March 2023 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

RNC Funding of Trump's Legal Campaign Undermines GOP State AGs' Attack on Litigation Funding - Litigation Finance Journal
by Gunnar Larson 21 Mar '23

21 Mar '23

Check out my new article: https://litigationfinancejournal.com/rnc-funding-of-trumps-legal-campaign-u… Litigation Finance Journal recently reported on a group of 14 state attorneys general that have called for action from the Department of Justice to review potential threats to U.S. national security from foreign adversaries’ engagement of litigation investment. Litigation funders and industry advocates have new ammo in response to the AGs’ claims, given recent news of the RNC funding former President Donald Trump’s various legal entanglements. According to ABC News, RNC leaders earmarked $1.6M in legal funding to support President Donald Trump’s defense over lawsuits brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Meanwhile, the United States Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform’s research has prompted 14 state attorneys general to ask for the Justice Department to assess national security risks of adversaries ‘undermining’ the United States by engaging litigation funding and third party investment vehicles. The group of 14 state attorneys general are concerned about foreign adversaries ‘weaponizing’ United States legal frameworks via litigation investment, to attack critical national industry and infrastructure, such as energy sectors. The group of 14 seeks the Department of Justice to detail how a network of federal agencies could engage a blueprint for defending United States independence from international litigation investors, hostile groups, agencies or governments such as Russia and China. This latest attack on the industry, prompted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is simply another attempt to undermine the nascent and growing litigation funding sector. It is ironic, given that in the case of Consumer Legal Funding–which the Chamber specifically targets–the funding in question does not go to support legal fees, but rather to finance claimants’ livelihoods while they remain injured and unable to work. While the RNC’s funding of Trump’s legal battles does not constitute foreign investment, it illustrates the acceptance of third party legal funding across political lines, and should be noted by industry advocates looking to respond to the negative publicity put forth by the U.S. Chamber.

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Threats Posed by Third-Party Litigation Funding
by Gunnar Larson 21 Mar '23

21 Mar '23

December 22, 2022 The Honorable Merrick B. Garland Attorney General U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20530 The Honorable Lisa O. Monaco Deputy Attorney General U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20530 Mr. Mathew G. Olsen Assistant Attorney General National Security Division U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20530 Re: Threats Posed by Third-Party Litigation Funding Dear Attorney General Garland, The undersigned State Attorneys General write to ask the United States Department of Justice what steps are being taken to protect the country against potential threats posed by third-party litigation funding (?TPLF?) in civil matters by foreign entities hostile to the United States. As you know, TPLF refers to the practice of an outside third party providing resources to fund civil disputes with the understanding that if the claim is successful, the third party will receive a share of the recovery. This practice has become quite lucrative, as the market has swelled to an estimated value of between $2.3 and $5 billion invested in lawsuits in the United States.1, 2 It is impossible to know the extent that foreign adversaries are spending on American litigation through TPLF, which leads to significant concern that TPLF is being used to harm our States and threaten our country?s economic and national security. 1 https://www.natlawreview.com/article/considerations-aba-s-best-practices-li… 2 https://www.law360.com/articles/992299 Foreign adversaries leveraging our judicial system in order to undermine our nation?s interests is a grave concern to our States. Through strategic lending, foreign adversaries could threaten our economic and national security by weaponizing the U.S. judicial system.3 For instance, foreign countries such as China and Russia could use TPLF to fuel targeted lawsuits designed to weaken U.S. national defense companies in the business of protecting our national security interests. Likewise, costly litigation aimed at sabotaging major energy sectors that are vital to our economy poses a direct threat to our economic security interests and global independence. Despite several reports and public discussion on TPLF, the federal government has not implemented a strategy to protect our nation?s court system from foreign interference by adversaries set on damaging American institutions. Concerns have been raised about cases being funded to target specific individuals or businesses, or simply to further backlog our courts at the expense of the American taxpayers.4 Nevertheless, the federal government has remained silent. Ensuring that our justice system remains protected from foreign interference is of paramount importance. We are requesting information about what the Justice Department has done or is currently doing to address these concerns. The security concerns posed by foreign TPLF cannot be ignored any further without risking serious consequences to our nation. State Attorneys General stand ready to be part of the solution and we ask that our federal partners take action to help ensure that TPLF by foreign adversaries plays no role in American justice, our economy, or our national security. Sincerely, Christopher M. Carr Georgia Attorney General Jason Miyares Virginia Attorney General Steve Marshall Alabama Attorney General Leslie Rutledge Arkansas Attorney General 3 https://instituteforlegalreform.com/research/ilr-briefly-a-new-threat-the-n… litigation-funding/ 4 https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3758137-foreign-state-sponsor… sovereign-immunity-from-being-sued/ Todd Rokita Indiana Attorney General Derek Schmidt Kansas Attorney General Daniel Cameron Kentucky Attorney General Austin Knudsen Montana Attorney General Douglas J. Peterson Nebraska Attorney General Dave Yost Ohio Attorney General Alan Wilson South Carolina Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti Tennessee Attorney General Sean D. Reyes Utah Attorney General Patrick Morrisey West Virginia Attorney General

