Weird Fallout from Peiter Zatko’s Twitter Whistleblowing
People are trying to dig up dirt on Peiter Zatko, better known as Mudge.
For the record, I have not been contacted. I’m not sure if I should feel slighted.
Comments
Jordan Brown • September 14, 2022 9:16 AM
“Dig up dirt on” or “assess the credibility of”?
Some guy they don’t know from Adam says “Twitter is bad”. Is he for real, or is he just a troublemaker?
Chris Bonatti • September 14, 2022 9:28 AM
The average state of security across Internet companies is so abysmal that his claims are hardly outrageous. There’s long PARADE of companies that have basically practiced security by obscurity (Yahoo and Facebook come to mind). IMHO it doesn’t take any deep credibility to make me think that he’s right. He’s kind of just restating my default assumption.
a • September 14, 2022 9:34 AM
@Jordan Brown
Zatko’s been known for decades. He’s worked for Google and the Pentagon as well as Twitter. His credibility is fine.
Ted • September 14, 2022 10:32 AM
From the article:
… the moment reports of the whistleblower claim broke, Zatko’s reputation became tied to billions of dollars of market value. “The value of Twitter stock depends on the outcome of the litigation and what happens with the buyout.
It’s a point to note that the research and investment firm’s clients have such an intense interest in Mudge himself. More so than the revelations of his whistleblowing?
Farrow also writes that:
At least six research outfits … approached former colleagues of Zatko’s at Stripe, Google, and the Pentagon research agency darpa… At least two investment firms … also sought information from individuals close to Zatko.
So far everyone seems to be denying that they’ve talked to these firms. Seems like there would be a new layers of liability here too. I’m wondering how much of this is meant to uncover financially-relevant leverage and how much this is meant to intimidate. Has everyone in this Twitter deal faced this kind of scrutiny?
Jordan Brown • September 14, 2022 11:25 AM
@a
First, to be clear, I don’t mean to impugn his credibility in the slightest.
Sure, he’s got plenty of credibility amongst the cognoscenti of the the computer security world.
But investors are not part of that group and don’t know him from Adam. So they’re calling people who do know him to ask about him.
I’m sure there are some who want to discredit him, because he’s hurting their TWTR investment. But since investors can make money on any change in a stock price, my bet is that many or most just want to know how real the report is likely to be.
I’ll assume that you’re familiar with the computer security world, but let’s pivot it to, say, construction. “Engineer X Fired By Major Builder Claims They Use Bad Concrete”. Do you believe him? How does his report affect your investment strategy for Major Builder?
Fired employees saying bad things about their ex-employer is not exactly a new plot line.
Quantry • September 14, 2022 11:36 AM
@ a,
He’s worked for Google…Pentagon…Twitter. His credibility is fine.
who fact-checks the fact checkers?
‘ht tps://ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org/signatories
Those who have the most $bn to loose,
have the most capability to manufacture credibility,
IMO. Cheers.
- • September 14, 2022 11:37 AM
@Jordan Brown:
“Fired employees saying bad things about their ex-employer is not exactly a new plot line.”
Likewise,
‘Employees fired for questioning employers questionable practices is not exactly a new plot line.’
You see both in ‘civil liability’ cases that can be worth billions. Looking at tobacco or motor vehicle industries will give you plenty of examples.
Both can be true.
FlyOnTheWall • September 14, 2022 12:54 PM
Mudge/Zatko is not just any employee, some guy… far from it he has the kind of industry status and track record that are very difficult to impugn. Moreover, in listening to his testimony his core allegations are the most troubling to anybody involved in DB admin or s/w dev, not the resulting problems that inevitably follow.
Some of these allegations are easy to disprove/prove and hard to fudge:
- only Prod environment, no Dev or QA
- nonexistent/weak access, admin, and data logging
Really?! That Twitter would be missing this stuff is beyond the pale by any measure, not just for a tech co but any for any co using s/w (except perhaps for the most basic SaaS).
