[AwesomeGriffin]

I've heard this sort of thing happening in Third World countries. Perhaps the US is - for all its advanced technology and creature comforts - essentially now a Third World kleptocracy. Silicon Valley and Manhattan are like Dubai - gaudy showcases that don't represent the true nature of the hinterland. I would be very wary about working in Dubai; I would be equally wary about working and living in the US for the same reasons.

[ploxiln]

I'm a US citizen who is very unhappy about "civil forfeiture", about mass surveillance, etc. But the reality is that most people in the US are not directly affected. I haven't really been affected, and I don't personally know anyone who has been. (yeah yeah it helps that I'm white.) Most US citizens who are aware of these things, like me, are very unhappy about them. But most people are not really aware, and one reason for that is they haven't been personally affected.

Things in the US are not nearly as bad as in third world countries. They're bad, they're serious, but third world (or whatever you want to call Russia and China) problems are really in a league of their own. Dubai is in a different league than NYC / SF.

In the US, you can talk about it, you can get a lawyer, you can have newspaper articles written. Many third world countries - nope. There may be a couple of bloggers but they tend to get arrested.

Again, I'm not saying these things in the US are OK. I'm just saying it's unrealistic to say Manhattan is like Dubai, or NSA is like Chinese internet monitors/hackers. Really - not even close.

[swombat]

> In the US, you can talk about it, you can get a lawyer, you can have newspaper articles written.

And is this helping Joseph Rivers, a victim of shameless organised theft and institutional racism?

The "most people are unaffected" argument, which gets trotted out a lot, has a strong reek of the Martin Niemøller idea: ( http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007392 )

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Speak out, god damn it, if you have an ounce of freedom left in your blood! How can you sit idly by and make excuses and diminish the problem while your fellow man is being trampled by a ruling class of armoured thugs and liars? Is this what America was built on? That's not what you claim in your movies.

If you're making excuses for how this sort of despicable crap is "not that big a problem", you need to take a good, long look in the mirror and realise that you're currently part of the problem.

Every time an innocent has his rights trampled in this way, it is all of humanity that suffers. I am incensed on this person's behalf, and shocked and disappointed that this person's compatriots take it so lightly.

[ionised]

> Is this what America was built on?

I'm pretty sure it was.

[alchemism]

A vicious racist killer is proudly displayed on our $20 bill, after all...

[pipermerriam]

In all seriousness, what can I actually do. Nothing I've done in the past has felt like it moved the needle at all.

- Calling my local representative (Someone on the other end of the line thanks me and then politely dismisses me saying they'll pass it along). - Trying to inform friends and family (They don't really care for many of the reasons stated above)

I think apathetic is a good descriptor for my current state of mind around things like this. Any effort I've put into large scale change in the past has felt like spinning my wheels and generally decreased my overall happiness due to general frustration. Letting go of caring about politics was a major happiness/satisfaction increase in my generall well-being.

[swombat]

If you feel like you can't effect change where you are (a fair conclusion), I would suggest at the very least looking into moving to another country which is more representative of your values.

Yes, it seems like giving up. But then over time the more smart, educated, likely wealthy people leave the US and take residence somewhere less objectionable, the less economically competitive the US will be. Eventually it will decline.

At the very least, you'll know that you weren't one of the people contributing to sustaining this system. It might seem like a drop in the ocean, but, as the conclusion of Cloud Atlas puts it, what is the ocean but a multitude of drops?

[Zigurd]

Doxx the narcs. Track by their wifi radios in their smartphones.

[vacri]

In the US... you can get a lawyer

There are lawyers in this thread that claim cases where civil forfeiture is done to prevent the individual getting a lawyer.

[JustSomeNobody]

And there are judges who can order some of those forfeitures released/returned so that the individual can get a lawyer.

Of course this probably doesn't happen in reality...

[leap_ahead]

>> In the US, you can talk about it, you can get a lawyer

The problem is, you must be able to afford a lawyer. If the legal process of defending oneself is only available to the rich, then it largely does no exist for the general population.

