Tag: Crimes

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Finally, a court has ruled that in order for a DNA test to be admitted as evidence, the source code must be made available to the defense.

To my mind, any software used for prosecutions should be publicly available for review:

A New Jersey appeals court has ruled that a man accused of murder is entitled to review proprietary genetic testing software to challenge evidence presented against him.

Attorneys defending Corey Pickett, on trial for a fatal Jersey City shooting that occurred in 2017, have been trying to examine the source code of a software program called TrueAllele to assess its reliability. The software helped analyze a genetic sample from a weapon that was used to tie the defendant to the crime.

The maker of the software, Cybergenetics, has insisted in lower court proceedings that the program’s source code is a trade secret. The co-founder of the company, Mark Perlin, is said to have argued against source code analysis by claiming that the program, consisting of 170,000 lines of MATLAB code, is so dense it would take eight and a half years to review at a rate of ten lines an hour.

MATLAB is a pretty high level language, so if you have 170,000 lines of code in it, you are writing bloated code. 

Also, if you have 170,000 lines of code in it, I guarantee that there are bugs, and likely substantial ones, because most of those lines of code are there to handle edge (unlikely) cases, where the programmer has to make broad assumptions about the data.

………

On Wednesday, the appellate court sided with the defense [PDF] and sent the case back to a lower court directing the judge to compel Cybergenetics to make the TrueAllele code available to the defense team.

“Without scrutinizing its software’s source code – a human-made set of instructions that may contain bugs, glitches, and defects – in the context of an adversarial system, no finding that it properly implements the underlying science could realistically be made,” the ruling says.

Kit Walsh, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, hailed the appellate ruling. “No one should be imprisoned or executed based on secret evidence that cannot be fairly evaluated for its reliability, and the ruling in this case will help prevent that injustice,” she said in a blog post. If TrueAllele is found wanting, presumably that will not affect the dozen individuals said to have been exonerated by the software.

It should be noted that the studies “validating” TrueAllele have been conducted by Mark Perlin, and as such are suspect.

Also, though these are slightly different application, we already know that algorithms used for health care software, Zoom face detection, educational evaluations, and criminal sentencing are all explicitly racist.

It is no stretch to assume that an algorithm explicitly developed for police and prosecutors would be biased in their favor.

That is how you make sales.

Republican Family Values

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It’s good that we have people such as protecting our morality.

If they weren’t busy supervising our morals, they might actually be practicing theirs on a larger scale:

A former Republican Senate staffer was arrested in Washington on Friday on federal child pornography charges in what investigators said was a crackdown on an online group that traded numerous illicit files and videos in recent months.

Ruben Verastigui is accused of receiving and possessing child pornography between last April and this month, according to a criminal complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The 27-year-old was arrested Friday evening at his apartment in Northeast Washington, where police executed a search warrant. Investigators said they found “several files of child pornography” on his cellphone, along with a chat conversation in which he allegedly discussed exchanging the files and videos. During an interview with investigators, Verastigui admitted to receiving some of the files, according to the complaint.

Verastigui worked as a digital strategist for the Senate Republican Conference as recently as last July.

………

In one conversation in April, Verastigui allegedly told a user identified as “S-1” that pornography involving “babies” was his “absolute favorite.” The user later sent him a graphic video of child abuse, court records show, followed by nine more illicit clips the following day. During the same conversation, Verastigui asked that the user come to Washington “for the purpose of sexually abusing a minor,” records show.

Investigators said they identified Verastigui from a naked photo he took in his kitchen and sent to the chat. They said the details of the room and a tattoo visible on his left arm matched a picture from his Instagram account.

………

Verastigui was active in Republican politics, most recently working as a communications manager for the nonprofit Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, which supports Republicans who back clean-energy legislation. He was no longer employed at the organization as of Saturday, according to a statement provided by spokesman Ross Gillfillan.

………

He also worked as a digital strategist for the Senate Republican Conference as recently as July, meaning some of his alleged offenses took place while he was a congressional staffer. A conference spokesperson told The Washington Post in an email: “We have just learned about this investigation and arrest. The individual has not worked at SRC since July 2, 2020.”

Before that, congressional records show that Verastigui worked as a digital director for the GOP staff of the U.S. Joint Economic Committee in 2018. A spokesperson for former committee chairman Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

A LinkedIn page for Ruben Verastigui says he also worked as a senior designer for the Republican National Committee in 2017 and 2018, designing social media ads for the Trump Make America Great Again Committee and Donald J. Trump for President. A committee spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

………

According to the LinkedIn page bearing the name Ruben Verastigui, the user was involved in several antiabortion rights organizations before his work in government, including March for Life, Students for Life America and Live Action.

Well, with THIS guy, we know why he wants more babies born, he wants more explicit photos.   **shudder**

Students for Life confirmed Verastigui worked there from Sept. 5, 2014, to Dec. 2, 2016, after he was a student involved with the group.

………

At the 2013 March for Life rally, Verastigui was introduced as the president of his college’s Students for Life group, according to a C-SPAN video of the antiabortion rights event.

“We are the generation that has been led to believe that the killing of innocent pre-born children is okay,” he told the crowd. “How many of us are missing brothers, sisters, cousins, friends because of abortion?”

We’ve hears a lot of reports of fowl foul play among Republicans, and this one is worse, though tragically less strange than the auto-asphyxia death of a Jerry Fallwell ally a few years back.

