ERAD Gets A Sweetheart State Contract To Confiscate Assets From Public

  There has been a lot of chatter lately about the state's new contract with the ERAD group. For those of you that don't who they are, in a nutshell ERAD is a company that assists law enforcement agencies in seizing money stored on magnetic strip cards, predominately under the guise of asset forfeiture. They do this for an initial set up and equipment fee and then a set percentage of all money seized. This arrangement is similar to percentage agreements with Desert Snow, a company that teaches asset forfeiture techniques to agencies for a percentage of the seized assets. While I have no problem seizing the assets of convicted criminals, the current civil asset forfeiture laws are fraught with constitutional problems and ripe for abuse and misuse. Even by otherwise ethical officers trying to do the right thing. Desert Snow's training information even further amplified this problem, but that's another topic.

   Its a common human trait to associate the act with the tools of the act. We see this in the gun control fight to remove our constitutional 2nd amendment rights on a daily basis. We need to be able to think critically and separate the tools from the act. For example a carpenter can use a hammer to build you a house or to tear your house down. We shouldn't prevent carpenters from having hammers by reasoning if they didn't have hammers they couldn't tear our house down. So back to the magnetic strip cards and seizing money; Actual convictable drug dealers have developed a new way to move money. What they have been doing for a couple of years at least is obtain a supply of magnetic strip cards, whether they be hotel keys, credit cards, prepaid or otherwise, etc. They then load money onto a legitimate prepaid card, subsequently copying the loaded data strip information to multiple cards. A separate currier gets one of the copied cards and heads out. If the police stop the currier and seize the card they still have the other copies to download the money from.

  The devices the state is using is just like a credit card reader at the gas station. They run the card and the credit card company, in this case the ERAD Group, puts a hold on the money. The banking system recognizes all the copied cards as a single card so if the hold isn't lifted the money from the copies can't be transferred. This is a legitimate law enforcement tool and we need to make sure we don't take the hammer away from the carpenter. But, because of the current asset forfeiture laws it also gives unethical or misinformed agencies the ability to seize not only the coins out of an otherwise law abiding citizens ashtray, but to seize their birthday money from the prepaid card their grandmother sent them as well.
   While I have an ethical problem with the agreement the state has with ERAD I don't have a problem with the use of the card readers as a legitimate tool to fight crime. The problem I have is that because of the current asset forfeiture laws the legitimate crime fighting tool is easily misused, intentionally or not, to unconstitutionally deprive citizens of their assets. The fight for asset forfeiture reform shouldn't be diluted by fighting the tools. We need to stay focused and strong on fighting the unconstitutional act and pushing for strong asset forfeiture reform.

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