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Oklahoma State Troopers Use New Device To Seize Bank Accounts During Traffic Stops (news9.com)
mi writes from a report via news9.com KWTV: KWTV writes, "You may have heard of civil asset forfeiture. That's where police can seize your property and cash without first proving you committed a crime; without a warrant and without arresting you, as long as they suspect that your property is somehow tied to a crime. Now, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol has a device that also allows them to seize money in your bank account or on prepaid cards. If a trooper suspects you may have money tied to some type of crime, the highway patrol can scan any cards you have and seize the money." But do not worry: "If you can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you. And we've done that in the past," said Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. John Vincent.
Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Innocent until proven guilty, huh?
Alright, just gotta prove that the money is clean. You need to hire a lawyer to do that.
What are you gonna pay that lawyer with after all your money just got seized?
Oh, and better do it fast - rent is due soon.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Have these civil forfeiture laws been challenged on 4th amendment grounds? Isn't this the textbook definition of unreasonable seizure?
...no problem, Citizen. You may go. If you can't, you're probably guilty and all your shit are belong to us. Oh, and if you look Mexican, or Muslim, you probably shouldn't be here in the first place, terrorist, so your proof is probably not going to count for much.
I think that nice iPad you have is connected to a crime, therefore I'm confiscating it.
..yeah, no potential for abuse of police powers here, no sireee.
I think that smartphone you have is connected to a crime, therefore I'm confiscating it.
I think that laptop computer you have is connected to a crime, therefore I'm confiscating it.
I think that Rolex watch you have is connected to a crime, therefore I'm confiscating it.
I think that diamond ring you have is connected to a crime, therefore I'm confiscating it.
I think that expensive jewelry you have is connected to a crime, therefore I'm confiscating it.
I think that pizza you have is connected to a crime, therefore I'm confiscating it.
I think that car you have is connected to a crime, therefore I'm confiscating it.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
>implying it isn't
Circumcision is child abuse.
And the police unions wring their hands talking about how nobody trusts police anymore
I see no reference to the bank accounts, only the prepaid credit cards. Can anyone site something that actually talks about the attacks on bank accounts?
Article says pre-paid cards. Says nothing at all about bank accounts. Which would be a whole new level of thing.
"If you can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you. And we've done that in the past,"
Yeah, and just how many decades did it take before they gave it back?
AC comments get piped to
That's where police can seize your property and cash without first proving you committed a crime; without a warrant and without arresting you, as long as they suspect that your property is somehow tied to a crime.
I thought I was reading about some regime in the east! Not this USA. What is the difference? This saddens me.
I thought that was something that only happened in stories about Ye Olden Days (like Robin Hood) but this is literally highway robbery!
As though I needed another reason to *not* visit Oklahoma. It's now officially the Alabama of the South.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
You can have a portion of the money back as long as your bank account is full due to helping the police with their money laundering.
Spread your money around to different financial institutions. If the police confiscates your money from one financial institution, you still have money elsewhere as long as the debit cards for those other financial institutions aren't on your person.
Except how effective is that Glock going to be against the local SWAT team? Or how about that rusting AK-47 buried in your backyard against a military that has a massive arsonal including a nuclear stockpile capable of wiping out all of human civilization several times over? Is it time yet to bend over and spread those buttcheeks or run far away from the US?
This just proves how far law enforcement thinks that can go to tread over the rights and civil liberties of citizens in their pursuit of 'catching the bad guys'. This will not end but it has to. If a patrol officer has the authority to seize your bank accounts based on suspicion, whats to say they can't seize any and all assets based on nothing more than a "gut feeling". There is no requirement of proof on the officers part. Justice has deteriorated in the US. Crime has dropped to all-time lows, yet the headlines scream that there are rampant criminals stealing and profiting from drugs, terrorism, arms, whatever fits the headline of fear mongering. It is not right.
When will the citizenry of the US wake up and take back the power that has been slowly bled away form them over the last 50 years?
