Category: Justice

This is a Case to Watch

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Sergey Aleynikov, a senior programmer for Goldman Sach’s high frequency trading software, has been indicted for software theft.

It’s alleged that he took the software, and sent copies of it to a server in Germany.

This case is odd.

First, the entire high frequency trading thing smells of corruption: The idea is that by having servers colocated in the market, you pick up a few milliseconds speed, and so can execute trades between when someone else requests a buy, and when their transaction is actually executed.

To my, admittedly untrained, gut this sounds identical to front-running, which is illegal.

Additionally, the twists and turns of the trial, where Aleynikov’s lawyers made some fairly routing requests for things like his personnel file to show that he was not a disgruntled employee, had the squid’s* lawyers seriously freaking out, and suggesting that charges should be dropped.

I think that there are some very real bits of corruption that might be uncovered in the trial, though the prosecution, defense, and judge might very well find a way to suppress that, because, after all, it’s Goldman Sachs, and rule number 1 of Goldman Sachs is that Goldman Sachs has friends in high places, so it always gets what it wants.

My prior posts are here.

*Alas, I cannot claim credit for the bon mot describing Goldman Sachs as a, “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” This was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.

Columgian High Court Denies 3rd Term Bid By Uribe

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This is a good thing for democracy in Columbia.

12 years is too long.

Interestingly enough, they stopped a plebiscite on this not for broad constitutional reasons, but on narrow procedural ones, “on the grounds that a referendum approved by congress ignored checks and balances and because supporters exceeded financing limits during a petition drive”.

The campaign finance violations are no surprise; he is a darling of the moneyed class in Columbia.

New Orleans Police Supervisor Cops* Plea on Danziger Bridge Shooting

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I am stunned, because when cops shoot poor people, they generally get away with it, but with Retired New Orleans police Lt. Michael Lohman pleading guilty to obstruction of justice, it looks like these cops will not get away with murder:

Retired New Orleans police Lt. Michael Lohman has pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice in the Danziger Bridge shootings, which left two people dead and four others injured after police fired on a group of civilians trapped in the submerged city days after Hurricane Katrina.

Two men — Ronald Madison, 40, who was mentally challenged, and James Brissette, 19 — were killed. The survivors included a husband and wife, their two teenage children and a nephew.

Lohman, who helped orchestrate an elaborate cover-up of the crime, supervised the investigation and was at the scene on Sept. 4, 2005, according to an 11-page bill of information unsealed today.

According to the document, Lohman was aware that a subordinate planted a gun at the scene. He also wrote a 17-page police report full of lies about the incident and encouraged officers at the scene to remove shell casings.

I am stunned, and pleased, that the “thin blue line” has been broken, and the truth appears to be coming out any day now.

*Pun not intended.

Unbelievably F%$#ing Stupid

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Click for full size


I don’t intend to ban Italian IP numbers
… … … Yet

An Italian court has convicted 3 Google executives on criminal privacy violations because someone posted a nasty video to Google Video:

A judge in Milan, Italy, on Wednesday convicted three Google executives — chief legal officer David Drummond, global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer and former CFO George Reyes — of violating Italy’s privacy laws, a decision that Google is characterizing as an attack on Internet freedom.

The charges stem from a video that was uploaded to YouTube in Italy, back in September 2006, that depicts four high school boys in a classroom in Turin, Italy, taunting another boy with a mental disability.

Google received two requests to remove the video in early November, one from a user and one from the Italian Interior Ministry, and did so within 24 hours.

Nonetheless, Francesco Cajani, a prosecutor in Milan, filed suit against four Google employees for violating Italian privacy laws. All four were found not guilty of criminal defamation. The fourth, Arvind Desikan, formerly the head of Google Video in London, was acquitted of the privacy violation charges, unlike Drummond, Fleischer, and Reyes.

If I was running a service with user generated content, I would start denying access to Italian IPs.

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if this might have been driven in some manner or another by Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, who has control of something like 80% of the broadcast media in Italy, and might be unhappy with the competition for ad revenue and news.

Haiti Will Shortly Free Last Two American Kidnappers Missionaries

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This is not an exoneration. It’s an acknowledgment that the courts in Haiti are a shambles, and that they are getting a lot of pressure from the US.

It’s clear from the back story that something very wrong was going on:

A judge in Haiti has said the last two Christian US missionaries being held on suspicion of abducting children after the earthquake may be freed in days.

Bernard Sainvil told Reuters the case, which involves 33 children, should be closed this week because there were no criminal grounds to pursue it.

A lawyer for the two said he thought they would be freed by Thursday.

Eight fellow missionaries were released last week but their leader and her assistant were kept in custody.

