And the scanner maker gets a 7% cut. What could go wrong: "the state is paying ERAD Group Inc., $5,000 for the software and scanners, then 7.7 percent of all the cash the highway patrol seizes"
"What states does ERAD currently have contracts with? With what states does ERAD anticipate contracts to be signed in the next 180 days, and for all of these states, what percentages will ERAD be earning on funds seized?"
I'd need to FOIA every police department in order to do this :/ Not scalable. I can create a template that can be used whenever its discovered which police departments are using their services.
I'm in touch with the news station that has the contract, so I should be able to get it without an additional FOIA request. Once I have that, I'll recurse further if necessary.
1) ERAD training materials disseminated to law enforcement agencies (LEAs).
2) Correspondence between those LEAs and DHS, or occurring in DHS forums, regarding ERAD technology.
3) DHS reports, studies or memoranda mentioning ERAD usage in the field by DHS or any other agency.
I figure DHS Science & Technology Directorate might not be the right target. Should I just aim at DHS directly, or is there a specific group that would handle those connections between DHS and other law enforcement?
Should I structure this as three separate requests?
I found their website, and a page describing the service I believe these police are using. https://www.erad-group.com/fci
Also, I noticed that site:www.erad-group.com doesn't return anything on google, but it does on other search engines. Did ERAD request that it be removed from search results? Why would they do that? Why would they also not have a robots.txt if that is the case?
And if the courts decided that the asset forfeiture was incorrect and reimburse the person it was stolen from—does the scanner maker still keep their cut? Or are they still due their cut?
Highwaymen don't go away, they just get new uniforms and tools.
Particularly egregious is Lt. Vincent's take:
>"If you can prove can[sic] prove[sic] 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," Vincent said about any money seized.
In other words, "if we think you could sue us and set a precedent, we will give you your money back. But if you're poor, we won't respond to your phone calls."
> "If you can prove 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," Vincent said about any money seized.
Literally the opposite of how presumed innocence is supposed to work. Furthermore, good luck mounting a decent case now that they have all your money.
> Here's how it works. 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.
Given the low-threshold for seizure and how we've seen civil-asset forfeiture exercised by law enforcement, that's terrifying.
"We've seen single mom's stuff be taken, a cancer survivor his drugs taken, we saw a Christian band being taken. We've seen innocent people's stuff being taken. We've seen where the money goes and how it's been misspent," Loveless said.
It boggles the mind that this doesn't violate due process.
The despicable logic they use is that they're not charging the person with a crime (because people have due process rights), they're charging an inanimate object, the money, the car, etc. Property doesn't have due process rights, apparently.
Seriously. If you look at the court cases for asset forfeitures, it is titled "The State of Oklahoma vs $1,534.32 in cash" or "Iowa vs 2014 Mercedes".
> Seriously. If you look at the court cases for asset forfeitures, it is titled "The State of Oklahoma vs $1,534.32 in cash" or "Iowa vs 2014 Mercedes".
That type of thing is ok in Admiralty Law, but should have no place in criminal law. How we got to a point where things can be taken from someone who is not convicted of a crime is beyond belief.
> That type of thing is ok in Admiralty Law, but should have no place in criminal law.
It doesn't take place within criminal law.
(There is also "criminal asset forfeiture", which is a different beast, and takes place within normal criminal process against a particular criminal defendant: that is a part of criminal law, and its a lot less controversial than civil asset forfeiture.)
"You have a bunch of money on your ATM card. You can potentially go to an ATM take out cash, then get drugs. Now, I need to seize all your money to ensure you can't buy those illegal drugs that may or may not exist."
Strictly speaking, they are accusing the asset of being a nuisance (sometimes, though not always, as a result of being an instrumentality in a crime -- but civil asset forfeiture doesn't require a crime to have been involved at all; they are also providing both public notice and private notice to the person (if any) from whom the property was seized of the action, and anyone who has an interest in the asset (whether the person, if any, from whom it was seized, or any other person) has the right to assert that interest, at which case they have all the rights normally attendant to civil process [not criminal process, because its not a criminal action, and criminal penalties can not be imposed.])
Well, the real funny asset-forfeiture case names are United States v. Article Consisting of 50,000 Cardboard Boxes More or Less, Each Containing One Pair of Clacker Balls and United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins.
But the likes of United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency is obviously more dangerous than either of those:
like United States v. 11 1/4 Dozen Packages of Articles Labeled in Part Mrs. Moffat’s Shoo-Fly Powders for Drunkenness, or United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, United States v. One Tyrannosaurus Bataar Skeleton, or Marcus v. Search Warrant of Property at 104 East Tenth Street, Kansas City, Missouri, or R.M.S. Titanic, Inc. v. The Wrecked and Abandoned Vessel, R.M.S. Titanic ...
try not paying your property tax and see what happens. Deeds mean nothing. Receipts mean nothing. Registration means nothing. The State owns everything.
I guess married mothers, non-sick people and secular bands would all be fair game.
Shouldn't this just be "Citizens robbed by police".
In India at least they have the decency to say "Do you have a gift for me?" so you know what's happening.
My dad would pretend to be hard of hearing and deliberately misunderstand ad nauseum until waved on his way, this would happen about once a month while going about his lawful business.
He even gatecrashed a police function and got himself a picture shaking hands with the Chief of Police. He kept the photo in the vehicle so he could produce it and attempt to start up a conversation as though they were great friends.
This is a country where the guards of the police armoury were bribed with $5 to allow weapons to be removed.
I'm pretty sure the speaker was trying to point out a few examples which he thought the audience would sympathize were unlikely to be threats or otherwise engaged in criminal activity.
Of course all of these forfeitures stink of illegality, regardless of the victim. Forth Amendment? Never heard of it, apparently.
Yes, undoubtedly that was the idea. But "Vulnerable person exploited" is really less of a story than "police rob citizens". You could add "at gunpoint" to bait it.
I'm sure they're going to use that bullshit legal reasoning that because the money committed the crime, the money itself can be held responsible and seized, and money doesn't have 4th amendment protections because it's not a person.
Its mostly for use against prepaid gift cards and the like. Also those cheesy pre-paid credit cards.
Supposedly its already in use at borders. The news is that now if you get pulled over in OK the cops will now keep any gift cards they find.
Ever wonder why there's such a push to get RFID everywhere? If they RF scan your car and find a card in the trunk now you're at minimum guilty of obstruction.
> If they RF scan your car and find a card in the trunk now you're at minimum guilty of obstruction.
Errrrrr not really! 4th Amendment gives you the right to refuse a search of your person or vehicle. Even if the cops do find something illegal during a search you've clearly but politely refused, your refusal will give your defense attorney grounds to ask the court to throw out any evidence found in the trunk.
Which is why they aren't charging people with crimes when stealing property many of the times. No criminal charges, no public defender, no recourse for people with little to no money (and what little they had just got seized) to go to court to reclaim their stolen property.
Like how does the officer know how much you have and how much is 'appropriate' to confiscate?
I wonder if it does a series of authorizations looking for some sort of upper limit to figure out how much money is in the account and then they determine what to take from that?
Either way, this goes way beyond reason for what a trooper should be able to do on the side of a road during a traffic stop.
The officer doesn't have to know. Or care. He just takes every penny the system allows and lets you fight the DA over it at a later date. Even if the money is returned, it doesn't cost the cop anything to try. And if they keep the money, some moeny goes back to the police department.
Yes, but my statement was more of a technical one regarding how such a system might work.
I am speaking about the method used to determine how much is in an account and what can be withdrawn, because they can't check your balance without a pin number, and if their system is issuing multiple repeated authorizations, what protections banks have in place that might block these sorts of transactions to prevent theft.
I believe the system is operating on pre-paid cards. I don't know the technical differences in transactions on those vs normal credit cards, but I assume there are some.
Fun fact, when running credit or debit cards you can actually get the available balance on them. I've made the mistake of going to the gas station when my checking account only had a couple of dollars in it, ran the card at the pump and it let me put in exactly enough gas to 0 out my account and no more.
Upvoting you and GP wasn't enough; I screen captured the exchange for my personal archives. If I ever write my great American novel, I'll try to give credit.
No, people want large, busybody departments. It makes them feel safe. They don't want to increase their taxes, though, especially in conservative states such as Oklahoma.
This seems looks like it was designed to be abused. If this is used, their must be additional training for cops on how to make a seizure decision, and major repercussions if they seize money from a person who is then proven to be innocent.
>The largest part that we have found ... the biggest benefit has been the identity theft,
Oh, so if I have a card in someone else's name, you'll charge it, thus causing someone who doesn't even know about it to lose?
Any lawyers here want to weigh in on whether this would be identity theft/credit card fraud/etc on the part of the police and hence illegal? Isn't scanning/charging a card without authorization illegal?
This is the most interesting quote. How do these devices help in the case of identity theft?!
How can charging a card help either the bank or the account owner in the case of police apprehending a carder?
The only possiblity that comes to mind is that the police empty the cardholder's account and then later return that money minus the device manufacturer's 7.7% cut?!
>Oh, so if I have a card in someone else's name, you'll charge it, thus causing someone who doesn't even know about it to lose?