Don't get me wrong, I want the cops to get the bad guys. But do it right, not slimy, not by taking away the rights of free people.
Is this real?
No.
The source article says specifically it lets them take the funds off of a pre-paid card. It says nothing about bank accounts, credit cards, etc.
John Oliver addressed civil forfeiture a few years ago.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'm sure they can tell the difference between the 'wrong' sort to apply this too and the ' right' sort. I'll leave figuring the rest out as an exercise to the reader.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If the owner of the prepaid card files a claim that says that the withdrawal was unauthorized?
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
I think I might go over and "citizen's arrest it" and hold it over at my house, then call the police........Someday
If you can prove, you get the opportunity of fighting the police AGAIN in court. Amd hoping you eventually recover SOME of it.
This shit is little more than thievery.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
"If you can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you. And we've done that in the past," said Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. John Vincent.
Besides the absurdity of having to prove that you own your own possessions, there is the problem that many police forces simply declare it as "part of drug proceeds" and it is nearly impossible to get back.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The US is a fucking nightmare man.
As a kid I used to think that Knightrider (and K.I.T) were a joke. Why would you need single knight fighting for your rights ? In the fucking US of A of all places. A third world shithole I could understand, but the US ?
A revolution won't fix the US anymore. What you need is complete and utter eradication of the whole system.
Nuke it all just to be safe. And even then cockroaches will survive.
Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
It was thrown out with the bathwater for the war on drugs.
The perception was that drug dealers were living high off of their ill-gotten gains: owning houses, boats, off-road trucks... and flaunting their wealth in the community.
We didn't have enough evidence to charge them with drug-related crimes, so we invented civil asset forfeiture to compensate: if you even *looked* like you could be a drug dealer, you could have your assets confiscated and sold.
And the proceeds can go directly to the police department to further their anti-drug campaign. Under this new law, drug crime became a self-correcting problem as the proceeds went to fund ever-more expanded police operations. ...except that it didn't. Drug use is as high as it ever was, police can confiscate anything you own on a whim, and the action is not tied to evidence or charges, and neither the police nor the prosecutors can be held liable for mistakes and errors.
This was a problem for 20 years, and eventually the US attorney general made a ruling that in general, you can't sieze cash as civil-asset forfeiture.
(But the OP is apparently about state-sponsored seizure, not federal.)
This will to go to the supreme court, will cost about $2 million in wasted effort for some poor schmuck, cost about 10 years wasted time for some poor schmuck, and be overturned. In the meantime, OK state cops get a free pass to steal money from anyone.
And of course, when the government is eventually found doing something illegal, they are told to stop. When a company is found doing something illegal, they pay a small fine and don't admit to any wrongdoing. When a citizen is found doing something illegal, they go to jail.
And when a citizen is wrongly accused, it costs a lifetime of wages and a year or two of life effort just to escape the state's error.
What I don't understand is why more police aren't being shot in this nation. The police are trashing lives on a whim, and some of those trashed lives will have nothing to lose. I haven't had a polite interaction with a cop in 20 years, and most people say that the best policy is to avoid them at all costs. Parents are starting to teach their children not to call the police for help.
The police hurt a lot of people, unnecessarily, and a lot of people are getting desperate.
It surprises me that we're not in full-out revolt.
"It shows the state is paying ERAD Group Inc., $5,000 for the software and scanners, then 7.7 percent of all the cash forfeited through the courts to the highway patrol. " Total BS.
From the financial powers that be, perhaps the folks within the Secret Service/Office of the Inspector General should issue some "Defcon 1" gift cards (not to be used except under financial duress) that will immediately lock-out the merchant accounts used in this regard. The merchant accounts would then be impounded by the treasury for further examination into money laundering.
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done shall not interrupt the one who is doing it.
Oi, Slashdot, the article says NOTHING about seizing money from bank accounts. It ONLY mentions seizing from prepaid cards.
