6 ms·

Seizures allowed to be kept by the organisation doing the seizing is a terrible incentive. In other countries, seizures go to general revenue, which means tha

by ajb 2y ago

Seizures allowed to be kept by the organisation doing the seizing is a terrible incentive. In other countries, seizures go to general revenue, which means that the incentive to do it is diluted enormously. This is especially a problem with small police forces, or small polities where fines become a large proportion of revenue. You'd think that for the FBI the incentive would be diluted, given how huge they are, but maybe there is some institutional incentive there. I would argue that breaking the incentive is the best way to stop this,as opposed to fighting the detail of seizure justification (although the concept of 'criminal property' without charging the owner should be limited too)

potato3732842 2y ago
General revenue is barely better. It's probably worse in many cases becase the elected part of the government can ask the thugs to seize harder to keep money coming in and then kick it back to them in the form of resource allocation or preferential treatment. That's how every speed trap town operates The only solution is to let the petty drug dealers get away with their cars and let the mob bosses get away with their mansions, etc but that requires making it socially unacceptable to support the status quo which means shunning those that do (i.e. basically what happened with racism in the 60s and homosexuality in the 00s) which is hard.
- f_devd 2y ago
  If the last few years should have showed anything it's how little the elected officials typically care about balancing, let alone create excess, budget.
  - spwa4 2y ago
    Exactly. Even Trump, whose main policy promise was reducing spending, is currently 12% over budget (4% budget increase requested from congress + 8% that he's actually overspent so far)
  - Yeul 2y ago
    Well there was that Tea Party movement. But the reality is that America is addicted to spending more money than comes in.
    - h2zizzle 2y ago
      The Tea Party was like Gamergate in that it was ostensibly about [overtaxation|ethics in gaming journalism], but was actually driven by [sexism against female games journalists|racism against President Obama], and swiftly co-opted by [the conservative establishment|the conservative establishment] as the right face of the post-OWS idpol wedge. (It would be foolish to think that the divided state of this country was a unilateral push.)
      - Izkata 2y ago
        That narrative was created by the journalists Gamergate was against, to deflect against their criticisms. It was never actually true.
        potato3732842 2y ago
        And the real Grade A irony is that the same is true for the tea party and he took the post-hoc media spin hook line and sinker. If you take a step back you'll see that while tea-party, occupy wall street, Maga 1, mostly peaceful 2020/BLM and Maga 2 all take aim at different points in the establishment they're all firmly rooted in the discontent that every day people have with the amount the powers that be are lightening their pockets for causes they don't agree with. The grassroots movements will keep coming (and they will probably become more extreme too, and the powers that be will keep trying to co-opt and redirect them) until something changes.
        h2zizzle 2y ago
        My initial description was correct. Unfortunately, people like yourself subscribe to the outcome of years of commiseration that commenced with the aim of rationalizing what was clearly bigotry to even contemporary observers (I was one of those). It is correct that the grassroots movement that you mentioned had a core of righteous discontent. As mentioned, the right portions were co-opted quickly and refashioned into an arm of neoconservatism. The left was popularly (though not ideologically) discredited or otherwise neutered by reliance on reluctant liberal "allies". The proof is in the rightward march of American policy in the interim.
- cmeacham98 2y ago
  Speed traps catch people actually committing crimes. While you as a driver may be disappointed you can't speed (read: break the law) with impunity, I as a pedestrian and public transit user would prefer more speed traps and harsher enforcement. On the other hand, what happened in the linked article appears to be the FBI seizing the women's assets with approximately zero evidence she committed a crime.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    Speed traps are frequently paired with abrupt and arbitrary changes to the speed limit which exist for the purpose of the speed trap. People who go fast through those are technically breaking the law, but morally they're doing nothing wrong (unless you're the kind of servile worm who derives morality from the law.)
    - cmeacham98 2y ago
      I've never seen any strong evidence for this (only a handful of anecdotes), and my personal experience driving doesn't match. I saw speed traps all the time and don't remember a single one that was associated with a speed limit change. Additionally, even if the speed limit is changed, assuming there is appropriate signage it is your responsibility to follow the speed limit.
      - guappa 2y ago
        I've also never personally been to NYC or Antartica, thus neither of these places really exists.
        exe34 2y ago
        when you assert that something exists, it is generally expected that you would point at documented examples. for example, consumer protection organisations, or petrol lobbies, etc might have an interest in documenting those things. do those documents exist?
- ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
  Why not have the revenue go to victims of crime? Setup a general fund so that judges can allocate recovered funds to help the worst affected.
  - spwa4 2y ago
    Because then some people make a career out of causing crimes.
    - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
      > Because then some people make a career out of causing crimes. I don't really follow you. Are you suggesting that the victims fund would over-compensate victims so that they make a profit from being robbed etc? Currently, lots of people do make a career out of causing crimes - we call them criminals.
- teeray 2y ago
  Perhaps distributing among a large list of charities would be better. “A large list” would help prevent gaming the system with police / fire charities or something.
- ajb 2y ago
  With incentives, actual numbers matter. So yes, speed trap towns have bad incentives, but for national governments fines going to general revenue does not cause a problem even if in principle it is a bad incentive. In my country, local authorities are often accused of using parking fines as revenue, but the police are rarely accused of seizing for gain. As an unofficial punishment yes, but not for gain.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- hw-guy 2y ago
  Seized property should be held in a neutral escrow account until the case is adjudicated, and then automatically returned to the victim if they are not convicted of a crime within a reasonable time.
jalapenos 2y ago
There's such an odd deference to the perpetrator's chosen language here. If I go take someone's wallet, I don't get to get away with calling it a "seizure", "forfeiture", or "revenue". It'd be called theft or robbery, and I'd go to prison. There's something infantile about how we go along with the state's fictions and pretenses rather than just calling their wording of "civil forfeiture" by its natural wording of "robbery". I think the origin of this the formation of "district attorneys", followed by only allowing them to prosecute, as well as professional police forces. This is a sharp deviation from and degradation of common law, which used to allow anyone to initiate a prosecution against anyone, and which levied the responsibility of law enforcement on everyone.
- ajb 2y ago
  I'm totally comfortable with calling the OP's experience robbery. I used the word "seizure" because my comment is about what the law allows, not this case in particular.
- RandomBacon 2y ago
  > If I go take someone's wallet, I don't get to get away with calling it a "seizure", "forfeiture", or "revenue". It'd be called theft or robbery, and I'd go to prison. I'm a Federal Employee, not a LEO. If I take someone's wallet, I can claim qualified immunity. https://ij.org/press-release/supreme-court-refuses-to-hear-case-of-government-engineer-who-acted-like-a-police-officer-got-qualified-immunity-anyway/ https://ij.org/press-release/supreme-court-refuses-to-hear-c...
_heimdall 2y ago
This is actually the same reason why I'm surprised when anyone that is into bitcoin likes the idea of the federal strategic reserve. The government specifically saying they won't buy any, they'll just put any seized bitcoin into the reserve to be used later. Why would anyone like that the government created an incentive to seize more bitcoin?
- hustlejuice 2y ago
  imo people who understand bitcoin and its purpose don’t want government to buy it for strategic reserve. That said if you hold your own keys then bitcoin protects you from this type of abuse of power
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    Holding your own keys would help avoid seizure, but assuming the state already has enough access to reliably track the current owner of any btc they could still come after you regardless of where the keys are. They also could prevent you from using the btc in any non-private transaction. Companies are required to know their customers, it wouldn't be hard for them to be forced to block specific bitcoin hashes. You could still trade it privately, but it would effectively be gray money and should be worth less.
    - andirk 2y ago
      Interesting scenario. If a government can tie a specific person to a specific wallet, they don't need the keys to go forward with whatever they want to do with that info. I wonder if the FBI can proclaim a certain wallet is yours and you did some bad thing so you have to surrender those coins. Without the private key, they can't forcefully confiscate your coins. But I wonder if they can say "If any coins leave that wallet, we'll take retaliatory action!".
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        I would expect that a scenario where they could legally confiscate your coins is also a scenario where they could legally arrest and charge you with a crime. Confiscation of money is likely the least of your concerns there. The government could gain valuable intel from bitcoin addresses all the way back to the Mt Gox scandal. They would have only gotten more access since then, especially with legitimate businesses operating as exchanges that follow KYC regulations.
darkwater 2y ago
> Seizures allowed to be kept by the organisation doing the seizing is a terrible incentive. In a country where tips at restaurants are not only socially accepted but actually expected, this seems "expected behavior" as well, in my opinion.
Gibbon1 2y ago
For the US I think all fines and seized money should go to the social security administration.