From what I understand the technology is for seizing money from prepaid cards. For other cards it just looks up information about the account. Thats how it helps with identity theft.
ERAD card scanners were first developed around 2012 for the science and technology arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to combat the use of prepaid debit cards by drug cartels to transport drug money, according to a Homeland Security media release.
Since then, some law enforcement agencies around the country have adopted the technology.
According to ERAD Group’s patent for the device, law enforcement can determine the balance of money in an account associated with a prepaid card that is part of branded “open loop” networks such as Visa or MasterCard or “closed loop” cards that only allow purchases at a single company, such as gift cards.
When the card is scanned by the officer to check the account balance, the system disguises the balance request as a typical vendor request to prevent alerting suspects that law enforcement is checking the card, the patent states.
Once the card’s account balance is determined, the officer can use the device to freeze the funds, preventing withdrawal or use of the money in the account, or seize the funds by having them transferred to a law enforcement financial account, the patent states.
Although the device does not allow funds from non-prepaid cards to be frozen or seized, it can provide the officer information about those cards such as the card number, the name on the card, expiration date and the card issuer.
> the system disguises the balance request as a typical vendor request to prevent alerting suspects that law enforcement is checking the card
Wouldn't that go against the credit card (or pre-paid card) merchant agreement? And wouldn't ERAD have to have signed such an agreement in order to access the credit card network?
From that contract that was linked elsewhere, the equipment being provided includes:
> One (1) VX680 GPRS Terminal w/battery, thermal printer
The VX680 is a mobile credit card terminal (http://www.verifone.com/media/413350/VX680_2_lg.jpg) made by Verifone, much like the type that restaurants use most places besides the USA. If I had to speculate, maybe they try putting varying charges/holds on the card and see when it gets rejected in order to divine the balance?
I'm sure they have a special merchant agreement that allows for this. If the credit card networks refused to play ball they could be accused of hiding criminals.
This can't possibly be legal or even technically feasible. The victim can call her bank and report a fraudulent transaction, which pits the bank against a warrantless seizure that's impossible to defend in court. Surely banks can catch on and frontload an "identity protection" mechanism that'll simply block transactions from anything matching "ERAD" or however they identify themselves to the ACH.
It's doubtful that local or state PDs have enough political pull or money to battle banks over this through the court system.
Every time I've had a fraudulent charge on my account, I've contested it and had the money returned to me. I can only assume that in some cases the bank simply bites the bullet and writes this off as a cost of doing business. There's probably an upper limit to their general benevolence. Given enough fraud-like losses stemming from asset seizure, the reasonable action would be to simply block the charges before they can post to the customer's account.
My bank does call me every now and again to verify charges on my debit card. Some of these calls make me wonder if the system has a hair trigger, which also means it's probably smart enough to just blanket block anything that looks like an asset seizure. This can't be too difficult, and will save banks money. The incentive to save money is a powerful one and has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting customers.
Exactly, if a bank blocked the charge it would be conceivable that they could be charged with conspiring with a criminal or some business of that sort. It would be so much easier and safer to just let the police take the money and say 'sorry, there's nothing we can do.'
Yup, but the fun part of constitutional rights being violated is you can continue to do so until the SCOTUS declares said legislation unconstitutional. Checks and balances are great, but they really don't work as well as they should.
You've entered into federal territory here. Banks are not regulated or controlled by the Oklahoma State Police, they're regulated by the Federal Reserve, Congress, the Treasury etc.
Once the state police start stealing funds from banks, they're very obviously crossing a line that will quickly get the Feds involved on a 'personal' level. It's actually a plus, the big boys in banking (which rule over an increasingly larger share of all banking nationally) will put an end to the state police theft very quickly as the numbers climb. Wells Fargo or JP Morgan, as far as the federal authorities are concerned, are drastically more powerful than the lowly Oklahoma State Police.
> which pits the bank against a warrantless seizure that's impossible to defend in court
Your argument could equally be applied against regular (cash) civil asset forfeiture. The outcome is the same either way.
"Sorry, it was authorised by the authorities, nothing we can do".
You'll be short of the money until you sue, same as in regular civil asset forfeiture. When you do sue, you'll have to prove that you're entitled to the money, same as in regular civil asset forfeiture. What you get back will be less legal fees, same as in regular civil asset forfeiture.
> It was not authorized by the card holder or a court order, so it is fraud.
Sorry, you're wrong. I've had the IRS steal money directly from my bank account to pay for taxes (and fees, and fines) I didn't owe. The bank won't help you, and I had to pay a tax lawyer $1,800 to get back $3,200 in taxes (and fines) from the IRS for a stock sale I never made.
The bank treats withdrawals by government agencies as legitimate transactions. They won't recognize it as fraud, and you won't get the money back from the bank.
The 'authorities' you're referring to, do not in fact have any legal authority to conduct that transaction. You're wrong entirely in your premise. What they're doing, is using force to steal property without any authorization.
The line you'll get in fact will not be that it was authorized by the authorities and there's nothing that can be done. Banking is federally regulated, it is not regulated by the state police in Oklahoma. The matter of jurisdiction when you start fraudulently stealing from bank accounts (which in many cases would naturally also be out of state and otherwise national banks, and or even virtual banks) is without question: it's a federal matter.
Cash and card are not the same. The very obvious difference between cash and card is that you can charge back via a card. The cash is physical and must be physically recovered from their possession (protected by their guns). That's a very substantial and fortunate difference for the card holder.
If it's a wire transfer then there's not much your bank can do. The money is gone by the time you have them on the phone just as much as if you had sent it to a Nigerian Prince.
My understanding with asset seizure is that you can show why the money was yours, and it is returned. What happens to the 7.7% taken by the servicer? Is it automatically returned as well?
The state refunds it to you, the 7.7% percent is the fee the state paid in order to withhold your funds so conveniently. The trick is you have to prove that those withheld funds are wrongfully withheld (the burden of proof is on the accused in this case) without access to the seized assets. In short, the 7.7% is negligible because in the cases of this abuse, you probably weren't getting that money back anyways.
While your understanding is technically correct, it's nowhere near that simple and usually costs more than the money lost in legal fees to win a case like this and get your seized assets back.
This reads like The Onion. I can't believe they're serious.
>"If you can prove 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," Vincent said about any money seized.
... Legit reason? How am I supposed to prove where every cent came from? What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?
If the police catch a person running away from a recently robbed bank holding a bag of money do you think they should have to convict the person before taking back the money?
If there is reason to believe that someone is in possession of property that doesn't belong to them it seems perfectly reasonable for the police to confiscate said property.
In that case, wouldn't it be evidence? I genuinely don't know all the details of how this works, but I do find it disturbing that the police turn around and spend the forfeited cash. Should they be allowed to do that with the sack of money from the bank, in your example?
Sure, if it's clear who the property is owned by it goes back to the rightful owner. But in cases where that is unclear or nonsensical (like money obtained by selling illegal drugs) it goes to the state. Where else would it go?
I'm no Con Law scholar, but where exactly do you find a basis for United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency in either the writings or expressed intentions of our founders?
Where else would it go? A disinterested third party - not the police department that had the power to confiscate it. The state or a specific public good - i.e.: housing/food banks etc. could work.
I do agree with this actually. Rather that going straight to law enforcement budgets the money should go to the general coffers to be allocated by the legislature.
I'd rather see it directed, specifically, to needed public goods. Otherwise it becomes just another generic revenue source (i.e.: a tax) and, over-time, it becomes all too tempting to still milk it for more money. Red light cameras are a good example of this. Revenues from them (in Chicago, at least) went to the city's general fund. That didn't stop the city from reducing yellow light times to increase revenues.
I like that goal too, but I'm not sure how to really do that. A lot of states direct all lottery money to education but that just allows the states to spend less on education out of the general fund. Ultimately money is a fungible thing. No way around that.
That's certainly fair/true. FWIW, I appreciate the symbolism and/or keeping revenue streams constrained. At least that forces governments to be honest in taxation rather than allowing these back-door taxation strategies.
If the police catch a person running away from a recently robbed bank holding a bag of money do you think they should have to convict the person before taking back the money?
Yes. The money may be held in escrow pending the trial, but appropration by police is unjust -- and should be illegal if the person is not charged and arrested.
So if it's clear that a person is in possession of illegally obtained property, but it's a mystery exactly how they got it so law enforcement can't indict them for a crime, they should just get to keep it?
If how the individual came into possession of the property is a mystery, how is it clear the property was illegally obtained? I would be hard-pressed to prove that many of my assets truly belong to me.
Edit: all of this is off-topic, as the bank can be proven the owner and the police would not keep the money.
If it's "clear" the money result from illegal activity, they will be charged with a crime.
Surely you are not advocating replacing the courts with truthiness and gut feelings?
No, I'm just saying that the legal standard for proving that property (usually money) was obtained illegally is lower than the legal standard for convicting someone for a crime and throwing them in jail.
Asset forfeiture is, and always has been, subject to judicial oversight.
That is a misreading of the story. This story outlines a method that allows law enforcement to confiscate money stored on pre-paid credit cards in a similar fashion to how they've previously confiscated cash. It says nothing at all about judicial oversite.