It may have previously mentioned them, since the top comment refers to them, but this could equally be an error by the commenter.
Anyway, fix the erroneous and inflammatory summary, there's a good chap.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
"I know that a lot of people are just going to focus on the seizing money. That's a very small thing that' s happening now. The largest part that we have found ... the biggest benefit has been the identity theft," Vincent said.
He's just making things up to justify it and this is very much all about the money.
Actually, no, it is not. You can challenge evidence obtained with such a warrant and avoid conviction.
Of course, there should be!
Once you even consider the idea, that having "too much" money is wrong, you've enabled a civil forfeiture somewhere...
It is not all lost — Nebraska, for one, has officially abolished civil forfeiture already. But it is certainly disheartening, that such an obvious injustice sprung up and continues to exist in the US, while people get fired up over complete nonsense and outright lies instead.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Is there any way to load a pre-paid card with a huge negative balance? Such that when somebody moves the negative quantity to their account, it actually cleans them out?
Have gnu, will travel.
You are totally innocent. Your stuff, however, is totally guilty. Try to prove otherwise!
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
https://www.dhs.gov/science-an...
Hopefully we will replace the cops and lawyers by AI systems soon, not under the control of the government, that will perform real justice. I'm more worried about the AI's getting controlled by others then them taking over.
No, no. Remember your right-wing ideology. You have to socially elevate yourself until you're the one taking the money from the plebs. That comes from hard work and grit, son.
The police aren't going to be seizing much in the way of assets.
It's Oklahoma. The only people with money in Oklahoma are half a dozen meth dealers, three elderly oil men and players for the OKC Thunder. And I guarantee that all the Thunder players got the hell out of there the minute the season was over.
You are welcome on my lawn.
the government has a racket that makes even the mafia jealous, they're a bunch of crooks!!!
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Cops regularly steal peoples cash. Travelling with $1500 in cash? that's suspicious and they can take it from you.
Never EVER trust a cop. They are no better than a freaking street gang.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The best part of TFA is the last sentence:
"It shows the state is paying ERAD Group Inc., $5,000 for the software and scanners, then 7.7 percent of all the cash forfeited through the courts to the highway patrol"
The great thing here is that ERAD Group Inc. can then give 7.7 percent of their 7.7 percent to "sympathetic" politicians who won't just keep the ball rolling, but will keep that system expanding. The highway patrol wins, ERAD Group Inc. wins, the politicians win, everybody wins! Great job, Oklahoma...the envy of the Great Plains.
Just throwing it out there that this mechanism would never work in Canada or Europe or most anywhere else in the world as we all use Chip & PIN technology and have for a decade (or more depending on the country). A cop can't "scan my bank card" and take my money. They would need my PIN, which I will not give them, nor can they compel it from me at a traffic stop, or any other time for that matter.
Even though the US is finally starting to adopt EMV cards, you are doing it using this FOOLISH "chip and signature" method which gives you zero protection against fraud (or foolishness like this) - but apparently the banks think that having to remember a 4 digit number is too big a burden for Americans.
With a law enforcement mindset like that, I think we understand a little better why Oklahoma generated Timothy McVeigh. While I do not condone what McVeigh did, I understand the path that led him there.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Is this real?
For some time police have had the power to steal cash from people if they 'suspect' that it might derive from some criminal activity, even if the suspect is not charged. If you are charged you are actually better off, because although the cash and other assets you have on you can be frozen as evidence, they can't be forfeited unless you are found guilty at trial.
What this article references is Oklahoma testing a new electronic device, called ERAD, which can detect money hidden on prepaid cash cards in your possession. Any such funds detected can be stolen on the same pretext as your cash.
Besides the obvious violations of the fourth and fifth amendments, the pigs who use this are fraudulently charging their victim's account.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
A bitcoin wallet is not susceptible to this attack.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Notice that oddly, every part of the legal system that contains the term "civil" has turned into complete shit?
> So what are they gonna do if they goof?
