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Build a Secret Compartment, Go To Jail
KindMind writes "Alfred Anaya was a custom stereo installer who branched out to making secret compartments for valuables, who the DEA sent to prison as a co-conspirator when a drug dealer used his creation to smuggle drugs. But Wired points out the bigger question: 'The challenge for anyone who creates technology is to guess when they should turn their back on paying customers. Take a manufacturer of robot kits for hobbyists. If someone uses those robots to patrol a smuggling route or help protect a meth lab, how will prosecutors determine whether the company acted criminally?'"
To me, law enforcement would have a leg to stand on if they were also pushing hard for the right to arrest the management of gun and ammunition manufacturers - Those agents-of-death are way more culpable of abetting in the murder of children than some guy making secret compartments.
... is to legalize absolutely all the drugs, and put the DEA, et. al., out of business. The insane drug war is just another excuse to violate citizen's rights, plus it provides obscene amounts of money to all the wrong sorts of people. And, reportedly, Mexico has lost 70,000 of its citizens since 2007 to drug war violence. Is the USA keeping drugs illegal really worth 70,000 human lives? I don't think so.
Who in the hell thought the 'War on Drugs' was rational? That's the problem right there. Drug use is not a black or white situation. Smoking pot is one thing. Meth addicts with children in the home is another. But like anything else controversial, once politics gets involved you can throw rationality right out the window! Being casualties of war is a given, you have to ask yourself if they're worth preserving a healthy community.
Under the same premise a car manufacturer should be liable for assisting in a bank robbery because the thieves couldn't have gotten away so quickly without their ingenious device called the automobile! This is just stupid and the judge that made that poor decision should be shot, hanged, and burnt at the stake!
Does a gun manufacturer or dealer go to jail as co-conspirator when the killer used the gun to kill people?
He used to work legally, and pay the taxes.
Now he will have problems finding a job, so he will build secret compartments for drug runners for living, not as a side job.
If you are a small Mom and Pop operations (Under 5 employees) you are going to jail.
If you are a Small Business (Under 100 Employees) you will get massive fines.
If you are a Medium Business (Under 1000 Employees) you will get a stern talking to
If you are a Large Business (1000+ Employees) you are considered an innovator, any misuse of your product is not your fault.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
On the face of it his incarceration is ludicrous. If he specifically created the compartment for drug smuggling and took part of the profits . . . well then I can see some justification.
There's more to it than this.
I think the lesson of this case has little to do with secret compartments. What mainly happened here is the police wanted him to work for them and he said no, so the built a case to punish him. The trial was a joke, the testimony against him was due to plea deals and some of it was physically impossible to be true, and most of it hinged on building up personal dislike by the jury due to his lifestyle.
He refused to put his life at risk when the police threatened him, and they made good on the threat, even if he was within the law. Being within the law does not matter when they want to get you.
...you'll see that not only did he have suspicions, but that those suspicions were validated when he had to repair the mechanism to open the secret compartment, only to find it loaded with cash. And not a little bit of cash; according to the article, the reason the compartment jammed was that it was over-filled with $800,000 in cash. Anaya's reaction, from the article:
If you participate in something you know to be illegal, that's conspiracy. He's not charged because he built a compartment; any activity that he would have participated in which would contribute...knowingly...to an illegal enterprise would fit the bill here. He's charged because he knew something wrong was going on, it involved him, and he said nothing to the police. If the criminals had somehow needed a hot fudge sundae to commit a criminal act, and he'd provided the ice cream knowing what would happen, the name of this article would be "Make a sundae, go to jail." I don't see the problem here. Furthermore, Anaya had serious concerns about his customer before he even did the work in the first place..."Anaya was unsettled by this request, for he had suspicions about the nature of Esteban’s work."
But guess what? None of that is the REAL thing he's caught for. After all of that...what happens? Esteban...the guy with almost a million dollars in cash hidden in his truck...is asked by Esteban to install a similar compartment in ANOTHER truck. I mean, come on...
Yeah, maybe Esteban just had a really lucrative paper route...
Right. They want your services so bad because it's not all that important to them. You're not helping with the narcotics trade...nooooo...
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
His mistake was in installing the second "trap" in the other vehicle. He could have legitimately claimed that he agreed to fix the first one out of a sense of responsibility for his workmanship AND fear that the guy would come after him for failing to do so. However, agreeing to the second one made it a clear money grab and it violated the California law. He knew the only way that the guy got that much money was through the drug trade. He should have told the guy that he had compromised his business by showing up with all that money in the "trap" and exposed him to legal liability beyond what he had agreed to.
I understand why he thought he was skirting the law, but he knew he was skirting the law. Once it went beyond merely knowing in an academic fashion that some of his customers were using his installations in an illegal fashion to having seen evidence (even though that evidence was not by itself enough to convict the customer) that a particular customer was doing so he had crossed the line. He crossed the line of plausible deniability.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Actually traps are pretty common for the rich or those who have to go to bad neighborhoods or even countries.
People keep normal valuables like their wallet, GPS, tablets or laptops in them. The idea is that anything out of sight is out of mind for a crackhead/methuser/dirty cop.
The guy targeted any buyers. The only reason he is going to jail is that he refused to be a snitch so they built a case to punish him for that.
