It's funny... if an engineer fucks something up, s/he can be personally responsible for the fuckup.... doctors need personal malpractice insurance for their fuckups... professional drivers can easily go to jail if they fuck up...
...but if a government worker, paid by the taxpayers, fucks up... the worst that can happen is, the taxpayers have to pay for eventual lawsuit cost and damages to the people who got fucked by that worker.
For something like this, atleast a few people should end up in jail for a long time.
Firstly, if an employee of a company fucks up at work, the company is responsible, not the employee.
In certain regulated fields, if a licensed individual fucks up, even when employed, their licence can be impacted and they can be fined (this is common in the financial industry).
If a prosecutor intentionally misleads a judge, there is a misconduct process that can impact their license and career.
When the article says "fbi", they mean an attorney acting on behalf of the FBI, and that person can be held accountable if the judge decides to.
> A Volkswagen engineer was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Sean F. Cox of the Eastern District of Michigan to 40 months in federal prison, and two years of supervised release his role in a nearly 10-year conspiracy to defraud U.S. regulators and Volkswagen customers by implementing software specifically designed to cheat emissions tests in hundreds of thousands of Volkswagen “clean diesel” vehicles sold in the U.S., the Justice Department announced today.
There are "fuck ups" and then there's committing fraud against the government (or any clear violation of the criminal code). Of course, you are not protected by your employer for the 2nd case - HOWEVER, the company is ALSO considered at fault and often fined accordingly.
Regardless, the FBI lawyer CAN still be punished in this case. Just because we don't know why the judge did not see fit to do so, does not mean they are immune. For all we know, the judge knew exactly what he was doing and wasn't really misled at all.
> Firstly, if an employee of a company fucks up at work, the company is responsible, not the employee.
That’s utterly wrong.
The employee is always a potential defendant.
Legal doctrines such as respondeat superior and principal/agent and the like extend the liability to the employer.
Nobody bothers to sue the employee as they’re generally broke. The goal is to sue the employer.
But, there is no ‘immunity’ that arises from being an employee.
Path dependence. SCOTUS decisions slowly but surely led to this. Most people don't care. Those who do are overwhelmingly "tough on crime" and "think of the children" and "drugs are bad" and so on idiots. And so the "average citizen" (median voter) cheered for these decisions, and so here is the result.
Not entirely true. It depends on the role the employee.
Employee who are officers or directors of the company, or lawyers for the company, can absolutely be held personally responsible. That's why it's common for employee's in those position to be covered by E&O insurance.
At the least the senior FBI and US Attorney’s should be liable to be held in contempt of court. Yes they might need some protection in carrying out their lawful duty but lying and misleading the judiciary isn’t lawfully carrying out those duties.
I've always felt that people working in law enforcement related fields should be required to carry their own liability insurance. Just like if you're in an at-fault accident your rates go up, the same should happen for law enforcement. If you're a repeat offender the rates go up sufficiently that it will no longer make financial sense for you to remain in the job.
That kind of insurance is there to cover accidents. A doctor's malpractice insurance would be irrelevant if the doctor had been taking cash from people's wallets - that's not malpractice, it's just theft. Similarly, if you lie to trick a judge into letting you "legally" take money, that's fraud, theft, and armed robbery - not any kind of malpractice.
This article says that the FBI agents and US Attorney incorrectly accused a safe deposit company of being a criminal enterprise (case was later dropped, nobody convicted, no real evidence). The FBI then lied to a judge, disregarded their warrant they obtained under false pretenses, and stole money and valuable from hundreds of people, almost all of whom were entirely related to the crimes the FBI was ostensibly investigating. The problem here is not a lack of insurance, it's that the FBI is brazenly acting like a criminal gang and none of the people who perpetrated the crimes will face consequences.
> incorrectly accused a safe deposit company of being a criminal enterprise (case was later dropped, nobody convicted, no real evidence).
That's not quite correct, I think: the company itself plead guilty to the money laundering part and was fined... but it was also unable to pay the fine, and the government chose not to go after the owners/officers personally. So the individual charges were dropped, but not against the company. That seems like even more of an indication that this was primarily/just a fundraising via forfeiture expedition.
Civil forfeiture laws need to be changed to require a criminal conviction first, and to impose mandatory multipliers of damages on the government when a forfeiture is found improper, or there is no motivation for law enforcement to stop padding their own budgets this way.
The article says there is no criminal case and nobody went to prison. That's weird, right? You've got enough evidence to seize their money, just not enough to prove they committed a crime in court. The company, which has already gone out of business, pleads guilty giving up their right to appeal, which wouldn't help them because they are already out of business, and agrees to a fine, which they can't pay anyway. I think it's much more likely the company plead out to get the legal case over with.