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QKD coming on stream
by professor rat 21 Mar '23

21 Mar '23

The process of quantum key distribution need not to be confused with quantum cryptography &/or computing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_key_distribution Reposts not strong AI rapidly entrenching itself into an invulnerable matrix & immovable object

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ATTACK ON A POLICE STATION
by professor rat 20 Mar '23

20 Mar '23

POLICE CARS BURNED >> We attacked the police station on Weißenfelser Straße with fire during the night of 15.03.23, the International Day against the Police and their Violence. Our incendiary devices hit the patrol cars parked in the yard. << https://anarchistnews.org/content/attack-police-station-leipzig-germany Reposts not millions of dead cops just yet

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Cryptocurrency: Nuclear Now (Documentary) re Mining
by grarpamp 20 Mar '23

20 Mar '23

https://twitter.com/NuclearNowFilm/status/1635734139935797249 https://twitter.com/TheOliverStone https://nuclearnowfilm.com/ Nuclear Now @NuclearNowFilm >From iconic director @TheOliverStone comes a thought-provoking documentary that explores the possibility for the global community to reach a brighter future through the power of nuclear energy. #NuclearNowFilm In Select Theaters April 28, 2023.

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Identity politics threat to cypherpunks
by professor rat 20 Mar '23

20 Mar '23

Twitter thread raises the point >> Bryan Bishop @kanzure · Mar 13 Replying to @perrymetzger I think people just really love identity politics and waving a new banner to sit under. . . . <<< https://twitter.com/kanzure/status/1634738371640672256?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%… Obviously there was a threat from working-class identity politics so long as Marxist Communists ( like James A Donald and John Young ) were posting here. Perhaps that threat is now receding as they approach death. Lets hope so!

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UBS Was Quietly Bailed Out in 2008; Now It’s Getting a $173 Billion Backstop to Buy Credit Suisse at 82 Cents a Share
by Gunnar Larson 20 Mar '23