The resulting extra-wide access to data (i.e., PII) by s/w devs/engineers and the inability to track that (i.e., the claims the media is paying attention to and Twitter is disputing generally) would be inevitable. Who doesn’t have a Test environment or access logs, this is the kind data/s/w 101 stuff one just can’t makeup!!!
SpaceLifeForm • September 14, 2022 2:34 PM
It does not take long
Baker alleges Agrawal and other Twitter executives “repeatedly discouraged” whistle-blower Peiter Zatko “from providing a full accounting of Twitter’s security problems to the company’s board of directors” as part of a cover up. Zatko was the company’s head of computer security at the time.
SpaceLifeForm • September 14, 2022 3:18 PM
More here. Case was filed yesterday afternoon, after the hearing ended.
https://rosenlegal.com/case/twitter-inc-8-2022/
According to the lawsuit, defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company’s business operations and prospects. Specifically, that:
- Twitter knew about security concerns on their platform;
- Twitter actively worked to hide the security concerns from the board, the investing public, and regulators;
- contrary to representations in SEC filings, Twitter did not take steps to improve security;
- Twitter’s active refusal to address security issues increased the risk of loss of public goodwill; and
- as a result, Defendants’ statements about Twitter’s business, operations, and prospects, were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages.
Clive Robinson • September 14, 2022 4:49 PM
@ SpaceLifeForm,
Re : Lying by Social Media.
“defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company’s business operations and prospects.”
I hate to say it but that was almost my first thought when hearing about Teitter’s alledged 5% of bot traffic. As I’ve said before anyone who looks at just maybe one or two Twitter threads can spot it being up beyween 30-50% via Nitter or Thread Ripper, you don’t have to go to Twitter’s fairly awful site to see it.
But…
“They are not the only ones”.
Most Social Media sites are upto something one way or another FaceBook is into,
“Selling PII for psychotic population control”
By the likes of the Mercer Family as seen by Cambridge Analytica, and their desire for compleate political control in the First and second world.
Alphabet / Google spying on every thing you type, everything you click a link for and much more besides.
As for Amazon, lets just not go there it makes my flesh very creapy feeling just thinking about it.
Oh and don’t forget Linked-In their reputation is so low, it’s way down below bottom of the barrel scraping and heading down as fast as they can.
Then there is Pay Pal and Palantir, less obvious but even worse.
I could go on but… You get the general idea.
They are all “at it” in some unlawful way…
Which turns this Twitter nonsense into a potential “fracture point” for the entire Social Media Industry.
What is going to come out about the Twitter Board almost certainly applies to all Social Media Industry boards, and when the rocket goes up, and the bulls start to run to the slaughter as they will do, there will be little left standing…
Thus the investor “class action” if alowed, and the Musk Defence if alowed will make doing the same to the rest of the social media groups much easier.
A wise person might chose now to move their investments out of Social Media and into something else whilst they still can. Or they might decide to go for the “wild ride” if and when it starts… Which as we’ve now passed a “tipping point” I suspect can not be stopped so “When not If” is my guess.
Lets be honest though which of the Social Media Corps have actually payed real sustainable dividends?
It has many indicators of a “start up bubble market” we tend to get these with all nrw technologies. Look into the history of canals and railways in England, for early examples. Then the Telegraph, telephone and radio markets. They all started with investor bubbles that burst…
Which brings me around to “Non Fungible Tokens”(NFTs) and “Smart Contracts” that will according to claims be the foundation of Web 3 and the saviour of Blockchain technology… Don’t put your money into that as as far as I can see crypto-coin is about to collapse in on it’s self…
It does not take much “back of the envelope” calculation that the “Public Ledgers” of Blockchain can not be supported, thus the fundemental argument for blockchains fails…
SpaceLifeForm • September 14, 2022 5:55 PM
@ Clive, Nick Levinson, ALL
Re: Lying by Social Media
The irony is that I found the lawsuit via Twitter.
