This seems very strange so maybe the article is leaving something out but if a warrant for X but not Y can still lead to confiscating Y, then what actually limits the power of warrants?
> In their warrant request, the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Steve Kim for permission to seize the store’s racks of safe-deposit boxes for forfeiture, but “not their contents.”
> The warrant request omitted a central part of the FBI’s plan: permanent confiscation of everything inside any box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified.
Is the crucial detail that the cash/goods lack any protection under the law? If there was a written and notarized murder confession in a box would that be permissible in court? I thought anything taken/found outside the scope of the warrant would be impermissible. Is the cash now impermissible for prosecuting actual crimes? (i.e. FBI can just keep it and make the owner sue for its return).
> In their warrant request, the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Steve Kim for permission to seize the store’s racks of safe-deposit boxes for forfeiture, but “not their contents.”
> The warrant request omitted a central part of the FBI’s plan: permanent confiscation of everything inside any box containing at least $5,000 in cash or goods, a senior FBI agent recently testified.
Is the crucial detail that the cash/goods lack any protection under the law? If there was a written and notarized murder confession in a box would that be permissible in court? I thought anything taken/found outside the scope of the warrant would be impermissible. Is the cash now impermissible for prosecuting actual crimes? (i.e. FBI can just keep it and make the owner sue for its return).