"The police took more than half of the state’s median yearly income from someone because a dog sat next to their car. If you think this is a horrific injustice, you should feel relieved to know the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with you. Civil asset forfeiture is the formal name for this form of state sanctioned theft." Continue reading →
"U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the Justice Department will issue new directives to increase the federal govenment's use of civil asset forfeiture, a controversial practice that allows law enforcement to seize property from suspected criminals without charging them with a crime. He has already dismantled Obama-era directives on drug sentencing guidelines and ordered a review of all of the existing consent agreements between the Justice Department and police departments that were found to be violating residents' constitutional rights." Continue reading →
"President Donald Trump and allies may complain on Twitter and out loud how the Deep State illegally snooped on him under his predecessor, Barack Obama, but that doesn't mean the White House wants less surveillance authority. The White House and several GOP senators have made it official: They want to make some significant surveillance authorities permanent under law without addressing concerns by civil liberties and privacy advocates that these authorities are being used to collect Americans' data without the use of warrants." Continue reading →
"Have too much cash? You’d better tell the government. If not, they’re authorizing themselves in this bill to seize not just the money you didn’t report, but ALL of your assets and bank accounts. They even go so far as to specifically name 'safety deposit boxes' among the various assets that they can seize if you don’t fill out the form." Continue reading →
"Federal law enforcement officers are raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year with little oversight or constitutional protections for property owners. Most of these types of seizures are never challenged. The I.G. found petitions were filed in only 20 percent of the DEA cash seizures it reviewed. Of those that were challenged, though, 40 percent saw money fully or partially returned to the owner, indicating that there may be a significant number of unfounded seizures going unchallenged." Continue reading →
"As Judge Katherine Forrest explained at the time, Ulbricht's life sentence was intended also to send a message to other would-be dark web drug kingpins. Her strategy appears to have backfired, at least in the short term: Sales on Silk Road successor sites doubled in the immediate wake of Ulbricht's sentence, as news of the trial's outcome raised awareness of the dark web drug market." Continue reading →
"You need food, so you grow some vegetables. If you have extra you sell them on a street corner to your neighbors, and if you live in California you get arrested for it." Continue reading →
"A unanimous Court declared that police should not be held liable for recklessly firing 15 times into a shack where a homeless couple—Angel and Jennifer Mendez—was sleeping." Continue reading →
"Greg Gianforte has won a special election for Montana’s sole seat in the House of Representatives, just one day after he was charged with misdemeanor assault for 'body-slamming' a Guardian reporter. Speaking at the G7 meeting in Sicily on Friday, Donald Trump called the victory a 'great win in Montana'." Continue reading →
"Increasingly, people are being asked to turn over and unlock their phones at the border, and doing that can expose a huge amount of data. Add in an app like 1Password — a central repository for a ton of private data — and it’s easy to see why someone would be worried about having to hand over their phone." Continue reading →