You Heard About that Insurrection?

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We are now seeing evidence that the conspirators began planning in November, which makes the whole “Seditious Conspiracy,” charges a lot easier to prove.

If they manage to flip some of these folks, I think that we are going to see the names from the Trump Administration or Trump Campaign to come up:

Three self-styled militia members charged in the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol began soliciting recruits for potential violence within days of the 2020 presidential election, later training in Ohio and North Carolina and organizing travel to Washington with a busload of comrades and a truck of weapons, U.S. authorities alleged Wednesday.

A four-count indictment returned in D.C. laid out fresh details and allegations against Jessica Marie Watkins, 38, and Donovan Ray Crowl, 50 — both of Woodstock, Ohio — and Thomas E. Caldwell, 66, of Berryville, Va. The three, all U.S. military veterans, are accused of conspiring to obstruct Congress and other counts, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

………

Real-time conversations recovered from a walkie-talkie-style app captured Watkins discussing a group of about 30 to 40 “sticking together and sticking to the plan” during the breach, according to court documents previously filed in the case.

In a 15-page indictment unsealed Wednesday, prosecutors revealed new allegations, accusing Watkins of contacting recruits on Nov. 9, six days after the election, for a “Basic Training” camp outside Columbus, Ohio, in early January so they would be “fighting fit by innaugeration.” Prosecutors also allege that Watkins participated in a “leadership only” conference call via an encrypted app, and that Caldwell arranged with another person bringing “at least one full bus 40+ people coming from N.C.” and weaponry ahead of Jan. 6.

………

In a phone interview last week, Rhodes said Caldwell helped “Stop the Steal” protesters navigate arriving in D.C. for a protest in November but that Caldwell is not a dues-paying member of Oath Keepers and does not hold any leadership position in the organization. Rhodes said he did not know Caldwell to be taking any action on Jan. 6 on behalf of Oath Keepers.

Rhodes said Watkins is a member in Oath Keepers.

In their planning, according to prosecutors, the group cited the perceived direction of President Donald Trump, embracing his false claims of election fraud and readying for a fight in apocalyptic terms.

“Trump wants all able-bodied Patriots to come” to the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally, Watkins is quoted as saying on Dec. 29.

“If Trump activates the Insurrection Act, I’d hate to miss it,” she added, according to the indictment.

Asked earlier by a recruit what to prepare for, Watkins allegedly wrote in November that if Biden became president, “our way of life as we know it is over. Our Republic would be over. Then it is our duty as AmericIans to fight, kill and die for our rights.”

I would be stunned if Trump associates (Roger Stone?) was not involved in this.

Antitrust Smoking Gun

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It turns out that Google and Facebook colluded to keep Facebook out of the advertising market in exchange for preferential rates.

This is pretty much a slam dunk, and yes, both organizations should broken up in the long term (Other limits fail over time) and be prevented from acquiring any other companies in the short term:

In 2017, Facebook said it was testing a new way of selling online advertising that would threaten Google’s control of the digital ad market. But less than two years later, Facebook did an about-face and said it was joining an alliance of companies backing a similar effort by Google.

Facebook never said why it pulled back from its project, but evidence presented in an antitrust lawsuit filed by 10 state attorneys general last month indicates that Google had extended to Facebook, its closest rival for digital advertising dollars, a sweetheart deal to be a partner.

Details of the agreement, based on documents the Texas attorney general’s office said it had uncovered as part of the multistate suit, were redacted in the complaint filed in federal court in Texas last month. But they were not hidden in a draft version of the complaint reviewed by The New York Times.

Executives at six of the more than 20 partners in the alliance told The Times that their agreements with Google did not include many of the same generous terms that Facebook received and that the search giant had handed Facebook a significant advantage over the rest of them.

………

The disclosure of the deal between the tech giants has renewed concerns about how the biggest technology companies band together to close off competition. The deals are often consequential, defining the winners and losers in various markets for technology services and products. They are agreed upon in private with the crucial deal terms hidden through confidentiality clauses.

Google and Facebook said that such deals were common in the digital advertising industry and that they were not thwarting competition.

………

The Wall Street Journal had reported on aspects of the draft complaint earlier.

………

“This idea that the major tech platforms are robustly competing against each other is very much overstated,” said Sally Hubbard, a former assistant attorney general in New York’s antitrust bureau who now works at Open Markets Institute, a think tank. “In many ways, they reinforce each other’s monopoly power.”

Because maintaining a monopoly is more profitable than developing a superior product.

One need only look at the cost and speed of broadband in the US to know that this is true.
The agreement between Facebook and Google, code-named “Jedi Blue” inside Google, pertains to a growing segment of the online advertising market called programmatic advertising. Online advertising pulls in hundreds of billions of dollars in global revenue each year, and the automated buying and selling of ad space accounts for more than 60 percent of the total, according to researchers.

In the milliseconds between a user clicking on a link to a web page and the page’s ads loading, bids for available ad space are placed behind the scenes in marketplaces known as exchanges, with the winning bid passed to an ad server. Because Google’s ad exchange and ad server were both dominant, it often directed the business to its own exchange.

A method called header bidding emerged, in part as a workaround to reduce reliance on Google’s ad platforms. News outlets and other sites could solicit bids from multiple exchanges at once, helping to increase competition and leading to better prices for publishers. By 2016, more than 70 percent of publishers had adopted the technology, according to one estimate.

