.
hunter2_ 2y ago
Confiscation (and punative consequences) of contraband impacting the immediate safety of passengers should be the only result of submission to warrantless searches at an airport. If there's a warrant (for search or for arrest) then go ahead and execute it at the airport or anywhere else.
- nashashmi 2y ago
  Confiscation would be a good passive response and it would not need a warrant. The added bonus is intel is widened to include the name of the person for record and tab sheet. Plus, future searches would be given warrant due to previous record.

cmiles74 2y ago

The violation of rights isn't great, the article also mentions seizing cash which may be just as bad or worse in some cases. One person cited in the article was traveling to purchase a truck and the deal fell through ($30k), an elderly man and his daughter had $82k siezed (why they were traveling with that much cash wasn't mentioned).

throwawaymanbot 2y ago
[dead]
perihelions 2y ago
- "(why they were traveling with that much cash wasn't mentioned)" You can read or watch their story here[0,1]. They're not shy about what happened to them—they sued the US government to get everything back (with the pro bono assistance of the nonprofit IJ). [0] https://ij.org/press-release/pittsburgh-retiree-sues-federal-government-to-get-his-life-savings-back/ https://ij.org/press-release/pittsburgh-retiree-sues-federal... ("Pittsburgh Retiree Sues Federal Government to Get His Life Savings Back" (2020)) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsre7I0UUJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsre7I0UUJA (" DEA & TSA Take $82,000 Life Savings From Pittsburgh Retiree") - "Terry, 79, is a retired railroad engineer born and raised in Pittsburgh. For many years, he followed his parents’ habit of hiding money in the basement of their home. When Terry moved out of his family home and into a smaller apartment, he became uncomfortable with keeping a large amount of cash. Last summer, when his daughter Rebecca was home for a family event, Terry asked her to take the money and open a new joint bank account that he could use to pay for dental work and to fix his truck, among other needs..."
- plagiarist 2y ago
  In a functioning justice system the government might be able to place a temporary hold on the money, but would need to promptly return it when declining to press charges or on an acquittal. Literal theft.
  - bsimpson 2y ago

itishappy 2y ago

> In a management directive issued on Thursday, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General said it had been hearing complaints about the searches for years — and had recently learned new information that suggested there were significant problems with them, including potential constitutional violations. For years... The recent info is (of course) a passenger recording their encounter. > The IG said investigators could not come to any conclusions about whether the searches involved racial profiling because the DEA does not collect data on all the people it stops — only on the cases in which money is seized. Data on seizures seems like a solid start. Why don't they have data on searches? > “The Department has long been concerned — and long received complaints — about potential racial profiling in connection with cold consent encounters in transportation setting,” the report said, adding that the DEA between 2000 and 2003 “collected consensual encounter data on every encounter in certain mass transportation facilities as part of a Department pilot project to examine the use of race in law enforcement operations.” > But neither the DEA nor the Justice Department “drew any conclusions from the data collected about whether the consensual encounters were being conducted in an unbiased manner, and in 2003 the DEA terminated its data collection efforts,” the report said, and “its consensual encounter activities continued.” Complaints for years, yet decided to stop recording data... That's sketchy as hell. > The IG found that the search was based on a tip by an airline employee who passed on the names of passengers who had purchased flights 48 hours before departure. > That employee was being paid by the DEA a percentage of the cash seized, the IG found, and had received tens of thousands of dollars over several years. That arrangement is problematic, investigators concluded. "Fight crime with crime" seems to be a fairly widespread attitude amongst government agencies (reminded of the TSA article yesterday), but this seems particularly egregious. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228795

ramblenode 2y ago
> Complaints for years, yet decided to stop recording data... That's sketchy as hell. The motivation could also be practical. Studies are canceled for a variety of reasons unrelated to the conclusion: flawed design, poor data collection process, data doesn't generalize, data isn't specific enough, study has run out of budget, something significant changed in the middle of the study, etc.

reverendsteveii 2y ago

Government to temporarily stop robbing people after watchdog determines that the way they rob people may be a violation of their civil rights as the law says that the police must rob people without regard to their membership in protected classes.

