Legal Schnauzer passes 4 million page views and reaches its 13th anniversary, two major milestones in our effort to unmask legal and political corruption

 

 Legal Schnauzer recently reached two milestones, and I never dreamed we would approach either one. First, we passed 4 million page views. Then, we reached the blog's 13th anniversary.

Both are pretty neat when you consider that I started this little enterprise with the idea that it probably would last a year or so.

Along the way, we have . . .

* Been named among the top 50 law blogs in North America, the only truly independent blog on the list. All the others are connected to law firms, law schools, legal associations, media groups, or public-affairs organizations.

* Played a lead role in the ousting of corrupt political figures, such as Alabama "Luv Guv" Robert Bentley and his mistress "Home Wrecky Becky" Caldwell Mason, plus former U.S. Judge Mark Fuller. We played a supporting role in the investigative journalism that led to the conviction of former House Speaker Mike Hubbard. Most recently, we played a supporting role in the journalism that apparently led to the retirement of Jefferson County Probate Judge Alan King and the surprise resignation of U.S. Attorney Jay Town -- with Ban Balch playing a lead role on both stories.


* Perhaps more than any other news site in Alabama, we've exposed the hypocrisy of "family values" conservatives, reporting on the extramarital activities and financial shenanigans involving U.S. Sen. Luther Strange and Jessica Medeiros Garrison; former GOP Gov. Robert Bentley, and the fully nude, gay-porn photographs of U.S. Judge Bill Pryor,

* On a story that has international implications, we've reported on former Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his history of corrupt actions dating back more than 20 years in Alabama.Substantial evidence suggests Sessions was in the middle of the KremlinGate scandal, which should surprise no one who knows about Sessions' background in "The Heart of Dixie, including his ties to the scandal-plagued Balch Bingham law firm.

When we gave birth to Legal Schnauzer back in the George W. Bush era, we did not have many other muckraking  enterprises in the Alabama blogosphere. I'm pleased to report that we have some excellent company these days. Of particular note is banbalch.com, which came on the scene roughly four years ago and has become a highly influential blog in a relatively short time. Publisher K.B Forbes. is an aggressive investigator, with a colorful writing style, and we suspect that has made Ban Balch must reading for many in the Birmingham legal community.

As for our milestones, they start with our first post, which was titled "Is 'Your Honor' Really Honorable?" and published on June 3, 2007. Some 4,164 posts later, we are still cranking out the kind of investigative journalism that is found at very few news outlets in Alabama, or anywhere else.

We're not certain when we passed 4 million page views, but the current number from the primary statistics service that we use (as I write this) is at 4,339,434. Our all-time unique visits are at roughly 3  million.

For reasons I don't fully understand, our second stat service (which is Google based) provides significantly different numbers. It has our all-time page views at 8.4 million, which means we passed 4 million there a long time ago. I didn't sign up for the first stat service until I had been blogging for several months, while the second one is attached to the blogging platform itself, and that might explain part of the difference. But on a daily basis, the Google-based counter provides a number that is roughly twice that of  the independent counter.

Never have figured out why that happens. I like the Google numbers better, but I tend to look at the independent numbers as the official count for Legal Schnauzer.

The numbers show that our readership has steadily grown. After starting the blog on June 3, 2007, we reached 1 million page views on or about July 15, 2011. We reached 2 million page views on or about February 25, 2015. We' published a post about hitting 3 million page views on July 5, 2017.  This post, about passing 4 million comes on Nov. 11, 2020.

That means it took a little more than 4 years to reach 1 million, another 3 1/2 years to reach 2 million, another 2 1/2 years to reach 3 million, and another 3 years to reach 4 million. That indicates there is a serious appetite for the kind of journalism we produce at Legal Schnauzer -- and I would say that's a good thing, especially given that we have been in an era of public corruption unlike anything this country ever has seen. And much of it likely has ties to Alabama.