That nobody was convicted of a crime over this is why I wrote the FBI incorrectly accused the company. If the FBI was right, and these were money launderers - where are the criminal charges? The FBI and US attorneys are well and widely known for over charging and coercing people to take pleas - so the guilty plea with no consequences doesn't really carry any weight. What's the evidence?
> The article says there is no criminal case and nobody went to prison. That's weird, right?
Ethically, morally, by common sense? Sure, weird. But it's also civil forfeiture law as it currently exists basically working "as intended." The whole goal is to end-run the criminal court and move things into civil court where they have a lower burden of proof and the accused have to pay for their own defense (or technically that of their property.)
This is even more politically impossible than the correct solution (which is for DAs et al to actually charge police when they commit crimes) since it would require legislation that police will not support.
Won't happen, Judges, DAs and the police are on the same team. It'd be like suing...yourself.
An amazingly high percentage of judges are former prosecutors. The last stats I read had it at around 66%. The remainder were primarily criminal defense attorneys in their previous life.
This is how gov works. Its why we need as little as possible. Its very difficult to hold them accountable when their funding is essentially guaranteed regardless of performance.
If anyone needs an explanation for why the populous has little faith in both democratic government and its longstanding institutions then this abuse of power is a quintessential example.
Clearly, one of the biggest problems with government (and large corporations) is that individual employees can hide behind and be protected by the institutional infrastructure. Essentially they can make decisions with impunity knowing that the 'system' will protect them.
If we're to restore any faith in our governance then this protection must stop. Decisions made by government employees must be open to public scrutiny, similarly, the origins of government policy—laws, regulations etc.—must be traceable back to its source (those who initiated said policies).
Systems without accountability will always become corrupt.
'Democratic (or republic) government' as opposed to totalitarian ones because the latter are almost always corrupt (almost by definition), thus excluded from discussion.
(Truly benevolent dictators are like hens' teeth—non existent.)
I would sort of agree. It looks like a regular bandits who after undergoing long evolution had came up with this genius idea that maybe getting taxes in the end is more profitable than outright robbery. Bud that ugly muzzle still shows up all the time.
The East India Company had its own armies and navy. They subjugated entire nations of people before being incorporated into the British state.
In the US, the capitalist mine owners, railroad owners and factory owners all employed paramilitaries to crush worker uprisings-- the tactics often included murder. In the case of Blair mountain, the capitalists' paramilitary forces even used aircraft to drop chemical and explosive bombs (left over from WWI) on striking mine workers.
The use of paramilitaries by corporations continues with e.g., Exxon accused of murders of environmental activists in the Niger delta. But, often corporations use state apparatus to affect violence for their advantage-- e.g., the many US illegal wars of aggression / regime change to steal resources of other nations. Or, the domestic use of police to e.g., attack indigenous protesters attempting to block an oil pipeline (Keystone XL) being built across their land against their wishes-- the police fired tear gas, rubber coated steel bullets, and water cannons (in the middle of winter) on the protesters, in service of TC Energy Corporation.
Governments engage in violence, but large scale government violence is usually at the behest of the very same rich powerful entities that historically employed their own henchmen or even their own private armies. Small scale government violence may just be sadistic and/or corrupt officials. While this petty violence is terrible for the victims, it is insignificant compared to the large scale violence committed in service of the rich and powerful.
The rich don't seem to care if a police department/FBI engages in theft/murder, as long as it doesn't affect them, and state apparatus to inflict violence is simply too useful to the rich to reign it in. Governments are not the problem. The capture of government by the rich and powerful is the problem. Unfortunately, many states seem to have designed their systems to ensure the rich control policy while the masses remain powerless-- the US, where money is speech, is a good example (159 rich people were responsible for 59% of SuperPAC campaign money, and 93% came from 3300 rich people-- they will expect a return on their investment).
Govt has a right to violence. You can't choose to stop using govt without moving yourself. They are an organization specifically to serve people. So they need to be held to higher standards.
Its not as if there's a governmental right to spontaneous violence. It's not even a 'right'. It's entwined in the governmental role to enforce laws for the protection of the community and public safety, during which harm may be used to obtain these aims. While this harm is supposed to be used sparingly and judiciously, the human nature of exacting justice can lead to excess and abuse. Unless evidence is presented to the contrary, the enforcing officers are protected with the 'qualified immunity' legal doctrine (aka 'a-few-bad-apples'). Its an unfortunate side effect of a mix of: police culture, training, and popular culture. At least in the George Floyd example, accountability was levied.