[shit_parade2]

More people rot in American jails than any other country.

America admits to torture and does nothing.

America has a kill list that only the executive presides over and keeps secret.

We've killed hundreds of thousands of civilians over the last decade and displaced millions.

And yet here is a presumptuous America ready to claim moral superiority over Russians and Chinese. A horrific display of Orwellian doublethink.

[ploxiln]

China would have more prisoners if it didn't execute them all.

You can't see online news articles negative of Chinese leadership, in China, they're taken down or blocked for the entire country.

This is not "doublethink", this is just being realistic. China and Russian are, objectively, way way worse. If you don't see that, you've lost touch with reality.

[shit_parade2]

Any citations for number of people China executes per year?

You simply state China and Russia are far worse but present no evidence.

America has killed hundreds of thousands of Muslim civilians over the last 12 years.

America holds people in indefinite prison without trial and even admits that they are innocent but continues to lock them away.

We torture people. We have secret kill lists. Our police rob citizens without punishment. Our politicians openly flaunt the law and go unpunished, as do bankers and large corporations.

Anything to support your view beyond mere assertion and blind allegiance?

[ploxiln]

It's well known.

"in 2008, 2009, and 2010, the Dui Hua Foundation estimated that 5,000 people were executed each year in China – far more than all other nations combined.[2] [1][3] [4] However, the estimated number of executions fell to 2,400 in 2013.[5] The precise number of executions is regarded as a state secret.[6]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_China

The US executed 40 - 50 people per year in those years. The US information is publicly available, of course.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions-year

[shit_parade2]

Even at the higher rate of 5000 per year China would need 100 years of executions to bridge the gap with us prison population http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-popula...

This does not include the hundreds of thousands of Muslim civilians the US has killed in the 21st century.

[adventured]

The US still ranks among the best nations on earth when it comes to low corruption in fact.

The civil forfeitures problem is non-trivial, but you're drastically exaggerating. The whole of the US has a very highly functional, low-corruption judiciary system, and a mostly still intact and strong property rights system.

Most of America is low crime, low corruption, the opposite of what you're implying. In fact it's because of that, that most Americans are unaware of what organizations like the DEA are doing.

The US is less corrupt than France for example:

https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results

[vidarh]

> The US is less corrupt than France for example

Careful there. The Transparency International page you link to is the perception index.

It measures what a set of people perceives corruption to be like in each country, and composits results from a number of different surveys in a way that as far as I know is not benchmarked against other data to verify if survey results actually matches reality.

You can not use it as a measure of how corrupt a country actually is. It's likely that it's an indicator when the numbers are very far apart, or that it can be used to spot trends in a country over time, but the relatively small difference between France and the US seems unlikely to be sufficient to draw any conclusions.

[baku-fr]

Furthermore, we French people are much more pessimistic than people in the US. Thinking that the politicians are just one corrupted kind is almost a national sport.

[skolor]

After looking through their data a little, I'm curious: who is paying all these bribes[1]?

7% of people who interacted with the police report paying a bribe to them? 11% for education I could believe, but 15% to the judiciary, 17% to "land services"?

Maybe I just need to step my bribe game up, but that seems significantly higher than I would have expected.

[1] http://www.transparency.org/gcb2013/country/?country=united_...

[xroche]

> The US still ranks among the best nations on earth when it comes to low corruption in fact

Yes, because corruption has been legalized through corruption.

You can, as a rich person, or an enterprise, legally bride politicians so that they can pass laws for your own profit.

"low crime, low corruption".

Also remember that "no crime" has been committed in the 2008 financial crisis.

[adventured]

You may not be familiar with US history when it comes to that. It's actually far harder to legally bribe politicians today than it was eg 100 years ago. A century ago there were hardly any laws restricting such practices.

