[HN Gopher] Judge finds no rights violations in FBI seizure Beve...
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Judge finds no rights violations in FBI seizure Beverly Hills safe-
deposit boxes
Author : tomohawk
Score : 62 points
Date : 2022-12-03 20:02 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
| kodah wrote:
| > The warrant request omitted a central part of the FBI's plan:
| permanent confiscation of everything inside any box containing at
| least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently
| testified.
|
| We really need to have a reset on law enforcement in this
| country. I don't think anyone's happy with the police anymore,
| federal or otherwise.
| tptacek wrote:
| That's manifestly untrue. There's probably a way to write that
| sentence to make it much less trivial to refute, but it will
| make a claim much more specific than "nobody is happy with the
| police". As written right now, the opposite is closer
| (somewhat) to the truth.
| tstrimple wrote:
| We tried that. Half the country worships the police as long as
| they aren't hurting them personally.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>We tried that.
|
| No, no we have not. any bipartisan moderate reforms are
| quickly loaded down with hyper partisan amendments from both
| the left and right killing any bill
|
| this happens to almost all legislation today
| krapp wrote:
| We haven't really tried that. We've made token attempts at
| it, mostly for the sake of optics, but actually trying it
| would require a revolution and civil war, because the complex
| of white supremacy, fascism and oligarchy which breeds the
| corruption of America's justice system needs to be utterly
| torn down and rebuilt from the ground up, around principles
| many Americans would find deeply uncomfortable, and American
| culture needs to be deprogrammed out of its fetishistic love
| of authoritarian violence and hatred of empathy and society,
| and that system and culture will violently resist all
| attempts at change at all levels, and by all means.
| Grim-444 wrote:
| This comment is pretty much the definition of a straw-man
| argument. You're presenting an extreme opinion as the opinion
| of hundreds of millions of human beings. Just adding to the
| hate in the world.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Police routinely abuse the public [1]. Yet about half of
| America believes major changes to policing aren't needed,
| and about half of America believes we shouldn't reduce the
| budget of police departments and shift to social programs
| [2].
|
| 1: https://twitter.com/search?q=cops%20common%20from%3Agreg
| _dou...
|
| 2: https://news.gallup.com/poll/393119/americans-remain-
| steadfa...
| Spivak wrote:
| I always enjoy seeing this line of reasoning because it
| seems completely unique to people in tech. A group is not a
| set of individuals, or at least that's what's meant when
| non-tech people talk about them. When the parent says "half
| the country" they don't mean "the set of all people who
| worship the police is around 150 million" they mean "the
| political body that is backed by around half the country
| has chosen to adopt as a core tenant an uncritical support
| of police."
| LatteLazy wrote:
| https://archive.ph/BhmFS/again?url=https://www.latimes.com/c...
|
| Old news (Sept).
| allears wrote:
| Paywall.
| ccrush wrote:
| archive it with archive.ph which has no cookies and gets a free
| trial every time it archives a page
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| This seems very strange so maybe the article is leaving something
| out but if a warrant for X but not Y can still lead to
| confiscating Y, then what actually limits the power of warrants?
|
| > In their warrant request, the FBI and U.S. attorney's office
| asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Steve Kim for permission to seize the
| store's racks of safe-deposit boxes for forfeiture, but "not
| their contents."
|
| > The warrant request omitted a central part of the FBI's plan:
| permanent confiscation of everything inside any box containing at
| least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently
| testified.
|
| Is the crucial detail that the cash/goods lack any protection
| under the law? If there was a written and notarized murder
| confession in a box would that be permissible in court? I
| _thought_ anything taken /found outside the scope of the warrant
| would be impermissible. Is the cash now _impermissible_ for
| prosecuting actual crimes? (i.e. FBI can just keep it and make
| the owner sue for its return).
| notch656a wrote:
| It's been awhile since I read it. I was thinking the judge
| authorized the FBI to itemize the contents of the boxes "for
| their return" or something of the sort. No idea what happens if
| police legally obtain access to evidence of a crime as a
| byproduct of a warrant, although I imagine for a non-publicized
| case it would not be good for the defendent. [note: not a
| lawyer]
| cperciva wrote:
| Never mind murder confessions -- what happens if there's
| legally privileged information in a safe deposit box? Seizing
| documents without providing any opportunity to litigate
| privilege is a legal Pandora's box.