Corporations act with probably the most impunity of all. They are beneficially and popularly thought of as job providers (until they choose to layoff). When they abuse their function in their yearn for profit, they offer nothing to imprison criminally and can only offer financial compensation -- if they haven't walled off their finances and declared bankruptcy for the guilty self. (Thinking of J&J & the talcum powder case.) In the Purdue Pharma/Sackler case, they paid only what they agreed to pay and many thought they got off easy, since none of Sacklers were even charged criminally.
The state's monopoly, qua Max Weber, is on the claim to the legitimate use of violence. That is, the right and legitimacy of that right, is restricted to the state, or an entity acting in the effective capacity of a state, whatever it happens to call itself.
Absent this, one of three conditions exist;
1. There is no monopoly. In which case violence is widespread, and there is no state.
2. There is no legitimacy. In which case violence is capricious. This is your condition of tyranny (unaccountable power).
3. Some non-state power or agent assumes the monopoly on legitimate violence. In which case it becomes, by definition The State.
The state's claim is to legitimacy. A capricious exercise would be an abrogation of legitimacy
Weber, Max (1978). Roth, Guenther; Wittich, Claus (eds.). Economy and Society. Berkeley: U. California Press. p. 54.
The misleading and abbreviated form that's frequently found online seems to have originated with Rothbard in the 1960s, and was further popularised by Nozick in the 1970s. It's now falsely accepted as a truth when in fact it is a gross misrepresentation and obscures the core principles Weber advanced.
"More than 1,700 environmental activists murdered in the past decade – report"
Killed by hitmen, organised crime groups and their own governments, at least 1,733 land and environmental defenders were murdered between 2012 and 2021, figures from Global Witness show, with Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Mexico and Honduras the deadliest countries.
Not exclusively corporate, but also not exclusively states. For the most part I find the distinction between these two (and other) forms of power to be largely a red herring. The real issue is power and its accountability, not the specific form it takes. Though at least in theory, a government can be made to answer to those it governs.
Individuals have a right to self defense, not to initiate violence. Government, having granted itself lawmaking power, grants itself a monopoly on the use of violence to enforce its laws.
It's worth noting that this case wasn't a screw up. It was a deliberate act of deception. You may well understand this but "fuck up" is an ambiguous term that might allow for negligence or an error rather than actual malfeasance, which was the case here.
I think what you might be suggesting is to remove prosecutorial immunity. There are so many cases of wrongdoing by prosecutors and judges, and there’s really very little that can be done to punish them.
It happens not just in judiciary or criminal cases, but also in DMV, state permits, immigration etc.
Even a typographical error or minor delays by the government official has asymmetric consequences for the human but no consequence to the officer. You can be perfect and do everything correctly but still fall off a cliff because some government officer made a typographical error.
Congress did pass a law decades ago allowing federal prosecutors to face civil suits for cases like this but the Supreme Court subsequently just said nah, prosecutors are exempt from the law while performing their job.
I agree and though much of the outrage has some political ties to it, I think and assume you agree that this is a pervasive problem for everyone not within the ranks of a federal agency of some kind.
Most people, regardless of salary, already bear the risk of jail for intentionally committing fraud and rights violations. Government employees are the only ones consistently exempt from this.
My neighbor is a sergeant in a small city's police force. Roughly 300K folks in our burg. He pulls in an average of $140K/year due mostly to overtime. Cry me a river about our poor overworked police who face deathly threats on a daily basis.
In the Crossfire Hurricane case, an FBI Lawyer - Kevin Clinesmith doctored an email from the CIA and used the doctored email as fake evidence to secure a FISA warrant. He doctored the email to mean the exact opposite of what the email was communicating. It seems to have been uncritically assumed that this lawyer acted alone and nobody else at the agency was aware of this act. Stories like this seem to suggest that this manner of operation could be fairly routine at the agency.
I remember reading a story a few years back where the DEA would create fake narratives to justify warrants because they had been tipped off by illegal spying by other agencies and needed not just a legal justification but also wanted to cover up the real source of the info so they could keep it up.
Even after such egregious behavior and severe abuse of power he was allowed to practice law again in DC when the bar reinstated him after his conviction[1]. That should tell you that he probably wasn't acting alone.
It's amazing the kinds of things you can get away with when you're politically connected.
For the convenience of its massive reach for solving major national problems, the FBI has been allowed to grow far too large and influential. While I don't think disbanding it is the solution, it should definitely be split up into smaller, more focused parts where there's no upper management of unelected political players that exert massive influence the way they do now.