Seeing a potentially significant loss of business to header bidding, Google developed an alternative called Open Bidding, which supported an alliance of exchanges. While Open Bidding allows other exchanges to simultaneously compete alongside Google, the search company extracts a fee for every winning bid, and competitors say there is less transparency for publishers.

The threat of Facebook, one of the biggest ad buyers on the internet, supporting header bidding was a grave concern at Google. The draft of the complaint reviewed by The Times cited an email from a Google executive calling it an “existential threat” that required “an all hands on deck approach.”

………

Before Google and Facebook signed the deal in Sept. 2018, Facebook executives outlined the company’s options to Mark Zuckerberg, its chief executive, according to the draft of the complaint: hire hundreds more engineers and spend billions of dollars to compete against Google; exit the business; or do the deal.

………

Facebook disclosed that it had joined Google’s program in one line in a Dec. 2018 blog post. But it did not reveal that Google, according to the draft complaint, provided Facebook with special information and speed advantages to help the company succeed in the auctions that it did not offer to other partners — even including a guaranteed “win rate.”

In this market, where fractions of a second count, a speed advantage was decisive. Facebook had 300 milliseconds to bid for ads, according to court documents. But the executives at Google’s partner companies said they usually had just 160 milliseconds or less to bid.

Facebook had yet another advantage: Direct billing relationships with the sites where ads would appear, according to the court documents. For most other partners, Google controlled pricing information, effectively putting up a wall between Open Bidding participants and site owners and hiding how much of winning bids sites end up receiving, the executives at other companies said.

………

Facebook promised to bid on at least 90 percent of auctions when it could identify the end user and committed to spending a certain amount of money — as much as $500 million a year by the fourth year of the agreement, according to the draft of the complaint. Facebook also demanded that data about its bids not be used by Google to manipulate auctions in its own favor, a level playing field not explicitly promised to other Open Bidding partners.

Perhaps the most serious claim in the draft complaint was that the two companies had predetermined that Facebook would win a fixed percentage of auctions that it bid on.

“Unbeknown to other market participants, no matter how high others might bid, the parties have agreed that the gavel will come down in Facebook’s favor a set number of times,” the draft complaint said. A Google spokeswoman said Facebook must make the highest bid to win an auction, just like its other exchange and ad network partners.

While both companies said that the deal is not an antitrust matter, they included a clause in the agreement that requires the parties to “cooperate and assist” each other if they are investigated for competition concerns over the partnership.

“The word ‘antitrust’ is mentioned no less than 20 times” throughout the agreement, the draft complaint said.

Seriously, this is not just unlawful, this is an actual criminal offense.

Executives used to be jailed for this sort of crap, at least until the 1980s, when Reagan gutted antitrust enforcement.

I’d like to see Sundar Pichai, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg frog marched out of the corporate offices in handcuffs.

Pass the Popcorn

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Given that Trump has less than 48 hours left in office, I find that NY prosecutors are talking with Michael Cohen about possible tax evasion and fraud, and Atlanta prosecutors appear to be moving toward an investigation toward a Trump prosecution on election meddling, to be amusing and satisfying.

I really hope that Trump goes to jail and is reduced to penury:

New York prosecutors conducted an hours-long interview on Thursday with Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former attorney, asking a range of questions about the president’s business dealings, according to three people familiar with the meeting.

The interview focused in part on Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank, his biggest and longest-standing creditor, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The interview, at least the second with Cohen by the Manhattan district attorney, comes amid a long-running grand jury investigation into Trump’s business dealings.

………

The Republican president also faces a civil investigation, led by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, a Democrat, into whether his company lied about the value of its assets to get loans or tax benefits.

Cohen is cooperating with that inquiry too. He previously told Congress Trump often inflated the value of his assets when dealing with lenders or potential partners, but deflated them when it benefited him for tax purposes.

………

Cohen, serving the remainder of a federal prison sentence on home confinement, has been asked by investigators to examine Trump Organization documents and provide other details about its corporate structure, the people familiar with the matter said.

Cohen pleaded guilty to evading taxes, lying to Congress and facilitating campaign finance crimes.

Deutsche Bank continued to do business with Trump even after he defaulted in 2008 on a loan for his Chicago hotel and condo development and sued the bank and others he blamed for his inability to repay.

But Deutsche Bank’s private banking division continued to lend to Trump, including $125m to finance the purchase and renovation of his Doral golf resort in 2012, according to previous disclosures.

And as to Atlanta prosecutors: 

Prosecutors in Georgia appear increasingly likely to open a criminal investigation of President Trump over his attempts to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 election, an inquiry into offenses that would be beyond his federal pardon power.

The new Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, is already weighing whether to proceed, and among the options she is considering is the hiring of a special assistant from outside to oversee the investigation, according to people familiar with her office’s deliberations.

At the same time, David Worley, the lone Democrat on Georgia’s five-member election board, said this week that he would ask the board to make a referral to the Fulton County district attorney by next month. Among the matters he will ask prosecutors to investigate is a phone call Mr. Trump made in which he pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to overturn the state’s election results.

Jeff DiSantis, a district attorney spokesman, said the office had not taken any action to hire outside counsel and declined to comment further on the case.

Some veteran Georgia prosecutors said they believed Mr. Trump had clearly violated state law.

