[tomohawk]

On the other hand, feds routinely seize defendants assets to prevent them from being able to pay for robust legal defense. Those assets aren't going to harm anyone, so the case for seizing them is much weaker than holding someone accused of violence in jail. In this specific case, the assets are alleged ill-gotten gains, but often that is not the case at all.

It doesn't seem to be a stretch that the feds "securely holding your property" does not cause injury when it interferes with your right to legal representation.

After all, posession is 9/10ths of the law. If the feds are holding it, its not really yours at that time.

[iudqnolq]

I believe you're completely correct. The current system is amoral; we should change it.

But unfortunately you don't have a right under the constitution to the legal counsel of your choice, and interfering with your ability to pay the legal council you want isn't a federal crimes government agents could go to prison for.

(One of the many reasons why is that the Supreme Court decided a few decades ago that prosecutors have absolute immunity for anything they do on the job, even if they deliberately violated the law.)

[biomcgary]

Do you remember the decision that gave prosecutors immunity? I've been toying with ideas for laws concerning malicious prosecution and I'm curious about the basis of the Supreme Court's decision.

[iudqnolq]

This might help https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_immunity

Edit: If you're serious about this project you should read through Civil Rights Corp's cases.

You'll learn the most a clever, well-resourced team can push the existing rules in practice to hold governments accountable.

In my unexpert opinion a nonlayer can most efficiently get an impression of how an area of law sort of works by reading decisions from lower-court judges who dispense justice assembly-line style.

When you're reading a Supreme Court decision or a law it's incredibly easy to miss a procudure that makes any remedy inpractical.

For example, you might read through a whole process for deciding the merits of a complex argument a prisoner's civil rights were violated. But you'd be missing that prisoner's lawyers can only make an argument if that prisoner, without a lawyer, wrote the exact right words on a complaint form and handed it to a warden within (for example) two weeks of their rights being violated.

Get used to this search engine. And when you read about a case in the news, look it up. This (or a related resource) is usually how the reporter got their primary sources.

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/

[theGnuMe]

Feds do this because they can’t win against well funded defendants.

[988747]

That does not make it OK. The proper solution is one or both of:

- Make laws so simple that a layman can understand them, thus removing the need for professional lawyers, and their exorbitant fees.

- Have prosecution be equally well funded as a defendant.

[dale_glass]

Laws start simple. Eg, Code of Hammurabi. Then they get complicated as we run into more and more edge cases that need handling.

In good measure laws get complicated because simple laws get worked around and abused.

We see this in tech too. Email is a simple concept that's grown into a highly specialized territory because spammers will exploit everything they can, and the more holes you patch, the more complex the system becomes.

[988747]

> In good measure laws get complicated because simple laws get worked around and abused.

I can quote tax laws as counterexample. A rule like "you pay 2% of your revenue as a tax" is simple and pretty hard to abuse. A rule like "Take your revenue, subtract expenses (see this 250-page document for list of allowed expenses and the rules when then apply), and pay 20% of your remaining income as tax" gives a lot of room to interpretation and abuse.

Governments make laws complicated because that gives them power - it's pretty much impossible to live in a Western country right now and not break some laws on daily basis.

[dale_glass]

> I can quote tax laws as counterexample. A rule like "you pay 2% of your revenue as a tax" is simple and pretty hard to abuse.

Well, for one such a policy would bankrupt many people and companies and be bad long term. Eg, anybody living month to month with effectively nothing to spare would end up slowly losing everything.

And of course companies would work around that by making things not be revenue. Eg, instead a company just paying you $X, now you get a whole bunch of "free benefits". You live in company-provided housing and eat company-provided food, which doesn't count as revenue.

So rather than earning $1000 and paying $200 rent, you now earn $800 and pay no rent. Government now can't tax that $200 because it's not revenue. You just live in a house provided as a free perk by your job.

Next step is that the government notices and doesn't like it, so now there's an extra tax if you live in company-provided housing until you end up paying roughly the same amount of tax as before.

It doesn't matter how you cut it, anything "simple" will be worked around, the government will try to counteract it, and we've come full circle again.

[pc86]

What's the definition of revenue? Is capital gains revenue? This other law says capital gains are taxes at 1%. Do I pay 1% on the capital gains then 2% when I move it into my account? We allow deductions in order to incentivize investment - if you're getting taxed no matter what, you're incentivized to just keep the money.

I agree with you that everyone breaks at least some law on a daily basis, but I disagree that tax laws are based on governments wanting more power. They're based on a very complicated and chaotic mix of the incentives we want in society and lobbying by those who already have money and influence.

[api]

> the more holes you patch…

In protocols at least the solution is to design one that assumes a very hostile network and is inherently built for it. None of the old first generation Internet protocols are like that.

[dale_glass]

So for instance, Bitcoin? Yeah, it's not the worst out there, but it's far from layman friendly. That's already highly specialized territory.

[api]

There's a lot to dislike about cryptocurrency but in that department it does represent a newer generation of protocol that is designed for the modern "dark forest" Internet.

All protocols should be designed with the assumption that you will face a well financed adversary at least as smart as you are who wants to destroy what you are building. All protocol work is security protocol work. "The Internet is a dark forest."