To get back your improperly grabbed civil asset forfeiture, you normally need to sue the USG or state government. You'll see cases with names like "State of Texas vs. One Gold Crucifix" and "United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency". While hilarious, you need to WIN this lawsuit, at whatever cost to yourself, to get your shit back. If you lose the case- totally possible- then you are out your shit, and also the cost of litigation, plus whatever it cost you in YOUR courtroom. Again: this can, and does, happen to entirely innocent people. You can be found innocent of a crime, and not get your shit back, and pay for two trials.
"The source article says specifically it lets them take the funds off of a pre-paid card. It says nothing about bank accounts, credit cards, etc."
ERAD does not transfer money from banks, but the cops can use it to scan your ATM card referncing a bank account. That means that if you get caught by Oklahoma cops in a civil forfeiture stop, immediately close any bank accounts represented by cards in your wallet and transfer them somewhere else before the cops get a signoff from some compliant local court on tapping the bank accounts they found.
The admiralty law misconception
So this device is just a mobile card payment system, just like in a store. If anyone wants to give him a call or Skype him, here's some contact info from https://www.ice.gov/doclib/aml...">2011:
T. Jack Williams
Paymentcard Services, Inc.
Mobile: 502.609.0109 Office: 817.576.3655
Skype: tjackwilliams
Email: tjackwilliams@gmail.com
His twitter account: https://twitter.com/tjackwilli...
PEARS shows that number is still connected to a Cingular Wireless (AT&T) account, so it's probably still his and working.
And if that card is already tied to Paypal or Android Pay or Apple Pay? Or a monthly auto-debit?
... the underlying law has been expanded and abused over the decades ...
Which was predictable - and predicted at the time.
RICO and other asset forfeiture statutes recreate the incentive structure that drove the Spanish Inquisition:
- The inquisitors rolled into town.
- They busted some people for allegedly being a heretic, witch, etc. Typically a relatively well-to-do farmer with lots of assets and some jealous neighbors.
- They tortured them until they had something to use as "evidence". (If all else failed, "The Needle" would find one of the spots on the skin (where the nerves come up, like the blind spot in the eye) where pain sensitivity is absent and the victim doesn't flinch when pierced.)
- Then they did them in, seized their assets, and split it between the Inquisitors and the local authorities.
Needless to say there was a strong financial incentive to find ever more heretics.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It is no different for a few. About 8% of Americans don't have a bank account. That's not nobody, but it is accurate to say the vast majority of people have a bank account. Thus the distinction matters to most people. If you have a bank account and also use prepaid cards, then this is a distinction that could be very important. Only for the people who do not have bank accounts is there no difference.
Also it matters in terms of the law and who they are fighting with. Try to take money from a bank account without a warrant and it runs afoul of a number of banking laws, not to mention you are picking a fight with the banks.
Because of both things, you'd get a TON more pushback since it would affect a lot more people and since there are some heavy hitters (banks) involved. As it stands, it is the sort of thing that only preys on some people who are not as likely to push back, most most it will have little to no effect on.
There's a reason it is being done as it is, it IS a distinction that matters legally and practically.
And ERAD gets 7.7% of all seizures.
Where's Timothy McVeigh when you need him?
I think that is the key thing, as I understand.
The police kindly offer to drop imaginary charges if you will just sign a consent to the siezure. The charges carry huge potential penalties, and make it clear that they are not above fabricating evidence. Even if you beat them in court it will cost far more money than you have. So you agree to the siezure and move on.
Are these the only profitable business models all we have left in this country? It certainly seems so. This is a despicable business. Such businesses should not be allowed to exist.
The ERAD system in question here was developed for the Dept. of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate and rolled out to state and local law enforcement just last year. Obviously this was done during the Obama administration.
Every time this comes up we get the same "OMG no!" posts... but no one seems to have any answers for how to fix this.
How do we get organized and fight something like this?