The other 8 are claiming that they had been scammed by Silsby and Coulter, and I am inclined to believe that something more than inattention to the finer points of Haitian immigration law is involved.

Yes, This is About the “War on Terror” Eviscerating Our Civil Rights

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One of the worst of the anti-terror laws, adopted under Clinton, not Bush II, is the “material support law,” which makes it a crime to provide “material support” to any organization that is deemed a “terrorist organization” by the President (actually the Secretary of State).

The cases, Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (08-1498) and Humanitarian Law Project v. Holder, are about what is a legitimate use of the law.

The case here is interesting because it appears that the law is criminalizing purely political speech:

CCR contends that the challenged provisions violate the First Amendment insofar as they criminalize the provision of forms of support such as the distribution of literature, engaging in political advocacy, participating in peace conferences, training in human rights advocacy, and donating cash and humanitarian assistance, even when such support is intended solely to promote the lawful and non-violent activities of a designated organization. Plaintiffs’ principal complaint is that the statute imposes guilt by association by punishing moral innocents not for their own culpable acts, but for the culpable acts of the groups they have supported. The statute does not require any showing of intent to further terrorist or other illegal activity. We also claimed that the statute was unconstitutionally vague, and that the Secretary of State’s power to designate groups was too broad, giving the executive too much discretionary power to label groups as “terrorist” and turn their supporters into outlaws.

As I see it, if a group sees the designation of another group as a “terrorist entity” as in error, the way that the current law is written, or at least enforced, actually publicly advocating for a change in that designation would be offering “material support.”

In this case, the Human Rights Project wants to train the PKK, the Kurdish Workers Party, designated a terrorist group, in, “human rights enforcement and peaceful conflict resolution,” but the material support law forbids this.

So this law is preventing the provision of training in how not to be a terrorist.

As with most of the anti-terror laws out there, it invokes Joseph Heller’s most famous work.

A good description of the oral arguments is here.

Because if You Try Them In Federal Court, They Will Just

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Plead guilty and cooperate with authorities and provide intelligence:

Terror suspect Najibullah Zazi, an immigrant from Afghanistan who was living in Denver, has admitted he planned to try to set off explosives to kill Americans, most likely in New York.

He also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and providing material support to a terrorist organization.

His guilty plea may mean even more for the war on terror, since it appears Mr. Zazi has agreed to cooperate with federal officials.

Should have waterboarded him, that would have shut him up.

More on Bybee and Yoo, and the Lessons Learned Therein

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Courtesy of Chris Floyd:

“Children, the law is nothing but a rag smeared with blood and sh%$.

“It is only for suckers, rubes and losers.

“Claw your way to the top — by any means necessary — and the law can never touch you.

“This is the American way.”

This is the message of Barack Obama and His Evil Minions™ determination not to prosecute, nor review in the smallest way by the bar association, the contemptible actions of the worst of the wrong doers amongst Bush and His Evil Minions™.

Microsoft Is Outrourcing Legal Work to India

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I have to admit that this development engenders no small amount of Schadenfreude:

Software giant Microsoft will begin outsourcing general legal work to India after signing a deal with legal process outsourcing (LPO) company CPA Global. The news comes as CPA outlined plans to expand its Indian workforce from 600 to 1,000 by the end of 2011, and hinted at opening another outsourcing centre.

Outsourcing to India: It’s not just for engineers any more.

What I want to see is outsourcing applied to investment bankers and brokers.

Sergey Aleynikov Pleads Not Guilty on Charges of High Frequency Trading Software Theft

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So, he is going to trial.

I’m surprised.

In my earlier examinations of this matter, it appeared that Goldman Sachs was considering letting it slide, because Mr. Aleynikov was requesting something that they did not want to provide.

The basics are fairly simple: High Frequency Trading (HFT) is basically a way to front run the entire market, and this guy was their head software guy in the process, so the trial should be interesting.

Germany Gets It

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The German tax authorities have decided to pay €2.5 million to a whistle blower who stole information on 1500 accounts, with the payments being dependent on the data being real. (See also here, and here) in order to catch tax evaders.

They did this before, with Lichtenstein in 2008, where payment netted tax revenues in excess of €200 million.

The Swiss have a problem, because I bought a 4 Gig memory stick a year ago for $12, and it’s smaller than a pack of gum.

Even if you assume 100K per account, this stick can hold about 40,000 accounts on each memory stick, and with the going rate from German tax authorities of about €1,666 per account, that memory stick could net an insider well over €50 million, with a bulk discount.

Their style of bank secrecy is likely to go away, because it is unsupportable.

