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> f the agents found cash, they seized it through civil forfeiture — a legal process that places the onus on the passenger to prove it was not connected to drugs in order to get it back

one of the absolutely most horrible laws that exist in the U.S. today that goes totally against the presumption of innocence that is (supposedly) the bedrock of our legal framework

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m463 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The IG found that the search was based on a tip by an airline employee who passed on the names of passengers who had purchased flights 48 hours before departure.

> That 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.

I think this goes even beyond civil forfeiture (which shares revenue with police departments, etc)

I think sharing it with an airline employee is out and out corruption.

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nicoburns 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Civil forfeiture is also out and out corruption. But I agree that this goes beyond the usual bounds of that process.

	▲	uoaei 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Some people just assume that legal == good. Too many of them comment on conundrums of morality without making that clear.

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bsder 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The problem, in general, is that any money collected by the criminal justice system should go into a fund that gets redistributed to victims or the population in general--it should never go into a "fund" that the state has any discretionary control over.

Any other arrangement sets up far too many perverse incentives.

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beej71 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I honestly don't understand how this has been allowed to stand all these years.

	▲	potato3732842 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		There are two ways that the abuses which happen at the intersection of government force and private business typically wind up making headlines and then getting scrutinized. First is someone dies. Either someone goes postal, an attractive woman kills herself, a sympathetic bystander who had nothing to do with it or perhaps an otherwise decent cop who's begrudgingly getting leveraged as muscle for the scam catches a bullet. More common is the victims of the scam pile up until some enterprising lawyer sniffs out a class action.
	▲	EasyMark 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think threesebig issues are that it’s hard to draw the line and make a “one-size-fits-all” set of rules, that this is a state by state issue, and that it’s easy to hand wave away the corruption by saying “we’re the police!”

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gdjskshh 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Would the blockchain make it easy to prove the source of crypto assets?

Or are crypto holders at risk of being arbitrary robbed by the government if they don't have thorough enough records?

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EasyMark 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't expect this situation or the situation in the title will improve over the next four years. People voted for a "crime and punishment" president, and we're about to experience the consequences. I really hate the excessive frisking and policing at airports and public events, and I despise our increasingly militarized police. I tend to focus on local events and road trips, doing my best to avoid these intrusive experiences for myself and my family. I regularly donate to organizations like the ACLU, EFF, and other civil liberties groups that fight against over-policing, despite their imperfections.

	▲	mionhe 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Just like the last time he was president, I'll bet.