August 2009 - cypherpunks-legacy

UBS, U.S., Swiss Complete Tax-Evasion Settlement
by R.A. Hettinga 21 Aug '09

21 Aug '09

"Regulatory Arbitrage", as Eric Hughes liked to call it on cypherpunks, is officially dead. Cheers, RAH -------- <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125007792394025747.html?mod=djemTEW#printMo… > The Wall Street Journal AUGUST 12, 2009, 5:22 P.M. ET UBS, U.S., Swiss Complete Tax-Evasion Settlement By CARRICK MOLLENKAMP and LAURA SAUNDERS Swiss bank UBS AG and the U.S. and Swiss governments have settled a long-running tax-evasion probe, a Justice Department attorney told a federal court Wednesday morning. Details of the pact were not provided during a teleconference with U.S. District Judge Alan Gold. Justice Department attorney Stuart Gibson said initial documents had been signed and final forms were awaiting signatures. It's likely UBS will turn over thousands of client names to the Internal Revenue Service as part of the settlement. The case centers on the Internal Revenue Service's efforts to obtain the identities of some 52,000 accounts so the revenue collector can investigate off- shore tax evasion by UBS clients. UBS, in a statement, declined to discuss the details. The Zurich bank said it welcomed the agreement. Justice Department representatives weren't immediately available for comment. A statement by IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman provided a sense of timing on releasing details of the pact. Mr. Shulman said, "We will release more details when the Swiss government signs the agreement as early as next week." UBS and the Swiss government had fought the effort, citing Swiss bank privacy. Lawyers involved in the case now believe UBS will agree to turn over some 8,000 to 10,000 account identities. The parties first officially said they were in talks in mid-July. That set off a month of back-and-forth discussions that underscored the difficulty in reaching a pact. A critical component of the settlement will be the process for turning over the names to the IRS. Lawyers representing UBS clients believe that one route may be for UBS to hand the names to the Swiss government, which then would notify the UBS clients that they can appeal in Switzerland. A flurry of clients already had been coming forward through a so- called voluntary disclosure program that allowed them to acknowledge unpaid income tax. That process had saddled the IRS with a flood of paperwork, leading the IRS to recently streamline the process. The settlement could represent a significant victory for the IRS and the Justice Department depending on how many names the IRS obtains. The IRS's case --effectively a civil court request to a federal court to force UBS to provide the accounts -- already had yielded documents detailing the inner workings of how UBS and its vaunted private bank helped U.S. clients. The settlement on Wednesday had run on a parallel track with a criminal inquiry that in February led UBS to agree to a $780 million settlement and to turn over some 250 names.

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by Deion Kramer 21 Aug '09

21 Aug '09

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21 Aug '09

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21 Aug '09

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21 Aug '09

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DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show
by Eugen Leitl 20 Aug '09

20 Aug '09

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print August 18, 2009 DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show By ANDREW POLLACK Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases. The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person. b You can just engineer a crime scene,b said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. b Any biology undergraduate could perform this.b Dr. Frumkin is a founder of Nucleix, a company based in Tel Aviv that has developed a test to distinguish real DNA samples from fake ones that it hopes to sell to forensics laboratories. The planting of fabricated DNA evidence at a crime scene is only one implication of the findings. A potential invasion of personal privacy is another. Using some of the same techniques, it may be possible to scavenge anyonebs DNA from a discarded drinking cup or cigarette butt and turn it into a saliva sample that could be submitted to a genetic testing company that measures ancestry or the risk of getting various diseases. Celebrities might have to fear b genetic paparazzi,b said Gail H. Javitt of the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University. Tania Simoncelli, science adviser to the American Civil Liberties Union, said the findings were worrisome. b DNA is a lot easier to plant at a crime scene than fingerprints,b she said. b Webre creating a criminal justice system that is increasingly relying on this technology.b John M. Butler, leader of the human identity testing project at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said he was b impressed at how well they were able to fabricate the fake DNA profiles.b However, he added, b I think your average criminal wouldnbt be able to do something like that.b The scientists fabricated DNA samples two ways. One required a real, if tiny, DNA sample, perhaps from a strand of hair or drinking cup. They amplified the tiny sample into a large quantity of DNA using a standard technique called whole genome amplification. Of course, a drinking cup or piece of hair might itself be left at a crime scene to frame someone, but blood or saliva may be more believable. The authors of the paper took blood from a woman and centrifuged it to remove the white cells, which contain DNA. To the remaining red cells they added DNA that had been amplified from a manbs hair. Since red cells do not contain DNA, all of the genetic material in the blood sample was from the man. The authors sent it to a leading American forensics laboratory, which analyzed it as if it were a normal sample of a manbs blood. The other technique relied on DNA profiles, stored in law enforcement databases as a series of numbers and letters corresponding to variations at 13 spots in a personbs genome. >From a pooled sample of many peoplebs DNA, the scientists cloned tiny DNA snippets representing the common variants at each spot, creating a library of such snippets. To prepare a DNA sample matching any profile, they just mixed the proper snippets together. They said that a library of 425 different DNA snippets would be enough to cover every conceivable profile. Nucleixbs test to tell if a sample has been fabricated relies on the fact that amplified DNA b which would be used in either deception b is not methylated, meaning it lacks certain molecules that are attached to the DNA at specific points, usually to inactivate genes.

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by Darryl Mcfarland 20 Aug '09

20 Aug '09

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