Right-wing has tried to portray them as politically biased against Republicans, but the evidence doesn’t bear this out. Since 1935 there have been 16 directors or acting directors. Only one of those was a registered Democrat and he only served in the position for 71 days.
I’d be really curious to learn more about political registration of agents at the FBI more generally but suspect that’s not possible. Andrew McCabe, for instance, is a key figure in this thread’s discussion. His behavior was partisan, highly unethical and probably illegal in my opinion. The political affiliation of the Director is far too imprecise a signal alone to determine absence or presence of bias in the organization.
I’m glad you brought up Andrew McCabe, because we have public knowledge about his party affiliation!
> “I have considered myself to be a Republican my entire life,” albeit “a moderate Republican,” McCabe said. “I’ve voted for every Republican candidate for president in every election, except the 2016 one, in which I did not vote. And I chose not to vote because of the political nature of the work that we were engaged in.”
He’s Republican. So was Robert Mueller. And James Comey. And Christopher Wray. And John Durham of course.
We might not have overall numbers, but what are the odds that almost every high ranking FBI official you recognize is a Republican, but that the overall leadership structure doesn’t lean Republican?
It’s not a far-fetched concept. 90% of police chose Trump over Hillary. The people going into federal policing are not dissimilar from local police. Likely more educated and more urban than your average local officer, so I’d expect them to lean more Democrat than 10%, but it would be a stretch to believe that they dominate the org structure.
Directors are, for the most part, not making the day to day decisions. They deal with the major and strategic issues that rise up to their desk. The decisions to bury cases, evaluate evidence with a specific perspective, or go on a fishing expedition with surveillance teams are mostly made at the supervisory level at local field offices. There's 56 field offices with many more satellite offices, each with a Special Agent in Charge, Assistant Special Agent in Charge, and many more supervisory special agents who run particular themed groups. It is a sprawling and massive organization of more than 35,000 people in total. I would count those 56 SACs as "upper management" that need more accountability, as well as all the deputy directors for X, Y, and Z at the Washington HQ, Quantico, etc.
OK sure, I'm all in favor of more accountability. But I also think it's absurd right-wing media portrays the FBI as a Democrat controlled and biased organization.
According to a (likely poor quality) poll, when only considering Hillary and Trump in the poll, 92% of police officers chose Trump[1]. I believe it's fair to say that law enforcement overwhelmingly votes Republican, even if the poll is not great quality. 9 in 10? Maybe not. But likely far more Republican than your average voter. That was also in 2016, prior to the Defund the Police movement which would likely bump those numbers up.
That was general law enforcement, but FBI is law enforcement. Given the average FBI agent is probably more educated and urban than the average LEO, their numbers are likely slightly more Democrat, but it's reasonable to believe it would still lean Republican.
65% of FBI's supervisory positions were male, and 78% white[2]. As we know, white male demographics skew Republican at 58%[3]. The total FBI workforce is 75% white, 56% male. Looking at demographics, we'd expect the organization to be more Republican than average.
As mentioned previously, 16 top officials were given the director/acting director title and only 1 of those was a Democrat. If top officials are at all representative of the political beliefs of the organization on average (it's a fair belief, as those top officials typically spent decades climbing the org), picking Republicans that many times would mean either a very rare coin flip, or the numbers skew Republican.
The FBI has spent most of its resources throughout history targeting left-wing organizations a la COINTELPRO. This is still the case over the past decade.[4]
At the same time Peter Strzok was texting about stopping Trump, another agent shared her experience as "The FBI is Trumpland" and that Clinton is "the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel," and that "the reason why they're leaking is they're pro-Trump."
All of this gets overlooked by right-wing media and instead they focus on right-wingers getting investigated and prosecuted. When--I dunno--maybe it's just Republican politicians are more criminal?
Without having actual party affiliation polls of the FBI, I think it's reasonable to look at the information we do have and say if we were to guess, the organization probably leans Republican.
> OK sure, I'm all in favor of more accountability. But I also think it's absurd right-wing media portrays the FBI as a Democrat controlled and biased organization.
Ok, first sentence sounds like we're on the same page. The second sentence sounds like you're very primed to have a political argument but I'm not sure with who. Nothing about the FBI leaning Republican is incompatible with my stance that the FBI is a monstrously large, unmanageable organization that centralizes federal law enforcement power into the unelected hands of supervisory bureaucrats.
You state this as if it were a fact, but how did you come to this conclusion?
Presidents don’t determine the type of people who join the FBI, stay for decades, and work themselves into leadership positions. Presidents just appoint one of these individuals as director.