I am really hoping that we see some prosecutions and convictions, but I fear that this will be yet another case of getting off using the “affluenza” defense.

Today in the Internet of Shit

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It turns out that internet connect chastity penis locks with poor security is a very bad idea.

I know what you are thinking, “What, did hackers hold someone’s penis for ransom?”

Why yes, someone was hacking these devices to take command of their joy stick, and they were demanding Bitcoin to unlock the device, and hence the penis.

Thankfully no one was actually wearing the “Chastity Cages” at the time.

Full disclosure:  I did not even know that such a device existed, either with or without internet connectivity, until I read about this today.

My penis is in a long term exclusive engagement with Sharon*, thank you very much:

A hacker took control of people’s internet-connected chastity cages and demanded a ransom to be paid in Bitcoin to unlock it.

“Your cock is mine now,” the hacker told one of the victims, according to a screenshot of the conversation obtained by a security researcher that goes by the name Smelly and is the founder of vx-underground, a website that collects malware samples.

In October of last year, security researchers found that the manufacturer of an Internet of Things chastity cage—a sex toy that users put around their penis to prevent erections that is used in the BDSM community and can be unlocked remotely—had left an API exposed, giving malicious hackers a chance to take control of the devices. That’s exactly what happened, according to a security researcher who obtained screenshots of conversations between the hacker and several victims, and according to victims interviewed by Motherboard.

A victim who asked to be identified only as Robert said that he received a message from a hacker demanding a payment of 0.02 Bitcoin (around $750 today) to unlock the device. He realized his cage was definitely “locked,” and he “could not gain access to it.”

“Fortunately I didn’t have this locked on myself while this happened,” Robert said in an online chat. 

Yes Robert, you were a very fortunate person not to have been wearing when this got locked down.

We could make a movie out of this, Free the Willie.

 *Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Yeah, This Is a Big F%$#Ing Deal

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It appears that over the past few days, Donald Trump called the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, and threatened him in an attempt to get him to manufacture 11,780 votes so that he could claim to have won the state.

It’s a bit late to impeach the bastard, but if this is not criminal, it should be:

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

Trump dismissed their arguments.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.”

This guy can’t be allowed to just walk away from this.

We’ve already over one hundred Congressmen and a dozen Senators signing onto this.

It’s a cancer on the Republic.

Dope Dealing Through Negligence

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That is why Department of Justice is suing Walmart over handing out opioids like Tic-Tacs.

Basically, the government is alleging that the pharmacists at the retail giant were so overworked that they were unable to perform due diligence of dodgy prescriptions.

I would love to see this level of scrutiny applied to Amazon:  

The Trump administration sued Walmart Inc. Tuesday, accusing the retail giant of helping to fuel the nation’s opioid crisis by inadequately screening for questionable prescriptions despite repeated warnings from its own pharmacists.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit claims Walmart sought to boost profits by understaffing its pharmacies and pressuring employees to fill prescriptions quickly. That made it difficult for pharmacists to reject invalid prescriptions, enabling widespread drug abuse nationwide, the suit alleges.

………

The country’s largest retailer by revenue, Walmart has been expecting this complaint and sued the federal government in October to fight the allegations pre-emptively. That suit accuses the Justice Department and DEA of attempting to scapegoat the company for what it says are the federal government’s own regulatory and enforcement shortcomings.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit alleges Walmart created a system that turned its network of 5,000 in-store U.S. pharmacies into a leading supplier of highly addictive painkillers. The allegations date to June 2013, according to the suit.

“Many of these prescription drugs would never have hit the streets if Walmart pharmacies had complied with their obligations,” said Maria Chapa Lopez, a U.S. attorney in Tampa, Fla., who is one of several prosecutors involved in the suit.

Walmart started with cut-rate prices on opioids that initially drove shoppers to its stores, the government alleges. Middle managers—under direction from executives at company headquarters—pressured pharmacists to work faster, the suit says, believing quick-fill prescriptions drew customers to stay and keep shopping.

Many of the alleged problems centered in Walmart’s compliance unit, which oversaw dispensing nationwide from the company’s main office in Bentonville, Ark., the suit says. Walmart allegedly ignored repeated warnings that the company had understaffed its pharmacies as pressure to sell quickly caused mistakes and put patients’ health at risk, according to the complaint.

Pharmacists allegedly got little help from compliance managers who for years didn’t share information between stores, and in many cases refused requests to give blanket rejections to suspect prescribers even after rival retailers had done so, the suit says.

“Rather than analyzing the refusal-to-fill reports, the compliance unit viewed ‘[d]riving sales and patient awareness’ as ‘a far better use of our Market Directors and Market Manager’s time,’” the Justice Department said, quoting a company compliance director. “Given the nationwide scale of those violations, Walmart’s failures to follow basic legal rules helped fuel a national crisis.”

Walmart’s defense appears to be, “I don’t want to deal drugs, but it would cost too much money to do the job right.”

My old axiom applies, “If they treat their employees like sh%$, how do you think that they will treat you as a customer?”

Mexico Takes a Step Forward on the War on Drugs

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In a move for their own sovereignty, Mexico has removed diplomatic immunity from foreign law enforcement (US DEA) agents, and added statutory requirements that any foreign law enforcement share collected intelligence with local authorities.

I see this as an unalloyed good.

