Hacker News Reader

Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

As an american, this is one of the most sadistic and reckless ways to raise awareness of a security issue and the researcher should be ashamed.

- American drug laws carry some of the harshest penalties in the developed world. Civil forfeiture allows police to seize your car and home, without trial, for drug charges. 3 strikes laws can and have put many people in prison for sentences as long as 20 years, for less than an ounce of Marijuana

- once released from prison, many American ex-cons are required to pay restitution for their incarceration and can be legally discriminated against for housing, employment, and even public benefits in some states. reformed convicts cannot vote in most american states, and must file legal petition for restoration of their right to vote.

- parole terms can be extended well beyond a prisoners sentence and require years of monitoring and testing services the former convict must pay for, or be sent back to jail.

simple convictions like marijuana can result in the loss of your children, the loss of your job, and complete financial ruin.

Source: I have been incarcerated in the United States in the past.

View on HN

This isn’t a security issue, Venmo is publishing this data by design. It’s already available for law enforcement, and they don’t need a Twitter bot. The bot was to inform the public.

Shaming Venmo into protecting their users or just raising public awareness about their policies is a great start.

I think this is the right way to look at it. The twitter bot didn't give this information to law enforcement, because unless they're idiots they've been monitoring and archiving this from day one.

You might be suprised.

I would be, this is exactly the use case for Palantir's social media monitoring system. If they failed to pull in this data source that would be a huge miss. Especially since Palantir and PayPal (who now owns venmo) were co-founded by the same person.

I doubt they’ve been monitoring and archiving this from day one.

The researcher isn't shaming Venmo, they're shaming the users.

I agree that the data is already available, but to hurt the users without a second of hesitation? Much better and justified to go after the company, ... slowly step up the pressure and escalate it gradually until you have their attention. Tag their CxOs on LinkedIn, call them out in person (don't let them hide between a corporate facade) for their greedy negligence. Better would have been by publishing a paper about it imho ... But to hurt the user like this? The author is a flipping coward.

As the author mentioned there have already been papers published about this but they got nowhere near the same attention. If you are actually concerned about the users of venmo you should be thanking the author he managed to bring major security issues to the attention of far more users then anyone else working on this same issue has been able to. And as others have noted venmo already shares everything with law enforcement, so there is no issue here with exposing people to increased legal risk.

It's available, but in many cases agencies are unaware that this data exists. Drawing attention to it exposes people who made life errors to outsized retribution. I'm willing to bet a dollar many cases brought by smaller agencies would've escaped limitations had they not been raised.

I'm entirely sober, always have been. I still think this one-person campaign may have ruined innocent lives. Just because people may not understand the seriousness of a repercussion doesn't mean they should fall victim to those which are unfairly onerous; most people can't process risk the way we can.

It’d be naive to assume that agencies don’t know about Venmo considering its data has been used previously to prosecute drug dealers [1].

[1] https://qz.com/376634/the-euphemisms-people-use-to-pay-their...

It would be naive, you're right.

That's why I mentioned "many" and not "all"

Those tweets cannot be used to convict someone. It's also not really their fault given they just took existing public data and reposted it...

But the final nail in the coffin is that simply put, 99% of the posts are from people who know it's public, don't care, and intentionally fill the description with stupidity. I can't count the number of times I've gotten venmo payments sent to me with salacious descriptions.

If you're actually breaking the law you are probably fine because far more people are just screwing around and you'll blend right in. And also, if you are breaking the law and think it's a good idea to admit that repeatedly via internet payments, maybe you aren't the brightest.

A lot of people are naively breaking some law, but getting by because they are too obscure for anyone to get around to caring. Something like this with media coverage can effectively 'short list' a few unlucky people who wouldn't otherwise deserve scrutiny, thus making it irresponsible to do as a real researcher.

Even fake salacious descriptions stop being fun when the IRS shows up for an audit.

Spoken like someone with no experience with drug court.

> Those tweets cannot be used to convict someone.

These tweets can't be used to convict you, but they could be used to secure a warrant and send a SWAT team into your house. Maybe they find drugs, maybe they shoot some people or pets, maybe they just scare everyone and damage your property.

> 99% of the posts are from people who know it's public, don't care, and intentionally fill the description with stupidity

How do you know that? My assumption was that payment details would not be publicly broadcast when I send money to a friend. Do you really think this assumption puts me in the bottom 1%?