This would be like believing city police are mostly Democrat because the mayors have been mostly Democrat. Or the same of blue state state-level police.
None of this is factual or living in the real world, it’s simply adhering to an unsupported opinion because it reinforces your feelings.
Right wing and Republican aren't synonymous though any more than progressive and Democrat is. For instance, some of Trump's biggest critics were Republicans and much of the early opposition research on him that was used to create the seeds of what would grown into the Steele dossier was funded by Bill Kristol, a longtime Republican kingmaker.
You’re telling me you believe the heads of the FBI have been registering as Republicans for 85 years and been appointed to the role by Republican presidents all as a long running scheme to lull Republicans into believing the FBI was not the secretly Democrat-controlled organization it truly is?
At no point did I say the entire history it has happened.
Are you saying it's impossible for someone to lie about their party affiliation?
Are you saying that worse hasn't been done by an an agency? (NSA spying, Project Ultra, IRS scandal, etc.)
I believe most people at the agencies have the best intentions, which is why you commonly get leaking, but I do believe there are some people who abuse their powers.
But I am also very very skeptical given the past actions of agencies.
Wait until you hear about all the crimes committed by law enforcement at _every_ level…
The FBI is often involved in some of the most serious crimes (serial murderers, sex trafficking, organized crime), so getting rid of them sounds a bit like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Without a doubt we should be wanting police reform, including better ways to discover criminal wrongdoing and more effective ways to deter it from happening and/or punish those who commit it.
If the FBI is violating people's rights, all Americans lose those rights. Whereas you at least have some say over where you live and your local police.
And, I admit this statement may be controversial, but you need police for a functioning society. People need someone to call if they get threatened or to deal with the aftermath of a murder. Without police, people would demand something that looks very similar to a cop.
You don't need the FBI. It's creation was linked to prohibition which we didn't need either. It's modern form came to be under Edgar Hoover who used it to facilitate Japanese internment, to "purge alleged homosexuals from any position in the federal government" (quote from Wikipedia) and domestic surveillance against civil rights leaders.
They were the agency that should've been responsible for stopping 9/11. Stealing again from Wikipedia, "government documents showed that both the CIA and the FBI had missed 23 potential chances to disrupt the terrorist attacks".
They do help convict murderers though. "Nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000... the cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death". [0]
Either way it shouldn't need to be the only evil left in the world before it's dealt with.
Even in your argument against the FBI you give a reason for having them. Yes, they missed 9/11, but they have also prevented unknown numbers of terrorist attacks.
They are also largely the ones called in to investigate serial murderers, child sex rings, drug trafficking, organized crime, etc. I think deferring to state level agencies to handle these crimes would produce worse outcomes.
I’m not saying the FBI is great. They’ve done a lot of awful things and had a lot of failures. But the current bad system isn’t automatically improved by getting rid of it if the alternative is worse.
[edit] it’s a bit like hitting a local maxima. Is there a better system out there for catching interstate and large scale crime? Most definitely. But it seems foolhardy to not have that plan in place when deciding to “dismantle” the FBI when doing so means more terror attacks happen, more children get trafficked, serial murderers kill more victims, drug lords grow bigger operations, etc.
I think you're right about this that disbanding them goes too far, but we could certainly use significant reform.
In particular, they often use 18 USC 1001 to manufacture crimes and the only evidence supporting a charge may be a written report (an FD-302) that could have been written months after the fact. Their current policy is not to record interviews. I think that needs to be reversed and there should be some materiality requirement to the 18 USC 1001 charges, rather than trying to get someone to slip up. They should also have bodycams when involved in raids or similar activities, same as cops do.
I'm also disturbed at how often they "lose" things like Woods files. I think their case files should be externally managed and backed up and audited by a separate agency who can present "missing" evidence in court from backup, along with records of who tried to delete it, regularly audit case files for things like the missing Woods files that shouldn't be, etc.
I'd do the same for cops, too. Body cameras should send the video to a separate organization that doesn't answer to the cops, so they can't "lose" it. And if they "forget" to turn it on, well, that should be subject to regular audits and should get someone in trouble long before it becomes an issue in a big case.
It's weird, we spend lots of time designing computer systems to support accountability, but there seem to be a lot of things we could do better on that front in law enforcement.
Pretty much every orginization that is allowed weapons and use of violence against others (with whatever ROEs) as part of their job, there will always be cases of abuse. When it goes unchecked, it becomes systemic.
This is not the same as a corp commiting financial fraud or other non-violent crimes. If a corp is having people killed to cover up, then we can start trying to equate.
Here's the lesson I want people to take away from this: the idea that there is a literal interpretation of the Constitution is a myth.