Google is hiding stuff. But failing.
But, via keywords, and thinking outside the box, and connecting dots, I found it in under an hour.
So, Nick, I am not Special (interesting autocorrect BTW), I am just one of tne many that pay attention and connect dots.
lurker • September 14, 2022 6:17 PM
@Clive Robinson
re history of canals, railways &c. “They all started with investor bubbles that burst…”
Suggests that social media and block-chain finance will eventually become solid reliable pillars of society. Just don’t stand close while the early adopters are wiped out by bursting bubbles …
Joe Buck • September 14, 2022 8:27 PM
Twitter never claimed 5% bot traffic. Their claim was that their estimate of “monetizable daily active users”, meaning how many people on average were seeing ads, didn’t have more than 5% bots, but they did not promise that this was true. The way they compute that number would exclude most bots. I don’t think arguments about the number of bots should be sufficient to let anyone out of a purchase agreement.
Twitter hiding security problems is a completely different issue. If their security is completely broken and that was hidden it is a more serious matter.
Clive Robinson • September 14, 2022 8:44 PM
@ lurker,
Re : The Tech Future
“Suggests that social media and block-chain finance will eventually become solid reliable pillars of society.”
The former will in some way or another. As I have advised several thinking about career paths,
“Communications : Humans just love to talk and always will.”
But the latter, no, I don’t see it having a longterm future, though I do suspect it will creat two or three more “bubble markets” for speculators to fleece those who don’t think, or think they are smarter than those running the long cons that appear around the blockchain notion.
Yes we will get forms of electronic currency, but the ledgers will not be public and treasuries will become firmly in control.
If you think about it we already have two working very well electronic currencies neither of which the block chain can get even remotely close to interms of efficiency and speed,
1, The card/token of credit/debit.
2, The card/token of pre-pay.
Whilst most know about Credit/Debit systems few realise the rise of partially anonymous and anonymous systems like “Phone Unit” and “Gift Cards” you just buy at a shop till and use yourself or give to others.
Both of these systems get around the “Double Spend” issue the blockchain is supposed to stop by being “on line” systems.
The problem that few talk about is just how big the blockchain would have to get. Firstly to stop double spend every transaction ever would have to be permently made available. Secondly whilst “Proof of XXX” is not required some control of the blockchain is required. Both of which kind of defeats the idea of Freedom and Anonymity.
It would take very little or no effort for the US Government or any other Government for that matter to pass legislation / regulation to implement black / White listing of crypto-coins, at which point it’s effectively compleate game over for crypto-coins.
This won’t stop those who are block-chain fan-bois or crooks wanting to set up further long cons. In fact you can see a new bubble building with the likes of “Non Fungible Tokens”(NFTs)…
The one I’m uncertain about is “Smart Contracts” by definition a contract has a finite period of existance, thus the entire “transaction ledger” is not required. But even so, the vast number of contracts / transactions put in place every day is realistically not possible to store in one database you need thousands. The problem then shifts to one of trust, and very very quickly you end up at the effectively failed “Certificate Authority” model…
I’m sure there will be those that disagree with my thinking, that is after all their right, as is it is to put all their money into ponzie and long-con schemes.
Few think things through sufficiently to realise that in reality the world has finite resources because we are bound by the “gravity well”. Which means nearly everything is based on a “zero sum game”. That includes finance, and the reason I differentiate between “real wealth” based on tangible physical assets and the fairly pointless “fiscal wealth” based on inflating intangible numbers that at best have no real meaning.
SpaceLifeForm • September 15, 2022 12:16 AM
Google spotted a shark that smelled the blood
The feeding frenzy begins.
‘https://www.rgrdlaw.com/cases-twitter-inc-class-action-lawsuit-twtr.html
Winter • September 15, 2022 1:40 AM
@lurker, Clive
Suggests that social media and block-chain finance will eventually become solid reliable pillars of society.
Indeed, every major increase in “productivity” was followed by investment bubbles and the madness of the crowds. Blockchains are no exception.