As a law-abiding citizen this scares the hell out of me. The thought that the police would scrape my accounts clean on the suspicion of wrongdoing is just completely insane.
I'm willing to make a sign and stand with other people... but what should the sign say and where should we stand? As far as I know this is a local thing that's backed up by corrupt courts all the way to the top. It's a multiheaded beast and I can't seem to figure out _who_ to even start convincing that this is a bad idea...
I 'bout spit out my drink... I hope this isn't a whoosh, but I think that makes it the Alabama of the Mid-West.
Civilization costs money to run. You take away taxes, you either give up that civilization, or your elected officials have to find another source of money.
Like asset forfeiture.
Like red light cameras.
Like policing the poor for profit.
The modern system of civil forfeiture took off during the Reagan administration as part of the war on drugs. It had been used in the past, such as during prohibition, but was rarely unsed until the war on drugs started.
All my assets are stored using Bitcoin!
The laws have been around for a very long time. However the modern misuse ratcheted up with a laws that allowed law enforcement agencies to get a share of seized funds. So of course it looks like a good way to balance the budget to a lot of those agencies. There have been reforms off and on, but only when the public seems overly concerned at the moment, but then when the public's not looking the law enforcement agencies are actively lobbying congress to keep relaxing the reforms.
Thanks....as if I needed another reason NEVER to go to that shit hole of a state named Oklahoma.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
A better "proactive defense" would be shooting any Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer you see before he has a chance to ask for your wallet.
We are innocent until proven guilty.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
So, will the drug dogs now "hit" on the cocaine molecules on the ferromagnetic strip on the card? WTF??? We have Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as the major party candidates, and now this shit?
Giant Meteor 2016! Just end it already.
...you want something akin to Mondo cards, only with all the knowledge that has been developed since on contactless payments and strong access security. Once you have cards that require no network, no central bank and no other external dependencies beyond the communications protocol, there is nothing that rogue officials can do to confiscate your money.
For those not aware of the history of cashless societies, Mondo had tamper-proof strongly encrypted cards that could act like cash. You could transfer money between cards. There was no risk of anyone setting the card to a prior state as any attempt to break into the device destroyed it. This did mean only one vendor made the cards, but we've come a ways since then. The Orange Book and EAL standards cover tamper-proofing and unauthorised writes to memory. Other standards cover application software design and protocol design. All you need is for card vendors to get certified against the general standards, financial transaction standards and the standards specific to some open specification. Vendors can then get encryption keys signed by such a standards verification body. So it would be a procedure similar to the old Level 3 SSL certificates but with all the extra verification layers you'd expect from the FAA or DoD.
You now have cashless, bankless, networkless anonymous financial activity on par with the Shadowrun fictional series, only a good deal more secure still and without having to physically transfer objects. Contactless transfers using unlicensed spectrum at very low power would require the sender to be in range of the intended receiver and to press some keys. That's it. Same sort of range as a key fob. Communication would be by encrypted link, using an authenticating + validating mode to prevent MitM attacks or other attempts at altering transactions.
What could the cops do? Well, they could confiscate any device they didn't recognise. That might not go down too well, though. They could confiscate the card, but as you can do wireless card-to-card transfers with this scheme, there's no guarantee they'd have confiscated any actual money by doing so. They can't determine if you did or didn't, except with the access code. It's not a computer, per se, as it doesn't need to be Turing Complete, and it's not an account, so there's no law on the books that requires that access be given.
Because the device complies with international banking laws and the PCI processing regulations, it would be legal to use such a card. It would be an authorized, licensed financial transaction processor between brick-and-mortar financial institutions, it's merely using the older networking method of store-and-forward with packet fragmentation and fragment reassembly. All perfectly legit operations. Because PCI governs logging, the device is compliant with all tax evasion and money laundering laws. There aren't any laws saying anyone has to actually access that information, the only laws that currently exist merely require that they can if authorized for a lawful need. Let the Feds figure out how to deal with that without making impossible demands of traveller's cheques and cashier's cheques, which can also be used as money equivalents.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
As always, this crap will hurt those who can least afford it the most. Prepaid cards are often, if not usually used by people who cannot afford to put their money in a bank. Banks charge fees that the poor cannot afford and the poor often have debts and a creditor will seize funds if they're in a bank. I know someone who gets her alimony in the form of prepaid cards because she can't risk putting it in the bank and without her meager alimony she'd be homeless. Where did my country go?
