Civil Forfeiture: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN treats it as the standard accessible explainer on civil forfeiture, linked in nearly every thread about police seizures.
What it is
John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on civil asset forfeiture, the process by which police can seize property they suspect is tied to crime. It explains how the property itself is put on trial and how departments profit.
Recommended by 8 HN commenters across 7 different months, 2014 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Recommends rickdale · 2014-10 · on “Finding a Video Poker Bug Made These Guys Rich”
John Oliver did a great job explaining the problem this week on his show. Basically, Kane and Nestor might be innocent, but their money is on trial separately, as dumb as that sounds. [this video]
Recommends sremani · 2014-11 · on “Police Use Department Wish List When Deciding Which Assets to Seize”
This is John Oliver's commentary on this issue. [this video] note: Not sure if we can post youtube videos here, but the commentary on the video very relevant to the topic
Recommends valarauca1 · 2014-11 · on “For Sale: 50,000 Bitcoins”
Civil forfeiture is really screwed up [1]. >So he basically loses them before he even can prove that they are his or not? Yes goods are guilty until proven innocent in court. >It seems to be a big loophole for the government to just go and steal whatever they want from you, before you've been proven guilty. It kinda is. Watch the link. [1] [this video]
Recommends jmstout · 2015-05 · on “How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without charging him with a crime”
Related: If you haven't seen John Oliver's segment on civil asset forfeiture, you should really check it out - [this video]
Recommends hobs · 2018-06 · on “A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it”
It's true, its un-american, and here's a video from John Oliver so you can learn more about this ongoing heinous practice the police use to prey on the poor and defenseless. [this video]
Recommends emj · 2021-05 · on “A police dog who cried drugs at every traffic stop”
Letting the Police take the money from Civil Forfeit is bonkers, John Oliver has an entertaining take on it: [this video]
Recommends kuhn · 2023-06 · on “Using loophole, Seward County seizes millions from motorists without convictions”
As someone not from the US I thought John Oliver did a great job of explaining Civil Forfeiture a few years back [this video]
Recommends curtis3389 · 2024-08 · on “"Jeff Bezos and Amazon tried to imprison my husband"”
Civil asset forfeiture is wild shit. John Oliver had a great episode on it: [this video] They make criminal accusations against your property and not against you, and because of that, you have no rights or recourse. This is just blatant nonsense under the US legal system, but that's kind of irrelevant. Civil forfeiture was introduced to take houses and cars from drug dealers as part of the War on Drugs, which was really started as war on minorities and hippies. The government wants to take stuff from drug dealers, so it gets to do it (see legal realism: [LINK] ).