Blockchains too improve productivity by improving the efficacy of book keeping. The incumbent is a cumbersome, slow, and opaque system of interactions between multi-tier institutions each with their own jurisdictions and reliability problems. Blockchains are transparent, robust, and fast.
Users can verify themselves whether or not money reached the correct account. Instead of, eg, a central bank needing to audit the transactions of every financial institution individually, this can be done in the ledger itself directly.
The promise of increased efficiency lead to central banks starting projects to incorporate blockchains into the financial system.
What Is a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)?
‘https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/central-bank-digital-currency-cbdc.asp
Blockchain and central bank digital currency
‘https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405959521001399
Clive Robinson • September 15, 2022 3:03 AM
@ Winter,
Re : Blockchain efficiency
“Blockchains are transparent, robust, and fast.”
No they are not.
To be transparent they need to be “public” and few people actually want every financial move they make being made naked and open to all.
Whilst they look like they are robust they are not as data structures, or systems. The only robustness they bring to the table over existing systems is by the public duplication. Which is problematical as who is going to pay for the infrastructure many times that of Googles current setup, just to implement one such? Remember you would need a minimum of four such systems[1] and all the high security communications to support it, which would make the NSA envious.
As for fast, the current systems due to the moronic “Proof of XXX” attached are so slow transactions are at best just a handful a second. Even without that “Proof of XXX” the number of global transactions at any one time numbers up in the tens of millions a second, something most do not realise.
But people do not appreciate the combined,
1, Gate Keeper Effect
2, Ripple across Effect.
This will create a significant time delay which has consequences in that high speed transactions can be done and compleated long before the blockchain gets updated, thus “High Frequency Fraud” will be a result. This will require “back-out” mechanisms that don’t exist because they destroy the blockchain security model.
Then of course any system with locked in time delay and capacity issues, is a “Sitting Duck” target for extortion by “Denial of Service”(DoS) attack.
To be honest I’m surprised there has been no real concerted effort to Ransom one of the crypto-coin blockchains by a DDoS…
As has been pointed out the idea of a global blockchain is a “Crypto-Anarchists” dream and every one elses very real nightmare.
Because like it or not, it will become not some kind of libertarian freedom, but a tool of near total oppression as it will have all the failings of hierarchical systems[2] that certain entities will lust after to control. We actually see this with blockchain gate keepers already.
[1] There is a problem with blockchains in that if someone gets more than 50% control they can “own it”. This means you need three at all times sharing effectively equitably. Add in the fact “at all times” need 100% availability, and no single system has 100% reliability means you need an absolut minimum of four, preferably more.
[2] Mankind has known many of the failings of single and hierarchical systems for as long as there has been any kind of social structure. War is just one obvious side effect, slavery or forced servitude yet another the list of hierarchical system failings is both long and grevious. For centuries at the very least people have sort out ways to robustly maintain the desirable effects of social cohesion, yet get rid of hierarchies, or atleast their many undesirable side effects, and so far the failure to do this is effectively 100%…
Winter • September 15, 2022 3:34 AM
@Clive
To be transparent they need to be “public” and few people actually want every financial move they make being made naked and open to all.
So they are transparent. Although that can be handled if this is no wanted.
Whilst they look like they are robust they are not as data structures, or systems. The only robustness they bring to the table over existing systems is by the public duplication.
Which is how you define “robust”: Can withstand stress. For instance, if Bitcoin could have been brought down, it would have been done so years ago. But this did not happen. So, I would say Bitcoin is robust as a data structure.
Which is problematical as who is going to pay for the infrastructure many times that of Googles current setup, just to implement one such? Remember you would need a minimum of four such systems[1] and all the high security communications to support it, which would make the NSA envious.
Which has nothing to do with anything I wrote.
As for fast, the current systems due to the moronic “Proof of XXX” attached are so slow transactions are at best just a handful a second. Even without that “Proof of XXX” the number of global transactions at any one time numbers up in the tens of millions a second, something most do not realise.