This egregious seizure is just further proof that the Fourth Amendment is pretty much dead. Any kind of forfeiture without probable cause should be a Fourth Amendment violation but yet civil asset forfeiture (the most egregious form of Fourth Amendment violation) remains legal.
Probably the worst thing about this case is that the government has been caught in a lie and isn't backing down and they want to keep the contents. Any "evidence" gleaned from these contents should be absolutely inadmissible without prior and specific probable cause. There should be no allowance for "there's no reason why legitimate customers would use USPV instead of a bank".
Lots of people distrust banks. Not using a bank is not evidence of a crime let alone probable cause.
I really hope the FBI and the US attorney get their rear ends handed to them over this but I have doubts they ever will.
I think it will, with IJ sponsoring lawsuits, in addition to the the Beverly Hills FBI fiasco. The deal is that many agencies only do civil asset forfeiture with game theory in mind. They will only take $10k , because it would be a Pyrric victory to win in court, since the lawsuit would cost you more than $10k. They also play games where they'll give you back the money if you're angry enough to sue them anyway, then you no longer have a case and you can't continue your suit. Give IJ $20. I think they have a chance of getting it done.
In my lifetime one of the biggest freedoms we have lost is private banking. Prior to 9/11 banking was relatively private. What you had was your own, and secret. You could even have a private bank account in Switzerland. Now, if you are American foreign banks won't even bother dealing with you.
Obviously the paranoid state, won't like the idea of a private safety deposit box company.
I think the next leg to fall is cash itself. We will move to CBDC and social credit.
There’s something incredibly irresponsible and pathetic about acknowledging a course of action that seems bad/inevitable, and then declaring that it will happen.
The future is not inevitable. If you declare failure to reach a positive future as inevitable, you are actively working towards failure, not success.
Yep. I had a chance to talk to an American several years ago who was living in Switzerland when I first learned about this situation. He had a house there before the US had fully forced the Swiss banks to give up their banking records. He had to refi or something and basically the local Swiss banks would not offer him a new loan purely because he was an American and because the US had been so heavy handed with them. Eventually I was able to find a lender to work with but it was not easy. The situation was so acrimonious that all major Swiss banks were refusing to do any new business with Americans. Afterwords I looked into it and linked up what had been happening in the news with his story (not his specific problem, but in general terms what had been going on with banking).
I’m not so sure about that… look at the demographic issues and the current banking collapse. China looks like it’s starting a pretty precipitous decline.
I hope things stabilize and people there DO keep improving, I have no desire to see anywhere stagnate or start declining. But I’m also extremely aware of how much of the Chinese state apparatus is dedicated to lying and distorting public perception, and what I hear about what’s been going on behind the scenes sounds really bad right now.
What you state is true and apparent to anyone who looks at the statistics. China has lifted billions of citizens out of desperate poverty over the past few decades. Over the same time period, middle-class wealth in the USA has been dropping and the poor have remained poor: in fact, most citizens have become less well-off. It is too bad that people afraid of uncomfortable truths have downvoted you.
The uplift in China has been staggering and should be celebrated.
A large part of that uplift is due to massive US investments. US leaders knowingly sacrificed a lot domestic industry in order to build up a China that we thought would liberalize and act to counterbalance the Soviet Union.
What should have been a cause for solidarity and cohesion and mutual uplift, and was functioning that way until relatively recently, has turned sour. China is starting to stagnate drastically, and we have not managed to create the service economy in the US we thought could sustain the middle class in spite of the transfer. The demographic issues in China were created decades ago, as were the supply chain issues affecting the global economy. The massive real estate fraud also didn't help. Instead of actually working to productively address these issues, Xi has pumped up nationalistic rhetoric, is clamping down on business, and seems hell bent on returning to a Maoist cult of personality.
These problems will not be addressed by chest pumping about which dysfunctional system is less dysfunctional, or which past glories are brightest. The present requires focus on the problems we have in front of us, and are best addressed with eyes wide open and a hard look at the practical problems in both the Chinese and US economies.
>US leaders knowingly sacrificed a lot domestic industry in order to build up a China
Lol, no - they sacrificed it for profits. Same with India. Also, China is liberalizing quite quickly; in many aspects it’s already more liberal than parts of Europe. But it doesn’t matter - it’s just an American propaganda talking point, as evidenced by not having an issue with much less liberal US Allie’s, like Saudi Arabia.
> The present requires focus on the problems we have in front of us, and are best addressed with eyes wide open and a hard look at the practical problems in both the Chinese and US economies.