> but they could be used to secure a warrant and send a SWAT team into your house

Nobody is going to send a SWAT team to someone's house over a $25 Venmo transaction marked as "drugs". Not only is it not even close to nearly enough evidence for a warrant, but a SWAT team isn't going to get sent for drug possession in any case.

You are naive, and spreading dangerous infromation. I had a friend whose house got swatted a couple of years ago after another friend sent him money via paypal with the desc "thanks for the guns and drugs". The other friend, Canadian, also had law enforcement show up on behalf of interpol.

SWAT is called special weapons and tactics for a reason. They get sent out in dangerous situations such as hostages, or when the suspect is known to be very armed, not for any old call. It costs money to train and deploy them, and it's not done as often as you imply.

Being swatted is a thing, but it's not going to happen over a $25 Venmo transaction titled as "drugs". Or even one titled as "weapons". There needs to be actual intent to harm someone immediately declared. Last year's swatting was because the person claimed he "had fatally shot his father, and was holding family members at gunpoint."

Law enforcement is different than SWAT, so I won't even entertain your second anecdote except for saying in order for Interpol to get involved, they needed far more evidence than a Paypal transaction with that description.

Interpol wasn't involved, they literally just passed the info along to local QC law enforcement. This ended up being a thing that dragged on for several months for the Canadian. You are probably right though on the American friend, swatted was the wrong word. Maybe visited by armed cops ready to make an arrest was more like it.

People are able to send SWAT teams to houses as a prank. Someone malicious who is stalking another person could use this information to justify their "prank".

What about do-gooders? Someone sees a transaction marked "for drugs" and they call the police because they think they are helping. This already happens to a lot of people holding cookouts, selling lemonade, cutting grass, and more.

Hardly "nobody".

> People are able to send SWAT teams to houses as a prank. Someone malicious who is stalking another person could use this information to justify their "prank".

Yes, by lying and saying there is a dangerous situation like a hostage. In the swatting incident from last year, they were called because the person said he "had fatally shot his father, and was holding family members at gunpoint."

SWAT gets sent out, sure. But SWAT does not get sent out for minor drug charges. They're called special weapons and tactics for a reason.

Not true:

"SPOKANE, Wash. - SWAT raided a Spokane home on heroin warrant. It happened just before 11 am Friday morning at a duplex home on the corner of 4th and Altamont. Details were not immediately known but authorities on scene say they were serving a warrant related to heroin."

http://www.khq.com/story/21437261/swat-situation

How do police obtaining a warrant? In part by establishing probable cause. How is probable cause determined in the US:

"Probable cause can be based on either direct observation by the police officer, or on hearsay information provided by others."

Once again, probable cause is a much higher bar than a Venmo transaction where you can put whatever you want in the description.

I believe I understand your point: police themselves are unlikely to initiate a SWAT raid based on the Venmo transaction comment.

However, I don't believe you are sincerely trying to understand my point: If probably cause can be established by, "hearsay information provided by others", Then the Venmo transaction information could result in someone being SWATed by a well intending citizen or a malicious person.

Therefore, the availability of this information on Venmo can be a contributing factor to someone having the police called on them (and the police responding). I am not sure where the hole in this logic is?

> SWAT gets sent out, sure. But SWAT does not get sent out for minor drug charges. They're called special weapons and tactics for a reason.

Sure they get called out for minor drug raids. For "practice." Especially in smaller locales where SWAT is needed infrequently. It's probably a bad idea, but it is what it is.

In a country where SWATTING is a thing, I would not be so sure.

According to a 2014 study by the ACLU, most SWAT raids are for drug searches. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/06/24/...

Back when I lived with a roommate, he paid the rent and I paid him half. I always wrote out the check for 'sexual favors."

Exactly. Anyone actually writing in "Drugs" and meaning its for drugs is going to get caught in some other fashion for being stupid. Police know 99.9999% of the Venmo comments are farce.

That doesn’t matter if they are looking for a pretext for a search warrant or an arrest.

>As an american, this is one of the most sadistic and reckless ways to raise awareness of a security issue and the researcher should be ashamed.

As an American, you are under educated about how the justice system works.

You can't be charged with crimes they can't prove. It's why comedians and public figures can openly admit to smoking weed.

