March 2024 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

The Silk Road Investigation: A 'Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents' ? Bitcoin
by pro2rat＠yahoo.com.au 09 Mar '24

09 Mar '24

Bad behavior like preening, posing and posturing as a peace loving agorist in public while trying to hire hitmen to kill targets and their flatmates is like the opposite of what cpunks are all about. ( Privacy for the poor and transparency for the powerful ) Ross Ulbricht has earned killing. He's almost as bad as a USG agent or Palantir employee. But do I repeat myself? Lets you and him fight is a good look for most US agents and most Silicon Valley corporados. I wish we had some respectable crypto currency media that could arrange it. Maybe one day. Marc Andreessen. You suck. Go die. Ditto Horowitz. Your fucked company is being richly rewarded right now . Katy for president? / CEO bitches You're old - we're young - and thats life.

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New York State Department of Financial Services Imposes $30 Million Fine in First Cryptocurrency Enforcement Action | White & Case LLP
by Gunnar Larson 09 Mar '24

09 Mar '24

https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/new-york-state-department-financial… On August 2, in its first ever cryptocurrency enforcement action, the New York State Department of Financial Services ("NYDFS") announced it had imposed a $30 million fine on Robinhood Crypto, LLC ("RHC") for failures in its Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money laundering program ("BSA/AML Program") and its cybersecurity program, and for non-compliance with notice requirements in its January 2019 supervisory agreement with the NYDFS ("Supervisory Agreement"), which RHC entered into with the NYDFS as a condition of obtaining its virtual currency business license. The NYDFS charged RHC, the cryptocurrency trading division of Robinhood Markets, Inc. ("RHM"), with violating the Department's Cybersecurity Regulation (23 NYCRR Part 500), Virtual Currency Regulation (NYCRR Part 200), Money Transmitter Regulation (3 NYCRR Part 417), and Transaction Monitoring Regulation (23 NYCRR Part 504). RHC holds a Virtual Currency license ("BitLicense") in New York under 23 NYCRR § 200. As a BitLicense holder, RHC is subject to NYDFS-mandated BSA/AML Program and cybersecurity requirements, among other things.

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Biden Launches $30 Million Ad Blitz by Joking About His Age
by Gunnar Larson 09 Mar '24

09 Mar '24

Biden Launches $30 Million Ad Blitz by Joking About His Age https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-09/biden-launches-30-millio… President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign is launching a new television ad poking fun at his age, part of a $30 million battleground state advertising buy following the State of the Union speech.

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Compassionate Release Grants Needed Now More Than Ever
by Gunnar Larson 09 Mar '24

09 Mar '24

Compassionate Release Grants Needed Now More Than Ever <https://www.law360.com/access-to-justice/articles/1807429?nl_pk=ac5a3855-e4…> After the U.S. Sentencing Commission's recent expansion of the criteria for determining compassionate release eligibility, courts should grant such motions more frequently in light of the inherently dangerous conditions presented by increasingly understaffed and overpopulated federal prisons, say Alan Ellis and Mark Allenbaugh at the Law Offices of Alan Ellis. Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/access-to-justice/articles/1807429?nl_pk=ac5a3855-e4…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/access-to-justice/articles/1807429?nl_pk=ac5a3855-e4…>

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'It Erases Us': Sex Abuse Survivors Troubled By Wash. Bill
by Gunnar Larson 09 Mar '24

09 Mar '24

'It Erases Us': Sex Abuse Survivors Troubled By Wash. Bill <https://www.law360.com/access-to-justice/articles/1809089?nl_pk=ac5a3855-e4…> By Hannah Albarazi Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is expected to sign into law a bill that eliminates time limits for bringing child sex abuse claims in the future, but survivors say they are disappointed by an amendment stripping the bill's retroactivity, saying the legislation doesn't go far enough to hold abusers accountable. Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/access-to-justice/articles/1809089?nl_pk=ac5a3855-e4…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/access-to-justice/articles/1809089?nl_pk=ac5a3855-e4…>

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Debt-Stricken Homeowners Fight Back After High Court Ruling
by Gunnar Larson 09 Mar '24

09 Mar '24

Debt-Stricken Homeowners Fight Back After High Court Ruling <https://www.law360.com/access-to-justice/articles/1792439?nl_pk=ac5a3855-e4…> By Andrew McIntyre Ten months after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision finding a Minnesota county wrongly held onto excess proceeds it reaped after seizing a woman’s condominium and selling it to settle a tax debt, states are scrambling to reexamine their laws as financially distressed homeowners file new suits challenging the practice. Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/access-to-justice/articles/1792439?nl_pk=ac5a3855-e4…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/access-to-justice/articles/1792439?nl_pk=ac5a3855-e4…>

