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You may have heard of civil asset forfeiture.
That's where police can seize your property and cash without first proving you committed a crime; without a warrant and without arresting you, as long as they suspect that your property is somehow tied to a crime.
Now, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol has a device that also allows them to seize money in your bank account or on prepaid cards.
It's called an ERAD, or Electronic Recovery and Access to Data machine, and state police began using 16 of them last month.
Here's how it works. If a trooper suspects you may have money tied to some type of crime, the highway patrol can scan any cards you have and seize the money.
"We're gonna look for different factors in the way that you're acting," Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. John Vincent said. "We're gonna look for if there's a difference in your story. If there's some way that we can prove that you're falsifying information to us about your business."
...
News 9 obtained a copy of the contract with the state.
It shows the state is paying ERAD Group Inc., $5,000 for the software and scanners, then 7.7 percent of all the cash the highway patrol seizes.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2016, @06:17AM
Any illusion that some of us might have clung to about our government being anything other than a common thug, should now be shattered. Actually it's not just a COMMON thug. It's the most powerful and dangerous of all thugs.
Add the government to the list of other thugs we have to fear every day: muggers, robbers, rapists, thieves, etc. It's no longer tenable to regard that as an extreme view. It is the fool who still thinks the authorities are on our side and can be called upon to help us, who is out of touch.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Thursday June 09 2016, @06:22AM
Just so nobody thinks I am a scared anonymous rabbit, the above post is MINE. I got logged out without noticing it.
When will this shitty system stop logging users out all the time? This was never a problem up until maybe the last month or two. Along with all the system crash screens.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2016, @10:48AM
Friend, I admire your fearlessness, but I'd advise against that.
COINTELPRO still exists, and now they use Stasi Zersetsung [wikipedia.org] tactics against dissidents in addition to trying to drive you crazy by putting voices in your head [wired.com] and giving you odd pains and/or frying the odd electronic or car components with microwave energy beams. [youtube.com]
Since the attacks are covert and mostly invisible, you'll be Kafka Trapped: Trying to say anything about it makes you seem more crazy. They can literally get away with murder. [fresnopeoplesmedia.com]
The worst is when they turn your own friends and family against you via spreading rumors, having authorities approach people you know with an NSA gag latter (or other local equivalent, all large governments do this) and telling them to help attack and slander you "for your own good" by making up lies to convince them "you're a threat to yourself and others and it's better for you to be in a mental hospital"... with the unspoken insinuation that otherwise they'll just disappear you. Your place of business gets complaints from people you've never met. False allegations of crimes are lodged by strangers. There's so many layers to the corruption cake it's not even edible to most people's minds -- they simply can't believe something like that is real, but that's exactly what they want you to think.
Not trying to scare you, but just wanting you to know what you're getting yourself into. Protip: "Tinfoil Hats" are correlated with "Conspiracy Theorists" because they reveal corruption and get targeted by directed energy weapons (declassified PDF of some of their effects). [stopthecrime.net]
Make sure you have a good support network that is informed about COINTELPRO before you go on such a crusade.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Thursday June 09 2016, @03:28PM
Not sure why this is modded funny (at least it's modded up). I've seen COINTELPRO tactics used with my own eyes. It's not any mystical-magickal X-Files lizard people¹ (John May lives!) woo. It's actually really quite simple. It's honestly almost boring watching it in play, if it weren't so heart-wrenching watching it happen to somebody who thinks COINTELPRO techniques are just conspiracy woo.
Anybody who isn't familiar with the techniques should look them up to know what to look for. I hate to say this, but accusations of sexual malfeasance are a bog standard go-to technique. There may also be accusations of megalomania and trying to usurp the ideology for one's own (presumably sick and twisted) ends (whatever those may be, doesn't need to be specified for this technique to work). At any rate, sexual malfeasance or no, you really know you're watching somebody using COINTELPRO tactics because of how similar to a Chinese finger trap it is. The more the victim tries to be reasonable and tries to defend herself, the more effective the COINTELPRO tactics become.
They will get under your skin. They will manufacture situations. They will play mind games with you. They will stress you out. They will psychologically abuse you in every passive aggressive way just to try to get you to raise your voice or have an outburst. The Chinese finger trap has sprung. Now they have proof that you're mentally unstable. Because only people who are mentally unstable get upset, stressed, or angry and raise their voices? It doesn't matter. There's no reasoning with it. This is hacking every basic human instinct for social cohesion. When the victim tries to prove to others that she's not mentally unstable, *boom* now she's not even aware of how sick and twisted she is!
Damned fucking gaslighting assholes had the gall to tell her that she "needed help" and give her fucking referrals to psychologists from the first five Google hits for "psychologist in $locality" when she was already seeing one and on psychological medication! And this is the impression the others are left with. A mentally unstable sexual abuser who refuses to admit they have a problem and get help.
*bam* COINTELPRO success!
She nearly killed herself, and I don't think she'll ever quite recover. She still doesn't believe me that COINTELPRO is a thing in actual, real use. See the true power of COINTELPRO. Even somebody nearly destroyed that way still thinks it's just X-Files lizard people¹ woo.
Instead of my standard rant, please, please, please, if you date women, you need to understand what can happen to you should you become targeted. That includes everyone who dates women.
Naturally, I am immune to COINTELPRO, in addition to the obvious reason, by virtue of having already lost my sanity many moons ago! Also, may I invite the person who is going to respond to this as though I was talking about myself up there to come forward and give us a live demonstration of COINTELPRO!
¹ Never forget who the real lizard people are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2016, @04:06PM
GP was modded funny to cover the "informative" mod.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2016, @11:22AM
That's odd, I used to get logged out (not often), but now have stayed logged in for months. Posting AC on purpose.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 09 2016, @02:07PM
No problems here. I logged in a long time ago, and I've only ever had to log in twice I think. Once, the power was out for a day and a half, when I finally reconnected, I had to log in to a couple different places. Another time, I upgraded a bunch of software, including the browser and the kernel. At reboot, I had to log back in.
You don't think it might be a Windows problem, do you?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday June 09 2016, @03:27PM
It hasn't logged me out yet, how long is your cookie cache set for? As to the accidentally anonymous comment, it's only the middle class who don't realize government is a collection of mostly thugs; I say "mostly". The rich and the poor both realize that government exists to protect the rich, who are the real masters, from the poor. If you're rich, government is YOUR thug doing your bidding. You think wars are fought for the sake of the poor?
The US is a plutocracy. Other nations (e.g. Sweden) are not.
Also note that our plutocracy is also theocracy. The national god is the ancient Greek god Plutus, god of wealth. Most Americans pretend to be Christians (and meny actually believe they are) when our national religion is the worship of wealth and the wealthy.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday June 09 2016, @07:03PM
FWIW, I'm logged out whenever I close all the browser tabs ... but if I referesh the page I'm logged in again.
Actually, I just checked, I'm logged out whenever I load the main web page from a bookmark. This is true even if I'm currently logged in on another tab. FWIW I'm using IceDove (Debian's clone of Firefox). I suspect the browser used is significant.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday June 10 2016, @02:42AM
Isn't Debian's clone of Firefox called Iceweasel? The browser I'm using now? Or is there more than one?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday June 10 2016, @05:15AM
Right, sorry. IceDove is the clone of Thunderbird. (I do use both.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.