It will make the destructive pursuit of the “War on Drugs” more difficult, and will force US law enforcement to consider the impacts of their actions on the locals:

Mexico’s congress has approved a new national security law restricting the activities of foreign law enforcement officers, in a move which critics say will endanger intelligence sources and threaten the future of international anti-narcotics operations.

The law passed on Tuesday strips foreign agents of diplomatic immunity and requires foreign officials in the country to share any intelligence they have obtained with Mexican officials.

While not ostensibly targeting officials from any specific country, the new law would probably impact US agencies, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which maintains a robust presence in Mexico.

………

The DEA works closely with Mexican security officials and creates much of the intelligence used in the so-called war on drugs. But US operations have sometimes caused a nationalist backlash, and despite billions of dollars in US military aid and attempts at judicial reform, Mexico’s militarised crackdown on crime has claimed more than 200,000 lives and left about 70,000 missing.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the president, suddenly sent the bill to congress in early December after complaining of the way the DEA acts in Mexico.

“During other governments, they came into Mexico as if they owned the place. They didn’t just carry out intelligence operations, they went after targets. [Mexican] security forces launched the operations, but the decisions were made by these [foreign] agencies. That no longer happens,” he said.

………

Ricardo Monreal, senate whip with López Obrador’s ruling Morena party, called the law “an effort to reinforce the principle of reciprocity in matters of national security”.

I’d like to think that this will lead to a more constructive, and less punitive, drug policy in the US, but as Upton Sinclair pithily noted, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it,” and the elements of the US state security apparatus whose salaries are dependent on the “War on Drugs” are unlikely to understand.

I expect a lot of chest thumping and coercion coming from this side of the border.

They Are Guilty, Give Them the Death Penalty

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I am referring, of course, to Purdue Pharma, who just pled guilty to pushing drugs on millions of Americans, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

They are guilty of felony murder, and should be subject to the death penalty.

I’m opposed to the death penalty for human beings, but for corporations, I’m cool with that.

Fines are not enough, and the Sackler clan needs to be reduced to penury:

Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty on Tuesday to criminal charges that it misled the federal government about sales of its blockbuster painkiller OxyContin, the prescription opioid that helped fuel a national addiction crisis. The admission brought a formal end to an extensive federal investigation that led to a multibillion-dollar settlement between the company and the Justice Department.

“The abuse and diversion of prescription opioids has contributed to a national tragedy of addiction and deaths,” Jeffrey A. Rosen, the deputy attorney general, said in a statement. “Today’s convictions underscore the department’s commitment to its multipronged strategy for defeating the opioid crisis.”

Purdue’s chairman, Steve Miller, acknowledged in a remotely conducted hearing in federal court in New Jersey that in order to meet sales goals, the company told the Drug Enforcement Administration that it had created a program to prevent OxyContin from being sold on the black market, even though it was marketing the drug to more than 100 doctors suspected of illegally prescribing OxyContin.

Purdue also pleaded guilty to paying illegal kickbacks to doctors who prescribed OxyContin and to an electronic health records company, Practice Fusion, for targeting physicians with alerts that were intended to increase opioid prescriptions. Practice Fusion has paid $145 million in fines for taking those kickbacks.

Doctors overprescribing OxyContin, along with illicit distribution of the drug, have contributed to the deaths of more than 450,000 Americans since 1999.

The premeditation for capital murder is in the underlying felony.

The company should be wiped from the earth, and the ill-gotten gains of the Sacklers should be clawed back from them.

No quarter.

Well, This Sucks

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Today, literally a day after a security audit stated that the security for the Baltimore County Public Schools computer network was so much Swiss cheese, they were hit with a massive ransomeware attack. 

My wife works as a special education consultant, primary in Baltimore county, and her meeting today was cancelled, and it looks like BCPS may not sort out this cluster-f%$# until the new year.

I’m not entirely sure how to fix this, but I think that relying more on internal expertise, as opposed to over-paid consultants, would be a good start:

Baltimore County’s school system was shut down by a ransomware attack that hit all its network systems and closed school for 115,000 students Wednesday.

While little has been made public about the extent of the attack, school officials said at an afternoon news conference outside the county school headquarters in Towson that they are working closely with state and federal law enforcement and the Maryland Emergency Management Agency to investigate.

………

Superintendent Darryl Williams said he has no timeline for when school will resume. School officials said the network issue has affected the district’s website, email system and grading system. Until the problem is resolved, students will have no school.

The attack comes as the school system continues to operate online only, with all in-person classes delayed, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

………

The school system stopped communicating to staff and parents by email and began using Twitter and robocalls to inform its community about the attack. The district is advising all students, parents and teachers not to turn on their school laptops, and some students have taken any county applications off their phones as a precaution.

………

Baltimore County’s network is the conduit for grades, lesson plans, and communication between teachers and students and parents. Unlike some other school systems in the region, Baltimore County began giving students devices more than a decade ago.

………

It’s unclear when the attack started, but the school board meeting video stream abruptly cut out late Tuesday evening. And according to social media accounts, school system teachers began noticing problems about 11:30 p.m. as they were entering grades.

It actually knocked the virtual BCPS school board meeting that was held last night.

What a mess.

The Bobbsey Twins Are At It Again

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Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have veen indicted in yet another state for their program of threatening voter suppression robocalls.