No, the system is excruciatingly slow because it is handled by multiple layers within multiple institutions and every transaction has to go through many hands, each having their own legal checks and (severe) vulnerabilities. It is not uncommon (I have experienced it myself) that money does not reach the recipient, or so s/he claims, and the sender cannot discover where the money went.
In a blockchain, every transaction is entered and the money can be followed to its destination. There are only two “hands”, the institution that initiates the transaction (e.g., the sender) and the institution that receives the transaction (e.g., the recipient). In Bitcoin and Ethereum, these two can even be the private persons who exchange money. But that is likely to become very uncommon. Any “Proof of XXX” have to be done only once at one of the end-points.
Bob • September 15, 2022 12:30 PM
The dozens of e-mails and LinkedIn messages received by people in Zatko’s professional orbit appeared to be mostly from research-and-advisory companies, part of a burgeoning industry whose clients include investment firms and individuals jockeying for financial advantage through information.
I think they are looking for ammo rather than confirmation.
SpaceLifeForm • September 15, 2022 5:41 PM
@ Ted, Clive, ALL
re: Material Adverse Effect
First, I want to note a Class Action lawsuit that flew under my radar. It is about a month old. It is about phone numbers and email addresses. I may have mentioned those datums previously. 😉
‘https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/privacy/twitter-class-action-alleges-company-uses-personal-information-for-marketing-purposes/
Now, we have the new lawsuit.
The market clearly knows that this deal will not happen. If everyone thought it would happen, would not there be action in the stock market buying at $42 in the belief they will be able to sell at $54 ?
Only suckers are thinking that now, slightly propping up the stock price, while the overall market is down. The smart money is staying away.
So, ask yourself, why would I buy a company facing a class action lawsuit ( 2 now), that has indeterminable damage settlements?
You would not pay out an asset to acquire a liability.
Here is where it gets interesting.
My bold. Note the court.
‘https://www.klgates.com/Delaware-Chancery-Court-Makes-Groundbreaking-Material-Adverse-Effect-Finding-Allowing-Buyer-to-Terminate-Merger-Agreement-10-11-2018
Shortly after the signing of the merger agreement, Akorn’s financial performance deteriorated significantly. In addition, during the period between the signing and the planned closing, Fresenius received whistleblower letters alleging “alarming” problems at Akorn. These led to investigations by Akorn and Fresenius that uncovered “serious and pervasive data integrity problems”[4] and regulatory violations at Akorn.
Ted • September 15, 2022 10:04 PM
@SpaceLifeForm, Clive, All
Fascinating. Material adverse effect (MAE) is a pretty high bar. Musk’s lawyers are reaching. Dogecoin diligence.
JonKnowsNothing • September 15, 2022 11:33 PM
@ Ted, @SpaceLifeForm, Clive, All
re: If everyone thought it would happen, would not there be action in the stock market buying at $42 in the belief they will be able to sell at $54 ?
Normally during a buyout or stock swap or other change in corporate structure, the terms of the deal not only declare the price of the exchange but also has a clause something like:
- Registered Shares owned and outstanding on DATE
Or similar wording.
What that means is any stocks purchased after that DATE do not get included in the exchange deal.
Whether Musk included such a clause in his proposal, I don’t know. Given the unusual form of his demand, I’d be surprised if he did.
The value of this stock is not what’s listed on the books. Like a horse, it’s whatever anyone is willing to pay. All sorts of theoretical concepts are applied to such stocks, but unlike depletion-mining-hard production, there isn’t anything there at all. Same with all tech stocks: it’s just Air and SWAG.
Which is why pump and dump works. Clive and others have explained how pump and dump works, but when it comes to massive hedge funds, these funds can take a long time to pump the handle before cashing in. They aren’t particularly worried about timing because they have enough in the pot to keep things floating.