Now, Germany needs to learn about the “Perp walk”.

8 of 10 Jailed Haitians Released

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The two apparent ring leaders remain in custody, and as a condition of their release, they must return later to Haiti to answer investigator questions:

While Judge Saint-Vil’s ruling allows eight of the Americans to leave Haiti on the condition that they return to the country to answer further questions in the case, it requires that Laura Silsby, the Idaho businesswoman who led the group, and her live-in nanny, Charisa Coulter, remain in jail to answer questions about traveling to Haiti before the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Some of the freed Americans had already contended this month that they were misled by Ms. Silsby, who had faced more than a dozen legal complaints connected to her online shopping business before she persuaded fellow Baptists from Idaho to assist her in setting up an orphanage for Haitian children.

“We are disappointed that all in the group are not being released,” said Terry Michaelson, a lawyer for Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, where five of the detainees, including Ms. Silsby and Ms. Coulter, attended church.

The church mission’s lawyer had put forward about $7,000 to help pay for the first month’s rent for the orphanage that Ms. Silsby planned to establish in the Dominican Republic.

…………

Some of the freed Americans had already contended this month that they were misled by Ms. Silsby, who had faced more than a dozen legal complaints connected to her online shopping business before she persuaded fellow Baptists from Idaho to assist her in setting up an orphanage for Haitian children.”

(emphasis mine)

This is beginning to sound like something written by Dashiell Hammett.

I Spoke too Soon

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The Ukrainian Supreme Court has temporarily suspended the election results for the Presidential election, so the official declaration of Viktor Yanukovich’s victory is on hold.

It has not suspended the inauguration, so it may largely be a formality, but my guess is that they will give a few days for Yulia Tymoshenko to present evidence.

I don’t expect much in the way of vote fraud to be found, and certainly not enough to change the results, but my record on predictions is a bit spotty.

Dick Cheney Just Confessed on National Television

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As much as it pains me to say, who watches the Sunday gasbags so I don’t have to, is completely correct when he says that Dick Cheney’s interview on ABC’s This Week is an admission that he committed war crimes:

CHENEY: I was a big supporter of waterboarding. [. . .]

KARL: And you opposed the administration’s actions of doing away with waterboarding?

CHENEY: Yes.

This is an admission of guilt under the conspiracy laws as they currently stand, though, President “Hopey Changey” and his Attorney General, Eric “Hold of on Prosecutions” won’t do anything about it, because ………… Hell, I don’t know why, and it pisses me off.

I would note that inaction not does make Holder, and Obama accessories in crimes against humanity.

There is an affirmative requirement to investigate and prosecute under the treaties.

Haitian Kidnapper Update

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First, I think that it’s pretty clear that something if fishy, since the State Department is refusing to intervene in the case, despite the fact that they, and their allies have aggressively lobbied for this.

It may have something to do with a report that this appears to be the 2nd time that they tried to abscond with children without paperwork or vetting that these were in fact orphans.

As I said before, this was a religiously motivated kidnapping.

Luckily for them, it looks like the they will be released shortly, with a finding by the judge of “the White American get out of jail free card” “no criminal intent.”

Court Case Against the Patenting of Genes Progresses

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I originally wrote about this in May, and my position then is what it is now, that you patent inventions, not discoveries, and that the counter argument, “discovering is hard work,” is a load of crap.

The case law is clear that, “a product of nature is unpatentable unless it is sufficiently different to become a patentable ‘composition of matter.'”

In any case, the litigation, put forward by a number of civil liberties and scientific organizations, is now making arguments before the judge:

Federal court hearings continued Tuesday on a lawsuit that could transform biotechnology in the United States by eliminating gene patents.

The case hinges around the claims of Utah-based Myriad Genetics on BRCA1 and BRCA2, a pair of genes closely linked to breast and ovarian cancer. Myriad “owns” the genes, and says its patents make it possible to profit on diagnostic tests. The company argues that if you remove the patents, the tests — indeed, commercial biotechnology as we know it — will vanish.

Myriad is, from the perspective of an engineer, not a patent attorney, dammit,* full of crap.

Their tests for the gene are still protected, it’s just that alternative, and better test methods for the gene that they discovered will be able to compete.

Fundamentally, IP law is about the public good, as it says in the Constitution, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries,” [where “discoveries” means “invention”, hence the reference to “inventors”, it gets complex],

My guess is that if Myriad had been a bit less hard assed about their patents, they have absolutely refused to license to anyone for any purpose, this case would probably have never come up.

As it stands now, they are literally killing people, and this makes them a thoroughly unsympathetic defendant.

I can’t imagine this not ending up at the Supreme Court though.

*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!