Which, unfortunately, seems to be the opposite of the direction that most politicians are going because real long term solutions are incompatible with tax cuts.
chinese data is what the central gov want it to be or else bureaucrats get trimmed, making the next data survey compliance with central gov estimates. the farce is so big that in 2022, the gov asked to redo GDP calculations "honestly" to assess the real situation (cant find articles for now)[]
not sure why this is being downvoted. China recently surpassed the US in life expectancy. But suppose you do not trust Chinese statistics; Mexico passed US life expectancy. Life expectancy a good measure for right track / wrong track.
The US is definitely on the wrong track, but I think the more we think emulating China will “fix” things (especially under Xi), the worse things will get. Look at what we did with Covid. We had existing pandemic response strategies that were thrown out to mimic China, and we destroyed our economy, didn’t save anyone, and stunted child development. Sweden was much more rational and adhered to much saner western policies that we abandoned due to panic and false advertising from China.
There are things about China worthy of emulation, like how easy it is (or was, not sure if this is still true) to set up factories, the cultural emphasis on hard work and education, the stronger generational family support networks, the sense of unity and cooperation and trust in authority. But there are also severe problems that China doesn’t talk about, many of which are side effects of some of the same things that are admirable when moderated, and extremely dysfunctional when under poor leadership.
US approach to COVID is pretty much the exact opposite to what China did. It follows from a fundamental difference in priorities - Chinese don’t want to die for somebody’s profits. I’m also not sure if fake news is an entire industry in China, like it is in US. And if it exists, it’s certainly not backed by the government, like Breitbart was.
As for false advertising - look at how western media are pumping Chinese “housing crisis” where the reality is pretty much the opposite (https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1011211/the-winners-of-chinas...) - it’s the west that has a terrible housing crisis; China has merely a housing investment crisis, which is a relatively minor problem to people.
Everything you can find says the opposite? How odd! When I search “china usa life expectancy” on DDG I get a page that’s choc-a-bloc with headlines about the provisional CDC release that says all signs point toward US Covid death rates causing such a sharp drop in US median lifespans that China, already having shown stunning improvements this past few decades and recently nipping at the US’s heels, has now pulled ahead.
> Now, if you are American foreign banks won't even bother dealing with you.
I'm living in the EU and any bank-related form I had to fill out ask whether I have ties to the USA. There's one for "are you citizen of a different country?", but the USA (and only the USA) is always asked for explicitly.
And non-American banks force their non-American customers to answer "are you happen to be American resident?". Even when they never did anything related to USA.
Imagine if every country on Earth asked this. But of course USA can force other countries to do whatever it wants.
“Based on my training and experience” is the magic phrase that lets feds say whatever falsehoods they want in a warrant application (a sworn statement made under penalty of perjury) and suffer zero consequences for lying.
Literally 100% of the times I have read this phrase, obvious falsehoods followed shortly thereafter.
Courts and police conspire to avoid penalizing police with violations of law.
Submitting false statements to the court should be an offense that carries jail time - and it should be even harsher for agents of the government and law enforcement officers.
Unfortunately the relevant prosecutor will simply decline to prosecute.
We didn't always have this loophole.
The original purpose of grand juries was to allow any citizen to bring criminal charges, so that political appointees wouldn't have this "pre-conviction pardon" capability. The grand jury's job, when returning an indictment, was to appoint an attorney general for that particular indictment:
I agree in principle, but feel it would almost exclusively be used to prosecute people who are more or less innocent. People like those manipulated into giving false confessions/testimony, or eyewitness accounts where the person genuinely believes a falsehood.
Semi related: It is interesting that these items are not considered the bank's property yet if I upload something to the cloud it is considered the cloud provider's data.
Why isn't cloud data treated the same as a safety deposit box?
You agreed to terms of service that gave the data to them. That would be a good canary case though, have a bank provide the same terms of service for their physical lock boxes, and see if that gets struck down, despite the TOS. If so, you have a case to annul the digital TOS as wel.
> if I upload something to the cloud it is considered the cloud provider's data
Is it? The cloud stores your data but the provider does not own your pictures or your PhD paper just because you uploaded them there. Any example of an EULA where a cloud provider assumes ownership of all data? Or you're thinking of situations like Facebook who I believe (may be wrong or misremembering) has this in their EULA - content uploaded become theirs.
On the other end of the spectrum as long as they don't know what's there (encryption?) it can't hurt them in the eyes of the law. If they can see what's there then authorities can still force them to act (identify the owner, remove the data, etc.).
> The cloud stores your data but the provider does not own your pictures or your PhD paper just because you uploaded them there.
