MESSAGE
| DATE | 2024-02-08 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Anything they want to do, they just do...
|
wsj.com
Opinion | A Spanking for the FBI
The Editorial Board
2–3 minutes
In 2021 the FBI raided a private safe-deposit company and seized more
than $86 million in cash and valuables from people accused of no
wrongdoing. At the time we called this a dangerous violation of their
constitutional rights. It took three years, but a three-judge panel of
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed.
U.S. Private Vaults was a private business in Beverly Hills the
government was investigating for money laundering and other things. The
FBI had a warrant, but this didn’t authorize a search of individual
safe deposit boxes. Agents were supposed to open the boxes only to
identify owners and safeguard their property until it could be
returned.
But the FBI overstepped, seizing the property of innocents along with
criminals. As the Ninth Circuit noted, one of U.S. Private Vaults’s
selling points was not asking customers too many questions—e.g.,
demanding a Social Security number—which made it attractive to drug
dealers and other criminals. But that’s still no excuse for the FBI to
overstep its authority and then invoke civil forfeiture to keep
everything it found worth more than $5,000, all without charging anyone
with a crime. A group of seven safe-deposit renters sued in what became
a class action, represented by the Institute for Justice.
The district court found for the government, but the Ninth Circuit has
now reversed. Judge Milan Smith Jr., said the government had opened the
door to the “limitless searches of an individual’s personal belongings”
that the British used in colonial America. This, the judge noted, “led
to the adoption of the Fourth Amendment” and its protection against
“unreasonable searches and seizures.”
If the FBI has evidence of something illegal, it can get a warrant. But
the Ninth Circuit ruling is a welcome reminder that the government
can’t go on a fishing expedition that snares the innocent with the
guilty.
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
http://www.coinhangout.com - coins!
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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