20 Mar '23

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/03/ubs-was-quietly-bailed-out-in-2008-n… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 20, 2023 ~ Credit SuisseYesterday, the Swiss banking giant, UBS, agreed to a shotgun wedding with its collapsing long-time Swiss rival, Credit Suisse. Switzerland has committed $173 billion in loans and guarantees to the combined firm. A key player in this deal was the central bank of Switzerland, the Swiss National Bank. That’s the very same central bank that had quietly bailed out UBS during the financial crisis of 2008 with the assistance of dollar swap lines from the Federal Reserve (the “Fed”) – the central bank of the U.S. Yesterday, the Fed announced the return of those emergency dollar swap lines as the shotgun wedding of UBS and Credit Suisse failed to quell a spreading banking panic. The way this UBS bailout went down in 2008 was illuminated in the audit of the Fed’s emergency bailout facilities from December 2007 to July 2010 that was conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO audit was not released until July of 2011. It reported the following about the UBS bailout: “In October 2008, according to Federal Reserve Board staff, the Federal Reserve Board allowed the Swiss National Bank to use dollars under its swap line agreement to provide special assistance to UBS, a large Swiss banking organization. Specifically, on October 16, 2008, the Swiss National Bank announced that it would use dollars obtained through its swap line with FRBNY [the Federal Reserve Bank of New York] to help fund an SPV [Special Purpose Vehicle] it would create to purchase up to $60 billion of illiquid assets from UBS. According to FRBNY data, from December 11, 2008, through June 2009, Swiss National Bank drew dollar amounts generally not exceeding about $13 billion to help fund this SPV that served a function similar to that of the Maiden Lane SPVs. Federal Reserve Board staff acknowledged that this was an atypical use of swap line dollars as the swap line agreements were initially designed to help foreign central banks provide dollar loans broadly to institutions facing dollar funding strains.” The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is located at the cross street of Maiden Lane in Lower Manhattan. It created Maiden Lane SPVs I, II and III in order to create opacity around its bailout of JPMorgan’s takeover of Bear Stearns (Maiden Lane I) and its bailout of the toxic assets Wall Street had created and sold to the giant insurer, AIG, (Maiden Lanes II and III). For a closer look at the crony operations of the New York Fed, see our report: These Are the Banks that Own the New York Fed and Its Money Button. The GAO audit located $16 trillion in cumulative loans pumped out by the Fed to bail out U.S. and foreign mega banks, many of which were derivative counterparties to banks supervised by the New York Fed. When the dollar swap lines and other Fed bailout facilities are added in, the bailout tab comes to $29 trillion as detailed by the Levy Economics Institute. This morning, the UBS and Credit Suisse deal is looking more like a hit and run than a bank merger. Here’s a sampling of the road kill: Swiss regulators have decided that shareholders will not get to vote on the terms of the merger, which prices Credit Suisse shares at approximately 82 cents, less than half of where Credit Suisse stock closed on Friday. The Financial Times reported yesterday that “Swiss authorities [are] poised to change the country’s laws to bypass a shareholder vote as they rush to announce a deal before Monday.” The Saudi National Bank and the Qatar Investment Authority are the two largest holders of Credit Suisse stock and are nursing deep loses this morning, as are Swiss pension funds. Holders of $17.3 billion of a Credit Suisse convertible bond, known as AT1, will be wiped out completely, according to the Swiss regulator, FINMA. This action flips on its head the century-old concept that bondholders get priority treatment over common stock holders. The AT1s are officially called Contingent Convertible Bonds or CoCos. This is a quarter of a trillion dollar market and these CoCos will assuredly see major upheaval in their trading prices today – delivering more losses and panic to investors. The whole European banking sector is taking a hit in early morning trade in Europe. UBS was down over 16 percent at one point before trimming its losses. Germany’s banking behemoth, Deutsche Bank, was down more than 10 percent while France’s BNP Paribas had tanked over 8 percent. Things aren’t looking too rosy for banks here in the U.S. either. The troubled U.S. regional lender, First Republic Bank, had its credit rating downgraded further into junk status by S&P Global yesterday, despite that wily effort by Wall Street’s thundering herd last week to add $30 billion of their own money to the uninsured deposits at the bank. First Republic’s shares were down over 30 percent in New York premarket trading this morning. Both UBS and Credit Suisse were already, individually, among the 30 Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs), meaning their risk profile required closer regulatory monitoring, annual stress tests, and higher capital buffers. Individually, they posed the potential for spreading contagion. Should markets be expected to cheer that two risk threats have now morphed into one larger risk threat to financial stability? This is akin to U.S. regulators allowing JPMorgan Chase to become riskier and more of a threat to financial stability by bulking up with the purchase of Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual in 2008. Credit Suisse got into this predicament of a weekend shotgun marriage in no small part because of an endless stream of scandals. In the spring of 2021, Credit Suisse lost $5.5 billion from the highly-leveraged, highly concentrated stock positions it was financing via ginned-up derivatives for the family office hedge fund, Archegos Capital Management. Archegos blew up on March 25, 2021 after it defaulted on margin calls to the banks financing its trades. An internal report for the Board of Directors of Credit Suisse by the outside law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison found that Credit Suisse “was focused on maximizing short-term profits and failed to rein in and, indeed, enabled Archegos’s voracious risk-taking.” In October of 2021 Credit Suisse paid $547 million to settle with criminal and civil authorities in the U.S. and U.K. for making an $850 million fraudulent loan in Mozambique where a significant part of the funds went for kickbacks to Credit Suisse employees and Mozambique government officials. Credit Suisse is also embroiled in legal battles over selling billions of dollars of Greensill Capital debt to investors as low risk. Greensill filed for insolvency in March of 2021. In February, FINMA concluded a two-year investigation into the matter with a finding that Credit Suisse’s failures had constituted “a serious breach of Swiss supervisory law.” There was also the spygate scandal. FINMA reported in October of 2021 that Credit Suisse had engaged in seven separate spying operations on its Board members, former employees and third parties. (Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.) Credit Suisse, unfortunately, is also interconnected via derivatives to the mega banks on Wall Street. This is highly likely why this weekend shotgun marriage came together so quickly sans a vote by shareholders. How it plays out in the long run is an entirely different matter.

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DeSantis Jabs Trump Over Potential NY Hush-Money Indictment
by Gunnar Larson 20 Mar '23

20 Mar '23

DeSantis Jabs Trump Over Potential NY Hush-Money Indictment https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-20/desantis-takes-dig-at-tr… Florida Governor Ron DeSantis jabbed at Donald Trump over his potential indictment by the Manhattan district attorney, even as he accused prosecutors of political bias.