It’s the so-called rogue investment advisor-company, that poaches the value of customer accounts, to lay high risk bets on long shot short term wins. This has broken the bank in a number of countries and on a number of occasions. Hedge Funds and Investment Firms can make concentrated efforts to take a nearly-worthless stock, to stratospheric heights over time: aka IPO
The players are not “everyone” as in you and me. The real players in the high stakes private room, are the bankers, hedge funds, investment companies.
It’s popcorn time to see who is going to win: The long game or the short con.
JonKnowsNothing • September 15, 2022 11:52 PM
@Ted, @SpaceLifeForm, Clive, All
re: You would not pay out an asset to acquire a liability.
This is not correct and it’s done all the time. Often it’s done to obtain some form of tax deferral.
Some companies when they go into one of the bankruptcy sections, actually are sold based on their liability, not their assets. It’s like house flipping. You buy a liability aka a derelict house, you expect to invest $60,000-$150,000 USD in remodel (cosmetic) and remedial (structural) repairs and sell it for 2 or 3 times the investment price + the cost of acquisition.
Sometimes, depending on your tax situation, the liability is far more valuable than the asset itself in deferring or offsetting taxes, sometimes you get to claim the deferral for years and years.
For normal folks we only buy assets to keep them or occasionally sell them. Big Money also means Big Taxes. So an asset that costs $50,000 USD and which yields a $40,000 liability, can be applied at various rates to Taxes Owed or Adjusted Taxable Wealth.
Race Horses are an easy to understand example. Only 1 wins the Kentucky Derby. There are 350,000 race horses born in the USA every year. 349,999 are tax write offs.
Clive Robinson • September 15, 2022 11:53 PM
@ Ted, SpaceLifeForm,
Re : Bar on Material Adverse Effect
“Fascinating. Material adverse effect (MAE) is a pretty high bar.”
Yes and no it depends on the chosen burden of proof and unfortunately something it should not, which is the courts behaviour.
The fact that the Delaware Chancery Court only has one such case of note, says more about their way of doing business than the basic principles of Old English Law ( which the majority of US law is supposadly based upon).
To put it loosely in a more modern parlance here is the quaint notion that no crime should go unpunished and that no criminal should benifit from their crimes.
It will be interesting to see if the judge in the Delaware Chancery Court want’s to be the wolf or the sheep.
The problem at the moment is all those that could start a criminal case for which there now appears to be sufficient cause to investigate are for some reason “Sitting on their thumbs”…
It’s finding the “Why?” answer to that question that should interest every one, especially in the case of the SEC who Musk has had previous run ins with.
As William Shakespeare had one of his characters in Hamlet[1] observe to another (Horatio),
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”
That as the tale unfolds ventures into madness and destruction.
[1] The Shakespearean play “Hamlet” is considered on of the finest examples of the imagery of it’s time. And is perhaps all the more remarkable because all plays of the time were subject to a very capricious approvals process. The now well known phrase indicating rottenness in the state of Denmark, puts an “honest face” on the theme portrayed. In that in every act and nearly every scene in Hamlet it has images of fetid and noisome disease deftly woven into the tale. With the delights of bodies redolent with diseases of the blood, pleurisy, and more obvious pustules, ulcers, and gangrenous portents.
JonKnowsNothing • September 16, 2022 12:14 AM
@ Clive, @ Ted, SpaceLifeForm, All
re: the wolf or the sheep
The Delaware Chancery Court is a court of contract law. It is not a criminal court and will not rule assertions of/or criminal aspects. They will rule on the contract. What did Musk sign and what does the contract say is included or excluded. That’s all they will rule on.
The other aspects, you have mentioned belong to different agencies and not every agency is going to respond to assertions without proofs needed, unless you are John Durham (see EW), who has been making a great lot of noise and legal filings, etc with No Evidence At All.
There are a number of different legal paths that may yet happen but they are not likely to happen until… Delaware Chancery Court has made a ruling.
