| ▲ | potato3732842 11 hours ago |
| Why now? These concerns have been being raised for decades. |
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| ▲ | jabart 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| The article clearly states the below along with numerous other issues. "That [airline] employee was being paid by the DEA a percentage of the cash seized, the IG found, and had received tens of thousands of dollars over several years. That arrangement is problematic, investigators concluded." |
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| ▲ | MereInterest 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Holy cow, "problematic" is an understatement. So the airline employee gives a list of people who don't have enough time to assert their rights, the DEA confiscated any cash they found, and then gave what sounds like a kickback. 1. The data breach of personal information from the airline to the DEA. 2. The DEA performing any search at all. I can't imagine a world in which "Booked a flight on short notice" should be considered probable cause. 3. The DEA confiscating money. The unconstitutionality of civil forfeiture has been well discussed. 4. The DEA paying for the ongoing data breach. With payments "over several years", that isn't just a finder's fee, that's an ongoing business relationship. Egads. | |
| ▲ | joe_the_user 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is the "proximate cause" but anyone who "knows the world" knows that arbitrary power leads to corrupt abuse of this sort quite directly. IE, sure they stopped cause they "found problems" but one would expect such problems existed from the start and are inherent to a system of seizing cash on suspicion of ... something. Which is to say it's not that no one read these explanations but that such explanations aren't meaningful and the real answer is politics as many have mentioned in other comments. That is to say, the mystery is what exact politics lead to this pull back now. | |
| ▲ | potato3732842 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Screw off with the implication that I didn't read it. The stated reason is likely BS. Various parties have been getting kickbacks of various types for decades but now it's a problem? I'll restate my question, why now? | | |
| ▲ | brewdad 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Because no one has a time machine to go back and change the past. |
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| ▲ | fn-mote 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Actually a key question. I assume there are politics involved that are not covered in the article. I would also be astounded to find that anything so simple as unilateral DOJ action, no executive order, no consent decree, would be effective in changing this behavior. |
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| ▲ | mrandish 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | I suspect the trigger was the realization recent especially egregious cases were being prepared for court cases, which were likely to be won. Agencies like this would rather voluntarily pull back to prevent a court ruling setting precedent. The agency can always bring back similar measures in different forms or with different supposed safeguards but a court ruling is beyond their control. | | |
| ▲ | potato3732842 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | >I suspect the trigger was the realization recent especially egregious cases were being prepared for court cases, which were likely to be won. I should've thought of this. Can you reference a specific case? I'd like to follow it. >Agencies like this would rather voluntarily pull back to prevent a court ruling setting precedent. The agency can always bring back similar measures in different forms or with different supposed safeguards but a court ruling is beyond their control. I need to review the federal jurisprudence on this. IIRC there were some finer points that changed so "don't worry we changed the rule" is no longer as good a defense as it once was and that's part of what led to Bruen making it into court in the first place. | | |
| ▲ | mrandish 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Can you reference a specific case? I'd like to follow it. In addition to the cases cited in the article, I've seen some other scary sounding incidents in MSM reporting recently but I didn't bookmark any. My thought was triggered by the article mentioning the Institute for Justice filing a class action which indicates there are a lot and that IfJ feels they have strong grounds. > "The IG report highlighted an incident documented in a video released four months ago by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit civil liberties law firm which is pursuing a class action lawsuit against the DEA." I agree that "we changed our policy" doesn't legally change their existing liability but it'll at least stop more incidents being added and I think it probably does influence the media optics as well as a judge's eventual corrective order (if it gets that far). Plus IfJ will certainly get discovery on all the relevant data including searches, confiscations, claims and the actual amount of criminal activity discovered (which is probably almost none as Justice Dept's own IG cited the lack of effectiveness). Now at least those likely shocking statistics will have a hard stop date a few years in the past by the time it comes out. Additionally, while this decision was probably being deliberated before the election, it may have been accelerated and/or influenced by the outcome of the election simply because the DEA is now less certain they'll have leadership in the Justice Dept, Homeland Security, etc willing to circle the wagons and stonewall to defend these practices. |
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| ▲ | acdha 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Yes, the IG quote in the article acknowledges that. Things like this depend on leadership and evidence. For the next couple of months, there’s a deputy attorney general who’s willing to look at that evidence and extrapolate the larger trend rather than dismissing things as freak one-off occurrences or the proverbial few bad apples. I would bet this has a lot to do with Biden’s political career being over: Democrats tend to run from accusations of being “soft on crime”, which means waiting for evidence to become overwhelming and while the DOJ is somewhat independent its senior leadership is generally going to be careful around sensitive topics. |
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| ▲ | FireBeyond 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| There's been a few very blatant video-captured interactions specifically about the DEA at airports, so has refocused the lens on them. And in both cases, the videos are fairly thorough, high definition, so there's none of the usual "you didn't see the rest of the interaction and context that makes it reasonable" - instead blatant abuses of power by the DEA agents. |
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| ▲ | potato3732842 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | I would like to think that the heat of public perception is increasing but I'm not sure that's true. Seems like civil asset forfieture was a much more hot button issue 2-4yr ago and has kind of waned since. Maybe, hopefully, you're right. |
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