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Comment by jacobn | Hacker News Reader

Any confiscated cash needs to go into state level or even federal coffers, not to the agency or local cops that did the confiscating. That removes the immediate incentive for abuse, while retaining the tool for what it was intended for: actual criminals.

(I don’t have the sources but read years ago that states that let the cops keep the cash have ridiculous levels of abusive confiscations, whereas states that have the money go to the state coffers basically don’t)

(Most civil asset forfeiture is done by local cops stopping people on the highway and similar)

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The DoJ has established a workaround for this, and it's called Equitable Sharing. Local cop seizes assets on behalf of the DEA or other federal agency, assets are held by the federal agency rather than the local agency, the federal agency sends a kickback payment to the local agency and takes over prosecution, local agency washes its hands of the matter, enjoys the plunder, and goes off and robs more subjects.

https://www.justice.gov/criminal/media/1044326/dl

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

why on earth do they get a kickback??

It creates an incentive.

I suspect the DoJ understood this and non ironically did not consider the problem of exploitation by corrupt cops to be a meaningful one. Because they're the DoJ. Many of them are or were basically cops themselves. It's very hard to recognize when your own people have become the bad guys. This is what we came up with checks and balances and separation of powers for, but I guess Congress is checked out on this one.

It wasn't an accident that abuse was not considered, it was intentionally designed this way, to keep local cop buddies happy and complicit.

It might actually also make things worse, as local cops only get a small kickback, they need to confiscate more to get to the same levels for themselves.

I guess some believe a corrupt cops seizing crime money is better than a corrupt cop just letting himself be bought.

To whitewash something that otherwise appeared like theft via one more level of bureaucracy.

Gotta keep the corruption going. What would be the point of being a dirty cop if you can't profit from it?

How about no more asset forfeiture?

Why not require due process and 4th amendment rights to be respected?

If the government convicts you of the crime and proves the money is the proceeds of the crime you are convicted for, them maybe it makes sense for the government to seize the funds. Absent that, it should be taken for what it is: armed robery.

The whole exigent circumstances exception is required to stop a crime which is highly probably to already be in progress and for which evidence could be lost to the prosecution. Especially at international airports this is highly likely to happen. The problem is that the system is set up in a way that encourages corruption.

What about your phone? Perhaps it's a stolen one. Would you mind if the airport crew keep it in custody for a few years until you prove it was adquired legaly in a court?

If they have reasonable suspicion that it indeed was. For example a case with a unique color pattern that is similar to a phone known to be stolen. Or if you can't unlock it.

This ship has sailed quite some time ago - resist TSA or border control to unlock your phone, and they either confiscate it or turn you back. These powers are unlikely to ever be curtailed again in the name of security. But I also think that TSA and border control should rather focus on people actually violating immigration law and compromising travel security.

The state has proven it can't be trusted with this power.

Removing this power is almost equivalent to defunding the police. It would make it impossible to stop a lot of crimes as they are committed.

Well something like that would be a real democracy, not the fakes that pass for it today.

Just stop trying to justify highway robbery. The criminal is the government until the person has been properly adjudicated by the courts!

I agree it sounds absolutely absurd - first time I heard about it I couldn’t believe it.

The Wikipedia page has more on the rationale, good or bad:

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

I like how the first two paragraphs under the intro (History) is basically outlining how the British doing it to American colonists was a catalyst for violent revolution to come…

…and then the third is describing how American courts immediately recreated the laws with these inspirations to increase their budgets.

I mean say what you will about monarchism and its many flaws, they at least had the sense to hang or behead highway robbers instead of funding them!

Only as long as they weren't the ones who worked for the monarch.

Monarchs used to sponsor pirates to harass enemy nations, so long history.

It was a great work program for young overactive men with low morals and high intelligence - Sir Francis Drake proved his worth to the crown.

https://medium.com/luminasticity/adrenaline-culture-bed2d640...

(note: non-serious article has some crude language and scenarios)

It cost the US a failure to use the metric system.

Though I heard that during Drake's circumnavigation his body count was remarkably low, especially for the age.

I figured Drake was the kind of guy who would stock his crew with men of his caliber, and those guys tend to make it through hell with a smile.

Basically, they (almost?) didn't kill any Spaniards when they raided their ships and settlements in South America.

It's a smart move. Word gets around (slowly) that if you don't fuck with Drake, he'll let you live and be on your way, just a little bit lighter

It's an irrelevant move. For this voyage Drake traveled faster than news of him. That's a big part of why him and his crew were so successful again and again.

While that's true, you absolutely don't have to settle for monarchy because a lot of democratic countries don't have this problem. Start with Canada (ignoring its namesake monarch). Civil forfeiture is a US specialty.

While perhaps specifically Canada does not have this type of asset forfeiture, I’m not sure they’re a good example of financial liberty that we should aspire to here in the US.

So let me understand this please: Canada is bad because it doesn't have what the US doesn't have either but aspires to have?

It's bad because they deem a protest a terrorist event and freeze your bank account if they found you donated.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/22/world/americas/canada-pro...

As a Canadian I'd like to take this opportunity to ask you what you know about Canada.