Putting a weed or needle emoji in your Venmo transaction isn't going to have the DEA breaking down your door in the next hour. These people are 100% completely safe.

With all of that said, if someone is convicted due to this, they were already screwed and being actively monitored.

Also the author said he removed PII.

> You can't be charged with crimes they can't prove

You certainly can be charged with any crime with or without evidence. And the way they make it stick is to offer a plea deal to avoid trial.

charged and held in jail

Where do you think people go when they get arrested? And what do you think happens if they don't have money on-hand to pay bail?

No, you cannot be charged literally without evidence. A judge would throw the case out, and likely censure or sanction the prosecutor.

Can you be charged on weak evidence, or even in some cases fabricated evidence? Yes, but that's a different matter.

You are describing a legal system that is written on paper.

we have a real one. It's an easy mistake for programmers to make. We work in a world of provable absolutes that behave exactly as written.

A judge would throw that case out, if you could afford a decent attorney who would be able to raise that point in a hearing.

> No, you cannot be charged literally without evidence. A judge would throw the case out, and likely censure or sanction the prosecutor.

Of course you can. All that's required is someone allege there is evidence establishing probable cause. Perhaps that so-called evidence has a perfectly innocent explanation that the person making the allegations is unaware of or choses to ignore. Perhaps the person making the allegations is mistaken. Perhaps they are even lying.

And sure, lack of evidence is grounds for getting cases thrown out. However, you need to make that case first. That requires time, representation and usually the services of a private investigator. The judge is not going to make that case for you.

Even if you get baseless charges thrown out, prosecutors are very rarely sanctioned.

This is what happened to my father about thirty years ago. While he was naive about a lot of things and didn't have good legal representation, he knew enough to refuse to plead guilty.

The "compromise" that prosecutors arrived at was to threaten him with a massive prison sentence, and mislead him about what an Alford plea is. "We're not asking you to plead guilty, and you wont spend any time in jail! Just sign this!" My father avoided jail time but was branded a felon.

Every couple of years since I was little I'd see him spend a few thousand dollars on attorneys trying to rewrite history or fix a new fire resulting from that plea. It took the whole family 30 years, unspeakable amounts of money and a really empathetic journalist but we managed to convince the governor of Missouri to pardon him a few years ago.

A regular person who doesn't have the inhuman qualities my father does would have been ground up and destroyed. He managed to work 35 years at the same company even though a population of "vigilantes" wanted to find any reason they could to get him fired or just make him miserable.

Every once in a while he'd let a story leak about how someone had rubbed grease on his work steering wheel or we'd have to go to the DMV to get new license plates because someone managed to get past his locking screws. My dad responded to this shit in a dispassionate way that still impresses me to reflect on. Someone might break into his locker and cut up his boots. If he said anything about it, it would be like "I should have known better than to use my locker." Then he'd treat going to the shoe store like going to the post office. It's just part of the chores one deals with.

If I were in his shoes I wouldn't have made it.

> you are under educated (sic) about how the justice system works.

What an arrogant and ignorant comment. You can absolutely have your probation or parole revoked for something like this. No conviction necessary.

Also you're wrong about PII being removed, unless you think that your photo and first name don't constitute PII (in which case, I hope you are never tasked with handling PII at your job).

> You can absolutely have your probation or parole revoked for something like this.

Then maybe you shouldn't be PUBLICLY posting about things like this in Venmo. Good grief people - this twitter bot did nothing to expose people that a cop/PO couldn't already do using Venmo.

The whole point of the bot is that people didn't realize they were posting this information publicly.

The whole problem is people on probation posting “drugs” as payment comment. I’m not american, but cannot imagine a country where this wouldn’t attract “sir are you an idiot” looks. Feels like those who complain want both healthy society and easy crimes at the same time.

Not all drugs are illegal drugs, not all posts actually contained the word "drugs", and the people doing this likely didn't understand that the posts were public.

> You can absolutely have your probation or parole revoked for something like this. No conviction necessary.

If you're already on parole, how about not buying drugs? I agree drug laws are ridiculous and draconian, but maybe let the people who are not on parole poke that particular hornet's nest.

Or at least, if you absolutely must buy drugs while on parole, how about not publicly announcing it on social media? You don't have to put anything in the Venmo comment field, let alone a needle emoji.

>As an American, you are under educated about how the justice system works.