There are, in fact, well established and relatively simple procedures for contesting civil forfeiture. There is a fair argument to be made that they sometimes don't work as well as they should but when you say that there is "NO judicial oversight" at all you are just just flat out wrong. You need to update your worldview if you want it to conform to reality.
This isn't perfectly reasonable though. Presumably the bank gets their money back when the cops catch a bank robber. But the police keep the money that they confiscate through asset forfeiture. They had no right to it in the first place so what gives them the right to keep the confiscated money? It's robbery.
I don't think the argument is "police shouldn't confiscate [stolen] property from somebody they're detaining because of suspicion the individual has committed a crime", it's "police should not take property unrelated to the crime and, in the event the individual is cleared of any wrongdoing, return _all_ property", the latter of which isn't happening.
If it turns out the guy running away from the bank just likes jogging with a bag of money the police should return his money and whatever else _immediately_ after the person is released.
This is why someone who has assets confiscated can make a claim (with a very low burden of proof) to get them back. People here are making it sound like that doing this is incredibly difficult or expensive but it's really not.
Depriving someone of their property – even temporarily – and forcing them to spend otherwise profitable time making a claim to get it back is a form of damage. What you're proposing would allow agents of the government to damage people as frequently as they wanted, with impunity.
That's actually not true at all. You can be held in jail for months pending completion of a trial depending on your ability to make bail and the seriousness of the crime in question.
You didn't mention a trial in your previous post, but rather a low standard of evidence to "make a claim". In that scenario, the burden of proof is on the victim of the property seizure rather than the accuser, which makes it different IMO.
False, at least in the US. The government's case is considered to be against the property, not against you. The standard of legal proof is a preponderance of evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt. "Assets [are only] returned if [the] owner proves [his/her] innocence". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United... for details.
In practice in the United States it's been shown to present little to no burden. These cases have been widely covered in the press. Again, see the link.
The Christian rock band raising money for a Thai orphanage[1] was a slam dunk, in terms of this so-called "low burden of proof", but it still took them two months to get their money back.
(Edited to add: I just realized they didn't actually get their money back. They got a check. Yep. You can generally cash those for free if you have a bank account.)
Imagine the situation of someone whose circumstances are less clear, or who can't otherwise afford to stay in one place and fight the seizure for however long it actually takes.
What happens to the person who just had all of their money taken away?
Because this being a civil case, the legal standard is "balance of probabilities". In other words, if they can give a convincing explanation of how your money is likely to be tied to some criminal activity, so long as it's "more likely to be true than not true", they win - unless you offer a convincing rebuttal to make it less likely.
Here's the part which I don't understand: if it's a civil case, why do they get to seize the property before proving anything?
If I open a civil proceeding against you, I can try to prove that you owe me $5k and if I prove that to the appropriate standard you can be compelled to provide me with $5k. I can't hack your bank account, withdraw $5k, and then open a civil proceeding to retroactively legitimize my robbery.
The whole system is a massive violation of due process, no matter what legalese you try to use to justify it. If you're allowed to take people's property and then retroactively sue them if they complain, what is even the point of having the Fifth Amendment?
You're never charged with a crime, the object is and it is not given representation. So there's no "innocent until proven guilty" for inanimate objects.
Despicable, and akin to highway robbery in my opinion.
I feel like I'm living in the Matrix when I see things like this. There are people out there - lawyers and judges, who must be fairly smart to finish law school - who think "United States v. $124,700" makes perfect sense.
I was told when I first started graduate school that it's not about how smart one is, but rather it's about perseverance, the ability to jump through bureaucratic hoops, bite your tongue and do what you're told.
I have come to believe this since I've met some incredibly brilliant PhD's, but I've also met some incredibly dumb PhD's.
A PhD is more about elbow-grease than intellect. You do need some intellectual chops (in your field - you can be very naive outside it), but you need perseverance more than anything.
I've met some PhDs who would run rings around anyone in their niche, but would be (metaphorically) unable to tie their shoelaces by themselves.
That doesn't make sense. Objects cannot commit crimes since they aren't human beings and thus cannot act, have rights, etc. Is this what Statism has come to? I know we have the whole corporations are people nonsense, but this is straying even further into complete irrationality. I know it's just to circumvent the law, but if they can create fiction like that, there's pretty much no law and order anymore.
Because of War On Drugs people had no problem with this. If you had asked when this law was passed someone random Joe Schmoe on the street -- "Is this a good law, we'll get all those rich drug lords?". They would have probably nodded and agreed.
So the law was pushed through. Then some day cops realized they can apply this law for fun and profit. And so they have been.
In thread after thread on this topic - civil asset forfeiture in its various forms - I see people do elaborate intellectual dances to describe or title what this is.
Nothing more than: highway robbery, is necessary. You're spot on, that's exactly what it is, and it's nothing more. It's robbery. Using any other names for it, just assists the police in covering up what they're doing through confusion. Everyone should begin calling it robbery by police or the equivalent, and stop referring to it as civil asset forfeiture in public forums (that's only useful in a technical/legal regard).
These are all language tricks used to manipulate the masses. "Double plus good" is not a stretch at this point if we become complacent to this kind of manipulation.
This is flatly incorrect. This is a civil proceeding, neither you nor your property are charged with a crime. Instead, a civil (not criminal) forfeiture proceeding is initiated against your property.
I'm not just being pedantic, this is part of why it's so incredibly fucked. They have, no exaggeration, taken a portion of the criminal legal system with all the constraints and due process requirements there, excised it with a legislative scalpel and grafted it back on to the civil system.
I honestly to this day don't understand why government is allowed any access at all to the civil system as a plaintiff, at least not beyond the local level.
Oh wait, yes I do understand: It's specifically to fuck the people over.
I have to imagine there's a giant pile of (criminal) laws they could use to prosecute someone who's trying to defraud the government. But your point is still well-taken, and it's kind of academic anyway - it's an incredibly valuable (and lucrative) tool for the government, of course they're not going to give it up.
The original intent of civil forfeiture was to handle cases where the property's owner is unknown. In admiralty law or cases of abandoned property, the government sues the property but it's just a shorthand way of saying "whoever actually owns this".
The legal theory (which is a total crock and obvious constitutional violation) is that you aren't the real owner, you stole the property so the state can take it away from you. That's what creates the presumption of guilt where you have to prove you're the owner of the property, same as if you dropped it on the street by accident and the cops found it.
Anytime one of these cases gets close enough to SCOTUS for a decision on the overall constitutionality the police/DA drop the case. Most of them seem to know its a scam and don't want to risk an adverse ruling. There have been a few hints that SCOTUS is ready to rule the current scope and scale makes civil forfeiture unconstitutional but who knows.
So we can't carry cash, because they'll seize that directly. This device could probably do some sort of run around the new chip system in cards. Bitcoin is nearly useless in the real world. So where does that leave us? Google & Apple Pay on our phones? At least our phones can be password protected.
Carry a credit card and pay that off monthly so as not to accrue interest. This way the only thing that could potentially be "seized" is your access to a line of credit. Now, I'd normally say that there is no way they could justify seizing assets that aren't even yours, it'd at least be entertaining to see if it did happen.
And you'll get an obstruction of justice charge if you don't supply the password then and then be found in contempt of court if you don't give it up when you're before a judge.
Not in this case. The police legally can't pull you over and force you to unlock your phone via password. They'd have to go through a court process, and that's precisely where any attempt at theft will fall apart (more specifically, as the law stands today the police won't even attempt this line of approach because they know it'd fall apart in the court system before they're able to steal the money).
After I had my debit card skimmed I started to have my debit card always deactivated by default. I usually only pay by credit card anyway. In cases where I need money from the ATM I enable my debit card via my bank's mobile app, get the money, and then disable it again.
I think you're correct. The quotes in the article make more sense in the light of stolen cards being "concealed" in other magnetic strips which aren't credit cards.
Many times, criminals illegally clone valid payment cards
on to non-descript pieces of plastic like hotel room keys
and subway cards, making detection and interrogation
nearly impossible. Since virtually any plastic card with
a magnetic stripe can re-purposed as a credit, debit or
prepaid payment card, being able to determine the
identity of the card is critical to your investigation.
The whole thing is moot once chips are (finally) in major use.
Gosh this copy from the linked web site seems like everything that's wrong with products in this space, "Criminals today use an array of payment cards to purchase, transfer or conceal billions of dollars of illicit funds from Law Enforcement"
Which criminals? The ones a local policeman happens to stop in a routine checkpoint?
I'd like to see actual stats on what percentage of everyday criminals who are met by local law enforcement "conceal billions of dollars".
I'd bet this percentage is so small the tool does more harm to the general populace than good on the off chance such a criminal is caught.
"The ERAD platform will help you document every confiscated credit, debit and prepaid card, and instantaneously provide key card issuer information that’s critical to your investigation. And if some of those cards are prepaid cards, ERAD™ gives you the ability, right at the point of arrest, to determine the value and immediately secure or freeze those funds."
So these devices do let LEOs seize funds but only from prepaid cards, apparently, for now.
