{"id":9643,"date":"2021-04-21T13:00:41","date_gmt":"2021-04-21T17:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=9643"},"modified":"2021-04-21T13:04:58","modified_gmt":"2021-04-21T17:04:58","slug":"law-enforcement-pirates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=9643","title":{"rendered":"Law Enforcement Pirates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019re an American, the government can\u2019t take your stuff without a legal finding of wrongdoing on your part. That\u2019s what most Americans believe but they\u2019re wrong. The government can, and does, confiscate citizens\u2019 property without legal proceedings or even an allegation of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<p>I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago in my <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=9601\">The TSA: Keeping Us Safe From Cash<\/a> post. This sort of thing even has a name: asset forfeiture. A better, more accurate name, is piracy. You\u2019d think it would be rare but according to the Washington Post it\u2019s anything but:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"es\" dir=\"ltr\">Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/jS6zv9xtsa\">pic.twitter.com\/jS6zv9xtsa<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Erik Brynjolfsson (@erikbryn) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/erikbryn\/status\/1383831908434399233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 18, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Just think about that. The government is stealing more from Americans than burglars do.<br \/>\nThe original intent was to prevent criminals from profiting from their crimes but has since morphed into a way for law enforcement agencies to fund their operations. The situation is so out of control that many states are passing legislation outlawing the practice and groups like the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ij.org\/\">Institute for Justice<\/a> have filed (and won) several cases on behalf of the victims. Real justice would be seizing the budgets of those agencies as the proceeds of criminal activity. That won\u2019t happen, of course, but at least we can hope that state legislators and the courts will put an end to this reprehensible practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019re an American, the government can\u2019t take your stuff without a legal finding of wrongdoing on your part. That\u2019s what most Americans believe but they\u2019re wrong. The government can, and does, confiscate citizens\u2019 property without legal proceedings or even &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/?p=9643\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-9643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9643"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9645,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9643\/revisions\/9645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irreal.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}