&gt; Imagine if the government said &quot;hey, that money in your bank account, we can just automatically take our taxes from it, because we&#x27;re not really taking it from you, we&#x27;re just taking it from the bank.&quot;<p>That&#x27;s exactly the logic used to justify civil asset forfeiture. There was a link on here two months ago showing that the assets seized were more than all burglaries in 2014: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10591250" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10591250</a> .