by ajb 2y ago

potato3732842 2y ago

General revenue is barely better. It's probably worse in many cases becase the elected part of the government can ask the thugs to seize harder to keep money coming in and then kick it back to them in the form of resource allocation or preferential treatment. That's how every speed trap town operates The only solution is to let the petty drug dealers get away with their cars and let the mob bosses get away with their mansions, etc but that requires making it socially unacceptable to support the status quo which means shunning those that do (i.e. basically what happened with racism in the 60s and homosexuality in the 00s) which is hard.

f_devd 2y ago
If the last few years should have showed anything it's how little the elected officials typically care about balancing, let alone create excess, budget.
- spwa4 2y ago
  Exactly. Even Trump, whose main policy promise was reducing spending, is currently 12% over budget (4% budget increase requested from congress + 8% that he's actually overspent so far)
- Yeul 2y ago
  Well there was that Tea Party movement. But the reality is that America is addicted to spending more money than comes in.
  - h2zizzle 2y ago
    The Tea Party was like Gamergate in that it was ostensibly about [overtaxation|ethics in gaming journalism], but was actually driven by [sexism against female games journalists|racism against President Obama], and swiftly co-opted by [the conservative establishment|the conservative establishment] as the right face of the post-OWS idpol wedge. (It would be foolish to think that the divided state of this country was a unilateral push.)
    - Izkata 2y ago
      That narrative was created by the journalists Gamergate was against, to deflect against their criticisms. It was never actually true.
      - potato3732842 2y ago
        And the real Grade A irony is that the same is true for the tea party and he took the post-hoc media spin hook line and sinker. If you take a step back you'll see that while tea-party, occupy wall street, Maga 1, mostly peaceful 2020/BLM and Maga 2 all take aim at different points in the establishment they're all firmly rooted in the discontent that every day people have with the amount the powers that be are lightening their pockets for causes they don't agree with. The grassroots movements will keep coming (and they will probably become more extreme too, and the powers that be will keep trying to co-opt and redirect them) until something changes.
        h2zizzle 2y ago
        My initial description was correct. Unfortunately, people like yourself subscribe to the outcome of years of commiseration that commenced with the aim of rationalizing what was clearly bigotry to even contemporary observers (I was one of those). It is correct that the grassroots movement that you mentioned had a core of righteous discontent. As mentioned, the right portions were co-opted quickly and refashioned into an arm of neoconservatism. The left was popularly (though not ideologically) discredited or otherwise neutered by reliance on reluctant liberal "allies". The proof is in the rightward march of American policy in the interim.
cmeacham98 2y ago
Speed traps catch people actually committing crimes. While you as a driver may be disappointed you can't speed (read: break the law) with impunity, I as a pedestrian and public transit user would prefer more speed traps and harsher enforcement. On the other hand, what happened in the linked article appears to be the FBI seizing the women's assets with approximately zero evidence she committed a crime.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  Speed traps are frequently paired with abrupt and arbitrary changes to the speed limit which exist for the purpose of the speed trap. People who go fast through those are technically breaking the law, but morally they're doing nothing wrong (unless you're the kind of servile worm who derives morality from the law.)
  - cmeacham98 2y ago
    I've never seen any strong evidence for this (only a handful of anecdotes), and my personal experience driving doesn't match. I saw speed traps all the time and don't remember a single one that was associated with a speed limit change. Additionally, even if the speed limit is changed, assuming there is appropriate signage it is your responsibility to follow the speed limit.
    - guappa 2y ago
      I've also never personally been to NYC or Antartica, thus neither of these places really exists.
      - exe34 2y ago
        when you assert that something exists, it is generally expected that you would point at documented examples. for example, consumer protection organisations, or petrol lobbies, etc might have an interest in documenting those things. do those documents exist?
ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
Why not have the revenue go to victims of crime? Setup a general fund so that judges can allocate recovered funds to help the worst affected.
- spwa4 2y ago
  Because then some people make a career out of causing crimes.
  - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
    > Because then some people make a career out of causing crimes. I don't really follow you. Are you suggesting that the victims fund would over-compensate victims so that they make a profit from being robbed etc? Currently, lots of people do make a career out of causing crimes - we call them criminals.
teeray 2y ago
Perhaps distributing among a large list of charities would be better. “A large list” would help prevent gaming the system with police / fire charities or something.
ajb 2y ago
With incentives, actual numbers matter. So yes, speed trap towns have bad incentives, but for national governments fines going to general revenue does not cause a problem even if in principle it is a bad incentive. In my country, local authorities are often accused of using parking fines as revenue, but the police are rarely accused of seizing for gain. As an unofficial punishment yes, but not for gain.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hw-guy 2y ago
Seized property should be held in a neutral escrow account until the case is adjudicated, and then automatically returned to the victim if they are not convicted of a crime within a reasonable time.