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The Silk Road Investigation: A 'Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents' ? Bitcoin News
by Gunnar Larson 09 Mar '24

09 Mar '24

Whete is Kathryn Haun when you need her on NYCCoin? ..... https://news.bitcoin.com/the-silk-road-investigation-a-pattern-of-bad-behav… by Jamie Redman Oct 22, 2019 The Silk Road Investigation: A 'Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents' The Silk Road Investigation: A 'Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents' Kathryn Haun, a general partner at U.S. venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, has revealed in recent interviews how she helped take down the Silk Road when she was working for the Attorney General’s office. According to her accounts, the U.S. government agency also asked her to help “start shutting down technology before it’s built.” Haun’s story also highlights how the U.S. government’s evidence against the Silk Road transpired because of double agents. Also read: FBI Agent Admits to Stealing Silk Road Bitcoins Seized by U.S. Marshals Kathryn Haun Was Asked to Disrupt Bitcoin in 2012 During the last few years, governments worldwide have been cracking down on digital assets like on and off-ramps that are tied to fiat. Regulations are far stricter than they were in the early days, when governments first heard about cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Andreessen Horowitz general partner Kathryn Haun has a lot of experience working with government agencies when it comes to the cryptocurrency economy. She witnessed the takedown of the Silk Road darknet marketplace and before she started she was even asked to help dismantle the Bitcoin network. During an interview with CNBC, Haun revealed how a colleague mentioned the up and coming technology to her in 2012. “‘We have this perfect assignment for you – there’s this thing called Bitcoin and we need to investigate it,'” Haun told the news outlet on October 6. “That was the first time I’d ever heard of bitcoin,” she added. The Silk Road Investigation: A 'Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents' Former Silk Road investigator Kathryn Haun. Attempts to shut down Bitcoin by agencies such as the U.S. Department of Justice were fruitless ventures, Haun detailed. “It would have been akin to saying ‘let’s go prosecute cash,'” the former prosecutor said. “What we heard with Libra were the same criticisms [about Bitcoin],” Haun remarked. While discussing the similarities between her early days with Bitcoin in contrast to Libra, she continued: They got more attention because of the high-profile nature of the project and the fact that Facebook was involved. I think it would be a really dangerous thing, and frankly a dangerous precedent to start shutting down technology before it’s built. Uncovering the Silk Road and Parallel Investigations During another recently published interview with Haun, the Andreesen Horowitz partner spoke with Hayman Capital founder Kyle Bass about her role during the prosecution of the Silk Road marketplace. “The Silk Road was making millions of dollars a month and they were generating a lot of revenue,” Haun stressed. She doesn’t remember exactly how the Silk Road case got opened in New York, but she recalls Senator Chuck Schumer read a Wired article that prompted him to wonder why the marketplace was allowed to exist. “So the Southern District of New York, which is another Attorney General’s office – I was in the U.S. Attorney General’s office in San Francisco – SDNY opened the case and was trying to figure out who was behind the Silk Road. At this same time, a D.C. office was also trying to figure out who was running the Silk Road — And there were parallel investigations going.” The Silk Road Investigation: A 'Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents' Haun discusses the Silk Road investigation with Hayman Capital founder Kyle Bass. Haun explained that the government had task forces comprised of many alphabet soup agencies: “We’re talking the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, DEA, ATF, and the U.S. Marshals,” she underlined. “One task force, the one out of Washington D.C., they had an undercover agent. That undercover agent was able to befriend the person running the Silk Road. All the government knew at the time was that the person running the Silk Road went by the nickname ‘DPR’ for ‘Dread Pirate Roberts’ from the movie ‘The Princess Bride.’ So they didn’t know who DPR was, but the undercover agent actually set up an attempt to buy the Silk Road.” The Foundation of Evidence from the Silk Road Case Stemmed from Double Agents According to the former prosecutor, the undercover agent struck many online conversations with DPR and proceeded for the next two years to engage and message with the moniker. “A lot of things went wrong on both sides — From the Silk Road side, 2013 was a really bad year for the Silk Road because what you had was a person who had an online persona called ‘Death from Above,’” Haun said. “Death from Above starting extorting DPR and saying ‘if you don’t pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars in bitcoin I’m going to reveal your identity to law enforcement.’ Meanwhile, there was another online persona who went by the moniker ‘French Maid.’ French Maid was selling DPR information about the government’s investigation. French Maid told DPR the Feds are closing in and the end is near and you are about to be had.” Haun added: The government didn’t know any of this then and it all came out after the fact. In the midst of this, something else really bad happened in 2013 — About 21,000 bitcoins, which is today in excess of roughly $150 million dollars, went missing overnight from the Silk Road. From Silk Road vendor accounts and from what you might consider the petty cash account — Although there’s nothing petty about 21,000 bitcoins. The Silk Road Investigation: A 'Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents' Haun’s story begs the question: How much evidence would the government have without the use of double agents and rogue officers manipulating the investigation? During the remainder of the interview, Haun discussed Curtis Green’s role with the Silk Road and said Green showed the Feds “how the Silk Road worked, how to log into it, how to reset vendor PINs and passwords, and of course [Green] had that access because he was the key administrator.” Haun also said Green even gave his laptop to the Feds to keep as evidence. The discussion with Kyle Bass shows how government agents claim to have dismantled the Silk Road from the words of a former Federal prosecutor. However, Haun wasn’t involved with the DPR takedown first hand, but she was very much involved with investigating rogue agents. At first, when she heard about the first rogue agent she took it with “a grain of salt” and actually said it was a shame the tipster was smearing a Federal agent’s good name. But the tipster was insistent and she decided to look into it. “We saw that this agent who we got the tip for was liquidating hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions a month, in cryptocurrency. So I thought it’s probably another undercover operation and there’s probably a legitimate explanation,” Haun explained. The Silk Road Investigation: A 'Pattern of Bad Behavior and Double Agents' >From left to right — Carl Mark Force, Shaun Bridges, and Curtis Green all played a ‘double agent’ role in the Silk Road investigation. Curtis Green was a Silk Road moderator who was told by the U.S. government to fake his own death. Haun concluded that the rogue agent was caught telling exchanges to destroy transaction histories. Because undercover agents who are running undercover operations shouldn’t be asking for evidence to be destroyed, it raised a red flag Haun said. Her team found a “pattern of really bad behavior to put it mildly” and in the end, it turned out the rogue agent was both online personas: French Maid and Death from Above. Essentially, the interview with Haun shows that Curtis Green, Shaun Bridges, and Carl Mark Force were acting as double agents during the entire investigation. The discussion with Haun further highlights how the Silk Road case was quite messy and many constitutional laws were broken by rogue agents in order to disrupt the site. Still, the U.S. government, with no thought toward constitutional law and a complete disregard for true justice, based all their Silk Road evidence on the shameful ethics of Curtis Green and two rogue cops — Carl Mark Force and Shaun Bridges. It goes to show that the many unanswered questions surrounding the case, like how government agents found the Silk Road’s IP address, which wasn’t due to a faulty ‘captcha’ screen as claimed, were likely due to perfidious agents gone rogue.