Hello sir, we're performing an investigation. We accept cash, check, and credit card. Just hand us your wallet, sign here, and then realize you can't afford to hire a lawyer because we took all your money.
This happens, or something very similar. There have been multiple cases where someone faces charges and the government freezes all their bank accounts, preventing them from being able to hire a good attorney to defend themselves.
State Sen. Kyle Loveless, R-Oklahoma City, said that
removes due process and the belief that a suspect is
presumed innocent until proven guilty. He said we've
already seen cases in Oklahoma where police are abusing
the system.
"We've seen single mom's stuff be taken, a cancer
survivor his drugs taken, we saw a Christian band being
taken. We've seen innocent people's stuff being taken.
We've seen where the money goes and how it's been
misspent," Loveless said.
If State Sen. Loveless's statement is accurate, it appears that these victims were unable to get the charges reversed by their banks' fraud departments.
So what would this device look like? Is it performing ACH or wire transfer transactions? Or is this just sending card information to the company, which then automates the state government's garnishment process?
I'll be interested to get the full story when details are available.
I'm glad there's some pushback from the state legislature!
Or a well off white guy had to deal with the police in a negative context for the first time in his life and that changed his opinion of them and the power they do or don't deserve
First of all, he didn't call him racist. Secondly, pointing out that for some reason long-standing problems suddenly seem to get a lot more attention once they start negatively affecting white people is not promoting hate - it is calling attention to racism.
When you start a comment with "well off white guy", you are indicating the person is a racist since they are ignoring problems of their fellow humans because of the person's race. If you substitute any other race in that statement, people would find it to be an accusation of racism. I suppose there is another interpretation of that line, but I am trying very hard to be charitable to posters (I do fail quite a bit).
pointing out that for some reason long-standing problems suddenly seem to get a lot more attention once they start negatively affecting white people is not promoting hate
from the article: ''It's called an ERAD, or Electronic Recovery and Access to Data machine, and state police began using 16 of them last month.''
I would submit his current problem is not long standing since it started last month. Also, we do not know his history of speaking out about civil forfeiture. Why, the incident with his wife could have been a "shutup" warning from the police. I said I provided a piece of data, and I have not really had time to look at the context.
As to the second half, pointing out some issue is racial and the participant only started noticing because of their race is informing your reader that you believe that person to be racist.
it is calling attention to racism
Which implies that a belief that someone is being racist. Thus calling him a racist as he is the only protagonist mentioned.
You know, I grew up in the grey between two different groups, and I sometime wish I could have been raised in a suburb or had a little more blood to qualify as the other group. Being able to say "I am..." in a clear voice is an amazing powerful thing. I've gotten to see what absolute shits groups going too far can be on each other when one believes they can say and do things with minimum risk. Assumptions about people based on their race are just wrong. Judge a person by their word and deed with a kind eye and hopeful heart. I fail at this quite a lot, but I think I'm ok with what I wrote.
// as a side note, I love hnreplies and if I had cash I would suggest adding a blackout time feature
The fact remains he did not call him racist, whatever you believe he implied. For someone who claims to try hard at being charitable, I think you should take that into consideration. At the very worst if dsfyu404ed is calling Kyle Loveless a racist, I would have to argue that this particular instance of it is borne of ignorance as opposed to malice, which is an important distinction especially for your claim that he is spreading hate. Pointing out racism borne truly of ignorance is not promoting hate, even if you're wrong on the claim. Claiming a person is racist out of malice is (rightly or wrongly).
If someone (not a minority) is ill-informed about an issue that disproportionately affects minorities, to the point that they believe the issue is not so serious, and only when personally confronted with the effects do they take on a more fully-informed opinion and speak out about the injustice of it, I don't think you necessarily have to consider that person a racist, even if you think their behavior is a result of bias. And, while dsfyu404ed certainly expressed frustration with this state of affairs (as I believe anyone should), that still does not rise to the level of actually calling a person a racist. This need not apply only to race - it can also be rich people not caring about poor people problems, or men not caring about womens' issues, and so on.
For another example look at the opioid epidemic in the US now, compared to crack hysteria in the 80s. Suddenly drug addicts are victims of circumstance, unfairly targeted by unjust or antiquated laws, it's the drug companies' fault for pushing these treatments to doctors, etc. etc. Whereas in the 80s crack dealers were going to infiltrate your nice suburban community and turn your daughters into whores and your sons into foot soldiers in their gang wars, or whatever the hell. And it just so happens that the opioid epidemic is particularly bad among white communities now. However, that doesn't mean that everyone who is concerned about the opioid epidemic now, yet took a different view of the crack epidemic back in the day, is necessarily a racist in the usual sense. It could be they are ignorant of their bias, and lack introspection.
Isn't the basic problem how much money the US government has spent improving the supply of heroin from Afghanistan after the taliban completely destroyed it during their 2001 rise to power.
I read "well off white guy" as implying privilege. I am not sure that is the same as accusing someone of being a racist. The benefits of that privilege can help make your life easier, whether you asked for the privilege or not. And also regardless off whether you actively or consciously try to benefit from said privilege. I guess it does at least affect the way you experience life and the world around you.
Note:
I am from Denmark and maybe I have a different perspective, even though racism is a problem here as well, but maybe in a different way.
I was having an internal debate with myself about whether to jump in on this conversation just because it is a topic that can cause a lot of controversy. But I decided that self censorship, is a bad thing for society as a whole in the long run.
Right, the legislator is referring to civil asset forfeiture, which is what the devices in the OP's article does too--just now they will steal money from your bank account if you happen to have your debit card with you instead of just being able to steal the cash you have in the car.
>99.999% of everyone who knows what asset forfeiture is knows it because of John Oliver.
Asset forfeiture has been controversial since it started being used much more frequently in the 1980s. I really doubt most of the people commenting on it here first heard of it on John Oliver's show.
Haha, indeed. I think I'd heard of it many years ago, but I didn't really understand how fucking absurd it is until a story about it appeared here on HN. A year (~ish/maybe, my memory of timelines is fucking terrible) later I saw the John Oliver episode.
Slow down there. First of all, the parent didn't claim to be a genius who had some pre-existing knowledge. Secondly, even if (s)he learned it from John Oliver, how does that make it less a part of parent's knowledge?
Furthermore, the use of "plain-old" was a way of indicating that this is a new method but an old process; eg, it's not legally any different from normal asset seizure.
Finally, and most importantly, I don't see any bias or why you even call it that.
Radley Balko has been writing about asset forfeiture for about a decade. He has done more to bring this issue to the medias attention than John Oliver has. It is completely unfair to claim that no one knew what was going until someone famous began to popularize it more.
Not that there is anything wrong with John Oliver hopping on the band wagon, that's good thing.
I tried to write the long answer and it turned out as a wall of text composed of parenthetical caveats. Then I tried to right the short answer and it turned out as a medium length yet confusing answer.
The truth of the matter is that people are barely evolved ape/chimps and do pretty much whatever suites them as long as they don't get their ass kicked for it.
As someone who is closely following the topic I would say he is pretty accurate.
Most of these laws are passed claiming it is meant to target hardened criminals. Good people like us think it is okay to take away any rights of people who we consider as bad. Given the choice cops will not knock down the door of Drug dealer known to have automatic rifles at his home but some poor old cancer patient who is unlikely to resist or cry.
These problems are not a creation of police. These are created by good people like us who do not empathize with criminals, minorities and other groups which by default consider "less human".
> These problems are not a creation of police. These are created by good people like us who do not empathize with criminals, minorities and other groups which by default consider "less human".
I agree that the problem is considering others as "less human" but I wouldn't exclude the police from that!
I understand your sentiment. But I think as a society we have allowed the legal system to evolve in a way that only Bullies will become and thrive as cops and narcissist jerks will become public prosecutors. They are problem but they are more of a side-effect of we not standing up for other people's liberty.
Some of us think there are good people, who have rights, and bad people, who deserve to have rights taken from them.
Some of us think there are people with power we need to impress and then there are people without power we can take from them whatever we want.
Some of us think we are all human beings and everyone deserves to be a part of society, to be seen as human beings with human wants, needs and human emotions, even when they do things that harm other people. And whether they even do that, is not for us to judge.
The first group needed people who were willing to take things from the bad guys, and picked the second group as police and prosecutors.
That's how we're in this situation today.
Your child ask you if they can go to your donald-trump-loving-women-should-stay-in-kitchen neighbour's house to play with friends. Do you:
1. Change your child's school so they don't mix with the 'wrong sort'. You're afraid what your social circle think if your children mix with children of people like that.
2. Your neighbours are racists and sexists. Petition their kids to be kicked out from your kids' school. They don't deserve an education.
3. Let your child go play with them, then if your child has a positive experience, let him go again next time. If not, protect the child from the consequences of not going next time.
Its not a particularly surprising choice of examples for a Republican politician upset about the practice that wants to highlight targeted groups to whom his constituency is likely to be sympathetic.