On paper it works as you described. In reality only celebrities, the well connected and those able to afford good lawyers get the full benefit of the doubt in our legal system. You or I could not do what OJ did and get away with it.

>Putting a weed or needle emoji in your Venmo transaction isn't going to have the DEA breaking down your door in the next hour. These people are 100% completely safe.

That's false equivalence. No, the DEA isn't going to do anything for a minor possession charge. What does happen is that companies bundle and sell this sort of data as "open source intelligence" and it's used all the time (as are many other things) to dig up dirt on low level people in order to make them snitch on higher level people.

>With all of that said, if someone is convicted due to this, they were already screwed and being actively monitored.

This kind of data is what makes a minor charge sticky and harder to bargain down to something that's actually reasonable (assuming the accursed has a useful lawyer at all). Nobody is getting convicted on this alone but it could be the difference between getting the prosecution to drop all drug charges or not.

>Also the author said he removed PII.

He did a piss poor job as others have mentioned. It would be easy to de-anonymyze this data set.

Much easier to collect one yourself though.

As an African-Canadian, it appears to the rest of the world that you have two different justice systems, and the one for people of colour and allegations of “drugs” works completely differently than the one for white Americans.

I am skeptical that Americans of color will not be charged for drug crimes that cannot be proven by any reasonable standard, and I am also very much afraid that if someone is brought to the police's attention like this, they will be at risk of a wrongful prosecution, or worse.

Just bringing a person of color’s name to the attention of their local law enforcement’s attention can create a risk of death in a traffic stop or no-knock search coupled with an itchy trigger finger.

It shouldn’t be like this, but as long as it is, outing drug users to the police in any way contributes to the injustice in the American “justice” system.

> As an African-Canadian, it appears to the rest of the world that you have two different justice systems, and the one for people of colour and allegations of “drugs” works completely differently than the one for white Americans.

As an American, and one who grew up among the poor, and criminal elements of society in the "racist" deep south, I do believe you read a bit too much sensationalized news leading you to a wrong conclusion.

However, you're right, there is a dual system. A system for the rich and a system for the poor.

Interesting. That’s a testable hypothesis. If after controlling for income there is a difference in sentencing between races, then that’s evidence to reject the hypothesis that there is no racial disparity.

I believe I once read something that makes me believe that we should indeed believe there is racial disparity but I can’t find it now. Pity.

> If after controlling for income there is a difference in sentencing between races, then that’s evidence to reject the hypothesis that there is no racial disparity.

Well, logically speaking, you can't draw that conclusion.

I implicitly meant for similar severity of crime. Different distribution of crimes is a different discussion.

Still testable, and I believe rejectable that race has no impact on sentencing.

I've always liked this map to show the composition of prisons. https://demographics.virginia.edu/DotMap/

As an aside: I'm a tall 30-something white male. I'm safe I'm not going to have the cops called on me with "$Action while black", and the assumption is that if I'm somewhere, I'm supposed to be there.

As it turns out, that system is also pretty racist toward rich black people as well.

> As it turns out, that system is also pretty racist toward rich black people as well.

Which is exactly why OJ is in prison for murder.

One anecdote does not a trend make.

>one for people of colour and allegations of “drugs” works completely differently than the one for white Americans.

This is far more about social class ($$$) than color. I'm not saying there aren't racial injustices at play, but I promise you that whites (and anyone else) without means are treated similarly when they get busted. Don't completely buy into the picture painted by the media.

I just wanted to make a kind of empty comment to say that I agree with you. Most of the replies to your comment say you're distorting the picture, and that it's only about wealth inequalities. However, even wealthy people of color experience these injustices, they most often though just have enough money to pay their way free.

Americans want to believe that it’s about wealth disparity, because that allows moderates to believe that at some level, people are responsible for their own poverty, and if poverty is something people have control over, then they bear personal responsibility for being too poor to afford justice.

Compound that with people disingenuousy promoting this narrative for their own political reasons, such as wanting to promote the idea that the inhumanly high incarceration rates are evidence of an inherent criminality, laziness, or both on the part of people of colour, and you get an oft-repeated explanation that should not be accepted without evidence.

It might feel like it ought to be true, but it’s not.

> You can't be charged with crimes they can't prove.

This burden of proof does not apply for parole violations, or civil asset forfeiture as mentioned in the OP.