No, no. Remember your right-wing ideology. You have to socially elevate yourself until you're the one taking the money from the plebs. That comes from hard work and grit, son.
And I suppose you too are one who believes that Fascists were right wing too? You do realize that in 'Murica the non-left isn't necessarily "right" (because the -wing theory of politics is a French myth concocted centuries ago for propaganda of that time) and that "right" in America (as used by the left) tends to refer to those damn "you've got to be kidding me" Constitutionalists who suppose legitimacy is vested in government if, and only if, it respects the natural rights of people as, idk, the document which "Constitutes" any authority for the government at all very strongly protects by restricting the government to powers you can count on three hands? (One of which is to "ensure a Republican form of government" in every State, meaning rights-respecting and universal application of rational laws, according to the authors themselves to whom "Republican" was not some mysterious undefined quantity the Supreme Court must muse upon now and then.)
But I know, I know, I fail: I'm trying to reason with one of your true believers.
You seem to have a strange image of the spanish inquisition.
The spanish Inquisition in fact created many of those assumptions we still have today, chiefly the "innocent until proven guilty".
Also, safe for a few very unfortunate years, the doctrin was that witchcraft did not exist: The one accusing someone else would be in trouble, not the "witch" herself.
True, they conducted IIRC 45000 trials, out of whch 35 people were found guilty of witchcraft and killed. Assuming that these were all innocents that would still be a much better false-positive score than today's American justice system which has a suspected false positive score of around 20%.
In truth the inquisition was mostly looking for heresy and heretics, as long as you went to church every sunday and agreed with the teachings they tended to not care or look at whatever you did at night in the woods.
What you are thinking of when you mention those kinds of crooked tactics are probably the secular courts of that time. Yes those were bad and rife with corruption.
Dear Slashdot,
The article says NOTHING about bank accounts. Your summary is therefore completely misleading. Fix it.
Yours sincerely,
Someone who gives a shit
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
and you can get refunded if you can prove you are innocent - without, of course, having any cash to hire a lawyer with.
Yep, America's justice system takes another dive off the deep-end.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Tell that to the Dutch. The siege of Amsterdam alone killed thousands by starvation over an 80-year period - the Inquisition was at least as much a military power as a policing power and should be equally blames for the crimes of their navy. The very concept of "heresy" being a crime flies in the face of any concept of justice. Now only an idiot would claim the protestants were any BETTER. John Calvin executed his best friend for heresy and protestants in Iceland had habit of invading monasteries and forcing priests and nuns to copulate at gunpoint. Which wouldn't even save their lives, it would just get them a quick death rather than a slow torture death.
But to suggest that the inquisition was some precursor of modern justice is flagrantly ignorant. There are actual precursors of modern concepts of justice like innocent-until-proven-guilty out there. The Magna Carta for example. But none of them came from a church. They came, mostly, from philosophers - a group of people who have, throughout history, been more likely to be accused of heresy than support the church. Especially that faction known as "natural philosophers" (the precursors of science) - such as Copernicus or Spinoza for example but to no lesser extent the philosophers who thought about politics, statecraft and power - after all, any time they said something sensible it was a threat to the power-relationship (read: circle-jerk) between nobility and religion. Examples here would be philosophers like John Locke.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
If there were honest statistics available about this criminal activity being conducted by actual Highway Men, they would no doubt show the vast majority of victims are of course, minorities.
There are several reasons that the nightmare land now called Oklahoma was one of the last admitted continental states.