That's a ridiculous statement. My church (both as an organization and the people in it) gives tons of money to single moms for everything from subsistence to fully paid Disneyland vacations. We run a volunteer group that does things like yard work, handyman work, and moving for single moms. The most visible charity outside a church in my city is for single moms. There are single moms who work in important positions at my church. The bible specifically points out on many occasions that those who follow Christ should show love and compassion to people such as single moms as Christ would.
I've seen it said before and I'll say it again. Anyone who works for companies who make products like this in any capacity should be blacklisted in the industry. The missing scruples here could fill several large containers.
The missing scruples are what make the people responsible for this valuable. You don't want someone who might have a moral crisis working on a product that can and will be easily wielded for abuse.
Yeah, sure, let's turn that into a war between ourselves instead of demanding better legislation and more transparency from governments. Blacklisting individuals isn't going to solve any problem whatsoever and we run the risk of alienating a whole bunch of people who will then might go out and do even worst things than writing software for questionable companies.
We need laws that prevent those things. That's the only way this can be resolved. We're a huge community with an equally huge influence and resources. Let's coordinate and use our power for a good cause, instead of resurrecting witch-hunting practices.
> let's turn that into a war between ourselves instead of demanding better legislation and more transparency from governments
The government is made up of it's constituents, we should absolutely blacklist those people to let them know we are not OK with this. You'll never get more transparency from the government, it's not in their best interest to do that, nor is it for them to implement 'better' legislation. Ideally that would be great, but we are WAY past that being a realistic possibility in America.
No I did. In theory the government is made up of its own people, so my first sentence meant I deem it acceptable to blacklist private companies that provide these products and services to the government.
But also in the same breathe, people in government are also extremely self serving, and it does them no good to provide more transparency when their current paychecks benefit from a lack of transparency.
I can see how that appears to be contradictory but I did not mean for it to be taken in that manner, hope this clears up my statement.
While I agree with you that this is first and foremost an issue with our government, it is also a matter of ethics.
Doing/making something because it is legal is does not make it right. As you're building a team you should hopefully be hiring only people who act ethically and can understand the implications of their work, right?
What sort of laws do you forsee addressing this? At what abstraction (i.e. local, state...)? We already have a Bill of Rights that AFAIK was intended to protect us against these sorts of ingresses by the state into our daily lives. They just come up with ever-fanciful word play like in rem and "executive order" to supercede it.
The laws you're talking about will never occur if the people making those laws are non-technical. As an industry we need to self-regulate, and have our self-regulation have the weight of law behind it. This system works fairly well, for example, in the medical profession, where you can lose your license to practice medicine based on principles set forth by other doctors.
That's essentially an argument for a professional licensure system for software development.
Setting aside that professional licensure requirements are anathema to the spirit of the hacker movement, they would likely have prevented the creation of a massive pool of technology companies, including Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook. Even that proposal would stifle innovation.
However, what's being suggested by the OP is not even a professional licensure system.
It's mob justice.
The difference is that professional licensure organizations follow fixed sets of rules, procedures, and principles. These rules are established, agreed upon, and promulgated in advance of enforcement. Most importantly, the procedures generally allow for the basics of due process.
Mob justice has no set of fixed procedure, and no assurance of due process. Its enforcement is governed by caprice, and subject to a set of arbitrary, inconsistent, and constantly shifting "rules."
The OP is proposing an arbitrarily enforced "refusal to hire" policy people from an ill-defined set of "undesirable" companies.
First, there are no rules for establishing which companies are undesirable.
What fields of technology exactly are undesirable? And exactly how closely did an engineer have to be involved with such technology?
Second, many companies develop "dual use" technology, which has both civilian and military uses. This includes manufacturers of everything from CPUs to jet engines. Is the designer of a gyroscope used on spacecraft and on missiles banished from our ranks?
Third, many of these companies are also huge conglomerates. GE makes jet engines, as well as washers and dryers.
Where do we draw the line?
Should a GE employee be blacklisted under this "system"? One from Intel? How about Facebook for taking money from the CIA? Google for Boston Dynamics?
Most importantly, who decides, and how?
If it's determined by whim and popularity, as proposed by the OP, then I want absolutely no part of it.
I agree that these are all significant challenges. However I believe that in the absence of a licensing body, we as professionals can still reach consensus-based conclusions on minimum standards of professional ethics.
And I suspect very strongly that the engineers on this particular project would have clearly violated any standards of professional ethics we could agree on.
How, where, and by what metric is this "consensus" established? What if you and I disagree? What if Microsoft and Apple disagree? Who decides?
Civil war amongst software developers, with utter lack of due process, and ostracism as punishment are not as pleasant to the ear as "consensus," but that's the end result of what you're proposing.
This, of course, misses the central flaw in the proposal: If "good" companies refuse to hire engineers with work history at "bad" companies, you'd be forcing the very engineers who now want to do work you consider "good" back into doing work you consider "bad."
Setting aside the horrific personal implications this ham-fisted approach would have, by its very nature, a refusal to hire policy would have the exact opposite effect that you intend.
I don't think a professional organization would want to wade into politics like that. At least for engineers, the principles they enforce are limited in scope. They demand that missiles designed by engineers don't veer wildly off-course. They don't demand that engineers refrain from designing missiles. The former is a matter of engineering; the latter is a matter of public policy.
I've always wondered about the people engineering devices like this, the people at Harris Corp. creating Stingrays and other surveillance platforms, how they feel about their work. Listing individual employees might be a bit much, but we could certainly create one of companies involved. Unfortunately I fear it would be a long list.
im sure their most important hiring aspect is a certain mindset. once you get someone truly believing they are working on the side of good, they will do just about anything. zealotry is alive and well.
Harris has very very high turnover. I believe that people get hired not knowing what they're getting into. It takes a while to figure out that not all is as it should be.
Most people don't have a moral backbone nearly as string as they think they do. There was an article last week, posted here IIRC, about a an adware company in the northeast that was apparently a pretty good employer other than morally and ethically repugnant nature of the product being created. Several of the employees interviewed talked about the mental hoops they jumped through to justify working there.
First you have civil-asset forfeiture that let's police seize money from you when you are carrying large amounts of cash (with a generous false positive rate potentially disastrous to victims).
Now to get around that, you could try handling everything by card or bank transaction (unless you're one of the unfortunate few without access to a bank account due to low credit rating or other legitimate reasons). And now they can seize that too?
That's not ripe for abuse, that's designed for abuse.
As a non-American, what's wrong with your country?
I hope it doesn't come to this. IMO the people cheering on Trump as a way of "getting the nightmare out of the way and moving on" need to study and understand the human cost incurred the last time that happened.
One pillar of the traditional Republican support for Israel is the Christian effort to usher in the apocalyptic war that will bring forth the second coming of Jesus Christ.
...? Not sure if you are being sarcastic, but nowhere in Christian Bible does it teach that somehow the human race can either "usher in" or prevent the end times.
That'll be bad for everyone involved. Even the victors will have a rough time of it; and from your perspective, there's a non-trivial chance they don't align with your beliefs. People advocating for this have no concept of warfare in general, nevermind in a modern setting. The people hurt the most are always the innocent non-combatant civilians.
> The people hurt the most are always the innocent non-combatant civilians.
That isn't true now anyway?
I don't advocate for anything, all I know is if the current trend continues, like every other free society that has gone down this same road, It will end very badly and then will improve for a generation or so.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure." - Thomas Jefferson
I'm sorry but no. The vast majority of examples of violent revolution end badly for everyone involved, even the victors. The phrase "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" has a lot of truth to it.
That's, of course, humoring the notion that this is in the cards in the developed world. If you step out of the echochambers on the Internet and interact with people in reality, you begin to see that things aren't nearly as bad as the curated outrage porn would lead you to believe.
That depends how you define "revolution" (if you set the right scale cut-off, it was the last armed revolt meeting the cutoff, but not all "revolutions" are "armed revolts" and vice versa; particularly, for the latter, "revolution" often implies success, not merely an attempt, at replacing the aspects of the status quo ante against which the putative revolution is aligned, which those revolting in the Civil War spectacularly failed to do.)
One could argue that some or all of the suffrage movement, temperance movement, and civil rights movement (and maybe others) were "revolutions" that are more recent -- and more successful (if only in the short-term, in the second case) -- than the Civil War, though none of them were primarily armed revolts.
A whole lot is wrong. I was born here and love the country, but increasingly fear for my safety and well-being: our employer pays nearly $20,000 per year for NHS-equivalent health insurance (two adults, no children), basic prescriptions cause multi-month fights due to claim denials on drugs my doctor instructed me to take, patent trolling is endemic and a real threat to small bootstrapped companies, a pathological liar is one step away from the White House and lending legitimacy to anti-first-amendment and white supremacist groups, literal highway robbery is real, and as best as I can tell money has come to be held above life itself.
I'm profoundly disillusioned, and not sure where to go from here.
You forgot: the TSA, the "warning shots in the chest" (it's a meme), the 6% of black people currently in prison, the 1% of all population currently in prison, the freedom you export (another meme - yes I'm talking about the drone-based assinations outsourced to private companies), and the NSA patently ignoring any interpretation-by-a-reasonable-man of the constitution. But it really cheers my heart that there are so many people gathered on HN who see through the problems.