There’s an irony in you critiquing someone about being under educated about the justice system, only to turn around and give a naive and starry eyed account of some idealized American justice system. You don’t have to be convicted of a crime to have your life ruined or seriously impaired by the criminal justice system, and prosecutors will routinely charge people with more crimes than they know they can prove in order to pressure plea deals.

> You can't be charged with crimes they can't prove.

Yes, you can, or no one ever would be acquitted, since that is exactly having been charged with a crime that the prosecutor then tried to, but could not, prove.

> It's why comedians and public figures can openly admit to smoking weed.

No, the reason why they can do that is a combination of statutes of limitations, decriminalization, and lack of priority for prosecution.

> Putting a weed or needle emoji in your Venmo transaction isn't going to have the DEA breaking down your door in the next hour.

True.

> These people are 100% completely safe.

Less true.

> With all of that said, if someone is convicted due to this, they were already screwed and being actively monitored.

Being actively monitored doesn't mean you are screwed, but, yes, something like pre-existing suspicion and this being a connecting piece of evidence and not the whole case is the main legal threat.

> Also the author said he removed PII.

Unless the author is ab expert in the area, there's generally a pretty big gap between deleting what seems to be PII and effective deidentification.

You can't be charged with crimes they can't prove. It's why comedians and public figures can openly admit to smoking weed.

I think you have to much faith in the justice system. They don't have to "prove" anything. Once they arrest you, they can easily intimidate you into taking a plea and the overworked public defender won't be of much help.

And were these things to happen to a Venmo user, it's ultimately Venmo that's responsible for it.

(Also: this is work of a random dude that whipped up a Python script in 2 hours, after finding the API link on Twitter. Were the police to care about those tweets, wouldn't they care about those payments before?).

I'm not sure if there is any other reasonable way of handling such problems. If I found this API link and saw this data, I should be able to report it to a government agency, and within a week, Venmo should be under threat of losing shit ton of money if they don't fix it (they should lose some over this anyway). Is there an official process that works like this? Why not?

Yeah GDPR has provisions for that. In the US though? I don't think it's illegal if it's in the ToS or EULA.

> (Also: this is work of a random dude that whipped up a Python script in 2 hours, after finding the API link on Twitter. Were the police to care about those tweets, wouldn't they care about those payments before?).

Two things. First, you're seriously overestimating the technical acumen of "the police," on average. Second, there are all sorts of crimes that the police basically don't give a damn about but are more or less obligated to investigate if they're brought to the police's attention. You can see how zillions of people trolling one another's purchases online could lead to some tips to the police, etc. etc.

Second, there are all sorts of crimes that the police basically don't give a damn about but are more or less obligated to investigate if they're brought to the police's attention.

I'll counter you with anecdata: the Seattle Police Department and cannabis before it was legal in WA. They came right out and said, "it's at the bottom of our priority list." Oh, sure, they're probably still "obligated" to investigate, but writing parking tickets took priority that day, sorry.

Just like the cops are in no real hurry to investigate my missing car stereo. They might be "obligated", but that doesn't mean other things aren't ahead in the queue.

"I'll just check with the boys down at the crime lab. They got four more detectives working on the case. They got us working in shifts!"

Same with Vancouver PD, who openly said they have far more important things to do than bust people for smoking weed or even the grey-area medical marijuana stores with their own in-house homeopaths writing prescriptions. Even in terms of drugs, PDs care far more about trafficking, importation and production than they care about the possession and use.

> the researcher should be ashamed

Nah, these people used blatant keywords in their public transactions. Even if you argue that they thought their transactions were private, these users chose to tag their payments with drug related keywords. If they really cared they would have encoded or obfuscated the payment descriptions.

>many American ex-cons are required to pay restitution for their incarceration Hold the phone, people get sent to prison then get to pay for that privilege once released? Do you have any further reading on that?

Some states charge, for example prison health care, TDCJ/Texas will give you a bill upon release or skim your commissary account for payments. There's barely a state budget for prisons and voters don't want to pay for it, meaning political suicide if you're giving tax dollars to convicts.

> There's barely a state budget for prisons and voters don't want to pay for it

But boy do they love watching people get locked up. What a bad approach for treating the ills of society. Let's lock people up at the drop of the hat, make it the most miserable thing possible, and then expect them to come out well adjusted and fully functional. People went to jail because they were neither of those things before hand.