Then what's the point of having the device? If they're prepaid cards, they can be seized (though it shouldn't be allowed) the same way cash is. By hand.
Don't you idiots ever get it? It's not really a two party system. Every time it comes to something truly fucked like this it gets bi-partisan support. Abortion and gun control are the smoke and mirrors that confuse you peasants and keeps you focused on fighting each other while the elite motherfuckers that pull the strings behind the scenes laugh at your stupidity and fuck you over.
Your cash would get seized. That's been going on for ages all over the country.
www.wavefront-av.com
JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST!!!!
When are the people going to wake up and fight back against this unconstitutional garbage??????
No, no. Remember your right-wing ideology. You have to socially elevate yourself until you're the one taking the money from the plebs. That comes from hard work and grit, son.
No no no, if you're not born with a silver spoon up your _ss (think President Shrub,) you're already f_cked for life.
It's okay, this is Slashdot. You can say things like "ass" and "fucked". It's one of the things I like about this site.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
... to never move to Oklahoma...
My not responding to your flame is in no way indicative of my submission to your statement, it just means I don't have t
I think this is a rather obvious thing that people seem to have a hard time understanding. Statistically Poverty = Crime. Increase poverty, you are going to see a proportional increase in crime. It is pretty simple. If I don't have any means to support myself, a little means to alter that situation, one of the alternatives left is crime.
Anyway what might be more interesting, is while generally true, there are plenty of wealthy people that commit crimes as well, but what is the relative impact. Without running any numbers I would guess that the overwhelming portion of crimes committed for which people in poverty are thrown into jail amount to peanuts. While the crimes committed by relatively wealthy persons which largely go without conviction, are of a much greater value and impact.
Perhaps one explanation is one of perspective. If I break into you house and steal your TV, there is a physical connection to the event and a need for justice, whereas if I embezzle from mutual funds or other financial instruments affecting thousands of people it is more abstract and seemingly less of a priority.
I've always thought whenever people are talking about "fighting" crime with more police or like measures, that you are just catching more crime, not really reducing it. If you want to reduce crime you need to hit the root cause, poverty, and not the symptom, which is the crime itself.
For some time police have had the power to steal cash from people if they 'suspect' that it might derive from some criminal activity, even if the suspect is not charged.
The suspect does get charged; unfortunately, the case is something like State of Washington vs. Prepaid Account Card 1227496584367954, not against the person whose assets have been seized.
That was my first thought. But it is a prepaid "line of credit" and so is, essentially, a secured credit card. Because the officer need not even charge you with anything much less arrest you the "perpetrator" could obtain a replacement card and drain it themselves. In the event of an arrest they could use an accomplice to do the same thing.
In the interest of protecting the government's right to seize property without a conviction the only solution is to drain the cards. Naturally, the company is paid 7.7% of the seizure in the best spirit of profit sharing anywhere.
My favorite quote from the article: "If I had to err on the side of one side versus the other, I would err on the side of the Constitution,” Loveless said.
It's all about money, man.
You think you're free?
Try going somewhere without money.
Bill Hicks
Vote for the most left leaning candidate you can get. Vote Bernie till he drops out, then Hilary after that. It took four decades for our country's right wing to get use to this point. They worked tirelessly and with the backing our nation's wealthiest citizens. It's not something you're gonna fix overnight.
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No, the legal hack police are using is in the very name of your example: the cops file a civil action against the cash or property itself, which does not have Constitutional rights. People have rights, so if you ever want to see your money again, try to get arrested at the scene.
Can't be tied to poverty. Otherwise your point would get undermined, wouldn't it?
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We dropped that issue when we realized we had lost, completely. Every now and then we treat the waters after a mass shooting to see if the winds have changed, but we drop it as soon as we see they haven't. This crap survives on the whole 'tough on crime' attitude. We can't get away from that because it's still a key issue with moderate voters.