I would assume that a bank does not regularly go rifling through the contents of everyone's safety deposit boxes and reporting items they believe are incriminating the way a cloud provider does.
Safe deposit boxes are still subject to AML regulations. Banks are required by law to snoop around on their customers and to try to determine if the deposit boxes are being used for money laundering. Banks do regularly rifle through customer records to build profiles about what they think their customers are doing. Federal AML regulations require it!
Regulations or the threat of potential regulations are behind pretty much all of these types of privacy invasions. No one is claiming to own your data, money, or possessions -- but there will be scrutiny in all cases due to the law.
This is why banks don't let random unknown people open safe deposit boxes. They're required to profile their customers.
> Safe deposit boxes are still subject to AML regulations.
Can you provide a reference showing that AML regulations would require a bank to snoop in the contents of a safety deposit box? I've never heard of such.
In comparison it's easy to find references to banks being required to report cash transactions over $10,000.
They do not specifically require a bank to snoop in the contents of a safety deposit box. What I believe they require is that the bank snoop on the customer in general as part of KYC. My understanding is that because of this, banks typically only offer a deposit box for established customers with a meaningful transaction history with the bank.
Your response isn't really connected to the paragraph you quoted from my comment. My second paragraph explains why the situation is how it is.
But it is undisputed that neither the cloud provider nor the bank own what you put in there so I'm not sure why you'd hook into that point.
The rifling through your things is a strawman in this context. Both parties can and will do it if the law asks for it. It's logistically more complicated for a bank to do it for thousands of boxes but on the other hand all that stands between the bank and the content is one door they can easily unlock. It's far easier for a cloud provider to rifle through every account but on the other hand between them and the data there may be some practically unbreakable defense (encryption). Which is why Apple can get out of a search warrant while a bank cannot.
Physical items have ownership. If you store an item to a safety deposit box you are still owner of the item.
Data in general do not have ownership (there are some special cases like copyrightable data or personal data, where exclusive rights equivalent to ownership exist). So anyone who have lawful access to data can use them (unless there is some contractual restriction). So if you upload some general data to the cloud, your and cloud provider's relationship to the data is the same.
> Only those who wish to hide their wealth from the DEA, IRS, or creditors would” rent a box anonymously at U.S. Private Vaults, she wrote
It appears this opinion was wrong: many honest people did choose this store instead of a bank for their safety deposit needs. I wonder why? I understand this question has no bearing on the legality of the FBI actions, but I do want to understand the customers' rationale.
Banks in the U.S. are required to have customer identification programs (31 CFR § 1020.220), but U.S. Private Vaults allowed its customers to be anonymous:
Also, not all bank branches offer safe deposit boxes, and it’s difficult to get one unless you have other accounts. For someone who does their banking online or with an institution that doesn’t have a large branch network, it might have been more convenient to use U.S. Private Vaults than to set up and maintain another banking relationship.
“All of the major national banks would prefer to be out of the safe-deposit-box business,” said Jerry Pluard, the president of Safe Deposit Box Insurance Coverage, a small Chicago firm that insures boxes. “They view it as a legacy service that’s not strategic to anything they do, and they’ve stopped putting any real focus or resources into it.”
From previous reading on the place, it seems a certain religious / ethnic sect used it (Persian refugees of Christian faith) and they perhaps used it based on their experience with having their assets seized by the Iranian regime before they fled. It’s a bit tricky since a number of the deposit boxes were directly connected to actual crimes but I believe that’s how they became popular in the first place.
Agreed. Never underestimate the value of convenience. If USPV had better hours, better tech, and was more convenient than a bank, why wouldn’t normal people use it?
It honestly sounds quite appealing to me - quick trip to a strip mall, access via retinal scan, in and out nice and easy.
There are a few differences between street gangs and the police. Mainly the police receive medical and retirement benefits whilst also enjoying near infallibility.
I guess if one were wholly uninformed about LA Police forces, they’d ignorantly downvote your post. It’s a shame people are being reactionary instead of taking the opportunity to inform themselves.
Don't forget the bit where the FBI claimed that a lot of the seized money was physically contaminated with illegal drug residue, but we can't show you the evidence because we converted all the physical seized cash into vouchers/deposits. But please trust us and we'd like to indict people on this evidence.
Most Reason contributors would feel right at home in the pages of the LA Times. Not the headlines they write for Reason, you understand; but the authors themselves, yes.
...but if a government worker, paid by the taxpayers, fucks up... the worst that can happen is, the taxpayers have to pay for eventual lawsuit cost and damages to the people who got fucked by that worker.
For something like this, atleast a few people should end up in jail for a long time.