Seeing as how they have shown themselves to be undeterred from their lives of crime by the prior indictments, I think that pre-trial detention without bail is called for:

A grand jury in Cleveland on Tuesday indicted right-wing political hoaxers Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman with felony charges connected to a multi-state robocall campaign that prosecutors say was meant to scare voters in urban areas with large minority populations out of voting by mail in the Nov. 3 presidential election.

Wohl, 22, of Irvine, California, and Burman, 54, of Arlington, Virginia, are indicted on eight counts of telecommunications fraud and seven counts of bribery in connection with more than 8,000 calls that were placed to residents of Cleveland and East Cleveland.

Wohl and Burkman already face similar criminal charges in Michigan and a civil lawsuit in New York City connected to the same scheme. They are free on a $100,000 bond after pleading not guilty to charges in that state.

Cuyahoga County court records say Wohl and Burkman are expected to make their first court appearance on Nov. 13.

The charges stem from a group called Project 1599, which Wohl and Burkman founded. The caller told potential voters that police and debt-collection companies could use personal information that voters put on their mail-in ballots to track down people who have outstanding warrants and credit-card debt. The claim is not true.

………

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office was the first to file charges against the duo. Ohio’s investigation began when U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge, a Cleveland Democrat, and others went to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s office, which referred the case to prosecutors in Cuyahoga County, the Columbus Dispatch reporter earlier this month.

………

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose referenced the indictments Tuesday afternoon during an appearance on Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s twice-weekly coronavirus address. DeWine invited LaRose on to discuss voter turnout and concerns about in-person voting.

LaRose said that his office received a tip through its voter-fraud website of “an incident of voter intimidation that was targeted particularly at the minority community,” which he called a “really ugly and pernicious act of voter intimidation.”

………

Wohl and Burkman have risen to notoriety in recent years as they blundered their way through a series of public announcements of scandals later discredited.

Wohl earlier this year began circulating what he said was a copy of a lab report showing that Biden had contracted COVID-19 and had 30 days to live. Biden and his campaign dismissed the report as fraudulent.

The pair is also accused of hiring one of Wohl’s ex-girlfriends to publicly accuse Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who is more popular and seen as more trustworthy on information about the pandemic than Trump, of assaulting her in a hotel in 2014. The woman later told a reporter that the accusation was false and that Wohl and Burkman paid her to levy it.

How do folks like this, and I am including the evil James O’Keefe (I know a good James O’Keef) stay out of jail.

If they weren’t white ……… Oh, now I get it.

Another Assassination Attempt

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Only this time, it was Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine who was targeted:

A Miami County resident has told police that he was approached about helping to arrest Gov. Mike DeWine at his Greene County home and try him for “tyranny.”

The case has been referred to the Ohio State Highway Patrol, though a spokesman declined to discuss further details, citing security reasons.

A resident of Piqua, in a police report filed last Friday, said that he was contacted earlier that day by Renea Turner, an activist who has been protesting DeWine’s coronavirus policies. Cleveland.com is withholding the man’s name for safety reasons.

During the call, Turner was reported to have said the plan was to arrest the governor later that weekend, try him for several supposed crimes, and sentence him to a penalty that could include exile or execution, according to the Ohio Capital Journal, which first reported the story, as well as state Rep. John Becker of Clermont County in a YouTube video.

I am not a lawyer, but this whole “exile” thing seems to be constitutionally dubious.

The goal here was an execution.  

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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A militia group in Michigan has just been arrested while planning to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

As Anna Russel would say, “I’m not making this up, you know.”

This is a logical extension of the whole militia/White Supremacist/Proud Boys/Oath Keepers sh%$ that Donald Trump has bee cultivating for years.

The federal government has charged six people with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in an alleged domestic terrorist plot, according to newly unsealed court records.

Seven others face state charges, brought by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. All 13 are in custody, officials said.

Members of a militia group purchased weapons, conducted surveillance, and held training and planning meetings, but were foiled in part because the FBI was able to infiltrate the group with informants, according to charges officials planned to detail Thursday.

Plans included kidnapping Whitmer and putting her on trial for treason, officials allege.

They were planning on killing her.  Treason is a capital offense, particularly for the right wing militia crowd.

………

Whitmer also lashed out at President Donald Trump and accused him of “stoking distrust,” “fomenting anger” and emboldening groups who “spread fear and hatred and division.”

Absolutely true.

Trump is losing his sh%$ over her comments, to which I say, “You are such a delicate snowflake.”

Pass the Popcorn

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 A federal appeals court just called bullsh%$ on Trump’s attempt to use his being President* to prevent investigation of tax evasion and fraud.

The excerpts of the opinion indicate that the judges have no f%$#s left to give with either Trump’s lawyers or the DoJ obfuscations:

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Manhattan’s district attorney can enforce his subpoena for President Trump’s tax returns, rejecting a bid by Trump’s lawyers to kill the request on grounds it’s a malicious political ploy and potentially setting up another high-stakes showdown at the Supreme Court.

………

The unanimous ruling was issued by a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which concluded, “We have considered all of the President’s remaining contentions on appeal and have found in them no basis for reversal.”

(emphasis mine)

That’s law speak for, “Your eyes are brown because you are completely full of sh%$.”

District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. is seeking eight years of the president’s tax returns and related documents as part of his investigation into alleged hush-money payments made ahead of the 2016 election to two women who said they had affairs with Trump years prior. Trump denies the claims. Investigators want to determine whether efforts were made to conceal the payments on tax documents by labeling them legal expenses.