Trump is only the natural leader to this army of thugs, exactly like in 1934 in Germany. Let's hope that if your country falls into that trap, there will be an even bigger country to come and save you, like you did for us in 1944.
Historically, Canada has always been a release valve of sorts for abuses of the US. Just look at the Vietnam war or (in a much larger sense) the underground railroad.
Thus begins a new round of escalation and avoidance - cash is seized? No longer carry it. Credit Cards maxed? Keep it in a separate account and load only as required. In an account but you can direct funds from your phone? Hand that over.
At some point you just rely on biometrics for every transaction, it turns into an automated shakedown scheme or you just learn to avoid the state of Oklahoma.
What do you think will happen if you're arrested with a thumbprint lock on your phone? They may not be able to force you to recite your password (at least without lengthy legal proceedings beforehand), but they can certainly grab your finger and use it to unlock the device. They may not be able to do this if you've only been detained, but I wouldn't chance it.
This should firmly cement law enforcement's status as thieves rather than civi servants. As if civil asset forfeiture didn't do that already, already making police the #1 class of thieves in the US: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-...
516 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 307 ms ] thread"What states does ERAD currently have contracts with? With what states does ERAD anticipate contracts to be signed in the next 180 days, and for all of these states, what percentages will ERAD be earning on funds seized?"
I'm in touch with the news station that has the contract, so I should be able to get it without an additional FOIA request. Once I have that, I'll recurse further if necessary.
1) ERAD training materials disseminated to law enforcement agencies (LEAs).
2) Correspondence between those LEAs and DHS, or occurring in DHS forums, regarding ERAD technology.
3) DHS reports, studies or memoranda mentioning ERAD usage in the field by DHS or any other agency.
I figure DHS Science & Technology Directorate might not be the right target. Should I just aim at DHS directly, or is there a specific group that would handle those connections between DHS and other law enforcement?
Should I structure this as three separate requests?
Also, I noticed that site:www.erad-group.com doesn't return anything on google, but it does on other search engines. Did ERAD request that it be removed from search results? Why would they do that? Why would they also not have a robots.txt if that is the case?
[edit: submitted too soon by mistake]
And if the courts decided that the asset forfeiture was incorrect and reimburse the person it was stolen from—does the scanner maker still keep their cut? Or are they still due their cut?
This is probably why it is incredibly difficult to dispute it and the police will put up every roadblock to stop you.
Particularly egregious is Lt. Vincent's take:
>"If you can prove can[sic] prove[sic] 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," Vincent said about any money seized.
Literally the opposite of how presumed innocence is supposed to work. Furthermore, good luck mounting a decent case now that they have all your money.
Given the low-threshold for seizure and how we've seen civil-asset forfeiture exercised by law enforcement, that's terrifying.
"We've seen single mom's stuff be taken, a cancer survivor his drugs taken, we saw a Christian band being taken. We've seen innocent people's stuff being taken. We've seen where the money goes and how it's been misspent," Loveless said.
It boggles the mind that this doesn't violate due process.
Seriously. If you look at the court cases for asset forfeitures, it is titled "The State of Oklahoma vs $1,534.32 in cash" or "Iowa vs 2014 Mercedes".
That type of thing is ok in Admiralty Law, but should have no place in criminal law. How we got to a point where things can be taken from someone who is not convicted of a crime is beyond belief.
It doesn't take place within criminal law.
(There is also "criminal asset forfeiture", which is a different beast, and takes place within normal criminal process against a particular criminal defendant: that is a part of criminal law, and its a lot less controversial than civil asset forfeiture.)
Also, if they're confiscating assets, why not confiscate the car? Why just the cash/cards?
How do we get this absurd law overturned? What's the minimum required? Supreme court decision?
"You have a bunch of money on your ATM card. You can potentially go to an ATM take out cash, then get drugs. Now, I need to seize all your money to ensure you can't buy those illegal drugs that may or may not exist."
But the likes of United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency is obviously more dangerous than either of those:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._$124,700_in_U...
And the list of cases here is hilarious as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_rem_jurisdiction
like United States v. 11 1/4 Dozen Packages of Articles Labeled in Part Mrs. Moffat’s Shoo-Fly Powders for Drunkenness, or United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, United States v. One Tyrannosaurus Bataar Skeleton, or Marcus v. Search Warrant of Property at 104 East Tenth Street, Kansas City, Missouri, or R.M.S. Titanic, Inc. v. The Wrecked and Abandoned Vessel, R.M.S. Titanic ...
Apparently, property doesn't really belong to us.
Corporations are also people, so you can't really have one of those either.
Shouldn't this just be "Citizens robbed by police".
In India at least they have the decency to say "Do you have a gift for me?" so you know what's happening.
My dad would pretend to be hard of hearing and deliberately misunderstand ad nauseum until waved on his way, this would happen about once a month while going about his lawful business.
He even gatecrashed a police function and got himself a picture shaking hands with the Chief of Police. He kept the photo in the vehicle so he could produce it and attempt to start up a conversation as though they were great friends.
This is a country where the guards of the police armoury were bribed with $5 to allow weapons to be removed.
Of course all of these forfeitures stink of illegality, regardless of the victim. Forth Amendment? Never heard of it, apparently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._$124,700_in_U...
http://www.wired.com/2014/09/fantastically-wrong-europes-ins...
Supposedly its already in use at borders. The news is that now if you get pulled over in OK the cops will now keep any gift cards they find.
Ever wonder why there's such a push to get RFID everywhere? If they RF scan your car and find a card in the trunk now you're at minimum guilty of obstruction.
Errrrrr not really! 4th Amendment gives you the right to refuse a search of your person or vehicle. Even if the cops do find something illegal during a search you've clearly but politely refused, your refusal will give your defense attorney grounds to ask the court to throw out any evidence found in the trunk.
Like how does the officer know how much you have and how much is 'appropriate' to confiscate?
I wonder if it does a series of authorizations looking for some sort of upper limit to figure out how much money is in the account and then they determine what to take from that?
Either way, this goes way beyond reason for what a trooper should be able to do on the side of a road during a traffic stop.
I am speaking about the method used to determine how much is in an account and what can be withdrawn, because they can't check your balance without a pin number, and if their system is issuing multiple repeated authorizations, what protections banks have in place that might block these sorts of transactions to prevent theft.
Police departments found a way to fund themselves without pissing off anyone who matters politically.
Oh, so if I have a card in someone else's name, you'll charge it, thus causing someone who doesn't even know about it to lose?
Any lawyers here want to weigh in on whether this would be identity theft/credit card fraud/etc on the part of the police and hence illegal? Isn't scanning/charging a card without authorization illegal?
How can charging a card help either the bank or the account owner in the case of police apprehending a carder?
The only possiblity that comes to mind is that the police empty the cardholder's account and then later return that money minus the device manufacturer's 7.7% cut?!
From what I understand the technology is for seizing money from prepaid cards. For other cards it just looks up information about the account. Thats how it helps with identity theft.
> Now, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol has a device that also allows them to seize money in your bank account or on prepaid cards.
ERAD card scanners were first developed around 2012 for the science and technology arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to combat the use of prepaid debit cards by drug cartels to transport drug money, according to a Homeland Security media release.
Since then, some law enforcement agencies around the country have adopted the technology.
According to ERAD Group’s patent for the device, law enforcement can determine the balance of money in an account associated with a prepaid card that is part of branded “open loop” networks such as Visa or MasterCard or “closed loop” cards that only allow purchases at a single company, such as gift cards.
When the card is scanned by the officer to check the account balance, the system disguises the balance request as a typical vendor request to prevent alerting suspects that law enforcement is checking the card, the patent states.
Once the card’s account balance is determined, the officer can use the device to freeze the funds, preventing withdrawal or use of the money in the account, or seize the funds by having them transferred to a law enforcement financial account, the patent states.
Although the device does not allow funds from non-prepaid cards to be frozen or seized, it can provide the officer information about those cards such as the card number, the name on the card, expiration date and the card issuer.
Wouldn't that go against the credit card (or pre-paid card) merchant agreement? And wouldn't ERAD have to have signed such an agreement in order to access the credit card network?
> One (1) VX680 GPRS Terminal w/battery, thermal printer
The VX680 is a mobile credit card terminal (http://www.verifone.com/media/413350/VX680_2_lg.jpg) made by Verifone, much like the type that restaurants use most places besides the USA. If I had to speculate, maybe they try putting varying charges/holds on the card and see when it gets rejected in order to divine the balance?
It's doubtful that local or state PDs have enough political pull or money to battle banks over this through the court system.
My bank does call me every now and again to verify charges on my debit card. Some of these calls make me wonder if the system has a hair trigger, which also means it's probably smart enough to just blanket block anything that looks like an asset seizure. This can't be too difficult, and will save banks money. The incentive to save money is a powerful one and has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting customers.
Once the state police start stealing funds from banks, they're very obviously crossing a line that will quickly get the Feds involved on a 'personal' level. It's actually a plus, the big boys in banking (which rule over an increasingly larger share of all banking nationally) will put an end to the state police theft very quickly as the numbers climb. Wells Fargo or JP Morgan, as far as the federal authorities are concerned, are drastically more powerful than the lowly Oklahoma State Police.
until of course they make a "profit sharing" deal with federals similar to the one in supposedly DEA related asset forfeitures performed by locals.