Cumpiler69 2y ago
[flagged]

PittleyDunkin 2y ago

Given that the war on drugs was such a massive failure (and seems to fail harder each year), I consider their continued existence to facilitate parallel reconstruction and bypass what protections we have from our government.

dfxm12 2y ago
From the perspective of preventing people from using drugs, it is a failure, but it is clear that was never the goal from the start. It is successful in systemically and extra-judiciously oppressing a lot of peoples, often to the benefit of the prison-industrial complex. The war on drugs has also benefitted the military-industrial complex and helped to quell leftist insurgencies in foreign countries, like Colombia. Wars against vague notions, like drugs or terror, let the government pinpoint its enemies and deal with them how they see fit.

zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago

My brother was robbed of over $80k like this at an Amtrak station several years ago. They made up some story about following him from Chicago to Portland and it was from heroin sales. 1. He got on the train 3 states away from Chicago, I know this because I gave him a ride to the station. 2. He never had anything to do with heroin sales. They were charging him with 3 felonies of 10+ years each and eventually got a plea deal for them to keep the money and he had like a couple years probation. All for carrying some money on a train.

tptacek 2y ago
I'm sure he wasn't a heroin dealer, but why was your brother carrying $80k?
- fusivdh 2y ago
  [dead]
- zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
  It's a free country and people should be allowed to transport money with them. He was on his way back to Northern California to pay someone for some stuff that had been fronted + re-up
  - tptacek 2y ago
    In cash? Did you tell him "this is a bad idea, you should wire the money instead"? What if he had been mugged? What if he lost the suitcase? I arranged the transportation of $25,000 in cash (I sold a car, it was a gag, I was very young, and it was an extraordinarily bad idea that cost me thousands of dollars), and just as a physical object that's pretty big. Also: where did he get the cash from? I had trouble getting it.
    - mixmastamyk 2y ago
      At larger banks, there’s usually a teller that has their own cubicle with a locked door. They buzz you in in and you ask for amounts > 1k.

alsetmusic 2y ago

Here’s the watchdog org that first made the video go viral: https://ij.org/press-release/department-of-justice-suspends-controversial-airport-interdictions-after-viral-footage-showing-dea-agents-threatening-abusing-innocent-traveler/ https://ij.org/press-release/department-of-justice-suspends-...

bsimpson 2y ago
We just did holiday donations at work. If I saw this last week, I probably would have earmarked some for them.

AyyEye 2y ago

> The IG found that the search was based on a tip by an airline employee who passed on the names of passengers who had purchased flights 48 hours before departure. I have bought last-minute airline tickets three times in my life -- all to buy a car that was a good deal. All three times I had cash to buy said car. Glad I never got snared.

baxtr 2y ago
48 hours is not uncommon for business trips.
- pas 2y ago
  this was simply a targeted operation at people who use cash instead of credit cards, right? (I mean business trips, corporate people usually use credit cards.)
  - Scoundreller 2y ago
    A lotta corporate people are forced into using some (annoying and often useless) corporate travel agent. I’d guess messing with those bookings would… quickly fix the problem.
chatmasta 2y ago
I purchase most of my tickets last minute simply because I tend to procrastinate. And they’re usually one way tickets because I procrastinate deciding my return date, too. I’ve never been flagged for SSS though. Maybe that’s because the behavior isn’t anomalous for me.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  I never flew before 9/11, the few times I've flown, I've always been "randomly selected".
  - bdangubic 2y ago

baxtr 2y ago

I bet this will go viral on X…

AcerbicZero 2y ago

I love watching the feds scramble to stop committing crimes whenever someone with a camera happens to walk by. Really makes me believe they're behaving when we're not looking.