Legal Schnauzer clearly has made an impact, largely because of readers who follow and support us, and sources who help inform us. Regular readers know that our kind of unbridled journalism comes with a price, especially in red states like Alabama and Missouri, where corruption flows like a river.

In October 2013, I was kidnapped by "law enforcement" from inside our home in Birmingham and tossed in jail for five months. In essence, I was "arrested for blogging," reporting on the gross corruption that only recently has caught the attention of the state's somnolent mainstream press. In summer 2014, forced from our home by a wrongful foreclosure, Carol and I landed in Springfield, Missouri, where I grew up. In September 2015, we were the targets of an unlawful eviction, which included cops pointing assault rifles at my head and shattering Carol's left arm so severely that it required trauma surgery.

It seems clear that both of these events were attempts to shut down Legal Schnauzer. But we are still here, and our readership is growing. The thugs have failed, in the face of devoted, intelligent, and thoughtful readers.

For your gracious support, we offer our most sincere thanks. And we invite you to stick around for the next 4 million page views.

On a final note, we reached one other milestone recently. On May 31, 2020, we had 65,199 page views -- a one-day record for the blog. The next day, June1, 2020, we had 59,163 page views -- for a two-day total of  124,362, another record.

Did Balch Bingham and Verizon resort to a fake deposition to stonewall discovery in lawsuit over apparent attempted theft of Burt Newsome's practice?

Burt Newsome

A deposition at the heart of a lawsuit over Balch Bingham's alleged conspiracy to steal the lucrative collections practice of Birmingham solo attorney Burt Newsome shows signs of being a hoax, according to a new report at the Web site banbalch.com.

How could a deposition be a hoax? K.B. Forbes, publisher of banbalchcom, lays out the peculiar circumstances that point to possible discovery fraud in this instance. One of the most suspicious factors involves the deponent's resistance to answering any question that would reveal his personal-identifying characteristics. (The deposition is embedded at the end of this post.)

Why would Balch and its affiliates want to create a phony deposition? Newsome's legal team determined that conspirators likely used a Birmingham-based phone number -- (205) 410-1494 -- to communicate about the conspiracy, perhaps via prepaid "burner" phones. If the deposition was a hoax, it likely was designed to stonewall Newsome's efforts via discovery to unearth communications among individuals who were trying to ruin him professionally.

The deponent, a Verizon Wireless employee named "Jason Forman," testified that (205) 410-1494 was a router switch, and to his knowledge, had no ties to burner phones. But consider the odd circumstances surrounding the deposition, which leave a reasonable person wondering if the deponent really was a Verizon employee named Jason Forman. One oddity? Forman identified himself as a custodian of records at Verizon but denied having any expertise about the technology behind cell-phone numbers. Forbes provides background on the deposition:

And Balch Bingham almost got away with it.

Hitting the panic button after Newsome’s legal team linked all the co-conspirators to a single wireless phone number in 2017, Balch Bingham and their stooges put into a play what many believe was a phony, staged deposition in July of 2017 allegedly with Verizon’s top experts.

Balch attempted to take a Verizon burner cell phone and magically turn it into a “router switch.”

And the embattled law firm appears to have used all their political and legal connections to prevent Newsome from showing Balch and the co-conspirators had allegedly perjured themselves when they consistently declared they did not know each other.

What about specifics that point to possible discovery fraud? Forbes provides them:

We learned recently that the alleged phony, baloney deposition with Verizon on July 31, 2017 was done via computer video conferencing; yet no video recording of the deposition is available.

The alleged expert Jason Forman was no expert on routing switches or telephony. He simply processed subpoenas for 14 years at Verizon.

And the individual who gave the deposition: Was he really who he said he was? Was he an actor?

Also consider the recent revelation that Jay Town (U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama), who was captured in photos meeting with Alabama Power CEO Mark Crosswhite in an apparent effort to rig the summer 2018 North Birmingham Superfund bribery trial, has ties to Verizon Wireless and Balch Bingham. Here is how we desribed it in a recent post, based on Forbes original reporting:

We . . . have questioned the legitimacy of the deposition. Was it a real or staged event? Highly unusual, the deposition with Verizon did not take place at their large corporate campus.

Instead, this deposition supposedly took place at a Regus Center (a rent by the hour office space facility) in Bedminster, New Jersey, less than 10 miles from Verizon’s Corporate Headquarters located in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

And what law firm represents Verizon regularly? McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney and Carpenter in Morristown, New Jersey, just one mile away from Verizon’s Corporate Headquarters.

And who worked for McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney and Carpenter before his career as a prosecutor?

Jay E. Town.

Pulling in all their weight to crush Newsome, we suspect Balch (and/or their sister-wife Alabama Power) appears to have reached out to Town for his assistance in July of 2017, a tour de force.

Forbes provides more insights in yesterday's banbalch.com post:

Reading the deposition, you can see the affair was a farce, pure fiction.

Why would Jay E. Town be tied to such a half-baked deposition? He was in the process of being confirmed in the U.S. Senate and we believe a phone call or two were made. Who was Balch’s biggest stooge at the time? U.S Senator Luther Strange.

We remind our readers that a staged event is of no surprise.

Alabama Power’s sister-wife Balch Bingham gave birth to a fake AstroTurf campaign in the North Birmingham Bribery Scandal. The use of actors by electric utility companies and their consultants was exposed in 2018. And Alabama had a legendary story of actors portraying themselves as tree-hugging environmentalists in 2013 so they could smear and eventually oust a Public Service Commission member in 2014.

In our almost two decades of advocacy work, we have never, ever seen such an extreme miscarriage of justice as we have seen done against Burt Newsome, a father of four children, who allegedly was wrongly targeted, falsely arrested, and defamed by Balch Bingham.

Town should have let the FBI probe the trampling of the civil liberties and due process of an innocent man; instead Town appears to have looked the other way for the sake of his friends: the Siamese twins of Alabama, Balch Bingham and Alabama Power.

If Town has an ounce of integrity left in his body, he should hand the Newsome Conspiracy Case off to the Public Integrity Unit of the FBI in Washington, D.C.

That brings us back to "Jason Forman," the guy who stonewalled in the Newsome deposition. Was he legitimate or was he an "actor," providing information that had little connection to reality? The deposition tells us this, for sure: "Jason Forman" was determined not to provide any personal information that could be used to confirm his identity.


(To be continued)

Shadowy facial-recognition company Clearview AI, with ties to Alabama Republican operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison, reports "intruder" stole client list

Jessica Medeiros Garrison at a gambling expo in Las Vegas.

 A controversial facial-recognition company, which has Alabama connections, said yesterday an "intruder" stole its entire client list, according to a report at The Daily Beast. It's not clear how the intruder gained access, if the data was stolen digitally or in some other fashion.

Birmingham-based GOP operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison serves as vice president of public affairs for Clearview AI, which has been pitching its services to law-enforcement agencies and casino operators, among others. Garrison is the one-time campaign manager and mistress for former U.S. Sen. (R-AL) and Alabama attorney general Luther Strange -- and her social-media presence appears to have gone dark since her ties to Clearview became public.

Reports Betsy Swan at Daily Beast:

A facial-recognition company that contracts with powerful law-enforcement agencies just reported that an intruder stole its entire client list, according to a notification the company sent to its customers.

In the notification, which The Daily Beast reviewed, the startup Clearview AI disclosed to its customers that an intruder “gained unauthorized access” to its list of customers, to the number of user accounts those customers had set up, and to the number of searches its customers have conducted. The notification said the company’s servers were not breached and that there was “no compromise of Clearview’s systems or network.” The company also said it fixed the vulnerability and that the intruder did not obtain any law-enforcement agencies’ search histories.

An attorney for Clearview quickly went into damage-control mode:

Tor Ekeland, an attorney for the company, said Clearview prioritizes security.

“Security is Clearview’s top priority,” he said in a statement provided to The Daily Beast. “Unfortunately, data breaches are part of life in the 21st century. Our servers were never accessed. We patched the flaw, and continue to work to strengthen our security.”

The firm drew national attention when The New York Times ran a front-page story about its work with law-enforcement agencies. The Times reported that the company scraped 3 billion images from the internet, including from Facebook, YouTube, and Venmo. That process violated Facebook’s terms of service, according to the paper. It also created a resource that drew the attention of hundreds of law-enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, according to that report. In a follow-up story, The Times reported that law-enforcement officials have used the tools to identify children who are victims of sexual abuse. One anonymous Canadian law-enforcement official told the paper that Clearview was “the biggest breakthrough in the last decade” for investigations of those crimes.

What could the breach mean for Clearview? That remains unclear:

The notification did not describe the breach as a hack. David Forscey, the managing director of the no-profit Aspen Cybersecurity Group, said the breach is concerning.

“If you’re a law-enforcement agency, it’s a big deal, because you depend on Clearview as a service provider to have good security, and it seems like they don’t,” Forscey said.

Facial-recognition technology—which matches photos of unidentified victims or suspects against enormous databases of photos—has long drawn intense criticism from privacy advocates. They argue it could essentially mean the end of personal privacy, especially given the proliferation of security cameras in public places. Some law-enforcement officials, meanwhile, see it as a tool with enormous potential value.

Jessica Medeiros Garrison, who once trashed Alabama political foes for allegedly taking campaign cash from gambling interests, now cozies up to casino operators in Las Vegas to pitch facial-recognition technology

Jessica Garrison addresses gambling execs in Las Vegas

Alabama GOP operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison is committing acts of political hypocrisy that might make U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blush. No kidding.

What have we learned about Garrison's role as vice president of public affairs for a shadowy facial-recognition company called Clearview AI? For one, the company -- with Garrison as its PR face -- tends to take actions that contradict its public statements. Consider this from a report at BuzzFeed News:

Despite its claim last week that it “exists to help law enforcement agencies,” Clearview has also been working with entities outside of law enforcement. [CEO Hoan] Ton-That told BuzzFeed News on Jan. 23 that Clearview was working with “a handful of private companies who use it for security purposes.” Marketing emails from late last year obtained by BuzzFeed News via a public records request showed the startup aided a Georgia-based bank in a case involving the cashing of fraudulent checks.

[Last October], a company representative was slated to speak at a Las Vegas gambling conference about casinos’ use of facial recognition as a way of "rewarding loyal customers and enforcing necessary bans." Initially, Jessica Medeiros Garrison, whose title was stated on the conference website as Clearview’s vice president of public affairs, was listed on a panel that included the head of surveillance for Las Vegas' Cosmopolitan hotel. Later versions of the conference schedule and Garrison’s bio removed all mentions of Clearview AI. It is unclear if she actually appeared on the panel.

It no longer is unclear if Garrison appeared on the panel. We reported last week on her comments to casino operators at a panel discussion, including a photo of her just to the left of center stage. The evidence is clear that Garrison is pitching facial-recognition technology to gaming executives. Where does hypocrisy enter that picture? This is the same Jessica Medeiros Garrison -- who, while serving as campaign manager and mistress for former Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange -- verbally attacked any opponent who said anything remotely positive about gambling. Consider this from an April 2013 Legal Schnauzer post, which came roughly six months before my "arrest for blogging" in Shelby County:

We know that Strange takes hypocrisy on gambling issues to monumental dimensions. After all, this is the guy who has tried to shut down non-Indian gaming facilities, such as VictoryLand in Macon County and Center Stage Alabama in Houston County, while taking a $100,000 campaign contribution from the Poarch Creek casinos. This also is the guy who used the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) to help obscure the donation via a PAC-to-PAC transfer.

That brings us to Jessica Medeiros Garrison. She made news here last week when we reported on a press release she issued in March 2010, calling for Strange's GOP primary opponent, incumbent AG Troy King, to return any campaign funds he had received from gambling interests. That seems curious--some might say hypocritical--when you consider that Garrison now works for the very organization that helped launder gambling funds for Luther Strange in the same campaign.

What are we talking about? Before we tackle that question, let's see just how worked up Jessica Medeiros Garrison became over Troy King's campaign funding. This is from her press release, and the full release can be viewed at the end of this post:

“Gambling interests have propped up Mr. King's campaigns, back to 2006,” said the Luther Strange campaign manager, Jessica Garrison. “If he sticks to his pledge of returning direct contributions from gambling interests, he needs to return at least $190 thousand. If he gives back all of the contributions he has accepted from PACs which have received money from gambling operators, slot machine manufactures and their lobbyists, King needs to return nearly $400 thousand to keep his public pledge.”

As you can see, Jessica Garrison turned into a virtual hellcat when the subject was Troy King and his alleged ties to gambling. But what about her own ties to gambling -- and those of her long-time political benefactor, Luther Strange? Here is more from our April 2013 post:

Jessica Medeiros Garrison, it seems, tried to hold Troy King to a standard that she was not willing to meet herself.

Garrison now serves in an "of counsel" role with the large, downtown-Birmingham law firm Balch and Bingham. But her primary role seems to be serving as director of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). What is RAGA? It is an affiliate of RSLC, the organization that helped funnel Indian gaming funds to the Luther Strange campaign.

Translation: Jessica Medeiros Garrison called for Troy King to distance himself from any organization that dealt with gambling funds; Garrison herself subsequently joined an organization that . . . deals with gambling funds.

Here it is 2020, almost seven years later, and Jessica Garrison is cozying up to gaming interests in the most public of forums -- at the epicenter of American gambling, Las Vegas. When dollar signs are floating before Ms. Garrison's eyeballs, her opposition to gaming seems to drift away.

We can only imagine the guffaws that must draw from Troy King.

Evidence that Jay Town rigged Superfund trial to favor Alabama Power raises questions about his protection of Richard Shelby, Jeff Sessions, and Luther Strange

Jay Town and Mark Crosswhite

Reports that federal prosecutor Jay Town met with Alabama Power CEO Mark Crosswhite before the North Birmingham Superfund bribery trial in summer 2018 -- and, in fact, took steps to ensure power-company officials were protected from prosecution, even scrutiny -- raises a profound question: Did Town's protective efforts extend beyond the power company to prominent political figures who have helped bolster his career?

By prominent political figures, we mean Richard Shelby, Jeff Sessions, and Luther Strange.All three were connected to the Superfund scandal but managed to escape with hardly a scuff mark on their reputations. Did Town make sure that happened? Well, let's consider the power-company angle to this story.

Were Crosswhite's discussions with Town fruitful, essentially making sure Alabama Power would be a non-entity at the trial? The answer appears to be yes, according to a report from banbalch.com, titled "Secret Deal? Alabama Power was “Unmentionable” During Corruption Trial":

During the criminal trial of Balch and Bingham partner Joel I. Gilbert and Drummond executive David Roberson in July of 2018, criminal defense attorneys were allegedly instructed not to mention Alabama Power or their ties to the money laundering entity Alliance for Jobs and the Economy (AJE) without first clearing it with Alabama Power’s criminal attorney.

If you think that emits a foul odor, consider these news items that surfaced well before the trial began and essentially presaged that something fishy was afoot:

* Alabama assistant DA, Jay Town, tapes a 2016 campaign ad for U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby

Is Jay Town a brazen political animal? Consider evidence that he purchased his federal position from Richard Shelby, as outlined in this report from al.com:

An Alabama assistant district attorney taped an ad for the re-election campaign of Sen. Richard Shelby that aired during Monday night's College Football Playoff national championship game.

Madison County assistant DA Jay Town, identified in the commercial as a former major in the United States Marine Corps, spoke in the commercial about Islamic terrorists and how Shelby is keeping watch over President Obama.

"We have radical Islamic terrorists killing people all over the world," Town said in the ad. "And President Obama keeps talking sweet to them, doesn't want to offend them. Where's the sense in that?"

Later in the commercial, Town said, "We have another year to put up with Obama. But thank God we have Richard Shelby standing over him, trying to keep him in line."

Can we say "political pandering"? Jay Town clearly knows that game.


* Watchdog group calls for Jay Town's recusal from Superfund case because of ties to politicos

In August 2017, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) noted Town's conflicts related to the bribery scandal and released a letter that called for him to step down from the case: The reason? Town's ties to certain Alabama political figures. From the letter:

On June 22, 2017, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Alabama, under the leadership of an acting U.S. Attorney, publicly announced an ongoing public corruption investigation that involves the law firm Balch Bingham, the coal company Drummond, and their alleged role in bribing a state legislator in Alabama to block the expansion of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site in Birmingham. That state legislator has admitted to taking bribes from Balch and Drummond.

POGO’s reason for calling upon you to recuse yourself is that three key officials who are your political allies and supported your appointment as U.S. Attorney—Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Senator Luther Strange, and Senator Richard Shelby—all have deep political, financial, or personal ties to Balch and Drummond. Furthermore, Senator Strange has been linked to the bribery scandal.

What about details on Town's connections to Sessions, Strange, and Shelby? POGO provides them:

In Alabama, there have been public allegations that Senator Strange was present when bribes were offered related to the Birmingham Superfund site (Senator Strange disputes these allegations). As Alabama Attorney General, Senator Strange filed letters with the EPA in October 2014 and January 2015 declaring that the state would not provide any funding for the cleanup of the Birmingham Superfund site, located in a poor African American neighborhood. The Drummond Co. donated $25,000 to his campaign two weeks before the first letter in October 2014 and another $25,000 a month after the second letter in January 2015. A POGO report provides further details.

You twice advised Senator Strange in political campaigns. He subsequently supported your nomination for U.S. Attorney. Senator Strange is now alleged to be involved in a bribery scandal under investigation by the office of which you are now in charge.

Another public supporter of your nomination as U.S. Attorney is Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Balch and Drummond were, respectively, Senator Sessions second and third largest sources of campaign funding during his Senate career—and through their political action committees and employees have contributed an approximate total of $300,000 to his campaigns since the late 1990s.

As you may be aware, several Balch attorneys have worked in Senator Sessions’ office through the years. Currently, his high-profile deputy —Jeffrey H. Wood, the acting Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division—was a Balch partner up until he joined the Justice Department the day President Trump was inaugurated. Mr. Wood has recused himself from any matter involving Balch and has specifically listed the Superfund site in Birmingham in his recusal list. You should follow Mr. Wood’s lead and recuse yourself as well. We have also requested that Attorney General Sessions recuse himself.

Finally, Senator Richard Shelby, another principal sponsor of your nomination as U.S. Attorney, and for whom you appeared in a television campaign commercial in 2016, is a longtime recipient of campaign money from Balch and Drummond. According to public records, Senator Shelby has received approximately $110,000 from Balch and $155,500 from Drummond over his last three election cycles (1999-2016).

Bottom line: Jay Town was compromised up to his eyeballs in the Superfund case, and no one took calls for his recusal seriously? Is that because Town was committed to protecting his political benefactors, as he was to protecting Alabama Power?

From our vantage point, the answer appears to be yes.

Jessica Medeiros Garrison, an Alabama GOP operative tied to Luther Strange, might get caught in a storm created by shadowy facial-recognition company

Alabama GOP operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison could be a target of a U.S. Senate grilling in the wake of reports about her involvement with a shadowy facial-recognition company that raises constitutional questions about privacy. Garrison is listed as the primary customer contact for Clearview AI, a startup that reportedly has pitched its services to more than 600 law-enforcement agencies.

Garrison, the one-time campaign manager and mistress for former Alabama attorney general Luther Strange, apparently has made her social-media presence go dark following a 1/18/20 New York Times report about disturbing issues surrounding Clearview. In addition to Congressional scrutiny, Clearview faces a class-action lawsuit, along with demands from at least one social-media giant to cease using its online images.

Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) sent a letter last week to Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That, asking for information about a number of prickly issues related to facial-recognition. From a report at cnet.com:

Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts issued an open letter Thursday demanding answers from the creator of a controversial facial recognition app used by US law enforcement. The letter to the CEO of Clearview AI, Hoan Ton-That, follows a New York Times investigation into the software company and its app, which can identify people by comparing their photo to a database of pictures scraped from social media and other sites.

In the letter, Markey requests information from Clearview, including a full list of any entities and law enforcement agencies currently using the technology, as well as details on any past security breaches and on Clearview's employee access privileges. Markey also asks if Clearview's technology is able to recognize whether the biometric information uploaded to its systems points to children under the age of 13.

"Any technology with the ability to collect and analyze individuals' biometric information has alarming potential to impinge on the public's civil liberties and privacy," Markey wrote in his letter to Ton-That. "Clearview's product appears to pose particularly chilling privacy risks, and I am deeply concerned that it is capable of fundamentally dismantling Americans' expectation that they can move, assemble, or simply appear in public without being identified."

If Clearview makes a serious attempt to respond to Markey's queries, could the letter wind up on Garrison's desk? Given that she is listed as the company's primary contact with the public, the answer likely is yes.  Clearview touts its technology as a way to fight crime, but Markey suggests it could help facilitate crime. From a report at mediapost.com:

Markey also warns that the technology could be “weaponized” in “vast and disturbing” ways.

“Using Clearview's technology, a criminal could easily find out where someone walking down the street lives or works,” he writes. “Widespread use of your technology could facilitate dangerous behavior and could effectively destroy individuals' ability to go about their daily lives anonymously.”

As for other issues now facing Clearview . . .

* Twitter says, "Stop scraping our site for images"

Twitter sent a letter [last] week to the small start-up company, Clearview AI, demanding that it stop taking photos and any other data from the social media website “for any reason” and delete any data that it previously collected, a Twitter spokeswoman said. The cease-and-desist letter, sent [last] Tuesday, accused Clearview of violating Twitter’s policies. . . .

Clearview’s database of photos dwarfs those previously used by law enforcement agencies. Other technology companies capable of building such a tool, like Google, have decided not to because of concerns about the potential for abuse.

* I hear those lawsuits coming, coming 'round the bend . . .

Clearview AI, a start-up that reportedly sells "faceprint" databases to police departments, has been hit with a potential class-action lawsuit.

The company scraped billions of photos from Twitter, Facebook and other companies, used technology to create a faceprint database, then sold that database to police departments across the country, according to an explosive report Sunday in The New York Times.

In a complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in Illinois, state resident David Mutnick accuses Clearview of violating the state's biometric privacy law. That measure, considered one of the strongest in the country, requires companies to obtain consumers' written consent before compiling their faceprints.

Mutnick, who is represented by the Chicago civil rights law firm Loevy and Loevy, is seeking damages and a court order requiring Clearview to not only stop selling the material, but also expunge it.

Mutnick's lawsuit appears to be the first one against Clearview, but it likely won't be the last.

Attorney Jay Edelson, who has brought numerous privacy cases against Silicon Valley businesses, says he also expects to file suit against the company.

“What Clearview is doing is really game changing, in terms of individual autonomy and freedom,” he tells MediaPost. “And it's really scary that a startup -- just a couple of people -- can just change America.”

He adds that his goal would be to obtain a court order shuttering Clearview.

“I do not believe that what they're doing is proper, and we feel very good about being able to explain that to a court,” he says.

Jessica Medeiros Garrison provides an Alabama angle to Clearview AI, a facial-recognition company with the potential to radically alter privacy rights in the U.S.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Sackler family behind Purdue Pharma and OxyContin funneled more than $10 billion of corporate funds into overseas trusts and holding companies, in apparent effort to hide assets from opioid litigation

The family behind Purdue Pharma, makers of OxyContin, funneled more than $10 billion in corporate funds to overseas trusts and holding companies as it faced heightened scrutiny for its role in the opioid crisis, according to a New York Times report. Luther Strange, former U.S. senator and Alabama attorney general, might be in the middle of this, considering reports that he is working with the Sackler family to encourage hasty settlements of opioid litigation.

Have the Sacklers been trying to hide their assets from plaintiffs' attorneys, who have filed lawsuits across the country? That seems to be the primary question, according to a report at The Week:

A new audit commissioned by Purdue Pharma found that during a time when more lawsuits were being filed against Purdue in connection with the opioid crisis, the Sackler family withdrew more than $10 billion from the company.

Members of the Sackler family have owned the company since the 1950s. Purdue's signature product, the opioid OxyContin, was approved in 1995, and the audit shows from 1995 to 2007, the company made $1.32 billion in payments to the family. From 2008 to 2017, when the company was under intense scrutiny for its alleged role in the opioid crisis, Purdue made $10.7 billion in payments. The audit shows that some of the money was moved to trusts and overseas holding companies, The New York Times reports.

More than 2,800 lawsuits have been filed against Purdue, and the Sackler family has said it will give at least $3 billion in cash as part of a settlement to resolve some of the suits filed by state and local governments. Purdue is going through a chapter 11 restructuring, and the report was filed in a New York bankruptcy court . . . .  In a statement, New York Attorney General Letitia James said investigators "must see detailed financial records showing how much the Sacklers profited from the nation's deadly opioid epidemic. We need full transparency into their total assets and must know whether they sheltered them in an effort to protect against creditors and victims."

Here are other compelling questions regarding the Sacklers and opioid litigation: Has the family engaged in tax evasion and bankruptcy fraud? How deeply is Luther Strange involved in possible subterfuge? And is an audit that Purdue Pharma commissioned be believed? We do not yet have clear answers to those questions, but we do have insights from an article at U.S. News:

The Sackler family - owners of Purdue Pharma - transferred more than $10 billion in a decade from the OxyContin maker to its trusts and holding companies, the New York Times reported, citing a new audit commissioned by the drugmaker.

The audit, which was prepared by consulting firm Alix Partners, is likely to add further scrutiny on how much the Sackler family should pay to resolve lawsuits that Purdue Pharma face regarding the U.S. opioid epidemic, The New York Times added.

Lawsuits filed by state and local governments allege Purdue and the Sacklers contributed to a public health crisis that has claimed the lives of nearly 400,000 people since 1999 by aggressively marketing opioids while downplaying their addiction and overdose risks.

The audit showed that from 2008 through 2017, Purdue's payouts to the Sackler family totaled $10.7 billion, the report said. The auditors reported that they did not know how much cash distributed to the Sacklers was actually used to pay taxes.

If the Sacklers are trying to pull a con game, it looks like New York AG Letitia James will not be an easy mark:

Purdue reaped up to $13 billion in profits to the Sackler family, the U.S. states said in October, opposing efforts to halt lawsuits alleging the company and its owners helped fuel the epidemic.

"We are committed to holding the Sacklers responsible for the role they played in fueling the opioid crisis and will not stop fighting until we have achieved justice for victims," James said.

The drugmaker had filed for bankruptcy protection in September to pause thousands of lawsuits while it tries to build support for a proposed settlement it estimates is worth $10 billion.