Your argument could equally be applied against regular (cash) civil asset forfeiture. The outcome is the same either way.
"Sorry, it was authorised by the authorities, nothing we can do".
You'll be short of the money until you sue, same as in regular civil asset forfeiture. When you do sue, you'll have to prove that you're entitled to the money, same as in regular civil asset forfeiture. What you get back will be less legal fees, same as in regular civil asset forfeiture.
It was not authorized by the card holder or a court order, so it is fraud.
Sorry, you're wrong. I've had the IRS steal money directly from my bank account to pay for taxes (and fees, and fines) I didn't owe. The bank won't help you, and I had to pay a tax lawyer $1,800 to get back $3,200 in taxes (and fines) from the IRS for a stock sale I never made.
The bank treats withdrawals by government agencies as legitimate transactions. They won't recognize it as fraud, and you won't get the money back from the bank.
A local police department or city government does not have this power.
Update: few more examples: http://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/bankruptcy/wage-garnishm..., apparently this is quite common; still don't think PD can do it for this reason
The line you'll get in fact will not be that it was authorized by the authorities and there's nothing that can be done. Banking is federally regulated, it is not regulated by the state police in Oklahoma. The matter of jurisdiction when you start fraudulently stealing from bank accounts (which in many cases would naturally also be out of state and otherwise national banks, and or even virtual banks) is without question: it's a federal matter.
Cash and card are not the same. The very obvious difference between cash and card is that you can charge back via a card. The cash is physical and must be physically recovered from their possession (protected by their guns). That's a very substantial and fortunate difference for the card holder.
This only works to seize the funds on prepaid cards, not bank accounts.
I need a state sponsored monopoly where my income stream is non-recourse without chargeback possibility.
>"If you can prove 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," Vincent said about any money seized.
... Legit reason? How am I supposed to prove where every cent came from? What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?
Exactly, why is it not incumbent upon them to prove that you have gained that money through illegitimate means?
If there is reason to believe that someone is in possession of property that doesn't belong to them it seems perfectly reasonable for the police to confiscate said property.
That's not what's being described here.
Yes. The money may be held in escrow pending the trial, but appropration by police is unjust -- and should be illegal if the person is not charged and arrested.
Edit: all of this is off-topic, as the bank can be proven the owner and the police would not keep the money.
Asset forfeiture is, and always has been, subject to judicial oversight.
There are, in fact, well established and relatively simple procedures for contesting civil forfeiture. There is a fair argument to be made that they sometimes don't work as well as they should but when you say that there is "NO judicial oversight" at all you are just just flat out wrong. You need to update your worldview if you want it to conform to reality.
If it turns out the guy running away from the bank just likes jogging with a bag of money the police should return his money and whatever else _immediately_ after the person is released.
How about "police should not take property where no crime is known to have been committed"
(Edited to add: I just realized they didn't actually get their money back. They got a check. Yep. You can generally cash those for free if you have a bank account.)
Imagine the situation of someone whose circumstances are less clear, or who can't otherwise afford to stay in one place and fight the seizure for however long it actually takes.
What happens to the person who just had all of their money taken away?
[1] http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/months-after-53-00...
If I open a civil proceeding against you, I can try to prove that you owe me $5k and if I prove that to the appropriate standard you can be compelled to provide me with $5k. I can't hack your bank account, withdraw $5k, and then open a civil proceeding to retroactively legitimize my robbery.
The whole system is a massive violation of due process, no matter what legalese you try to use to justify it. If you're allowed to take people's property and then retroactively sue them if they complain, what is even the point of having the Fifth Amendment?
Despicable, and akin to highway robbery in my opinion.
No one and nothing is charged with a crime in civil asset forfeiture.
The currency is defined as the defendant in the case.
I have come to believe this since I've met some incredibly brilliant PhD's, but I've also met some incredibly dumb PhD's.
I've met some PhDs who would run rings around anyone in their niche, but would be (metaphorically) unable to tie their shoelaces by themselves.
So the law was pushed through. Then some day cops realized they can apply this law for fun and profit. And so they have been.
There's no way I'd carry a bank card in OK.
1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11865494
It wouldn't be the first time a news article was wrong, though it'd be nice to know for sure.
Nothing more than: highway robbery, is necessary. You're spot on, that's exactly what it is, and it's nothing more. It's robbery. Using any other names for it, just assists the police in covering up what they're doing through confusion. Everyone should begin calling it robbery by police or the equivalent, and stop referring to it as civil asset forfeiture in public forums (that's only useful in a technical/legal regard).
These are all language tricks used to manipulate the masses. "Double plus good" is not a stretch at this point if we become complacent to this kind of manipulation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/07/14/...
I'm not just being pedantic, this is part of why it's so incredibly fucked. They have, no exaggeration, taken a portion of the criminal legal system with all the constraints and due process requirements there, excised it with a legislative scalpel and grafted it back on to the civil system.
I honestly to this day don't understand why government is allowed any access at all to the civil system as a plaintiff, at least not beyond the local level.
Oh wait, yes I do understand: It's specifically to fuck the people over.
The legal theory (which is a total crock and obvious constitutional violation) is that you aren't the real owner, you stole the property so the state can take it away from you. That's what creates the presumption of guilt where you have to prove you're the owner of the property, same as if you dropped it on the street by accident and the cops found it.
Anytime one of these cases gets close enough to SCOTUS for a decision on the overall constitutionality the police/DA drop the case. Most of them seem to know its a scam and don't want to risk an adverse ruling. There have been a few hints that SCOTUS is ready to rule the current scope and scale makes civil forfeiture unconstitutional but who knows.
https://www.erad-group.com/fci
While the implications here are certainly pretty creepy, this seems more like something to use in investigations of money laundering, etc.
Which criminals? The ones a local policeman happens to stop in a routine checkpoint?
I'd like to see actual stats on what percentage of everyday criminals who are met by local law enforcement "conceal billions of dollars".
I'd bet this percentage is so small the tool does more harm to the general populace than good on the off chance such a criminal is caught.
Yes, US citizens are criminals by definition of law, apparently.
"The ERAD platform will help you document every confiscated credit, debit and prepaid card, and instantaneously provide key card issuer information that’s critical to your investigation. And if some of those cards are prepaid cards, ERAD™ gives you the ability, right at the point of arrest, to determine the value and immediately secure or freeze those funds."
So these devices do let LEOs seize funds but only from prepaid cards, apparently, for now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/us/justices-weigh-freezing...
So what would this device look like? Is it performing ACH or wire transfer transactions? Or is this just sending card information to the company, which then automates the state government's garnishment process?
I'll be interested to get the full story when details are available.
I'm glad there's some pushback from the state legislature!
Not from OK, so I get the feeling this affects things, but not sure how.
When you start a comment with "well off white guy", you are indicating the person is a racist since they are ignoring problems of their fellow humans because of the person's race. If you substitute any other race in that statement, people would find it to be an accusation of racism. I suppose there is another interpretation of that line, but I am trying very hard to be charitable to posters (I do fail quite a bit).
pointing out that for some reason long-standing problems suddenly seem to get a lot more attention once they start negatively affecting white people is not promoting hate
from the article: ''It's called an ERAD, or Electronic Recovery and Access to Data machine, and state police began using 16 of them last month.''
I would submit his current problem is not long standing since it started last month. Also, we do not know his history of speaking out about civil forfeiture. Why, the incident with his wife could have been a "shutup" warning from the police. I said I provided a piece of data, and I have not really had time to look at the context.
As to the second half, pointing out some issue is racial and the participant only started noticing because of their race is informing your reader that you believe that person to be racist.
it is calling attention to racism
Which implies that a belief that someone is being racist. Thus calling him a racist as he is the only protagonist mentioned.
You know, I grew up in the grey between two different groups, and I sometime wish I could have been raised in a suburb or had a little more blood to qualify as the other group. Being able to say "I am..." in a clear voice is an amazing powerful thing. I've gotten to see what absolute shits groups going too far can be on each other when one believes they can say and do things with minimum risk. Assumptions about people based on their race are just wrong. Judge a person by their word and deed with a kind eye and hopeful heart. I fail at this quite a lot, but I think I'm ok with what I wrote.
// as a side note, I love hnreplies and if I had cash I would suggest adding a blackout time feature
If someone (not a minority) is ill-informed about an issue that disproportionately affects minorities, to the point that they believe the issue is not so serious, and only when personally confronted with the effects do they take on a more fully-informed opinion and speak out about the injustice of it, I don't think you necessarily have to consider that person a racist, even if you think their behavior is a result of bias. And, while dsfyu404ed certainly expressed frustration with this state of affairs (as I believe anyone should), that still does not rise to the level of actually calling a person a racist. This need not apply only to race - it can also be rich people not caring about poor people problems, or men not caring about womens' issues, and so on.