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America?s TikTok Addiction Isn?t Just China?s Fault
by Gunnar Larson 09 Mar '24

09 Mar '24

America’s TikTok Addiction Isn’t Just China’s Fault https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-08/tiktok-america-s-addi… There are few things that can get both the American left and right as exercised as the idea that a foreign nation is perverting the minds of their young. When that country is China, the full force of the US political system weighs in. That has resulted in the unanimous approval of a bill that would stop internet service providers and app stores from offering TikTok to consumers, unless the social media firm’s Chinese parent ByteDance Ltd. sells it within six months.

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Fwd: SpaceX Corporation Board of Directors One Rocket Road Hawthorne, California 90250 Sales@SpaceX.com Re: Potential SpaceX Interlocking Directors’ Intent to Manipulate Markets
by Gunnar Larson 09 Mar '24

09 Mar '24

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lv9Wt6y1ld4bNap0z3epIxttEGiP_oVpfxH0GTS… May 21, 2022 BY ELECTRONIC MAIL SpaceX Corporation Board of Directors One Rocket Road Hawthorne, California 90250 Sales(a)SpaceX.com Re: Potential SpaceX Interlocking Directors’ Intent to Manipulate Markets Dear SpaceX Board of Directors: >From our New York headquarters, xNY.io - Bank.org, PBC embodies the notion that rather than a merry-go-round, the process of change and innovation is like a slide. Today’s memo aims to notify the SpaceX Corporation of concern of potential market manipulation that could impact cross-border digital asset innovation, free speech in the United States of America, the global ESG economy and Moon exploration. We do not see this as a stereotypical democrat versus republican battle (as Mr. Musk alludes). We see this as a risk arbitrage matter for xNY.io - Bank.org’s profit (subject to regulatory approval). Some may argue a scheme to leverage the protection of “free speech” has led to Twitter deal advisors attempting a $44B LBO market manipulation exercise. Further cause for reasonable concern is warranted if similar intent is at play in the form of Tesla’s ESG scam claim. xNY.io - Bank.org indicators signal risk of possible intent to manipulate public and private markets prompting clarification of the SpaceX Corporation’s intent concerning Moon exploration and exploitation as a ESG digital asset vault. To be very clear, SpaceX directors should understand xNY.io - Bank.org’s work to protect cross-border digital asset innovation was born before Twitter's prospective LBO. Our concern specific to the intent of Twitter’s LBO deal makers is party to our work in New York to usurp Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase board directors who may be potentially engaged in similar market manipulation referenced here: 1. xNY.io - Bank.org | DOJ Memo #4 - Goldman Sachs Deferred Prosecution Agreement. 2. xNY.io - Bank.org | Memo #2 - JPMorgan Chase Board of Directors ESG Marketplace Manipulation. 3. xNY.io - Bank.org’s work also includes research into oil and nickel marketplace manipulation as an ESG concern. The Twitter LBO includes Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase operating as deal advisors. As referenced above, claims of Twitter robot scams and claims of Tesla ESG scams display a pattern of questionable intent. xNY.io - Bank.org asks SpaceX to clarify your board's intent concerning the Moon and any connection to USDD (now in Moon phase). SpaceX directors may agree that the Moon can also be defined as one of the most valuable ESG digital asset vaults known to modern humanity. Protecting the Moon from explo8itation is fundamental to Space exploration. SpaceX is party to any potential Twitter deal maker advisors that may exercise questionable intent risking the Moon’s ESG vault potential. xNY.io - Bank.org is concerned with interlocking directorate syndicates that include SpaceX, Tesla, PayPal, Goldman Sachs and BitGo. This setup breeds a galaxy of third and fourth party risk(s) at the demise of pure cross-border digital asset innovation. Twitter robots are not the focus of the Orlando Police Department Pension Fund, who suggests that Twitter’s LBO is suspected of questionable intent as potentially illegal. - Mr. Musk’s ingenuity as an entrepreneur is historic and greatly respected as a model inside our organization. As a Gates Scholar and Blockchain Scholar holding international law distinction(s) The concept of the Moon being an ESG digital asset vault is logic USDD seemingly embodies. - For obvious reasons, we seek SpaceX’s board to confirm if the intent behind your CEO’s Twitter LBO and Tesla ESG claims and if SpaceX is party to a USDD type matter given your syndicate’s close association with USDP. xNY.io - Bank.org kindly asks the SpaceX Corporation board of directors to respond within 15 days of receipt of this correspondence. Default in the form of no response within 15 days is not an extortion technique on our part. Rather, it is a design benefit in disclosing our intent post 15 days to ask for approval to engage New York’s False Claims Act in response to SpaceX, Tesla, PayPal and Meta interlocking directors potentially engaging in digital asset marketplace manipulation (exemplified by USDP and USDD) that may exploit Space and Moon exploration at xNY.io - Bank.org, PBC’s overall expense. Respectfully yours, Gunnar Larson | xNY.io <http://www.xny.io> - Bank.org <http://bank.org>, PBC MSc <https://www.unic.ac.cy/blockchain/msc-digital-currency/?utm_source=Google&u…> - Digital Currency MBA <https://www.unic.ac.cy/business-administration-entrepreneurship-and-innovat…> - Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ip) G(a)xNY.io +1-646-454-9107 CC: Tesla Board of Directors Twitter Board of Directors Goldman Sachs Board of Directors JP Morgan Chase Board of Directors

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA CASE NO. 22-CV-14102-MIDDLEBROOKS DONALD J. TRUMP, Plaintiff, v. HILLARY R. CLINTON, et al., Defendants. ORDER ON MOTIONS TO DISMISS
by Gunnar Larson 09 Mar '24

09 Mar '24

Brody Larson makes 190 highlights to UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA CASE NO. 22-CV-14102-MIDDLEBROOKS DONALD J. TRUMP, Plaintiff, v. HILLARY R. CLINTON, et al., Defendants. ORDER ON MOTIONS TO DISMISS: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JUQtPF8f6ckSRHwLcu3S_joyF5xQoA-A/view?usp=… BACKGROUND Plaintiff initiated this lawsuit on March 24, 2022, alleging that “the Defendants, blinded by political ambition, orchestrated a malicious conspiracy to disseminate patently false and injurious information about Donald J. Trump and his campaign, all in the hopes of destroying his life, his political career and rigging the 2016 Presidential Election in favor of Hillary Clinton.” (DE 177, Am. Compl. ¶ 9). On this general premise, Plaintiff brings a claim for violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”), predicated on the theft of trade secrets, obstruction of justice, and wire fraud (Count I). He additionally brings claims for: injurious falsehood (Count III); malicious prosecution (Count V); violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) (Count VII); theft of trade secrets under the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 (“DTSA”) (Count VIII); and violations of the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) (Count IX). The Amended Complaint also contains counts for various conspiracy charges and theories of agency and vicarious liability.

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