………

The panel that heard the president’s appeal shot down his claim that the district attorney’s investigation is limited only to the alleged payments made by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal — saying in their ruling that the “bare assertion . . . amounts to nothing more than implausible speculation.”

………

Vance’s bid for Trump’s tax records has been stalled since last year, when he issued the subpoena to Mazars.

Trump’s lawyers, who have signaled that they would ask the Supreme Court to look at the case again, have already lost at the high court, which in July rejected their initial argument that, as president, Trump is immune from prosecution. The justices said, however, that Trump could try again with a different approach.

I am amused.

Today in Schadenfreude

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Mark and Patricia McCloskey, better known as the St. Louis Ken and Karen, have been indicted on weapons and evidence tampering charges.

As you recall, they brandished firearms at Black Lives Matter protesters.

The evidence tampering may been that one of them had tampered with Ms. McCloskey’s gun following the incident to claim that it was not a lethal weapon:

A St. Louis grand jury has indicted Mark and Patricia McCloskey on two counts each: exhibiting a weapon and tampering with evidence.

………

The indictment means prosecutors convinced a grand jury they have enough evidence against the McCloskeys to proceed to trial.

Gov. Mike Parson has said he would pardon the McCloskeys should they be convicted.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner originally issued charges against them for unlawful use of a weapon – a felony.

The grand jury added the charge of tampering with evidence. Only prosecutors are allowed to present evidence to grand juries, and they are secret proceedings.

………

Patricia McCloskey told police the handgun she used during the June 28 confrontation was inoperable because she had used it as a prop during a trial against a gun manufacturer.

Yeah, sure.

………

A key component of Missouri law states that a gun must be “readily capable of lethal use” in order for someone to be charged with the crime. Hinckley signed the court document, known as the complaint, saying the weapon was capable of lethal use.

………

City attorneys for St. Louis refused to charge nine protesters who were ticketed for trespassing after members of the Portland Place trustees said they did not want to press charges against them.

That’s because the McCloskeys are loathed by their neighbors.  There has been a long history of disputes in the neighborhood.

That’s why Portland Place trustees wanted nothing to do with the case.

I’m pretty sure that some of their neighbors are doing a happy dance over this, as am I.

Boy, This is Turning into a Sh%$ Show

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First, former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale creates the most convincing shirtless suspect audition tape for an episode of Cops ever, and now serial securities fraudster Jacob Wohl, and his partner in crime Jack Burkman, have been charged with election fraud and face the prospect of decades in prison.

The wheels really do seem to be coming off of Trump’s Evil Minions™ right now:

Conservative operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were charged on Thursday for allegedly orchestrating a series of robocalls aimed at suppressing the vote in the November presidential election, Michigan authorities said.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed a slew of charges against Burkman, 54, and Wohl, 22, including conspiracy to commit an election law violation and using a computer to commit the crime of election law – intimidating voters. Prosecutors allege the two political operatives were using a robocall system aimed at scaring Detroit voters away from using mail-in voting ballots. The calls, which were made in August, went out to nearly 12,000 Detroit residents.

Both Wohl and Burkman face four felony counts and a maximum sentence of 7 years in prison.

The voice on the call attributed to Wohl and Burkman attempts to trick listeners into not sending in mail-in ballots, falsely warning that the information would be used to track fugitives, collect on credit card debts, and enforce “mandatory vaccines.” The calls also told residents to “beware of vote by mail.”

………

Wohl and Burkman didn’t respond to immediate requests for comment. In August, Burkman denied being behind the robocall, claiming it was suspicious that it was connected to his personal cell phone number.

“No one in their right mind would put their own cell on a robocall,” Burkman told The Daily Beast.

Ummmm ………We’ve seen your other frauds and scams (also here, here, and here) 

You areally ARE that f%$#ing stupid.

………

The attorney general’s office added that during the investigation into the robocalls, investigators communicated with officials in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois—all of whom reported similar robocalls being made to residents in their states. All the calls, they said, were made to residents in “urban areas with significant minority populations,” the Michigan attorney general’s office said.

………

The Michigan charges aren’t the only legal charges facing the pair. Wohl has been charged with two felonies over alleged violations of California securities law. On Saturday, The Daily Beast reported on a secret FBI investigation into Wohl and Burkman over the leak of confidential juror questionnaires and grand jury testimony in the trial of Trump associate Roger Stone.

Wohl and Burkman became notorious online in 2018, after a failed attempt to manufacture a sexual assault allegation against Robert Mueller collapsed in spectacular fashion. Since then, they have tried to create hoaxes against other Trump opponents, but the schemes always fail almost immediately, often due to Wohl and Burkman’s own errors.

Seriously, these folks are flipping out. 

My deepest wish is that the inevitable shrapnel that results from their flying to pieces so spectacularly only injures their fellow travelers.

Stating the Obvious

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Retired federal judge John Gleeson, the special master brought in by judge Emmett Sullivan to investigate the DoJ’s attempt to dismiss charges against Michael Flynn, has come out with his report, and it’s a doozy.

In it he calls the decision a, “Corrupt and politically motivated favor unworthy of our justice system,” in addition to noting that it is, “A gross abuse of prosecutorial power.”

It’s nice that someone has finally called William Barr corrupt.

