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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.
From what I understand, a bartender can get in trouble for overserving someone who then drives drunk and causes mayhem.
Apparently, this guy who installed custom compartments in vehicles got in trouble, despite (apparently) refusing to build them for explicit drug use.
Are convenience stores liable when smokers get cancer? They're selling the carcinogens.
Are firearm and ammunition manufacturers and dealers liable for school shootings? You know those aren't all done with zip guns and reloads.
We have a legal system that seems to be logically inconsistent.
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.
Don't you mean the unions?
Union workers make the products that kill, maim or injure millions:
Cars, pools, trampolines, cigarettes, movies, spoons, etc..,
No brain, no pain.
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.
"The judge agreed with McCracken’s harsh assessment. He sentenced Anaya to 292 months in federal prison—more than 24 years—with no possibility of parole. Curtis Crow and Cesar Bonilla Montiel, the men at the top of the organization, received sentences half that length."
Just to be clear -- the article doesn't reveal the 24-year sentence until almost the very end. Part of the problem is, as usual (see Aaron Swartz) unchecked prosecutors piling on crazy charges to force a plea bargain, and one person who truly believes they didn't do anything wrong, and refuses to take it for principle's sake. End result: epic miscarriage of justice.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
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
The case hinged on whether Alfred Anaya knew that the compartments were being used to smuggle drugs. In this context, when he was repairing one of the compartments in question he saw that it was full of bundles of cash. The prosecutors argued (and the jury agreed) that this was clear evidence that something illegal was going on, most likely drugs. He could have said no at that point, but he didn't. I'm generally in favor of legalization for most drugs, but this fellow isn't as sympathetic and innocent as the summary makes him out to be.
I myself once machined and built a small safe designed to hide in a vehicle as I frequently transported gold at the time. Unless there was proof that this guy was trying to do something illegal it sounds absolutely insane that he would be punished. The area that I traveled through was known to be quite dangerous and window smashing and grabbing at valuables was common. Matter of fact many gun owners need some sort of safe in their vehicles as there is a plague of people leaving guns under the car seats or between the seats or sometimes just under a newspaper on the seat which is dangerous in many ways including stopping to get gasoline or a cup of coffee. Criminals often get their guns by feeling around under car seats. Friday and Saturday nights are usually the good nights for that nonsense as people get drunk and leave their cars wide open with guns, wallets and all kinds of things in easy reach. Usually the only way these thieves get caught is by accident.
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.
If it's illegal to hold cash, then we all become Cypriots.
Then he invited trouble right in the door by talking to the DEA without a lawyer.
Sure, he thought he wasn't breaking the law, but was hardly an expert. Huuuge gamble to make.
Also, getting tried in Kansas with the name Anaya might have been something a decent lawyer could have avoided.
I had no sympathy at all until I saw the sentence. 24 years without parole is madness.
Disagree. Some people keep cash, and what better place to keep it than a secret compartment. Just because you don't keep your money in a bank doesn't mean you're a criminal. Unless he had specific knowledge of his customer's criminal activity, just finding cash doesn't imply anything other than that dude is rich as hell
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.
There was no transaction. Mr. Anaya is not a mandatory reporter of a cash transaction to begin with. For all Mr. Anaya knew, the money was withdrawn legally from an institution required to report, why should the onus/burden of enforcing the law fall to a car customizer? They're obviously just smacking him down for not playing nice nice in their ever plodding damn fool idiotic crusade against drugs. I don't think this sentence will stand on appeal. IANAL though.
I hate sigs.
you put your weed in there.
Someone here's not gonna get your reference.
I am not a crackpot.
http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/drug-decriminalization-portugal-lessons-creating-fair-successful-drug-policies
Unless they live in Cyprus now.
Wow. Can you claim that "every low priced item for sale in the real world" must be stolen, because why else would someone offer to sell something for a low value if it might have a higher value? No, sometimes people don't know the intrinsic value of something. So everyone who buys something cheaply off craigslist does not have to be complicit in the purchase of stolen goods if they didn't know the goods were stolen. You're reaching a conclusion which may seem reasonable but which, IMHO, is unreasonable.
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Banks have mandated reporting of transactions greater than a certain amount, or even of the "unbundling" of a transaction into a series of transactions that skirt that certain amount. Not everyone who performs transactions are mandated to be reporters.
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What amount of money is suspicious? Is carrying $3000 in cash proof of evil that requires the government to confiscate it through Asset Forfeiture laws and cases like USA vs. "large bag of cash"? Do you know how much abuse there is of these asset forfeiture laws?
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Read up on the Tenaha, Texas Police seizures scandal. Is every other person in the world supposed to report their suspicions to the police anytime something slightly questionable comes along? (your viewpoint certainly does not match your namesakes' reputations, attila demedici!)
did you read TFA? he yelled at the customer and made him get the money out of there because he "doesn't want any trouble" before repairing the mechanism on it, then he later accepted future jobs from the customer.
he demonstrated that he believed the money was ill gotten when he freaked out and yelled at the customer and made him take the money away before he finished repairing it.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
When is it ever better to leave a valuable item in a car than to take it with you, especially if it is small?
Have you never been to the beach? Boy, are you missing out on some fun.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
My school had a few real meth heads when I was in high school. The harm that regular meth did was demonstrable in a way that made DARE completely unnecessary. A lot of students actually avoided meth because they saw the harm it did (damaged intelligence, rotting teeth, misc health issues, etc.)
Just calling the kid(s) on stage at a pep rally for 5 minutes and saying "kids, this is what regular meth use does. This is why we don't want you to use meth. Now Johnny, Susy, etc. please be seated." would stop 95% of kids from ever doing meth. It's not like a STD or something like that it's so in-your-face and repeatable that only morons (even by teen standards) would think it doesn't apply to them.
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
This is true. The loss to the global economy (or more specifically, USA & Mexico) from an additional 70k people dead is a lot more money than what is gained from the DEA by having jobs parading around arresting people for drug use.
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=-
> he demonstrated that he believed the money was ill gotten
I still do not get it. This proves what exactly? The craftsman suspected that the customer may be a criminal. This does NOT make him a co-conspirator in a drug smuggling operation.
"But Anaya resisted his court-appointed lawyer’s advice to plead guilty; he still couldn’t fathom how building traps made him a drug trafficker, and he was confident that a jury would sympathize with his plight."
Logical, I would think. Only the jury in Kanzas (not Anaya's state, BTW) did not sympathize for some reason. Why would that be?
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
And he knowing laundered hundreds of billions of dollars in drug money, terrorist financing, and even money helping Iran's nuclear program. Yet, the CEO of HSBC isn't doing any time, so your argument falls apart.
Frankly, this boils down to "prosecute little guys who can't defend themselves". The prosecutor in Kansas thought he could look tough on crime, so he went after the people who he felt he could nail with little effort.
Meantime, the real criminals get away with it because they are too big to prosecute,
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.