When you fashion a tool, there is the expectation that it can be used for anything. This is a difficult way to think. But there is a case where its exercise is simple. Right wingers want the most blunt, vicious, powerful tools to beat their perceived enemies into submission. However over time such tools will exist to be used against whomever happens into their path. Pacifism, diplomacy, and the rule of law are better tools...they provide stability of the emotional undercurrents and are applied equally. Violence and brute force on the other hand are completely one-sided: they produce vast asymmetries that won't go away until the power is redistributed. So! Civil forfeiture today...nice tool to beat those lousy drug dealers into submission with at the time, which even then was a flawed notion, and now police use it to steal from innocent people! What irony!
What civil forfeiture is is a legal tool that was introduced by fearful politicians to allow law enforcement agencies to simply take the possessions of drug dealers, such as meth lab equipment, so as to neutralize them, without the constraints of red tape such as legal procedures and warrants and whatnot. Now of course even then that was a silly idea. The War on Drugs is slowly winding down (though it still continues) and it has been found on all counts to be a disaster. Maybe instead of attacking the victims, it would have been better to ask how drug addictions form and why.
As an added bonus, the civil forfeiture laws introduced by trigger-happy politicians stayed on the books. There have been reports of certain police departments in states like Texas, Florida, and Georgia that are using old civil forfeiture laws to actually steal from people when they pull them over, like highway robbers! Out-of-state people are targeted especially, and it is difficult to sue for the return of petty items (and expensive) so they usually get away with it. Be careful driving in east Texas especially. Lordy.
Surveillance tools are beloved by power-mad megalomaniacs who wish to know and control everything, but then their instantiation allows them to be wielded by whatever manages to gain control of them in turn. Plus spying on people destroys trust, cripples abilities of communication, and drives the actual threats further underground. Good job guys!
Ditto for military tools such as the atom bomb. Now this is an especially interesting subject. Creating just one of these things necessarily leads to the possibly of MAD, because it increases the likelihood of antagonizing entities to gain control of them as well. Absolute power is impossible. But they always try.
