
DEA seized father’s life savings at airport without alleging any crime occurred - antongribok
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/the-dea-seized-her-fathers-life-savings-at-an-airport-without-alleging-any-crime-occurred-lawsuit-says/2020/01/15/1d9986e6-36e6-11ea-bb7b-265f4554af6d_story.html
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rtkwe
The legal theory that spawned (civil) asset forfeiture is just bananas, "oh
we're not seizing property without a trial we're charging the
money/car/property itself with the being connected to a crime so we can take
it." How has this survived any contact with a court? It's owned by someone...
you're seizing it from them...

See the classic US vs $124,700 in U.S. Currency. [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._$124,700_in_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._$124,700_in_U.S._Currency)

~~~
jdsully
Unfortunately the practice is as old as the republic itself. It comes from
British law where the owners of vessels are unreachable by the courts but
their property (the ship) is attainable. The case law on this is very
extensive. A law permitting the practice against ships smuggling contraband
was one of the earliest acts of the continental congress.

Even if your an originalist it's extremely difficult to argue the founders
didn't intend to permit the practice.

~~~
inamberclad
In the circumstances you mentioned, the owner of said property would be
breaking the law. That's different from the current practice.

~~~
jdsully
Not necessarily. They may have no knowledge of the smuggled cargo on their
vessel. Without knowledge or intent it's hard to argue they are guilty of
smuggling by mere ownership.

~~~
rtkwe
But someone is breaking the law and could be charged with the crime, in this
case the people operating the ship. The ship question is also more complicated
than 99% of the asset forfeiture cases because it involves owners and
operators where sooo many of these cases just involve the cops confiscating
cash because they decide it's large enough to try to steal under the pretext
of it being maybe connected to a crime. [0]

The case of cash in particular is galling because if it's connected to a crime
then the owner must also be connected to that crime so charge them with
something and don't go through this weird sideways process where the owner
suddenly has to prove the negative case that their property isn't connected to
a crime.

[0] Because that's the heart of what's happening, it used to be that CAF
didn't happen that much because only the Feds can really do it and none of the
money got kicked back to local departments. Years back that got changed and
suddenly local cops were much more interested in confiscating and filing these
kinds of cases.

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joebubna
This kind of abuse of power makes my blood boil. It's an utter shame things
like this are allowed to happen, and the TSA, police, and DEA agents involved
should be ashamed. This should have never needed to be resolved in court.

Common sense to me would have been to record her identity, do a quick criminal
background check, and if nothing came up let her go on her way (with the
cash). Then if necessary, the DEA could keep a closer eye on her future
travels or business dealings to watch for suspicious patterns. But to just
take someone's money with no justification is ludicrous!

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boutad
If you want to help fight against these sort of injustices, considering
donating to the Institue for Justice. They are available as an option for
Amazon Smile. Read more about civil asset forfeiture on their website:

[https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-
forfeiture/](https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/)

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AtlasBarfed
Now THIS is what bitcoin is good for.

Unfortunately, the shady applications overwhelm apparently legitimate ones
like this.

~~~
bradstewart
How do you store your private keys to prevent the government from simply
seizing those?

~~~
wcoenen
Memorize it in the form of a BIP-39 mnemonic[1]. 12 words are enough to encode
128 bits of entropy and a 4 bit checksum.

[1]
[https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawi...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki)

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LocalH
I’m sure the government would love to be able to remove cash as a payment
option. They’d love to have every single monetary transaction recorded
somewhere, and cash is the only way to transfer actual currency to someone
else without a record of it.

~~~
sschueller
Too bad for them that crypto currencies now exist.

~~~
bathtub365
I think crypto is a boon for law enforcement because every fragment of money
can be traced since its inception.

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opless
Paywalled/subscription/sign-in demanded.

~~~
gen3
[https://outline.com/8puDsc](https://outline.com/8puDsc)

~~~
opless
Thanks!