Barr makes Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell look like Perry Mason:

A retired federal judge accused the Justice Department on Friday of yielding to a pressure campaign led by President Trump in its bid to dismiss the prosecution of former national security adviser Michael Flynn for lying to federal investigators.

In a 30-page court filing in Washington, former New York federal judge John Gleeson called Attorney General William P. Barr’s request to drop Flynn’s case a “corrupt and politically motivated favor unworthy of our justice system.”

“In the United States, Presidents do not orchestrate pressure campaigns to get the Justice Department to drop charges against defendants who have pleaded guilty — twice, before two different judges — and whose guilt is obvious,” said Gleeson, who was appointed by the court to argue against the government’s request to dismiss the case.

Gleeson’s filing set the stage for a potentially dramatic courtroom confrontation Sept. 29 with the Justice Department and Flynn’s defense over the fate of the highest-ranking Trump adviser to plead guilty in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation. Friday’s filings echo earlier arguments from Gleeson, who called the Justice Department’s attempt to undo Flynn’s conviction a politically motivated and “a gross abuse of prosecutorial power.”

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the District of Columbia set the hearing date after a federal appeals court upheld his authority to review and rule on the government’s dismissal request on Aug. 31. The hearing before Sullivan was selected from three dates proposed by the parties and is scheduled the same day as the first presidential debate between Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Flynn’s lawyer Sidney Powell on Friday called Gleeson’s filing “predictable and meaningless,” saying again that Flynn’s investigation was “corrupt from its inception.”

Sidney Powell is  complete nutjob, by the way, less than a half step away from Q-Anon.

………

Although Flynn cooperated with the Mueller probe and was prepared to be sentenced December 2018, he switched course after Mueller’s investigation ended and Barr took office last year. Flynn then accused prosecutors and his former attorneys of coercing him into pleading guilty and concealing FBI misconduct, claims that the department and Sullivan rejected.

When Barr came in, someone told Flynn that the fix was in.

………

“Pursuant to an active investigation into whether President Trump’s campaign officials coordinated activities with the Government of Russia, one of those officials lied to the FBI about coordinating activities with the Government of Russia,” Gleeson said earlier in the case.

“That is about as straightforward a case of materiality as a prosecutor, court, or jury will ever see,” he wrote.

Of all the people who need to go to jail, and be disbarred in the Trump administration, Billy Barr needs it the worst.

The Reinoehl Death Looks Increasingly Like a Hit

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It now appears that Michael Reinoehl’s death at hands of police appears to have been a deliberate execution, with the police opening fire without warning:

Officers who first confronted Michael Forest Reinoehl outside an apartment complex in Washington last week yelled no warnings or commands before firing and killing the Oregon man wanted on a murder warrant in the death of a right-wing demonstrator in Portland, according to a witness now represented by a lawyer.

Nathaniel Dingess, 39, lives in the apartment complex near Lacey, Washington, where Reinoehl apparently was hiding.

Dingess said he saw Reinoehl walk toward his car holding a cellphone in his hand when two unmarked law enforcement vehicles converged outside the complex in the 7600 block of Third Way Southeast last Thursday night. Officers began firing at Reinoehl, according to a statement issued by Dingess’ lawyer, Luke Laughlin, on his behalf.

Reinoehl ducked for cover near his car, but it was blocked by police cars and he never got into it, according to Dingess.

“Officers shot multiple rapid-fire rounds at Reinoehl before issuing a brief ‘stop’ command, quickly followed by more rapid-fire shooting by additional officers,” according to the statement.

Dingess said he never saw a handgun on Reinoehl or saw him reach for anything.

………

Dingess, an ordained minister of 19 years, fears for his and his family’s safety for speaking out in what has become a flashpoint in the political swirl around Portland’s ongoing protests, according to his lawyers.

Laughlin and other lawyers are calling for an independent authority to investigate the shooting of Reinoehl, arguing that the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office is not an uninvolved party.

………

The night of the shooting, the U.S. Marshals Service issued a statement that said, “Initial reports indicate the suspect produced a firearm, threatening the lives of law enforcement officers. Task force members responded to the threat and struck the suspect who was pronounced dead at the scene.”

Normally, I would be inclined to wait for an investigation, and perhaps some more information before coming to that conclusion, but given that both Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr gave their official imprimatur to this as an extrajudicial killing, I have to believe that orders were given that Reinoehl was not to be taken alive:

President Donald Trump seemed to endorse the extrajudicial killing of suspects while discussing the fatal shooting of the antifascist activist Michael Reinoehl by U.S. Marshals in early September.

………

“The U.S. Marshals went in to get [Reinoehl], and, in a short period of time, they ended up in a gunfight. This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him. And I will tell you something, that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution when you have crime like this,” Trump said.

Trump’s comments seemed to line-up with Attorney General William Barr’s official statement following the killing of Reinoehl, calling the officers’ actions “a significant accomplishment in the ongoing effort to restore law and order.”

Given the eyewitness account, I’m not inclined to believe that Trump and Barr both gave tacit, if not explicit, approval to a shoot on sight order.

Certainly, given the pro-fascist proclivities of both the US and local state security apparatus, I don’t think that you would need a smoking gun type order to do this, just vague language about how no risks being taken.

If you are not worried, note that, if the allegations are true, this is only one step away drone strikes against US citizens on US soil.