For another example look at the opioid epidemic in the US now, compared to crack hysteria in the 80s. Suddenly drug addicts are victims of circumstance, unfairly targeted by unjust or antiquated laws, it's the drug companies' fault for pushing these treatments to doctors, etc. etc. Whereas in the 80s crack dealers were going to infiltrate your nice suburban community and turn your daughters into whores and your sons into foot soldiers in their gang wars, or whatever the hell. And it just so happens that the opioid epidemic is particularly bad among white communities now. However, that doesn't mean that everyone who is concerned about the opioid epidemic now, yet took a different view of the crack epidemic back in the day, is necessarily a racist in the usual sense. It could be they are ignorant of their bias, and lack introspection.
This is a pointless charade that fools nobody.
At any rate, he did not call him a racist. That's not really up for discussion since the text is right there.
Isn't the basic problem how much money the US government has spent improving the supply of heroin from Afghanistan after the taliban completely destroyed it during their 2001 rise to power.
Note: I am from Denmark and maybe I have a different perspective, even though racism is a problem here as well, but maybe in a different way. I was having an internal debate with myself about whether to jump in on this conversation just because it is a topic that can cause a lot of controversy. But I decided that self censorship, is a bad thing for society as a whole in the long run.
Asset forfeiture has been controversial since it started being used much more frequently in the 1980s. I really doubt most of the people commenting on it here first heard of it on John Oliver's show.
Furthermore, the use of "plain-old" was a way of indicating that this is a new method but an old process; eg, it's not legally any different from normal asset seizure.
Finally, and most importantly, I don't see any bias or why you even call it that.
Not that there is anything wrong with John Oliver hopping on the band wagon, that's good thing.
If they're so inclined they can take your things by force and you will have no reasonable means of recourse.
It's like being charged solely with resisting arrest.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/15/the-day-fer...
The truth of the matter is that people are barely evolved ape/chimps and do pretty much whatever suites them as long as they don't get their ass kicked for it.
As someone who is closely following the topic I would say he is pretty accurate.
Most of these laws are passed claiming it is meant to target hardened criminals. Good people like us think it is okay to take away any rights of people who we consider as bad. Given the choice cops will not knock down the door of Drug dealer known to have automatic rifles at his home but some poor old cancer patient who is unlikely to resist or cry.
These problems are not a creation of police. These are created by good people like us who do not empathize with criminals, minorities and other groups which by default consider "less human".
I agree that the problem is considering others as "less human" but I wouldn't exclude the police from that!
Some of us think there are people with power we need to impress and then there are people without power we can take from them whatever we want.
Some of us think we are all human beings and everyone deserves to be a part of society, to be seen as human beings with human wants, needs and human emotions, even when they do things that harm other people. And whether they even do that, is not for us to judge.
The first group needed people who were willing to take things from the bad guys, and picked the second group as police and prosecutors.
That's how we're in this situation today.
Your child ask you if they can go to your donald-trump-loving-women-should-stay-in-kitchen neighbour's house to play with friends. Do you:
1. Change your child's school so they don't mix with the 'wrong sort'. You're afraid what your social circle think if your children mix with children of people like that.
2. Your neighbours are racists and sexists. Petition their kids to be kicked out from your kids' school. They don't deserve an education.
3. Let your child go play with them, then if your child has a positive experience, let him go again next time. If not, protect the child from the consequences of not going next time.
(Edited to change "marijuana" to "medical-marijuana".)
That's a ridiculous statement. My church (both as an organization and the people in it) gives tons of money to single moms for everything from subsistence to fully paid Disneyland vacations. We run a volunteer group that does things like yard work, handyman work, and moving for single moms. The most visible charity outside a church in my city is for single moms. There are single moms who work in important positions at my church. The bible specifically points out on many occasions that those who follow Christ should show love and compassion to people such as single moms as Christ would.
"Bad cops" have committed acts which are illegal; where were illegal acts committed in the story?
Even if organizationally there wasn't a tendency to protect the organization, this would not end the issue.
Blacklisting someone without due process is not the same thing as refusing to produce a drug to kill someone.
We need laws that prevent those things. That's the only way this can be resolved. We're a huge community with an equally huge influence and resources. Let's coordinate and use our power for a good cause, instead of resurrecting witch-hunting practices.
The government is made up of it's constituents, we should absolutely blacklist those people to let them know we are not OK with this. You'll never get more transparency from the government, it's not in their best interest to do that, nor is it for them to implement 'better' legislation. Ideally that would be great, but we are WAY past that being a realistic possibility in America.
I don't think you meant what you wrote there. You're saying government transparency is not in the best interest of its citizens?
But also in the same breathe, people in government are also extremely self serving, and it does them no good to provide more transparency when their current paychecks benefit from a lack of transparency.
I can see how that appears to be contradictory but I did not mean for it to be taken in that manner, hope this clears up my statement.
Doing/making something because it is legal is does not make it right. As you're building a team you should hopefully be hiring only people who act ethically and can understand the implications of their work, right?
Setting aside that professional licensure requirements are anathema to the spirit of the hacker movement, they would likely have prevented the creation of a massive pool of technology companies, including Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook. Even that proposal would stifle innovation.
However, what's being suggested by the OP is not even a professional licensure system.
It's mob justice.
The difference is that professional licensure organizations follow fixed sets of rules, procedures, and principles. These rules are established, agreed upon, and promulgated in advance of enforcement. Most importantly, the procedures generally allow for the basics of due process.
Mob justice has no set of fixed procedure, and no assurance of due process. Its enforcement is governed by caprice, and subject to a set of arbitrary, inconsistent, and constantly shifting "rules."
The OP is proposing an arbitrarily enforced "refusal to hire" policy people from an ill-defined set of "undesirable" companies.
First, there are no rules for establishing which companies are undesirable.
What fields of technology exactly are undesirable? And exactly how closely did an engineer have to be involved with such technology?
Second, many companies develop "dual use" technology, which has both civilian and military uses. This includes manufacturers of everything from CPUs to jet engines. Is the designer of a gyroscope used on spacecraft and on missiles banished from our ranks?
Third, many of these companies are also huge conglomerates. GE makes jet engines, as well as washers and dryers.
Where do we draw the line?
Should a GE employee be blacklisted under this "system"? One from Intel? How about Facebook for taking money from the CIA? Google for Boston Dynamics?
Most importantly, who decides, and how?
If it's determined by whim and popularity, as proposed by the OP, then I want absolutely no part of it.
And I suspect very strongly that the engineers on this particular project would have clearly violated any standards of professional ethics we could agree on.
Civil war amongst software developers, with utter lack of due process, and ostracism as punishment are not as pleasant to the ear as "consensus," but that's the end result of what you're proposing.
This, of course, misses the central flaw in the proposal: If "good" companies refuse to hire engineers with work history at "bad" companies, you'd be forcing the very engineers who now want to do work you consider "good" back into doing work you consider "bad."
Setting aside the horrific personal implications this ham-fisted approach would have, by its very nature, a refusal to hire policy would have the exact opposite effect that you intend.
The problem is if the police is corrupted and are using it outside the law, or not by the intention of the law.
(As this civil case nonsense)
First you have civil-asset forfeiture that let's police seize money from you when you are carrying large amounts of cash (with a generous false positive rate potentially disastrous to victims).
Now to get around that, you could try handling everything by card or bank transaction (unless you're one of the unfortunate few without access to a bank account due to low credit rating or other legitimate reasons). And now they can seize that too?
That's not ripe for abuse, that's designed for abuse.
As a non-American, what's wrong with your country?
That isn't true now anyway?
I don't advocate for anything, all I know is if the current trend continues, like every other free society that has gone down this same road, It will end very badly and then will improve for a generation or so.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure." - Thomas Jefferson
That's, of course, humoring the notion that this is in the cards in the developed world. If you step out of the echochambers on the Internet and interact with people in reality, you begin to see that things aren't nearly as bad as the curated outrage porn would lead you to believe.
That depends how you define "revolution" (if you set the right scale cut-off, it was the last armed revolt meeting the cutoff, but not all "revolutions" are "armed revolts" and vice versa; particularly, for the latter, "revolution" often implies success, not merely an attempt, at replacing the aspects of the status quo ante against which the putative revolution is aligned, which those revolting in the Civil War spectacularly failed to do.)
One could argue that some or all of the suffrage movement, temperance movement, and civil rights movement (and maybe others) were "revolutions" that are more recent -- and more successful (if only in the short-term, in the second case) -- than the Civil War, though none of them were primarily armed revolts.
I'm profoundly disillusioned, and not sure where to go from here.
a pathological liar is one step away from the White House and lending legitimacy to anti-first-amendment ... groups
These complaints actually describe both major-party candidates pretty well.
Trump is only the natural leader to this army of thugs, exactly like in 1934 in Germany. Let's hope that if your country falls into that trap, there will be an even bigger country to come and save you, like you did for us in 1944.
That would be Russia, China, or Canada.
North?
Sure glad the local police didn't have one of those when they were doing their first of the month car stops.
At some point you just rely on biometrics for every transaction, it turns into an automated shakedown scheme or you just learn to avoid the state of Oklahoma.
Its simple and its fast.
To steal and murder! The correct police motto.