What has changed in that time, is now the government has vast economic controls at its disposal. If the government doesn't control the economy, you can't buy economic favors from them. When the US was still a very Capitalist nation at the start of the 20th century, in which the government had little control over the economy, political bribery would not get you very far when it comes to passing laws for your own profit.

To sum it up: political bribery is far more difficult today than it was 100 years ago, but now it can buy you a lot of things whereas before it could not, because of the substantial expansion of government control over the economy.

When it comes to the financial crisis, Western Europe committed many of the same financial 'crimes' you're referring to that, that the US did. The financial, banking and real estate boom and bust hit countries from Britain to France to Germany to Spain. What happened in the US was not unique to the US, the same things were going on in a lot of 'first world' nations.

The Fed stepped in and bailed out tons of European banks for example, the same as they did US banks.

[thaumasiotes]

I was reading a while ago how a surprise candidate won some state-level election and lobbyists were falling over themselves to donate to his campaign... after he had won.

It may not be legal to give politicians money, but it's totally legal to donate to their old expired campaign, and for them to then have the campaign repay the loan they gave it.

[warfangle]

Explicit quid pro quo bribery is much harder than it used to be, certainly.

But the quid pro quo inherent in election financing ("If I make choice A, PAC #1234 will fund $5m of ads in my next campaign ... if I make choice B, I'll get a couple hundred checks from constituents at $50 each and PAC #1234 will run those $5m of ads against me") is much more insidious.

[realusername]

This is the perception of corruption, not the actual corruption. When it comes to the political system, the US is much more corrupt than most European countries. At least in France (since it's your example) you can't legally bribe politicians, it is not enforced a lot but at least it's illegal. In the US, financing of parties (so bribery) is the norm for the presidential election. And at least, minor parties have a representation in France, so there is a hope that the system can still change, in the US, since there is no way to have a representation of the small parties by design, only a revolution can make things change.

[visarga]

> a mostly still intact and strong property rights system

The practice of civil forfeiture on people who can't defend legally, like this guy, sure doesn't indicate that.

Maybe for the HSBC guys who laundered $378.4 billion over several years there will be a small fine, their profit for a few months. But no bank was forfeited. No board members were sent to jail for it. It seems property rights are solid, if you are rich.

[adventured]

Yes, the DEA forfeiture racket is vile, and yes it needs to be stopped. Nobody should undercut how terrible what they're doing is.

The reason the US still ranks high on the low corruption index, is because you have to take the value of the whole, not just one small problem such as this.

It impacts an extraordinarily small percentage of Americans today, and the dollar sums are extraordinarily small in such a large economy. Put another way, on that 100 point corruption scale, the DEA program would represent a negative deduction of 2 or 3 points.

What's actually important here, is stopping it before it gets larger. If they don't stop it, it will get much bigger, and graduate from being a small problem to being a serious threat to the average citizen.

If we're talking about rights violations, civil forfeitures are a joke compared to the war on drugs for example and the incarceration that has been going on since the 1970s.

[deciplex]

The reason the US ranks low on the corruption perception index, is that those in the electorate not totally apathetic have scandal fatigue. Try looking into what passes for a "scandal" in some of the countries that have similar scores to the US.

[m_mueller]

Until you respond to the very good counter arguments brought forth about your linked source, you have nothing to back up your claim that the US has low corruption. Why are you still calling it a "low corruption index"? Please allow your viewpoint to be challenged by arguing rationally rather than just repeating the same falsehoods.

[pjc50]

mostly still intact and strong property rights system

The title system is weak and outdated, and the mass fraud of "robosigning" (http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/false-affidavits-fore...) has not been adequately addressed.

[gambiting]

Seriously, 99% of these "outrageous" things that are happening in US now were also a thing 30-40 years ago in communist Poland and my parents(and their parents) are very well aware of these dangers - but Americans have never experienced it so they are completely oblivious to what is happening with their country. When I was a kid I always wanted to go to America - now I would pay money to not have to go there, thank you very much.

[leap_ahead]

Same here, from a Russian citizen.