The Arc Of Managerialism
1st February 2024
Zman does a deep dive.
Beverly Hills, California. The company offered safe deposit boxes to clients seeking privacy and security. Banks have rules about what can be kept in their safe deposit boxes and often require disclosure of the contents. This company did not place such restrictions on their clients. As a result, it was assumed its clients were criminals or people who would like to circumvent government surveillance.
For this reason and no other reason, the FBI got a warrant to inspect the company’s records, presumably to confirm that criminals were using the service. The legality of this was not questioned by the judge who signed off on the warrant because judges no longer question warrant requests from agents of the state. The FBI could hand a judge a drawing of stick figures in fingerpaint, claiming it is surveillance video of criminal activity and the judge would accept it.
Putting that aside, the warrant made no mention of opening the safe deposit boxes or inspecting the contents for criminal activity. On the day of the raid, the special agent in charge of the raid ordered his agents to pry open the boxes, inventory the contents, bring in drug sniffing dogs to sniff the contents and collect fingerprints from the boxes and the inside of the facility. Then the FBI decided to seize tens of millions in property on the grounds that they could do it.