Once this guy knew who he was doing business with, it gave him two crappy options:
1) Turn informant for the government. His customers would know in a moment that he flipped once they see that he's moved out of his house and suddenly has the money to open a fancy storefront with all the bells and whistles (bugged to the gills). Once they figure that out, he and his family are as good as dead.
2) Take your chances in court. Since the federal government moved the venue to Kansas, that'll practically secure a conviction for an LA Latino who can easily be painted as a gangster living large while working on spec for the drug lords. Also, this sets an example for those who refuse uncle sams generous offer to turn informant.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
I read this article before it was posted on Slashdot, so I have had a chance to think about it. My biggest problem with this case is the guy's credibility. When it came time to make the money (lots of money) installing the traps he was content to play dumb. When it came time to cooperate with the Fed's after reality caught up to the guy all of a sudden he was in so much fear for his life about these guys that cooperating the Feds (they offered a sweetheart deal) was inconceivable to him.
Let's put it this way, it would be a little bit like one of the guys in Columbia that makes private submarines in the middle of jungle claiming that he thought they were for recreational purposes. This guy knew damn well what his traps were being used for and went right on making them and profiting off of them anyways. Point being that the guy knowingly facilitated the drug trade for profit, how is he any different from a dealer or a crooked border agent?
One of the grievances in the Declaration of Independence was that the British government was "transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences". The Founders believed that any alleged crimes should be prosecuted in the jurisdiction where they occurred and that defendants should be tried by a jury of their peers. This was codified in the Sixth Amendment: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed..."
It seems clear that this section of the Constitution was violated here. Anaya was prosecuted in Kansas, a state where he had apparently never set foot, on the grounds that some of his customers had smuggled drugs there using his secret compartments. But this meant that he would not be tried by a jury of his peers – Californians who are racially diverse, familiar with high tech, and understand that rubbing elbows with the occasional shady person doesn't mean you are necessarily a criminal yourself. Instead he would be tried by a jury in Kansas, a state which is almost all-white and which is full of (let's be honest) fascists.
This is far from the only outrage in this case – it never should have been prosecuted in the first place, and the 24-year sentence is utterly absurd for any offense that doesn't involve death or serious bodily harm – but it's one that hasn't been mentioned so far, and may have been key to Anaya's conviction.
That makes no sense to me. Large amounts of cash seem like a pretty legitimate use for a secret compartment in a car, in many neighborhoods throughout the US. The only way an ordinary citizen could have a large amount of cash is obviously through illegal means? I guess we really were never supposed to win.
There is broadly applicable principle that laws should not usually yield counter intuitive results. If they do, the odds favor the law itself being unjust. In this case, we're punishing a harmless-but-stupid mechanic for making otherwise legal car customizations only because our perverse drug laws created an unreasonable situation. Also, the DEA and DOJ got pissed that he feared the drug dealers more than them.
There is ample evidence that drug prohibition causes crime and prevents treatment, making all the DEA agents, DOJ prosicutors, and prison contractors who lobby for unjust intimidating laws wholly responsible for the drug related deaths, addiction cases, etc. All the ridiculous scenarios like asset forfeiture cases or locking up mechanics who make otherwise legal mods flow entirely from the underlying corruption in our prison-industrial-complex.
There is one small measure I'd suggest that might reduce the problem somewhat : Do not permit federal prosecutors to become federal judges or win primaries for elected office. Any time we hear about a proposed judicial appointment or a new candidate in some race, just google them and find their past jobs. If they were a federal prosecutor, then google more to find if they ever brought charges under the CFAA, DMCA, etc. or if any drug cases stand out as unjust. If so, then make a stink online to help derail their career advancement. If federal prosecutors cannot usually become federal judges or representatives then they'll lose considerable lobbying power over time.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
It's not illegal to manufacture or sell something that is eventually used in a crime.
It *IS* illegal to provide material support for a criminal act. That makes you one of the criminals.
So, if I make guns that are sold at retail and a criminal comes and buys them at a store and then uses them in a crime, not my fault. But if I sell a few crates of guns to a visitting African warlord for cash, well....
If I have a business installing hidden compartments in cars, no problem. If I find out one of my customers is using the compartments to smuggle materials and I continue to serve that customer, I'm no longer just installing hidden compartments, I'm PARTICIPATING IN THE SMUGGLING.
The guy wasn't jailed for making the compartments. He was jailed for being part of the smuggling scheme.
paintball
If I was repairing something and found a huge stash of money within, my first thought would not be that my client was a drug dealer.
My first thought would be something along the lines of, "Holy crap. That is a lot of money. If some is ever missing he'll think I was the one who took it. I don't want any trouble, so I'll tell him to take his money, make sure it's all there, and keep it out of my reach."
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Guns are designed for many purposes - grease guns, paint guns, pellet guns, air guns, et. al.
Firearms are designed for one purpose: to accelerate a small hunk of metal and/or plastic in a linear direction of the operator's choosing, at a very high rate of speed. PERIOD - that's what they are designed to do.
What the operator chooses to point said firearm at is NOT an aspect of the tool itself, but rather a consequence of the operator's decision.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese