Monthly Archives: June 2022

On 18 May 2022, SEBI issued a circular on simplification of procedure and standardization of formats of documents for transmission of securities pursuant to amendments to SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations 2015. In order to enhance ease of dealing in securities markets and with a view to make the transmission process more efficient and investor friendly, the procedure for transmission of securities has been further simplified vide the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) (Fourth Amendment) Regulations, 2022 dated 25 April 2022 (LODR Amendment Regulations). The LODR Amendment Regulations has inter alia enhanced the monetary limits for simplified documentation for transmission of securities, allowed Legal Heirship Certificate or equivalent certificate as one of the acceptable documents for transmission and provided clarification regarding acceptability of Will as one of the valid documents for transmission of securities. Pursuant to the notification of the LODR Amendment Regulations, this Circular is being issued to specify the formats of various documents which are required to be furnished for the processing of transmission of securities. There are various annexures attached to this Circular some of which provide details of the documents required for transmission of securities, operational guidelines for processing investors service request for the purpose of transmission of securities, format of the form to be filed by nominee/claimant(s)/legal heir(s) while requesting transmission of securities, format of the Letter of Confirmation to be issued by RTAs/ Issuer Companies, etc.

The common norms stipulated in SEBI Circular SEBI/HO/MIRSD/MIRSD_RTAMB/P/CIR/2021/655 dated 3 November 2021 and SEBI Circular SEBI/HO/MIRSD/MIRSD_RTAMB/P/CIR/2021/687 dated 14 December 2021 shall be applicable for transmission service requests. The provisions of this Circular shall come into force with immediate effect in supersession of the following circulars:

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Simplification of procedure and standardization of formats of documents for transmission of securities - Lexology

The left has expressed a special hatred for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for decades. Thomas stands for everything our elites hate: free speech, due process, fair elections, and every individual right in the Constitutions Bill of Rights. Paradoxically, the left seems to find this especially galling because he is the descendant of slaves.

But for all these decades, they havent been able to get him. Cue House Speaker Nancy Pelosis show trial masquerading as an investigation of a three-hour protest at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. It was a protest that got out of hand when the Capitol Police took the most peculiar step of opening the Capitol doors wide to the protesters.

And who is the congressional committees scapegoat of choice for the J6 star chamber? Thomass wife, Ginni. Interestingly, PolitiFact concluded that there is no evidence Mrs. Thomas had anything to do with organizing the Jan. 6 protests. So the committee and its media cohorts have been on a propagandistic fishing expedition.

For example, they located some text messages with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in which Thomas expressed concerns about the 2020 electoral process. They dug up emails in which she asked Trump lawyer John Eastman to provide updates on what was going on with election litigation. And so on. Theyll keep trying to cobble together their desired picture. In the end, theyll just make it all up (a specialty of Rep. Adam Schiffs, D-Calif.)

So, since they havent been able to destroy Justice Thomas after years of trying, they hope to get to him through his wife. Its a sickening tactic, one reflecting the worst of totalitarian regimes, including Joseph Stalins Russia and Mao Zedongs China. But the tactic reveals an even deeper goal. They detest anyone who dares defend real freedom. And they cant stand anyone who exercises that freedom.

So watch what they are doing to Ginni Thomas: their disrespect for her private life, their double standards of justice, their shameless smear campaigns. Observe their intent to destroy her husband through her. Watch it. Because it is what they have in mind for you and me and any American who values freedom and a private life.

If youve ever heard Ginni Thomas speak (to the extent the media permits you to really hear her) you can immediately see she is the real deal. If you are a person of good will, you will see a kind-hearted person who strives for fairness and looks for goodness in everyone.

She obviously loves America. She values its constitutional guarantees of individual rights for everybody. There is absolutely no guile in her.

But in the eyes of this congressional witch hunt, Thomass devotion to the American concept of liberty and justice for all is the big crime. Its a concept that leads to the idea of one man, one vote and free speech and real debate all of which run counter to the Democrats self-professed goal of permanent one-party rule.

Everyone needs to understand that if Ginni Thomas has no right to express her opinions and have conversations about those opinions with family, friends, and acquaintances as a private citizen, then neither do you. If she has no right to ask obvious questions in this case questions about election integrity, but it could be about anything else then neither do you. Everything they are trying to pin on Thomas about her activism and possibly influencing her husband or trying to overturn the 2020 election is b-llsh-t.

Everybody has a right to question any election they want. Just as the Democrats in Congress put on non-stop show trials for four years in which they pushed the now-proven bald-faced lie that the 2016 election was stolen, every private citizen has the right to ask questions, especially about weird and unprecedented electoral procedures. Particularly in light of the elites Time magazine admission of how they rigged it, after all.

So if you really want to understand where the J6 hearings are going with their attack on Ginni Thomas, you should see it as a proxy attack on every American citizen. Just look at the scandalous treatment of non-violent J6 defendants who are handled like Soviet-era political prisoners by a now putrefied Department of Justice (DOJ), all with the apparent concurrence of congressional Democrats. Just look at the Stalinist-styled pre-dawn raids being conducted by the Federal Bureau of so-called Investigation. If Congress wasnt so corrupt, wed have an investigation into these heinous, un-American acts.

The Democrat-controlled Congress apparently has contempt for each and every right enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The policy positions they push are all about destroying your private life. Lets check them off, one by one.

They routinely limit your First Amendment rights to freedom of thought, speech, writing, and association under the guise of non-discrimination. As the treatment of J6 protesters shows, you have no right to petition for an address of your grievances. The Second Amendment is now on their chopping block because they dont want you to be able to defend your rights or the people you love.

The Democrats constant attacks on the right to private property and giving license to mobs to harass officials at their homes look like attacks on the Third Amendment. The FBIs middle-of-the-night raids on the homes of citizens like Jeff Clark and James OKeefe and Roger Stone spits in the face of the Fourth Amendment.

Democrats subpoena of Ginni Thomas is a ruse to try to invent testimony against her husband as well as against herself, in violation both of spousal privilege and of the Fifth Amendment. (Or, as Schiff seems to be aiming for: creating the impression of impropriety by publicly airing what spouses talk about in their private lives.)

The DOJ has clearly violated the Sixth Amendment by preventing J6 defendants from having a speedy trial. Many were detained and incarcerated without being charged. This brings us to the Seventh Amendments right to a trial by jury, presumably an impartial jury. It is laughable to presume that any jury pool in the exceedingly leftist District of Columbia would allow a fair trial to any Jan. 6 defendant.

If you follow Julie Kellys superb investigative reporting on the treatment of J6 defendants in the D.C. jail, you should be outraged that the cruel and unusual punishment of defendants including solitary confinement for long periods, beatings, and the withholding of medical treatment for offenses like parading are in direct violation of the Eighth Amendment.

No doubt congressional Democrats view the Ninth Amendment as a total joke since they dont seem to believe Americans should have any individual rights at all. Finally, they hate the Tenth Amendment because it means that you might be able to escape their grasp by regaining your individual rights in a state like Florida governed by Ron DeSantis.

So much for the Bill of Rights. Attacking family members and the private lives of perceived opponents is behavior typical of all totalitarian systems. Ginni Thomas is simply the private citizen whom the committee hopes to parade as an example of what will happen to you (and your families) if you dont conform and comply with their demands.

If you think youll be able to live unmolested by elitists who so routinely abuse their power, think again.

One of the committees key goals is to tamper with the Supreme Court. They want to eliminate a justice who has a non-negotiable respect for due process. But they also hope to make sure his wife, a private citizen, doesnt speak to him without their express permission and surveillance. If they can do that to her, theyre on the road to doing it to every one of us.

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Why The J6 Committee's Attacks On Ginni Thomas Harm Every American - The Federalist

David Simon hates the war on drugs. But he doesnt hate all police. He takes issue with police militarization, but he doesnt have time for slogans. In fact, hell cuss out anything from ACAB on the left to Back the Blue on the right. For him, the solutions to problematic law enforcement, even here in Minneapolis, are more complex than slogan-chanting political action, but not impossible.

A longtime Baltimore Sun crime reporter-turned-author, screenwriter and TV producer, Simon is most known for creating The Wire, a five-season look at how the city dealt with drugs and crime. In 2008, The Atlantic called him The Angriest Man in Television.

With his writing partner and production team, he just pulled off a six-episode HBO series called We Own This City that returns to Baltimore to tell stories of corrupt cops. The work is based on the reporting of Justin Fenton, a former crime reporter at The Sun now with a nonprofit newspaper called The Baltimore Banner. Twin Cities readers will see similarities between Baltimore post-Freddie Gray and Minneapolis post-George Floyd. Among them:

The Reformer talked to Simon about those similarities. Heres his view of what bad law enforcement looks like, what good policing can look like, and what it takes to get there (edited heavily for space):

I cant speak to most demographics of every city or what the crime problems are. Baltimore is a post-industrial, very heavily Rust Belt dynamic, with a very high rate of drug addiction, and its a city that has committed for about 30, 40 years to aggressively pursuing the drug war. So that sort of has colored and affected everything. I dont know if that marries up to the Twin Cities or not, but thats who we are.

I thought it was incredibly overt. The video was a little bit astonishing. How long it went on and how indifferent (Derek Chauvin) was. He seemed to be completely devoid of awareness that he was taking somebodys life or coming close to taking someones life. He doesnt seem to be comprehending. And the inertia of the cops around him was pretty shocking as well. But I mean just how long it went on.

There are moments of police violence that are over very quickly. You might argue from the premise of a cop that an instinctive or impulsive moment resulted in a death or police violence. Six, seven, eight seconds one blow, one battering. When it gets to be minutes thats something Ill always remember the premeditation becomes utterly convincing.

The Freddie Gray thing was very different in that were not quite sure what happened. At a minimum, the Baltimore Police Department had a guy in distress, who had suffered a spinal injury, and they rode him around unattended for 45 minutes in the back of a wagon. So theres definitely a case of negligence there.

The prosecutors looked for video of this van going around west Baltimore to see if they were giving him a rough ride. It doesnt seem so. That was the initial presumption. The more video came in, the more the van seems to be traveling at relatively normal speeds.

Its a little bit more of an enigma than George Floyd. George Floyd theres nothing enigmatic about it at all.

The work slowdown is a pretty remarkable thing. Clearly the arrests nosedived (in Baltimore) and the police stopped getting out of their cars to clear corners or go affect an arrest. They decided fundamentally that they werent going to do that. It was not organized, it was not called for by the union or anything like that, but it clearly happened. And definitively so because the arrests collapsed. And suddenly. I have no way of proving that. I think its incredibly unprofessional on the part of the police to stop doing their jobs and continue to take pay for it.

On the other hand, there is an argument that police were making a point that a lot of people didnt want to contend with, which is this: In Baltimore, its really subtle, but the prosecutor I hate to bring up racial politics, but this is just true the prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby, whose political base is African American and critical for her, politically, she did not want to go into another weekend without delivering some sort of indictment.

They were hoping to in some way mollify the protests. So she charged the death in the back of the wagon. She overcharged it as a second-degree murder there was certainly a negligence case there and possibly manslaughter, I dont know. But she charged it as second-degree depraved heart murder.

And this is sort of the subtle nuance here: The three officers who were involved in the transport were African American. The three who were involved in the arrest the knife arrest, which, whatever else it was, was effectively a legal arrest. Im not saying it was the best police work or that they needed to make that case for a pocketed knife, but they did. They were white. They were white officers who made the arrest.

By charging the Fourth Amendment case criminally which is to say false arrest or they in some way abused his civil liberties and denied his due process by arresting him she got a mixed-race group of defendants. Three and three. Which was important for her politically.

Unfortunately, what that did was, the entire police department watched what she did and said, Wait a second. Its one thing to start debating about what happened to this guy in the back of the van the fact that they werent around for 45 minutes. If youre telling me that even if I make a mistake on a Fourth Amendment case and when I can do a Terry stop (stop and frisk) or when I can detain a suspect

The Supreme Court changes Fourth Amendment stuff every term. They come up with different rules every term. If youre the average cop, you know, the chance of you making an arrest that will be thrown out in court on probable cause is pretty high. Eventually its gonna happen. Some judge is gonna say No, that isnt probable cause. Its not a distinct fine line every time.

And Gray he ran. He looked at the cops and he ran. Now, do I think that should be probable cause that you cant run from a cop without being chased? I dont, but unfortunately the U.S. Supreme Court does. That is reason to pursue and detain. Look up the law, which Mosby, of course, was unwilling to acknowledge.

So these cops, they were gonna beat it in court anyway. It was a legal arrest. But she basically sent a message to the Baltimore Police Department that if you make a mistake, if I decide you made a mistake, even a good faith mistake on probable cause, Im gonna charge you criminally. Im gonna try to put you in jail and take away your pension. And so a lot of cops said, Hey, why am I getting out of my car?

Thats a huge problem and that comes hand-in-glove with having positions empty. They cant fill the post cars, they cant fill the radio cars some nights without having guys work doubles.

So part of it is legitimate in that theyre down so many positions because of the exodus and because its (Baltimore) a poor city and theyre not throwing academy classes through at the rate they used to.

So some of the overtime is legitimate, but a lot of it is overtime fraud In Baltimore, you get paid overtime for a couple of things: Obviously, if you get involved in something and you have to work over, and then also for court pay, meaning youre working (4 p.m. to midnight) and you have to come in at nine in the morning to go to district court on your arrests.

That creates an incentive to do a couple of things, one of which is make a cheap, shitty CDS (controlled dangerous substance) arrest 40 minutes from the end of shift and then make sure you spend two hours processing drugs down at evidence control, processing a prisoner, and youre gonna get paid extra.

Or even better, make a bunch of shitty, meaningless arrests failure to yield, loitering in a drug-free zone, whatever. It doesnt matter whether it goes to court; youre not trying to actually convict anyone of anything. But they all gotta show up in court. And if you fill the days docket, youre gonna get paid for whatever the prosecutor signs your slip for, saying that (the officer) was in court on his cases.

And then if youve arrested so many people on such bullshit, then you get three days, four days, five days (OT). Meanwhile, the guy whos actually working on his post to try to solve whoevers robbing people with a gun, burglarizing churches and he makes one arrest for the month because he actually solved the case, he gets paid for going to court one time.

So theres actually an incentive to do bad police work to get paid more. And thats the overtime demon actually transforming police work into the worst possible thing.

Well, youve got to end the drug war Its not as if police work was devoid of violence or devoid of racism or any of these things. But tellingly, the police department in 1980 and certainly in 1970 was majority-majority white. It was run by white guys, the mayor was white, the power structure was white.

And now the Baltimore department is majority-minority. The command staffs African American and the mayors African American. The power structure is now no longer white, and yet the levels of police violence and corruption and dysfunction are worse. Think about that. I mean, thats probably very different from Minnesota.

Its not that the department of 1970 wasnt capable of considerable police violence against neighborhoods of color and people of color. I know that they were capable of predatory policing.

So we start from a position where of course it was bad. But in 1970, 1977, 1980, all the way through those years, the clearance rate for things like murder, robbery, rape, assault they were at or above the national average. We solved more of our crimes. And thats kind of one thing you want police to do its the one thing that a police department can do for a city is when people hurt people and theres actual crime as opposed to drug warring.

There is a linkage between the clearance rates for felonies and and the rate of crime, and you can point to Boston in 1991, what they did. Its actually been demonstrated that if you lock up the right people for the crimes that matter, you can actually affect the quality of life in your city.

Well, the clearance rate when I was in the homicide unit to write a book in 88 was 71 or 72%, somewhere in there. In the end, and of course, that doesnt mean 72% went to jail. It means like four out of 10 people who committed murder once you shake it out at the courthouse, and rightly so, not everyone should be convicted, there are not guilty verdicts and there are cases that are dropped because of insufficient evidence, but by and large four out of 10 people, if you killed somebody in Baltimore, you saw the inside of a prison cell for some length of time.

Right now, the clearance rate is about 38%. Its probably one in 10 (in jail after committing murder). So the difference is back then you had 230 murders a year in a city of 730,000. Now, we have about about 120,000 less people, and we have 350 murders a year.

Because we trained two generations of cops how not to do the things that solve crime. They cant do retroactive investigation. They cant write a search warrant that doesnt get thrown out. They cant testify on the stand without perjuring themselves. They dont know how to properly interview people. They cant write a f***in report.

What they can do is go up on the street and grab bodies and throw them against the wall and decide whos going to go in the van for the ground stash. Or not even the ground stash for loitering or whatever.

We train them in the policies of mass arrest and drug war, which doesnt fix anything. Not only did it destroy neighborhoods and lives and the people being policed were over-policed brutally it destroyed law enforcement, it raised a generation of cops who cant actually do the f***ing job you need them to do and thats the police department now. Those skill sets dont exist anymore. So the drug war destroyed us.

And I would argue that that is why there was no peace dividend. If you think about the fact that the police department went from being majority white to being majority-minority Black command staff, Black city hall, and yet its worse? It should have gotten better. Instead, racial integration had been achieved in a fundamental way and yet its worse.

And the only thing that can explain that, to my argument, is the mission got worse. Weve committed to a mission that is incredibly destructive and alienating. Everyone has been locked up for something. My own film crew kept getting locked up whenever we finished filming and tried to drive out of the ghetto.

The Fourth Amendment ceased to exist under the last 20, 30 years of the drug war. It just got worse and worse. Until you had this Gun Trace Task Force that created this racially mixed group of officers who had come together to create the perfect predatory machine to just rob the shit out of people under the cover of the drug war.

And until we change that, until we get rid of drug prohibition and return the mission creep that thats created for law enforcement, police reform is doomed.

We have to accept that the drug war has brought us to this point.

How many slogans can I sneer at? All cops are not bastards. I know cops who have done credible and worthy police work that made my city better and werent shit who would go into peoples pockets. I knew guys who were just playing the stat game and didnt care about the people they are policing. Ive known all kinds of cops. All cops are not bastards.

However, the drug war will manufacture more bastards out of young cops than anything Ive ever seen. So theres some truth in what people were feeling. Although the slogan itself is alienating from anybody whos ever known a cop who ever tried to do the job the right way.

I dont believe you can back the blue unequivocally, in any sense if these are the policies that the police are being asked to enforce.

On the other hand, I dont believe in defunding police as an agency. I would certainly love to take away the money they spend on trying to do drug interdiction prosecution and give that to social programming. But Id also like to see the actual investigative, retroactive felony investigation enhanced to get the clearance rates back up to where theres an actual deterrent to violence. Because that, as I said before, that matters.

There was a great experiment done in Boston in 1991 where the police department went around to all their investigative units and they basically asked for police intelligence. Who were the 100 worst badasses in Boston, right? Who are the 100 guys a week that keep showing up in our files, keep showing up in our lineups? But that we cant every time we make a case, the witnesses end up intimidated. Who are the guys basically who keep showing up in case after case of violence and we know their names. Lets make a list and then they went out for those 100 guys, just 100 guys, and they got them on everything from parole violations to weapons violations. They basically targeted the people who were their repeat violent offenders. And they dropped the murder rate by 40%. Did anyone pay attention?

When we did Hamsterdam, we assumed, I mean, obviously, no ones ever tried it. They tried it in Zurich, in Amsterdam and Portugal and theyve had no increase in crime. In areas where you practice this level of tolerance for drug use, it becomes untenable for normal people. You dont want anyone living there. Huge amounts of human degradation. And your overdoses probably do go up, especially during this time of fentanyl.

But youre basically practicing harm reduction. Youre saying, We cant arrest our way out of this. And maybe by putting it all in place, we can direct all of our social services into that quadrant If you had someplace to push it, to practice, not to make some glorious libertarian moment of free love and drug use, but just harm reduction and its never been tried because no politician would dare stand behind them.

When you say progressives, are they white? Do they live in the inner city? Do they live in the area where crimes are occurring? Because let me tell you something, I still know a lot of people who live in east, west Baltimore they do not want to be unpoliced. Thats not what they want.

If you ask them what they want out of their police department, they say they want to not be harassed. They want to get treated with dignity when theyre trying to get from the car to the curb. They want to be respected They want to not be over-policed. They want no predatory police.

And then when you talk to them about whats wrong with their neighborhood and why its unbearable to them, they say Im scared. They want the police to come and lock up the badasses who are shooting people or robbing people or breaking into the houses. Thats what they want. And I am absolutely and firmly convinced progressives arent talking to them.

They want the police to do the job, the only job that police are good at and (criminologist Ernest) Burgess called that taking out the trash. And by that he meant the guys who were hurting other people. Not the guys who are hurting themselves with drugs, not the guys who were selling contraband so somebody could hurt themselves.

But everybody you talk to whos trying to make a life and in the hardest places in Baltimore, they want the police to do the one job they can do. And the police cant do it anymore. They learn to do the wrong f***ing thing.

Change the goddamn mission, and then from there, theres a basis for reform. But thats not satisfying enough to the lefties who want all police vanquished. Invariably, they dont live in these neighborhoods. They just imagine what its like but they dont actually live there. And it doesnt satisfy the people on the right who are convinced every time they read of a drug overdose or drug-related murder that the dysfunction of the drug war has to be applied harder and longer and more brutally. The people in either extreme are f***ing useless. They just are.

See more here:
Creator of 'The Wire' talks to the Reformer about troubled police departments like MPD - Minnesota Reformer

Item 1.01 Entry into a Material Definitive Agreement.

On June 24, 2022, Alaunos Therapeutics, Inc. (the "Company") entered intoAmendment #4 (the "Fourth Amendment") to a Cooperative Research and DevelopmentAgreement, dated January 9, 2017, by and among the National Cancer Institute,the Company and Precigen, Inc., as amended (the "CRADA"). The Fourth Amendment,among other things, extends the term of the CRADA until January 9, 2025.

The foregoing summary of the Fourth Amendment does not purport to be completeand is qualified in its entirety by reference to the full text of the FourthAmendment, a copy of which, subject to any applicable confidential treatment,will be filed as an exhibit to the Company's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q forthe period ended June 30, 2022.

Item 7.01 Regulation FD Disclosure.

On June 27, 2022, the Company issued a press release announcing the entry intothe Fourth Amendment. A copy of the press release is furnished as Exhibit 99.1to this Current Report on Form 8-K and is incorporated herein by reference.

The information contained in this Item 7.01, including Exhibit 99.1, is being"furnished" and shall not be deemed "filed" for purposes of Section 18 of theSecurities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act"), or otherwisesubject to the liability of that Section or Sections 11 and 12(a)(2) of theSecurities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"). The informationcontained in this Item 7.01, including Exhibit 99.1, shall not be incorporatedby reference into any registration statement or other document pursuant to theSecurities Act or into any filing or other document pursuant to the ExchangeAct, except as otherwise expressly stated in any such filing.

Item 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Edgar Online, source Glimpses

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ALAUNOS THERAPEUTICS, INC. : Entry into a Material Definitive Agreement, Regulation FD Disclosure, Financial Statements and Exhibits (form 8-K) -...

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On February 24, 1761, a Boston lawyer named James Otis really went to town. He had been engaged by some Boston merchantswhich is to say, in many cases, smugglersto fight against the Writs of Assistance, which were odious general warrants that allowed agents of the Crown to barge into just about any business and/or dwelling to search for smuggled goods. Otis spoke for five hours.

The heart of Otiss lengthy denunciation of the writs came fairly early on in his presentation. To Otis, granting the unlimited ability to search and seize created tyrants out of citizens. He also made it clear that the writs were contrary in spirit to the oldest precepts of English common law.

Listening in the courtroom, a 26-year-old Boston lawyer named John Adams found that Otiss eloquence lit a fire in him. The moment is immortalized in a mural on the wall of the Massachusetts State House. Somewhere in those five hours were the seeds of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as well as the importance of privacy to the life of that entire document. The concept of privacy was the reason they all fought the damn war in the first place.

All that being said, can folks please stop referring to the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut as having been "about contraception"? Griswold confirmed the existence of a right to privacy within the Constitution. That's everything. It's about marriage. It's about sex. It's about what we read. It's about how we communicate with each other. It's about the limits to search and seizure. It's about medical records and genetic information. It's about libraries and the internet. Its about what we learn and how we learn it. Its all tied in together in a fervent prayer to keep us all safe from, as Thomas Jefferson put it, every form of tyranny over the mind of man. As Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg put it in his Griswold concurrence:

So, if Justice Clarence Thomas has his way, and this Supreme Court of dubious legitimacy decides to reconsider Griswold and all its progenyand I make the odds of that no worse than 50-50a lot more than pills and rubbers and diaphragms are on the line. So is the principle that we are entitled to the public expression of our private thoughts, and in that principle, we have the right to be as safe from intrusion as James Otis said those Boston smugglahmerchants were safe against intrusions into their basements by agents of the Crown. Remember, also, as vigilantism among the populace becomes a vital part of law enforcement, that Otis warned us that giving our fellow citizens that power was to make tyrants of them all. Mr. Madison recognized that fundamental truth when he wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1788:

They all knew. That was why they fought the damn war.

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Griswold Is Not About 'Contraception.' It's About the Right to Privacy. - Esquire

Every year, government agents descend on peoples homes threatening them with huge fines if they do not divulge intimate details about their lives. The American Community Survey (ACS) is sent to about 3.5 million randomly selected Americans every year. It demands personal information such as how many beds, cars and phones the household has. It asks people to disclose their fertility history, sexual orientation, and history of marriage and divorce. It asks about daily commute time to work, detailed work history, and how much a person pays in taxes, rent, mortgage and utility bills.

In 1790, Congress authorized the first census. The law it passed authorized six simple questions about the number of people who lived in each home to ensure congressional representation was accurately apportioned. Interestingly, Congress rejected James Madisons proposal to ask about peoples occupations as a waste of trouble. That first Congress, which was closest in time to when the Constitution was written, rejected the notion that government agents could collect peoples personal information under its power to count the nations population.

Under the Constitution, the Census Bureau has one job: to count the number of people in the country for apportioning congressional seats in the house of representatives. Thats it.

But many people dont realize that the bureau now also conducts other surveys in addition to the decennial census. Most of them are voluntary. For some, the federal government even pays participants. But the American Community Survey is mandatory, and that compulsion makes it constitutionally suspect.

The American Community Survey, which asks more than 100 questions, goes far beyond a simple headcount. If this were a voluntary survey, people would be free to not answer the questions. No consequences would follow. But refusing to answer the ACS carries criminal prosecution and potentially ruinous fines. The Census Bureau acknowledges that threatening people makes many buckle under the pressure and disclose their lifes private details to the government agents. And the bureau doesnt see any problem with that.

We have seen a steady march toward protecting peoples privacy in the United States over the last century. As recently as Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, the Supreme Court has recognized that people have a constitutional right to shield information from disclosure. Meanwhile, the Census Bureau has marched in the opposite direction and ended up with a legal position that is unsustainable under the narrow authority Congress has given it. In short, the bureau believes that it can compel anyone to divulge any information it may be interested in under the threat of criminal charges and fines.

Ordering people to disclose highly personal information, or else pay hefty fines, without suspicion of wrongdoing, without probable cause, or without a warrant, is unconstitutional. Yet the Census Bureau asserts it has authority akin to a general warrant the power to search and seize anyone they choose for any or no reason at all when it randomly selects millions of Americans and orders them to answer the American Community Survey.

The Bill of Rights zealously safeguards the right to privacy. And this is exactly the kind of invasion of privacy that Judge Janice Rogers Brown decried in People v. McKay as the inevitable [revival] of the general warrant and precisely the kind of arbitrary authority which gave rise to the Fourth Amendment.

That is why Maureen Murphy, John Huddleston and thousands of other Americans are fighting the Census Bureaus unwarranted intrusion into their lives. Their pending class-action lawsuit asks the court to settle once and for all that the bureau lacks the authority to compel individuals to answer the American Community Survey. The relevant statute simply does not give the Census Bureau as much power as the bureau thinks it does.

The right to privacy is as American as apple pie or a baseball game on the Fourth of July. Simply put, what the government gets to know about you should be your choice to make. And if a government agent comes to your home asking you intrusive questions without a warrant or probable cause, you should have the undiluted right to tell the agent to take a hike.

Adi Dynar is an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit legal organization that defends Americans liberties when threatened by government overreach and abuse.

Read more:
What the government gets to know about you should be your choice - The Hill

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Jen Patja Howell shared an episode of the Lawfare Podcast in which Benjamin Wittes Wittes sat down on Twitter Spaces with Roger Parloff, Quinta Jurecic, and Molly Reynolds to discuss day four of the Jan. 6 committee hearings:

She alsoshared an episode of the Lawfare Podcast in which Wittes talked with Jurecic, Parloff, and Katie Benner of the New York Times about day five of the Jan. 6 select committee hearings:

Pollard shared a livestream of day four of the Jan. 6 select committee hearings. He also shared a livestream of day five of the Jan. 6 select committee hearings.

Elena Kagan shared an episode of Lawfare No Bull which features audio from the fourth public hearing held by the Jan. 6 select committee:

Bob Bauer argued that presidents seeking reelection can pose unique challenges to democratic elections in situations in which their desire to win can lead to disastrous results.

Daniel Richman discussed the role that the doctrine of willful blindness might have in proving Trumps criminal liability if a case were brought against the former president for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

David Priess shared an episode of Chatter in which Shane Harris sat down with Tim Naftali to discuss the legacy of Watergate in light of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack:

Howell shared an episode of the Lawfare Podcast from the November 2020 archives in which Evelyn Douek and Jurecic sat down with Alex Stamos to discuss the state of election security and the difficulty of countering false election claims:

Robert Chesney and Steve Vladeck shared an episode of the National Security Law Podcast in which they discussed the latest Jan. 6 conspiracy indictment, the Navarro contempt of Congress charge, the lawsuits challenging the Texas and Florida social media content-moderation laws, and more:

Stewart Baker shared an episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast in which he sat down with Amy Gajda to discuss her book, Seek and Hide: The Tangled History of the Right to Privacy:

Baker shared another episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast in which he sat down with Matthew Heiman, Scott Shapiro, and Nick Weaver to discuss the bipartisan effort to transform the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, cryptocurrency firms on the verge of collapse, TikTok, and more:

Herb Lin discussed the functional trade-offs in baked-in cybersecurity in product management.

Susan Landau argued that the EU proposal on combating child sexual abuse material online could present national security problems and relies on technology that does not exist yet.

Steve Bunnell reviewed James E. Bakers The Centaurs Dilemma: National Security Law for the Coming AI Revolution (Brookings Institution, 2020).

Howell shared an episode of the Lawfare Podcast in which Wittes sat down with Asfandyar Mir and Daniel Byman to discuss the current position of al-Qaeda in the world:

Howell also shared an episode of Rational Security in which Alan Rozenshtein, Jurecic, and Scott R. Anderson sat down to discuss the extradition of Julian Assange, Chinese access to TikTok customer data, and Googles potentially sentient LaMDA artificial intelligence program:

Jordan Schneider shared an episode of ChinaTalk in which he sat down with Weijian Shan to discuss Shans personal story of exile during the Cultural Revolution and his view on Chinas economic transformation:

Anoush Baghdassarian analyzed recent cases from the International Court of Justice that Armenia and Azerbaijan each brought against one other for alleged violations of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Max Johnston and Bryce Klehm shared the final episode of Allies, which they discuss the uncertain long-term legal status of Mahnaz, a former member of the Afghan militarys Female Tactical Platoon, and other Afghans who are on parole after coming to the U.S. during the U.S.s withdrawal from Afghanistan:

Matthew Tokson discussed what a recent ruling from the First Circuit means for Fourth Amendment cases concerning the use of telephone pole cameras for surveillance purposes.

Kyleanne Hunter discussed the potential impacts that overturning Roe v. Wade would have on women in uniform.

And Hyemin Han and Katherine Pompilio shared an application for the fall 2022 Lawfare internship.

And that was the week that was.

Link:
The Week That Was: All of Lawfare in One Post - Lawfare - Lawfare

Digital generated image of purple circular helium balloon with bitcoin sign on it exploding against ... [+] grey background visualising stock market crash.

The looming prospect of compliance with the reporting requirements in section 6050I has been a problem for the digital asset industry since the passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (P.L. 117-58) last November.

The requirements pose procedural obstacles and privacy concerns for taxpayers, but the government has an interest in ensuring compliance with the tax laws.

The revised version of section 6050I requires taxpayers engaged in a trade or business to file an information return when they receive $10,000 or more in digital assets in one transaction or two or more related transactions in the course of that trade or business. The information required is the name, address, and tax identification number of the person from whom the assets were received; the amount of the assets; and the date and nature of the transaction. The provision was originally designed for cash transactions.

The brief push for legislative repeal of the crypto-related portions of the infrastructure bill last year never stood a great chance. The new proposal by Sens. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., and Kirsten E. Gillibrand, D-N.Y., includes an instruction to the IRS to write guidance implementing the changes to section 6050I.

The Responsible Financial Innovation Act is crypto- and taxpayer-friendly on the whole, suggesting that at least two senators who are interested enough in ensuring that the digital asset industry has a favorable regulatory environment in the United States to sponsor comprehensive legislation arent looking to repeal the expansion of section 6050I.

That appears to be something of a trend. The Keep Innovation in America Act (H.R. 6006), introduced in November 2021, would have only delayed implementation of the section 6050I reporting requirements until 2026.

But it would have required the IRS and Treasury to study the effects of including digital assets in the scope of the reporting regime, including the effects on the privacy and liberty rights and interests of taxpayers and other persons affected.

Such a comprehensive study of the cryptocurrency industry and possible legislative design ramifications is a good idea.

Also last November, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, introduced S. 3206, which would have repealed the information reporting requirement, along with the change to the definition of broker in section 6045.

HOUSTON, TEXAS - MAY 27: U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaks during the National Rifle Association ... [+] (NRA) annual convention at the George R. Brown Convention Center on May 27, 2022 in Houston, Texas. The annual National Rifle Association comes days after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas which left 19 students and 2 adults dead, with the gunman fatally shot by law enforcement officers. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

He explained that he wanted Congress to study the digital asset industry more carefully before legislating because when it comes to legislating in an area where most Members of this body have very little familiarity of the details, it is highly perilous.

Cruz pointed to the technical difficulty that digital asset industry participants may have in getting the information required under section 6050I, and suggested that aggressive enforcement could decimate the digital asset industry, in a Joint Economic Committee hearing on November 17.

A recent case highlights the pressing need for Congress to be more circumspect in its attempts to regulate both the digital asset industry and the digital privacy of Americans more generally.

Coin Center, along with Dan Carman, Raymond Walsh, and Quiet Industries Corp., filed a suit on June 10 to stop enforcement of the infrastructure bills expansion of section 6050Is reporting requirement for digital assets, arguing that it is facially unconstitutional under the First, Fourth, and Fifth amendments.

In Carman v. Yellen, No. 5:22-cv-00149-KKC (E.D. Ky. 2022), the plaintiffs allege that the requirement would force the disclosure of sensitive information in violation of their reasonable expectations of privacy and their property rights.

The complaint also says that it would threaten to expose the plaintiffs protected associations and thereby chill their expressive activities.

As an example of the breadth of information that the reporting requirements could reveal, the complaint notes that from one [section] 6050I report in 2024, the government could discover that a person donated to a local mosque in 2016, paid for a sons sobriety treatment in 2018, contributed to an unpopular political cause in 2020, and hired a marriage counselor in 2022.

Absent the information reporting, the government typically needs a warrant for a cryptocurrency address to make those types of connections. Extending [section] 6050I to digital assets would not meaningfully assist the IRSs administration of the income tax, the complaint argues.

At the November 2021 JEC hearing, Peter Van Valkenburgh of Coin Center explained that although the Bank Secrecy Act passed constitutional muster because the third parties who bear the reporting requirements hold private information that has been voluntarily given to them for a legitimate business purpose, theres no third party in the section 6050I context.

bitcoin wallet for online cryptocurrency trading

Accordingly, he said the third-party doctrine cannot render a warrant unnecessary for the collection of information such as Social Security numbers. That argument is reflected in the Carman complaint. One of the central stated goals of cryptocurrency is to allow transactions without the intermediary institutions that implicate the third-party doctrine, such as banks and telephone companies, the complaint says.

The Carman plaintiffs first argument is that the reporting requirement constitutes an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Digital asset users have developed and adopted a technology designed to preserve personal agency and protect enhanced privacy in transactions, which entitles them to an enhanced expectation of privacy, the complaint states.

The response to the complaint will likely address the legitimacy of the governments interest in getting the information it seeks about transactions in digital assets. There should be some mechanism to allow the government to enforce the tax and other laws.

How to do that when theres no obvious intermediary from whom to require information reporting on specific transactions is a broader debate that was exemplified last year in the expansive proposal for financial account information reporting.

The Carman complaint cites opinions concerning the privacy implications of various laws, including an opinion from Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. in 1974 that explains, Financial transactions can reveal much about a persons activities, associations and beliefs. At some point, governmental intrusion upon these areas would implicate legitimate expectations of privacy.

The problem is that the justices and judges who wanted to recognize that line werent writing the majority opinions.

The Carman complaint highlights one of the central privacy issues of the digital age in its First Amendment claim based on freedom of association.

The plaintiffs might have difficulty succeeding with this argument in court, because their claim that the inviolability of privacy in associations means that Americans presumptively enjoy a right against reporting mandates is hard to square with the other reporting requirements in the tax code.

They might stand a better chance of finding a sympathetic ear in Congress with their other argument that truly private associations have become the last refuge of Americans fearful of the consequences of engaging in public life.

Part of the challenge here is that financial activities, even in decentralized forms, arent exclusively expressive. Sometimes financial choices are just that business transactions that have no particular First Amendment implications.

Many of them, if exposed, wouldnt reveal expressive associations so much as everyday financial decisions. That could implicate privacy concerns generally, but whether you ordered a book from a huge online retailer or a small local shop doesnt necessarily implicate freedom of association.

The argument is that by forcing disclosure of transactions that arent necessarily expressive, the government could use the information gleaned from them to uncover expressive transactions as well.

Once the government knows how to identify an individual on the public ledger from disclosure of a large transaction, it can find all the smaller transactions too. The trade or business limitation is insufficient because many contributions to advocacy groups would fall within the course of a trade or business, the complaint notes.

The ability to easily produce a full picture of the financial choices of taxpayers because of advances in technology cant be ignored when considering the impact of seemingly limited reporting regimes.

That should now be a universal consideration in the development of reporting requirements, although Congress doesnt seem to be up to speed with the relevant technology.

By highlighting critical modern privacy issues, the complaint provides an opening for their further consideration in the development of reporting regimes. Congress should do its share here, rather than leaving the questions entirely to the courts.

Still, this case will be important to watch because it could offer insight into how the courts might view a proposal like the one from the Biden administration last year to require broad financial account reporting. The contexts are different digital assets versus bank accounts but the arguments about transactional privacy have enough similarities that they could be a preview should that type of proposal be revived.

The Carman complaint notes that the third-party doctrine is restricted to the sharing of information that provides a limited view of a persons affairs, not a detailed mosaic.

In the financial account reporting regime, the $600 threshold for gross inflows and outflows, or even a slightly higher one, would likely have created a situation in which the limited collection of individual information, when aggregated across all accounts and individuals, would have offered a detailed picture.

The plaintiffs have a worthy and serious point about Congresss near-total disregard for individual privacy, but that failure isnt new, and it isnt limited to digital assets.

Protection of digital privacy in the United States is almost entirely absent, leaving those concerns to be addressed by what amounts to a privacy-exploding scheme based on a facade of consent. But the appropriate venue for this broader debate is the legislature.

Go here to see the original:
Tax Information Reporting On Digital Assets Steps Into The Spotlight - Forbes

An image of Eastman appears onscreen during theUnited States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack public hearings. Photo via Getty Images.

Trump-allied attorney John Eastmans ears are probably burning, considering that the House Jan. 6 Select Committee has recently discussed him at length; specifically, theyve questioned witnesses about an allegation that he came up with a completely bonkers and entirely illegal plan to pressure Mike Pence into overturning the election. (Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann testified that he told Eastman his plan was crazy and would lead to violent protests, which he said Eastman essentially shrugged off.)

On Monday, Eastman filed suit in a New Mexico federal court, demanding that the FBI return his cellphone, which he said was seized from him on June 22 in the parking lot of a restaurant in Santa Fe, where he now lives, and where I am from. The resounding response from everyone in northern New Mexico has been twofold: He lives here? and also, more importantly, Which restaurant, though? Through a deranged, time-consuming and Twitter-heavy use of my day, with the aid of family members, Google street view, and, crucially, several friends from high school, I believe I have answered the second question.

Food is a big preoccupation in northern New Mexico, because its the best on earth, and because the choice of where to eat is deeply a deeply political and culturally-specific decision that reveals a lot about the individual. Was Eastman dining at a fancy country club-esque establishment like Quail Run or Las Campanas? Was he out living large at the steakhouse that everyone still calls Steaksmith but is apparently called Bourbon Grill now? Was he eating at the fucking Chick-Fil-A, which only landed in town a few years back? What kind of taste does John Eastman have? Does he even know where the good food is?

Before he was haunting local eateries, Eastman advanced a totally false and obviously bullshit theory of mass voter fraud in a now-infamous memo, where he laid out a step-by-step plan to keep Trump in power, like some kind of hamfisted Scooby Doo villain. In his limited free time, when he has not apparently been trying to subvert democracy and the basic rule of law, he regrettably appears to have moved to Santa Fe. This is not an uncommon problem: weird creeps of national infamy move to New Mexico all the time to be relatively unobserved, like Donald Rumsfeld, who bought a house in Taos, and former Nixon White House Counsel John Ehrlichman, who moved to Santa Fe and grew a beard after serving prison time for his role in Watergate. (His extremely nice daughter taught me piano.)

Public records show that Eastman owns a two-bedroom, two-bath in a relatively nice part of town. Those records indicate that he bought the house in 2003 for a little more than $400,000, and owns another property in Long Beach, CA; Texans and Californians who buy second homes in New Mexico are considered a scourge by locals, and a new legislative proposal would tax their properties at a higher rate. Back in 2008, Eastman also appears to have briefly rented an apartment in a fairly charmless complex on Santa Fes south side, which is very funny, but probably only if youre from here. (Eastman, his attorney, and the Claremont Institute, the conservative think tank where Eastman is a senior fellow, all did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

In a motion filed in New Mexico U.S. District Court on June 27, Eastman claimed that FBI agents approached him on the evening of June 22 while he was leaving a restaurant. Eastman said that he demanded to see a warrant from them, which he claims they only showed it to him after he was frisked and his phone was seized. The motion also appears to be spinning some other kind of conspiracy theory, reading, The federal agents identified themselves as FBI agents, but they appeared to be executing a warrant issued at the behest of the Department of Justices Office of the Inspector General (OIG). It respectfully demands the return of his phonean iPhone Pro 12and that the court order the OIG to destroy all copies of any information that has already been retrieved or copied from the device. It adds, Movant further requests that any access to the cell phone and its information be stayed until he has a full and fair opportunity to assert and protect his Constitutional rights and the privileged communications of his numerous clients.

A video of the phone seizure also aired Monday night on Tucker Carlsons program on Fox News. Tucker, broadcasting from Brazil for some reason, scowled in constipated anguish as Eastman claimed that his Fourth Amendment rights were being trampled upon. This warrant is invalid on its face, Eastman told him, and likened it to a general warrant that the British king issued to just go rummage through somebodys belongings to see if they could find evidence of some crime.

Thats all certainly a lot of words, if not very good ones. But the restaurant thing immediately seized the interest of New Mexicans; Twitter and a Facebook group called Santa Fe Bulletin Board both immediately filled with heated speculation about where Eastman could have been dining.

I texted several family members to ask their thoughts, one of whom was convinced it was probably Quail Run or somewhere else fancy and secluded.

We witnessed a patron carry on endlessly about water the wait staff spilled on her there, the family member offered. It was quite a performance. We decided they were Republicans by virtue of their demonstration of outrage and personal offense.

This was compelling evidence, but it wasnt quite right. I had no choice but to tweet about this. As soon as I did so, I was joined in a Twitter thread by like seven people I know from high school (more specifically, we all used to go to punk shows together at a teen space called Warehouse 21).

Immediately, using the blurry background of the video that aired on Fox News, we began to speculate. Eastman was clearly in a large parking lot, which suggested one of the major artery roads on Santa Fes south side. Chick-Fil-A seemed like a likely contender, because Eastman seems like exactly the kind of guy who would eat there, and, according to Google Street View, the strip mall where its located is one of the only places that seems to have the kind of large parking lot lights on a high pole seen in the background of the video.

I bet it was Chick-Fil-A, my old friend Dave, who I have not seen in like 20 years, tweeted. Other people in the thread disagreed: wouldnt he be eating somewhere nicer, like The Compound, one of Santa Fes nicest restaurants, or at least The Shed, which has a very long wait and appropriately hot chile and incredibly good frozen mocha cake?

Imagine him being perp walked out of that tiny door, my friend Warren tweeted. (The Shed has a very low entryway). In other words, while that was a super funny visual, it couldnt be right; the Shed is also located near the plaza and faces a very narrow street, not a parking lot.

The sticking point for all of us, busily avoiding our jobs and clicking around Google Maps, were the number of trees in the background of the video, along with those big, high, parking lot lights. The density of the trees suggested somewhere near water, I thought, and the size of the parking lot meant it had to be somewhere on the outskirts of town.

What about something over where Annapurna was? suggested Dave, naming a restaurant thats been closed for years at that location, because all of our references are 15 years old, and we too are old. Whats over there now?

This was a good theory; Annapurna was in another strip mall on the other end of town, near the veterans cemetery. But to me, it didnt ring true; that strip mall is home to a natural foods store (Eastman definitely wasnt there), a sushi place (no), and a pho joint (come on).

Nonetheless, we all checked Google Street View again and realized Dave had to be right. I think Dave actually cracked the case, my other old friend Liz tweeted; she attached a side-by-side comparison of the parking lot and a still from the video. The shape of the lights, the angle of the trees, the power line overhead; it was unmistakable.

The only thing that made sense is that Eastman was there. The question remained was where, exactly, in the strip mall he could be eating. Dave suggested Valentinas, a New Mexican restaurant thats open for dinner, and thats significantly less upscale than anywhere wed had in mind, but perhaps an apt choice for someone trying to portray himself a man of the people. Everyone agreed that the tortas are good and that they have fried ice cream. (My friend Liz pointed out that he was parked closer to Kellys Liquors, and perhaps couldve been there instead; but he said he was having dinner, and we have to take him at his word.)

Warren, whod been about to feed his infant child or something less important, raced to the scene. Im here, he tweeted. He checked with Valentinas staff and the sushi restaurant, neither of whom recognized an image of a flustered white man being frisked by the feds. (The pho place was closed.) Warren also reported that a journalist from Outside magazine, clearly snooping on our important Twitter thread, showed up while he was looking.

Eastman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether hed gone to Valentinas and whether he ordered the fried ice cream. Nonetheless, in the impossibly sketchy Trump universe, filled with so many petty, disturbing little mysteries, this one, at least, seems partially solved.

Additional reporting by Warren Langford.

See original here:
Which Santa Fe Restaurant Was Trump Lackey John Eastman Eating At When the FBI Seized His Phone? An Investigation - VICE