| tptacek wrote:
| This happens all the time in searches, and, unsurprisingly,
| there's a bunch of very well-defined processes in the DOJ for
| handling privileged information found in searches. You should
| follow Ken White's podcast and Twitter feed if this is an
| interesting topic for you.
| Spivak wrote:
| > I thought anything taken/found outside the scope of the
| warrant would be impermissible.
|
| That isn't true in general, the supreme court has a test for
| whether things outside the warrant can be seized / not
| constitute an unconstitutional search.
|
| 1. Must be in plain sight.
|
| 2. Must be apparent that it was used in a crime.
|
| 3. Doesn't have to be accidentally or inadvertently found but
| if it's not the bar for it being a legal search is much higher.
|
| Since it's a safety deposit box 1 & 3 are pretty much already
| checked and I think falls down on 2. I can't possibly see how
| the existence of cash is apparent that it's used in a crime.
| bewaretheirs wrote:
| There is a "plain view doctrine" which says that obvious
| contraband or evidence spotted during a legal search for
| something else can also be seized.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_view_doctrine
| notch656a wrote:
| Keeping things in an anonymous safe-deposit box is in general a
| terrible idea.
|
| They are magnets for thieves, police, usually in urban area where
| a PI can easily follow you and even when acting fully within the
| law it could unintentionally look very bad if you are in the
| middle of some proceedings.
|
| A hole in the ground is probably preferable 99 times out of 100.
| trevyn wrote:
| Any best practices for holes in the ground? I can imagine that
| metal detectors and various animals change the threat model,
| but I suspect there are also unknown unknowns at play here.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I always assumed the best strategy would be PVC plumbing
| pipe. You can get 4inch (10cm) diameter sizes cut to any
| length. Stuff your cash/jewels/drugs + desiccant and use PVC
| sealant caps with waterproof sealant. Bury as deep as you
| want. I would expect that to last decades. Plus it should not
| set off any metal detectors.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| Why wouldn't the jewellery set off thr metal detectors?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _unknowns at play here_
|
| This sounds like a fun thought exercise. No idea who we are
| protecting against but some factors might be:
|
| - Moisture. The containers need to be completely sealed from
| moisture and have resistance to acid from the soil.
|
| - Metal detector. Perhaps this could be mitigated using a
| skid-steer with an auger drill attachment? Some of the larger
| skid-steers can use an 80 inch bit. Excavators can use even
| larger bits and drill at angles to get under solid objects.
| Rock auger bits can get through some rocks. Layers of gravel
| might obscure detection from ground penetrating radar.
|
| - Location should be obfuscated by trees to avoid satellite
| and aircraft imaging from Keyhole/Google/Others.
|
| - Accessibility. If there is a few feed of rocks above the
| container and a rope passes through the rocks, then retrieval
| is less likely to damage the container and one would not need
| dig as deep for extraction.
|
| - Drill numerous holes and find some other use for them
| whilst singing _One of these things is not like the other_
| jstarfish wrote:
| Re: moisture, you also need to account for condensation
| forming inside the box as your seal fails.
|
| For anti-metal detection, ideal spot would be atop/near a
| buried junkyard. Once they've gone to the trouble of
| excavating a rusted Dodge Neon, interlopers are not
| inclined to dig there again.
| dzonga wrote:
| the fact you separate thieves and police as separate entities
| is funny. I tend to put them under the same bracket. only that
| thieves have a full time to steal, whereas for police thieving
| is an auxiliary activity
| mikeyouse wrote:
| I feel for the honest people using the service from the article
| but when you store your valuables in private safe deposit boxes
| owned by a criminal who advertised his safe deposit boxes as a
| way to store the proceeds of crimes, you're gonna have a bad
| time.
| chriscappuccio wrote:
| Search warrants allow you to search an area that might reasonably
| contain the items listed in the warrant. Once they are in the
| safe deposit box, it sounds as if they are using civil asset
| forfeiture to steal the money.
|
| Not long ago people were joking on Steve Lehto's YouTube videos
| that the police might as well do forfeiture on armored cars. In
| California, the police started doing exactly that. You can hear
| them lamenting in one case that they only seized $300,000 and not
| the $1,000,000 they were expecting. This practice is being fought
| but it is still common in the US for police to seize assets just
| because they feel the assets might have been used in a crime, or
| might be proceeds of a crime. No criminal charges are necessary,
| and you have to sue to get assets back.
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(page generated 2022-12-03 23:01 UTC)