jalapenos 2y ago

There's such an odd deference to the perpetrator's chosen language here. If I go take someone's wallet, I don't get to get away with calling it a "seizure", "forfeiture", or "revenue". It'd be called theft or robbery, and I'd go to prison. There's something infantile about how we go along with the state's fictions and pretenses rather than just calling their wording of "civil forfeiture" by its natural wording of "robbery". I think the origin of this the formation of "district attorneys", followed by only allowing them to prosecute, as well as professional police forces. This is a sharp deviation from and degradation of common law, which used to allow anyone to initiate a prosecution against anyone, and which levied the responsibility of law enforcement on everyone.

ajb 2y ago
I'm totally comfortable with calling the OP's experience robbery. I used the word "seizure" because my comment is about what the law allows, not this case in particular.
RandomBacon 2y ago
> If I go take someone's wallet, I don't get to get away with calling it a "seizure", "forfeiture", or "revenue". It'd be called theft or robbery, and I'd go to prison. I'm a Federal Employee, not a LEO. If I take someone's wallet, I can claim qualified immunity. https://ij.org/press-release/supreme-court-refuses-to-hear-case-of-government-engineer-who-acted-like-a-police-officer-got-qualified-immunity-anyway/ https://ij.org/press-release/supreme-court-refuses-to-hear-c...

_heimdall 2y ago

This is actually the same reason why I'm surprised when anyone that is into bitcoin likes the idea of the federal strategic reserve. The government specifically saying they won't buy any, they'll just put any seized bitcoin into the reserve to be used later. Why would anyone like that the government created an incentive to seize more bitcoin?

hustlejuice 2y ago
imo people who understand bitcoin and its purpose don’t want government to buy it for strategic reserve. That said if you hold your own keys then bitcoin protects you from this type of abuse of power
- _heimdall 2y ago
  Holding your own keys would help avoid seizure, but assuming the state already has enough access to reliably track the current owner of any btc they could still come after you regardless of where the keys are. They also could prevent you from using the btc in any non-private transaction. Companies are required to know their customers, it wouldn't be hard for them to be forced to block specific bitcoin hashes. You could still trade it privately, but it would effectively be gray money and should be worth less.
  - andirk 2y ago
    Interesting scenario. If a government can tie a specific person to a specific wallet, they don't need the keys to go forward with whatever they want to do with that info. I wonder if the FBI can proclaim a certain wallet is yours and you did some bad thing so you have to surrender those coins. Without the private key, they can't forcefully confiscate your coins. But I wonder if they can say "If any coins leave that wallet, we'll take retaliatory action!".
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      I would expect that a scenario where they could legally confiscate your coins is also a scenario where they could legally arrest and charge you with a crime. Confiscation of money is likely the least of your concerns there. The government could gain valuable intel from bitcoin addresses all the way back to the Mt Gox scandal. They would have only gotten more access since then, especially with legitimate businesses operating as exchanges that follow KYC regulations.

darkwater 2y ago

> Seizures allowed to be kept by the organisation doing the seizing is a terrible incentive. In a country where tips at restaurants are not only socially accepted but actually expected, this seems "expected behavior" as well, in my opinion.

Gibbon1 2y ago

For the US I think all fines and seized money should go to the social security administration.