Like what do you really know about Canada?

Because I'm getting the same "Montreal is the capital of Canada" vibes that I got from an American tourist when I was a little kid visiting the same tourist town that they were on summer vacation.

It astounds me how confidentially incorrect Americans (I'm assuming that you're American) are when it comes to their close neighbour.

So please, tell me more about Canada.

Are you refuting the NYT story, or do you just like playing trivia games?

Not refuting it at all, just find it hard to see the relevance to the thread.

I would imagine that the funds that Canada froze in a unique situation are a rounding error compared to the funds some random US state seizes in a year.

Whatever their flaws so many other countries including Canada are so much better at this thing than the United States.

This is whataboutism. Both are bad, so where's your argument?

And this is relevant precisely because it's an example that shows the lack of financial liberty, that you could fall prey to in Canada. I thought it's a fitting answer to the parent comment.

No, its not whataboutism, because corruption in America is literally the subject that we're discussing.

How many people were affected by this issue? Again, it's a rounding eror compared to the number of people who are affected the corrupt practice of civil forfeiture.

These things are night and day different. A one off event compared to a systemic issue.

I'm not an American, and instead of asking an open-ended counter question you could try to address the issue

Did they not freeze bank accounts of people donating to the freedom convoy? Please note that this is a question of facts and not opinions. It is also completely removed from whether you (or I for that matter) support this cause or find the means that they chose legitimate.

"What about all the bad things in Canada"

Whataboutism is not a great argument. We should aspire to take the best features from each country, not to mirror any country exactly.

Given the horrible wealth disparity in the US, I'd say it absolutely is. Or pretty much any other western country would do also.

Yeah, the point wasn't aiming for monarchy but shaming them for being so bad at governance that monarchs did a better job in the one particular area.

I think it exists in Ireland too. I suspect it may be a legislative flaw that can be exploited in all common law countries (with the buy in of legislatures of course).

I dunno, there's some stuff like French ferme générale private tax collectors that weren't constrained in their profit-margin [0] or privateers with letters of marque and reprisal that went after civilians from other countries. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferme_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque

That's because a monarchy wants to have a monopoly on the highway robbing in the first place.

Monarchs are happy to use robbers. See the age of piracy and letters of marque

I believe the correct term you are looking for is privateers, not robbers.

They were outside the color of law and often targeted specific trade coming out of adversarial nations.

One kings privateer is another’s thieving pirates.

It depends on who is getting robbed.

Kings and governments just make up special words for when they commit crimes.

Yup - it’s a special kind of outlaw (literally, outside the law) who has a home he can go back to and be protected.

The Sheriff of London paid the monarch for their position, ￡300, and paid for this (as well as stashing away some for themselves) through taxes and fees or fines assessed by the sovereign.

This would have certain parallels to contemporary civil forfeiture.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheriff_of_the_City_of_London#...>

> That removes the immediate incentive for abuse,

It abstracts it away by one level. Without appropriate third party oversight you're going to be playing whack a mole until you have the President himself managing the operation.

To solve this, I would go further: any money seized by the government, whether asset forfeiture or a fine (but not fees or taxes) must not go into any government funds, and should instead be removed from the money supply, if there isn’t a “who it should be returned to”.

Well, maybe if money from fines was allowed to go directly to paying for something that directly addresses the specific type of harm that the type of crime the fine was for tends to cause, that would be ok. Like, if someone is fined for damaging the road, that money can go towards fixing roads.

But nothing else.

Just make it a criminal case. "Transporting more than $10,000 cash in service of a crime." Now the government has to prove the details of the case beyond a reasonable doubt, rather than simple preponderance of evidence, and the accused has actual constitutional rights which dictate the process. A key piece there would afford the accused legal representation if they cannot afford it and would allow them to make constitutional arguments about the nature of the search and seizure.

That would require evidence and due process, which is exactly what is not desired by the gov’t here. Because money is fungible and proving some specific money came from some specific illegal activity is hard.

Making someone else prove it came from a legit source before it disappears is much easier on them.

Especially since drug dealers (or most other folks) are not really all that interested in the scrutiny involved in a civil trial. Civil discovery is potentially incredibly invasive, with few of the protections of a criminal case.

There is no meaningful difference between removing money from the money supply and returning it to the Treasury.

You forgot the bundle that falls off the truck via corruption.

> It abstracts it away by one level.

And that might be enough. Give some credit to laziness and inertia.

Or just publicly burn the cash. This retains the punitive element of seizure from actual criminals, eliminates the perverse incentives from LE treating seized funds as a revenue source, and causes actual pain to LE if/when a court determines that they owe restitution for unwarranted seizure.

> Any confiscated cash needs to go into state level or even federal coffers

If I was king.. all confiscated cash must go to organizations such as ACLU and EFF (not a comprehensive list). That way it can still be done when sensible, but the more it happens the more money goes to organizations who strive to reduce abuse.

Giving those organizations an incentive not to reduce abuse!

This moves the problem one level up and makes returning it more difficult since they are now muddled with other assets. A safe deposit box would be required, with the court handling the keys.

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