But I guess as long as the prison system gets to turn a couple of bucks it makes it all worth it, right?

I did a little research. It's definitely not something I've ever heard of in my state.

Looks likes this is mostly in Ohio? Apparently in the 1990's, almost all Ohio counties rolled this out. It's been being rolled back ever since. As of a few years ago, only 40 jails in the state charge these fees. Of these, the most expensive six jails charge between $50-$60 per night, 5 charge between $20-48, Some charge $1-$2 per night. $17 Ohio jails charge a booking fee only, usually $10 but up to $40.

Some California cities have a pay-for-a-nicer prison scheme, but that's not really the same thing.

A few years ago when I was on jury duty, the primary business underway in the "County Justice Complex" seemed to be poor folks making payments on their jail stays. A real issue for some of them was making payments quickly enough to avoid additional jail stays, with the additional penury inherent in missing more work and having to pay more jail fees. This is in Missouri, a state more famed for its many injustices than Ohio is. We'd be safer and happier if we fired 75% of our LEOs tomorrow.

Wow, Missouri's setup with this sounds awful! Unlike Ohio, which only has some mostly short stay jails that charge, Missouri charges statewide, and for prison, which averages six months to two years for an exiting inmate. Unbelievable!

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2017/may/5/missouri-pri...

(As to firing LEO's, I think the research shows that there is a pretty clear correlation between more officers and less crime. So I'm not with you on that one.)

I haven't seen any of that research. Overall crime levels are correlated mostly with demographics. A good case has also been made that the prevalence of lead in childhood environments is a leading indicator of crime, but that is also a mostly demographic observation.

Incidentally, if you're looking at violent crime at the state level to convince yourself that overpolicing is not a problem, you're missing out on the fact that St. Louis has the highest murder rate in the nation, and #13 in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate

Pay-to-stay:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay-to-stay_(imprisonment)

I agree.

> I didn’t want to actually contribute to the problem of lack of privacy.

This reads more like "I had a funny feeling this could be wrong, but I did it anyways for internet points." How could anything on the internet possibly go viral? I couldn't take what the author said very seriously after this.

nice salacious hot take. knowing the author and having followed the development as it happened, I can attest to his sincerity. your assertion is just plain wrong.

So, an ad hominem followed by anecdata about someone with which you're personally invested?

I think the fact they wrote that at all means it crossed their mind. Did they reach out to Venmo before publishing the article? I didn't see that mentioned anywhere.

> I wanted to do something creative with this to demonstrate the lack of privacy in Venmo’s default settings.

What was the goal of this? Maybe someone from Venmo would stumble across this, and start some meaningful dialogue around how...

> to get a few laughs from my friends and colleagues

Ah, right. And of course, posting this publicly on Twitter was the only way to do that?

To me, this just shows contempt for users who may not even know that Venmo defaults to public, or even understand what that means. They became fodder for a cannon the author wanted to point at Venmo. Did the author contact all those users to inform them of the implications, both of their public transactions and the little piece of performance art they created?

Don't shoot the messenger.

Your ire should be directed at Venmo.

As an American, your comment is embarrassing.

Wow, that's just about the most overwrought, overblown, and misinformed post I've seen here in a long time.

1) this information is already public - in fact he removed some of the identfying details (last name for example) 2) the twitter bot assumes the descriptions are jokes 3) none of this could be used to convict someone of a crime

Unless you have some evidence that making public information like this public in a different format, calling someone sadistic for it is something should really be apologizing for. Your past incarceration does not give you any moral authority to be making personal attacks like calling someone sadistic...

I have to disagree- the data is out in the public by default (a feature of Venmo). Compiling such data is not abuse and is good for awareness.

Sorry to hear about your misfortunes. As more U.S. citizens abandon citizenship due to FATCA do feel the incarceration rate per capita will increase or decrease?

The people funding Mexican drug cartels are the ones who should be ashamed.

What's wrong with any of this?

People who are using and selling drugs are criminals like any other type of criminal.

Civil forfeiture is fucked, sure, but the rest of the consequences sound pretty fair. Break the law, you pay the price. If you rob a small bank instead of Deutsche, should you get a smaller penalty? Just because it's a small quantity of drugs doesn't mean anything, it's still the same crime.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com