Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/08/11/dea-bribes-railairline-employ.html
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No person shall be […] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
- Marcus Aurelius
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The law hasn’t ruled there since what, the fifties?
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Zane Young had $36,000 stolen by the DEA in Phoenix in in 2015. In May, 2016, they gave back half, but didn’t say why they were keeping the other half.
Um, because they’d already spent it on hookers and blow? Give me a hard one.
Tell me that the DEA doesn’t know that they are hated, useless, and less than 10 years away from being disbanded, and are just riding it out for what they can get. I bet the stationary cabinets are always completely bare.
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To be fair, the DEA has to be vigilant. Lots of our cash is involved in the drug trade. Why do you think so much of it tests positive for cocaine?
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Based upon the article, it appears that the best way to avoid suspicion is to buy a round trip ticket. Penny wise, pound foolish, as they say.
And don’t use cash.
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Because the DEA agents snort the seized cocaine with seized bills…?
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The DEA has just become another cartel - and this one hides behind a badge.
When American law enforcement does Asset Forfeiture I don’t see how it’s A) any different than highway robbery & B) how LEO’s are anything but the enforcement arm of the upper class.
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Only because they’re taking down Drug Money from the inside. They’re in too deep man. They don’t even know who they are any more!
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It’s amazing really, the sacrifices they make for the greater good. All that blow, and all those hookers … just remember folks, the heroic agents ot the DEA gave up sobriety and celibacy so you don’t have to. They deserve medals, every damn one of those brave men and women. sniff
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They’re just completing their field training requirements before they can apply for the US Secret Service.
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Guess this one needs amending.
O’er the land of the free…
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…and the home of the slave.
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Where can I get piles of those tracts made up to look like US money? Asking for a friend? 
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Hellooooo… commenters. It’s clearly the “legalized theft” hook that gets readers all het up. But, the illicit data collection is just as much an issue. Based on what we’ve seen other federal datahogs get away with, expect that the DEA will maintain their datasets forever. They will continue to add to them, with minimal changes in protocols. They will be effectively untouched by this. Just as the NSA and their client agencies* were operationally (nearly) unaffected by the Snowden disclosures.
They are not on the verge of redundancy.
*(the DEA is one of these)
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While I appreciate that the data collection is a big issue… if you are working class, losing $$$ is a big deal. It can mean the difference between having a place to live and being out on the streets, having a car and getting it repoed, having the $$$ to pay your bills and being in debt to a pay day loan place. And of course, the working poor are more likely to be using cash and to be targeted by the cops (doubly so, if the person is a POC). So yeah, I agree that the data gathering is an issue that shouldn’t be ignored… but cash seizures for some people can be a personal disaster.
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Something missing from the story is the rate of false positives. How many suitcases were rifled, but contained no cash?
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If only there was someone in charge of the person who runs the DEA, someone who had the authority to make significant changes in DEA policies. Like some kind of, I don’t know, Commander-in-Chief.
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Thanks Obama! (and Reagan, and Bush, and Clinton, and Bush, and probably HRC…)
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