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Yeah, it looks like at least some states are working to solve/reduce this problem.
I'd love to see that argument come back to bite them in court, too.
"Honestly your honor, I did not hire that prostitute or purchase those drugs, it was that devious 'wad of ten $100 bills' that did it!" Per recent precedent under similar cases, the cash should be charged with the crime, not me!
Not likely as the financial institutions wouldn't let you do that, but perhaps a card that isn't a real bank-card, but rather something which infects or otherwise screws up the machine used to steal your cash.
Last year, the police seized (Stole) more money and property than all criminal acts.
Our property would actually now be SAFER, if there were no police.
Is there any constitutional barrier to switching from FPTP to approval voting at a county or state level, as a trial before federal deployment? Technically, it would need no change to voting machines, as they already support "vote for up to n-1 candidates" functionality.
To quote Wiki, "The Inquisition was originally intended primarily to ensure the orthodoxy of those who converted from Judaism and Islam." This was a natural side effect of throwing out the Moorish invaders.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Am I missing something? If the police can take your money like that, then surely so can a criminal. The banks must have a security hole.
Right. Right wingers are for PRIVATE theft of private funds.
Heheh. Also private theft of public funds, it appears. Though really they are probably OK with anything just as long as whatever is stolen won't find its way into the mouths of the poors.
Someone had to do it.
Mod up please
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
What happened to innocent until proven guilty? And suppose there was no fraud, but you were carrying a deposit on a house or a car, and because of their seizure, you have losses? What then? And how do you get your assets back?
What has happened to justice in the USA, Are you safer in Russia? I think so...
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
It has been held that "innocent until proven guilty" applies to people, and when charges are filed against them. Since property is not a person, it has no rights.
And to get your property back you have to sue the city/county/state which took the action. Sometimes that works and sometimes it does not.
LOL. Yeah, that's not suspicious at all. Any idiot taking your advice deserves to have their funds frozen.
Because civil forfeiture takes place only when you are not arrested, taking actin against you after the fact would require an indictment. When this happens, you gain rights.
The federal law against cash transfers of $10,000 or more applies to cash deposits and withdrawals, not to account-to-account transfers or SWIFT (bank wire) transfers.
Stealing money for the state, just like pirates used to do.
They used to hang pirates. I think we should bring the practice back, for cops that do this. Also, the states attorneys that have them do this.
In this story - http://www.newschannel5.com/ne... the lady overseeing it all was just full of herself. She didn't give a crap that she was taking college money, other legitimate money at all. She should have been taken right out and hung from the nearest tree along with her merry band of cops she was encouraging to do this.
She was voted right out in the story I saw. However I feel she should be prosecuted for armed robbery along with the cops. In the above story it's very very clear that's exactly what they were doing. Robbing people at gunpoint. No better than a common jack booted thug.
The whole premise with cash is they claim it COULD be ill gotten money, from drugs. Somehow, you're supposed to be able to prove it wasn't drug money. Money in a bank account has always been considered off limits to them because you can almost certainly show how it ended up there. Only with a court order could they get it. I don't understand how this isn't armed robbery. They aught to round them all up and put them in jail, from whoever authorized this down to the cop doing it. Make them prove it wasn't armed robbery. If it was, the citizen gets the money back and damages that extend into their personal property. A cop could lose his house.
I bet that would stop it cold. No cop would do it.
And Santa Claus really is a fat guy who gives you stuff? And "If you can prove that you have a legitimate reason to have that money it will be given back to you" ?
Frankly, I have an easier time believing in a bunny that lays coloured eggs every year.. than that "we'll give it back to you" line.. Since when have thieves ever said "Oops, sorry, I didn't realize you needed that money so much. Here, have it back"
Meh. It ain't me. Every time I've been to Oklahoma the people are smaller than ants and the cop cars could be squished between my fingernails. I and my carry-on full of prepaid cards will be fine up here at 40,000 feet.
Points for an informative reply! Thank you.