hammock 2y ago

> The IG found that the search was based on a tip by an airline employee who passed on the names of passengers who had purchased flights 48 hours before departure. That employee was being paid by the DEA a percentage of the cash seized, the IG found, and had received tens of thousands of dollars over several years. That arrangement is problematic, investigators concluded. You don't say? > USA Today reported in 2016 that, over a decade, the DEA seized more than $209 million in cash from at least 5,200 people at 15 busy airports Assuming the top 15 airports account for 50MM annual travel, that means, on average, 1 in 100K traveler-trips have cash seized: 3 seizures per airport per month, with a per-seizure haul of $4K

1024core 2y ago

> That employee was being paid by the DEA a percentage of the cash seized, the IG found, and had received tens of thousands of dollars over several years. That arrangement is problematic, investigators concluded. What a perverse incentive! Flag every passenger possible; your expected payout is positive. You have nothing to lose!!

insane_dreamer 2y ago

> f the agents found cash, they seized it through civil forfeiture — a legal process that places the onus on the passenger to prove it was not connected to drugs in order to get it back one of the absolutely most horrible laws that exist in the U.S. today that goes totally against the presumption of innocence that is (supposedly) the bedrock of our legal framework

m463 2y ago
> The IG found that the search was based on a tip by an airline employee who passed on the names of passengers who had purchased flights 48 hours before departure. > That employee was being paid by the DEA a percentage of the cash seized, the IG found, and had received tens of thousands of dollars over several years. That arrangement is problematic, investigators concluded. I think this goes even beyond civil forfeiture (which shares revenue with police departments, etc) I think sharing it with an airline employee is out and out corruption.
- nicoburns 2y ago
  Civil forfeiture is also out and out corruption. But I agree that this goes beyond the usual bounds of that process.
  - uoaei 2y ago
    Some people just assume that legal == good. Too many of them comment on conundrums of morality without making that clear.
    - Gud 2y ago
      But is it really legal??? Seems pretty unconstitutional to me
beej71 2y ago
I honestly don't understand how this has been allowed to stand all these years.

HDThoreaun 2y ago

> USA Today reported in 2016 that, over a decade, the DEA seized more than $209 million in cash from at least 5,200 people at 15 busy airports Absolutely unacceptable

guiambros 2y ago

> The IG found that the search was based on a tip by an airline employee who passed on the names of passengers who had purchased flights 48 hours before departure. That employee was being paid by the DEA a percentage of the cash seized, the IG found, and had received tens of thousands of dollars over several years. That arrangement is problematic, investigators concluded. How come this is not a fireable offense in any company? This person is leaking a customer's PII to a third party (DEA, in this case). It doesn't really matter if it's to a government official, unless there was a warrant and the airline's Legal council involved. Am I missing anything? This feels outrageous that airlines are letting this happen. Is there a law that allows employees to break any company's policies under the guise of "suspicion of a crime being committed, even without a warrant"? And it's even worse that the "profits" are being shared with said employee, and this is not seen as bribery and corruption.

alphan0n 2y ago
Presumably the airline is unaware of the practice by employees. How would they know? Not like the the employee or DEA is going to make them aware and confidential informants aren’t named in court documents.
- kyleee 2y ago
  Actually a great side hustle for similarly situated employees who don’t mind fucking over other humans. I wonder how common it is? Big enough where people with these jobs discuss it in a forum on the net somewhere?
  - alphan0n 2y ago
    There are likely hundreds of employees with access to this information within the company, and thousands of third party employees. I work as an analyst for a marketing company that fulfills gift/award points/miles for people who have opted into the loyalty programs for all the major airlines, hotel chains, fuel reward affiliates. We have data granular to the minute in a continuous feed. I can only imagine that there are numerous opportunities for exfiltration along this chain. Personally, I make enough to never consider breaching protocol, but there are a dozen contacts in my sphere that are temps or contractors that deliver the data to us, I could imagine that the DEA offering double or more than their base salary with little danger of discovery would be tempting. *I think that by becoming an informant you would be dissuaded from public discourse or lose your anonymity, so there’s probably aren’t any serious forums dedicated to the practice.