The 9th Circuit compared the searches to the “abuses of power” that “led to adoption of the Fourth Amendment in the first place.”
The FBI overstepped its constitutional authority when agents searched hundreds of safe deposit boxes without warrants in 2021, a federal appeals court ruled. The court compared the FBI’s tactics to the kind of indiscriminate searches that led to the enactment of the Bill of Rights in the first place.
In March 2021, the FBI raided U.S. Private Vaults, a safe deposit box company in Beverly Hills, California. The company marketed its services around client anonymity and privacy, which appealed to gambling rings and drug operations, but also customers who were unable to get a deposit box at their bank or simply mistrusted banks and preferred to store their valuables elsewhere.
The FBI seized millions of dollars in cash from the deposit boxes, plus a mix of jewelry, personal effects, and documents such as wills and prenuptial agreements.
In litigation filed in federal district court in May 2021, victims of the raid argued that the FBI’s search “flagrantly” violated their Fourth Amendment rights. In October 2022, the trial judge ruled there was no Fourth Amendment violation.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously reversed the lower court’s decision on Tuesday. The court ruled that the FBI exceeded the bounds of a warrant obtained prior to the raid, which explicitly did not authorize any “criminal search or seizure” of the boxes’ actual contents.
The FBI’s warrant application omitted key details of the raid plan, including that the special agent in charge had directed agents to open every box, preserve fingerprint evidence, inventory the contents, and have drug dogs sniff all cash.
“If there remained any doubt regarding whether the government conducted a ‘criminal search or seizure,’” the 9th Circuit ruled, “that doubt is put to rest by the fact the government has already used some of the information from inside the boxes to obtain additional warrants to further its investigation and begin new ones.”
read more: https://theintercept.com/2024/01/24/fbi-raid-fourth-amendment/
Reminder that FBI was behind COINTELPRO, the organized attack on basically any left wing org in the country. And they continue to use very similar tactics to this day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
https://www.zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-our-history/fbi-war-civil-rights-movement/
Surely not the FBI?! Well at any rate, we can all sleep soundly knowing the affected parties will gain suitable remuneration via the civil court system.
/s
ALL warrantless searches are overstepping authority, and violating the Constitution too.
The headline is a bit misleading. The appeals court ruled that they didn’t have a warrant to search the boxes, which is an important distinction since they did have a warrant to search the business that housed them. They got a warrant to search the building, then used that to seize the property of clients and open investigations against them.
ACAB includes feds.
When the authority is committing the crimes, it erodes trust and emboldens society to also commit crimes. The FBI are fools and are undermining the very country they are supposed to be protecting. I hope some heads roll here and not just a slap in the wrist as this is not good.
This ruling is generally good, but seems toothless. 3 years ago a bunch of “allegedly” bad people lost many of their personal affects and the FBI probably got to obtain hundreds of additional warrants and evidence not to mention information about those people. The “special agent” will suffer no consequences, neither will any of the officers involved in the raid, and I’m sure nothing they stole will ever be returned to the victims. So what is the point?
For one, nothing they seized will be admissible in court, and anyone who was convinced based on that search can appeal their conviction.
It’s not nothing to those effected
Oh, whoopsies!
The warrants we got told us explicitly not to seize the vaults or its contents and we did anyways? Haha, my bad!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The FBI overstepped its constitutional authority when agents searched hundreds of safe deposit boxes without warrants in 2021, a federal appeals court ruled.
The FBI seized millions of dollars in cash from the deposit boxes, plus a mix of jewelry, personal effects, and documents such as wills and prenuptial agreements.
In litigation filed in federal district court in May 2021, victims of the raid argued that the FBI’s search “flagrantly” violated their Fourth Amendment rights.
The court ruled that the FBI exceeded the bounds of a warrant obtained prior to the raid, which explicitly did not authorize any “criminal search or seizure” of the boxes’ actual contents.
The government had fought against destruction of the records for more than two years, and plaintiffs’ attorneys were surprised by the about-face, which they called an attempt to “sweep a massive constitutional violation under the rug.”
On Tuesday, the 9th Circuit issued the ruling the government feared, while also ordering the FBI to destroy records of the search, including copies in its evidence databases.
The original article contains 731 words, the summary contains 171 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I thought the point was that you needed two keys to open it, right? Are there any safety deposit boxes that are physically safe?
Thats in a bank. These aren’t traditional boxes I think
Even the most secure vaults are rated by how long it takes a locksmith to open them.
Sure, but this is a bank. You’re literally paying them to protect your shit. They have armed guards to protect their vaults.
What’s the point of paying them if they give someone enough time to pick their locks before using violence against them?