Consider:
- If Musk is ordered complete the sale, and now owns Twitter lock-stock-and-barrel, then the SEC actions and Criminal exposures will be applied to him and he will be responsible for remediation.
- The former major investor-owners of Twitter may also have SEC and Criminal exposures.
It is not likely that any criminal or other action will happen until Delaware decides:
- Who Owns Twitter.
Clive Robinson • September 16, 2022 12:52 AM
@ JonKnowsNothing, Ted, SpaceLifeForm,
Re: Wolf or the sheep.
“There are a number of different legal paths that may yet happen but they are not likely to happen until… Delaware Chancery Court has made a ruling.”
Which is the wrong way to do things.
In many jurisdictions a breach of a public duty (criminal act) takes precedence over a breach of a private duty (tort). Because in the general case it causes “least harm”.
There is actually no dispute as to who owns Twitter, the current share holders do, not Elon Musk as the sale is still only an “offer” and has not “compleated”.
The two principles of,
1, Criminals should not profit
2, Least harm
Say that a potential “compleation” should be stayed untill the question of criminality is resolved.
Under the argument of,
“If Musk is ordered complete the sale, and now owns Twitter lock-stock-and-barrel, then the SEC actions and Criminal exposures will be applied to him and he will be responsible for remediation.”
Effectively makes a non criminal who has brought the criminality to light, not just pay for a criminals actions, but live the sentance, which totaly defies the notion of “Natural Justice”.
I think not even Shakespeare’s Denmark was that fetid and festering.
JonKnowsNothing • September 16, 2022 8:23 AM
@ Clive @Ted, SpaceLifeForm,
re: Which is the wrong way to do things.
It is, for better or worse, the way things are playing out atm.
For a more egregious variation you might want to wade through the issues regarding the stash of classified, national security documents, found in a closet at MaL.
The judge in this criminal case has made some interesting rulings preventing LEAs from looking at the documents and more recently giving the ORIGINAL documents to a 3d party reviewer (not copies of).
It would appear, that in the near term, the judge intends to return some or all the documents to the possession of FPOTUS before any criminal evaluations can be initiated. One of the current rulings is the LEAs may not continue to evaluate if anything illegal has been done. The general public assumption is YES there has been or maybe something illegal, but according to the judge, LEAs don’t get to even check if that is so.
While, reading the analysis (1), it’s clear that the only recourse to these rulings will be via an appeal. That appeal (level 1) isn’t going to go far, so a second one will be needed (level 2).
The connecting dots:
- Things don’t always go in a logical order
- Things don’t always happen in Ship Shape Bristol Fashion.
If they did, Musk would never have made his move against Twitter at all. He’s one of those folks that you cannot tell anything to or give counter-view advice. Getting that sort of funding and backing lined up isn’t done with a single phone call. Some folks must have thought he could pull it off and put their money on the line for it.
A MSM report indicated that all the funding is still there. It hasn’t vaporize yet. It’s waiting on the Delaware Chancery Court to determine who owns the bank account.
re: Shareholder Ownership… don’t be silly… not in this context and not if Musk owns 100% of the company. The offer is to buy out ALL outstanding shares.
It would be expected that after the buyout, a new flotation of stock would hit the market, rather than keeping Twitter privately held.
===
1) EW has been tracking this legal issue and the impacts of this judge’s rulings.
ht tps ://www.emptywheel. net/
(url fractured)
SpaceLifeForm • September 16, 2022 5:40 PM
@ JonKnowsNothing, Ted, Clive, ALL
Tilting at Windmills
This is probably not the Windmill that Twiiter wants to Tilt at.
AIVD is a sharp group.
A small Dutch town took Twitter to court on Friday to demand the social media company take down all messages relating to a supposed ring of Satan-worshipping paedophiles alleged to have been active in the town in the 1980s.
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Wannabe techguy • September 14, 2022 8:26 AM
I haven’t heard of this guy, but I’m not surprised. They attack the messenger instead of proving he’s wrong. Nothing new here.