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karl’s gpt4 wrapper was Re: [ot][spam]gpt-4 completions
by Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many 20 Mar '23

20 Mar '23

On 3/19/23, ytooR <Arpspoof(a)proton.me> wrote: > Great work carl! I love you hihi rooty <3 the code for the wrapper (which i’d like to expand to run locally) is at https://codeberg.org/xloem/lm . i was generating git commits with something like the following (after git clone and pip install) (don’t know if this example works, readme has no history for context): echo “added a story to the readme” | quickscripts/append.sh README.md | lm | quickscripts/patchfix.py logging the gpt4 output makes it easier for others to make open models that perform the same behavior. when it’s so normal to train models from data, having data ends up being really helpful. and of course i always value public logging. the code you quoted below has a bug which is repaired in the repository in patchfix.py which is pending simplification. the nice thing about the generation of git commits this way is that the model does not need to be instruct-tuned since the git history provides context. it would work on opt or llama (which are local models that don’t need network access). gpt4 is pushing the context length frontier which makes stuff like this become more feasible because you can shoehorn more git history into a prompt. the repository was entirely made on my mother’s old ipad, which i am often near now when for example having trouble moving my body and standing up. i was thinking of the “hunt and peck” method of software engineering. i briefly visited libreplanet and had a photo taken of me while i was coding this. i am now ill and work may be paused we shall see. > ------- Original Message ------- > On Sunday, March 19th, 2023 at 11:46 AM, Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One > Victim & Survivor of Many <gmkarl(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > >> {"time": "2023-03-19T14:44:38.939857", "lm": "spellbook", "url": >> "https://dashboard.scale.com/spellbook/api/v2/deploy/", "app_id": >> "sm43s5r", "input": "Write a python script to correct the line counts >> in a unified diff that contains corrupt @@ lines.", "output": >> "```python\nimport re\nimport sys\n\ndef >> correct_line_counts(diff_file):\n with open(diff_file, 'r') as >> file:\n lines = file.readlines()\n\n corrected_lines = []\n >> line_index = 0\n\n while line_index < len(lines):\n line = >> lines[line_index]\n\n if line.startswith('@@'):\n # >> Extract the line numbers from the @@ line\n match = >> re.match(r'@@ -(\\d+),(\\d+) \\+(\\d+),(\\d+) @@', line)\n >> if match:\n start_old, count_old, start_new, count_new >> = map(int, match.groups())\n\n # Count the actual >> number of lines added and removed\n actual_count_old = >> 0\n actual_count_new = 0\n line_index += >> 1\n\n while line_index < len(lines) and not >> lines[line_index].startswith('@@'):\n if >> lines[line_index].startswith('-'):\n >> actual_count_old += 1\n elif >> lines[line_index].startswith('+'):\n >> actual_count_new += 1\n else:\n >> actual_count_old += 1\n actual_count_new += >> 1\n line_index += 1\n\n # Correct >> the line counts if necessary\n if count_old != >> actual_count_old or count_new != actual_count_new:\n >> corrected_line = f'@@ -{start_old},{actual_count_old} >> +{start_new},{actual_count_new} @@\\n'\n >> corrected_lines.append(corrected_line)\n else:\n >> corrected_lines.append(line)\n else:\n >> corrected_lines.append(line)\n line_index += 1\n >> else:\n corrected_lines.append(line)\n >> line_index += 1\n\n with open(diff_file, 'w') as file:\n >> file.writelines(corrected_lines)\n\nif name == 'main':\n if >> len(sys.argv) != 2:\n print(f'Usage: {sys.argv[0]} >> <diff_file>')\n sys.exit(1)\n\n diff_file = sys.argv[1]\n >> >> correct_line_counts(diff_file)\n``\\n\\nThis script takes a unified diff >> file as input and corrects the line counts in the @@ lines if they are >> corrupt. To use the script, save it as `correct_diff.py` and run it with >> the diff file as an argument:\\n\\n``\npython >> correct_diff.py diff_file.txt\n```"} >

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FT sounding alarm bells about “ plethora of experiments with decentralised social technologies
by professor rat 20 Mar '23

20 Mar '23

TOO LATE, LOSERS! The screams of the Conde Nast wounded echoes in my ears - what sweet music they make! https://www.ft.com/content/3e27cfd6-e287-4b6f-a588-29b5b962a534 Reposts not context collapse, devolving to “shouting into the void.” Innovations in the direction of “Disappearing and Deniable Messages” are lauded, not as protecting anything so “imprecise” as a notion of “privacy” that a sender might opt into, but as limits imposed within the public to prevent the possibility of upsetting the contextual applecart. Apparently advancements in common understanding are anathema; any deviation from the enshrined shibboleths risks context collapse

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