[HN Gopher] Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US
___________________________________________________________________
Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US
Author : pseudolus
Score : 98 points
Date : 2021-07-22 16:25 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| rdxm wrote:
| for the amount of money HP flushed on autonomy they could have
| built a real pub cloud offering. Apothoker is worst CEO ever put
| in place by the worst Board ever....one shit-show after
| another...
| advisedwang wrote:
| I'm glad to see white collar crime taken seriously. Its always
| painful to see billion dollar crimes go unpunished.
| colpabar wrote:
| I want to agree, but the problem I have this particular case is
| that it seems that it's only being taken seriously only because
| the affected party is a massive US corporation. The US is going
| after someone from another country because he ripped off a
| bunch of rich people, but still, no one responsible for the
| 2008 financial crisis has been punished.
| nyc_pizzadev wrote:
| Some details here:
|
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-autonomy-cfo-sen...
|
| > The evidence at trial demonstrated that for more than two years
| prior to the sale, Hussain, 55, a citizen and resident of the
| United Kingdom, used sophisticated accounting methods to falsely
| inflate Autonomy's revenues to make it appear Autonomy was
| growing when it really was not. Specifically, Hussain used
| backdated contracts, roundtrips, channel stuffing, and other
| forms of accounting fraud to fraudulently inflate Autonomy's
| publicly-reported revenues by as much as 14.6% in 2009, 17.9% in
| 2010, 21.5% in the first quarter of 2011, and 12.4% in the second
| quarter of 2011.
| bartread wrote:
| > channel stuffing
|
| I'm slightly confused, and forgive my ignorance: how do you
| channel stuff _software_? I mean, granted this is 2009 - 2011,
| but even back then were Autonomy really selling software as a
| physically packaged good, or is there some way that virtual
| goods can be channel stuffed? (E.g., selling a shedload of
| license keys to resellers, many of which remain unsold to end
| users? Would that be something that even applied to the
| software Autonomy made?)
|
| EDIT: Similarly, for roundtripping, doesn't there need to be
| another company or companies involved? Doesn't there have to be
| some collusion? And if so, who are these other parties and why
| aren't we hearing about them?
|
| EDIT 2: This might explain the channel stuffing comment, and
| provide some mechanism for it: "fraudulently concealed from
| investors and market analysts the scale of Autonomy's hardware
| sales".
| nyc_pizzadev wrote:
| I am a bit familiar with Autonomy, but I don't know the exact
| specifics. They were in the software license business, so if
| I were to speculate, they would get a new channel partner and
| then forward them 250 server licenses, book the full revenue
| during that quarter, and then the partner has to sell all the
| licenses. But that could possibly take years. Repeat with a
| handful of fresh partners and you could book a significant
| amount of revenue growth. Given Autonomy had access to huge
| amounts of credit, money could have been fronted and
| exchanged to make these transactions look very legitimate.
|
| The roundtripping is not very clear. Maybe the same thing
| thru one of their acquisition companies?
| boomskats wrote:
| This is a big deal if it's a public company, sale or no sale.
| The ex-CEO of CA served 8 years for seemingly doing a lot
| less[0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35_day_month
| gnufx wrote:
| This was supposed to wait on the verdict in the civil case
| brought by HP(E?) on that sort of thing, which at least seems
| right. The Register covered it in detail, and currently has
| https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/22/mike_lynch_extraditio...
| guiriduro wrote:
| Sounds like something that would potentially be criminal in the
| jurisdiction in which the company operated, and for whom any
| questions of interpretation of accounting as criminal or
| otherwise would be wholly circumscribed: that jurisdiction is
| the UK. Nothing - especially a US-style "plea bargain" of
| trumped up charges threatening long incarceration unless the
| victim pleads 'guilty' to them, akin to torture in the
| worthlessness of any admission or incrimination of others so
| obtained - combined with jurisdictional overreach, this should
| be laughed out of court in the UK.
| freeopinion wrote:
| https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/autonomy
|
| says that Autonomy HQ is in San Francisco, CA.
| cycomanic wrote:
| You have read the article saying the company was sold in
| 2011?
| stormdennis wrote:
| America shouldn't be allowed to extradite and prosecute people
| who have not committed crimes in America. They'd never allow it
| in reverse. Also the justice system there doesn't inspire
| confidence.
| [deleted]
| sjaak wrote:
| You're right of course. But as always. The strong do what they
| can, and the weak suffer what they must.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > America shouldn't be allowed to extradite...
|
| America aren't extraditing him - the UK is extraditing him.
| teh_klev wrote:
| Sure, but a bit nit-picky. The extradition process being
| fought against in court was initiated by the US government.
| acover wrote:
| Edit: ignore me, I didn't know what I was talking about.
|
| Irrelevant information: The us has extradition treaties with
| many countries.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_the_Unite...
| capableweb wrote:
| > You are wrong
|
| What do you mean "wrong"? They expressed an opinion, not a
| fact.
|
| That you shouldn't be able to be extradited to a country you
| have nothing to do with, is something I agree with as well,
| but I wouldn't say it's "true". What is true today is that
| many countries have treaties to allow them to basically
| kidnap citizens of other countries. If you think that's
| good/bad, you should argue for one of those viewpoints, not
| necessarily if it's true/false.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| It does, but the question is whether the US would extradite
| one of its citizens for crimes they'd allegedly committed
| _while in the US_.
|
| I don't see anything on that Wikipedia page that says it
| would.
|
| The more usual case for extradition is for returning
| fugitives who have left the country where they allegedly
| committed the crime.
| acover wrote:
| Sorry, I misunderstood.
|
| > The treaty has been claimed to be one-sided[3] because it
| allows the US to demand extradition of British citizens and
| other nationals for offences committed against US law, even
| though the alleged offence may have been committed in the
| UK by a person living and working in the UK (see for
| example the NatWest Three), and there being no reciprocal
| right; and issues about the level of proof required to
| extradite from the UK to the US versus from the US to the
| UK.[4]
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK-
| US_extradition_treaty_of_...
| anonymousDan wrote:
| I agree. There was a horrendous incident recently in the UK
| where an American woman drove the wrong way up a particular
| road and ran over a teenager. Somehow she was spirited out of
| the country and now the US refuse to extradite her.
| trasz wrote:
| You're talking about Anne Sacoolas. There's more to it: she's
| a spook, and she fled on board of US military plane, lying
| about having diplomatic immunity.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Yes - my understanding is she was the wife of a spoon and
| didn't have diplomatic immunity? I agree perhaps there is
| more to it, but still it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
| argonaut wrote:
| There are conflicting reports on her diplomatic immunity
| and whether she was still employed as a spy (she was
| definitely employed by the US govt at the time, and as a
| spy in the past). So it's not as simple as saying she
| didn't have it or she lied about it. Looks to me like a
| complicated legal matter.
|
| At least the US State Dept position is that she did have
| diplomatic immunity.
| rjsw wrote:
| And if she was still a spy that should have been declared
| to the UK.
| trasz wrote:
| She (and US officials I think?) lied that she was a
| diplomat's wife and thus had immunity. The fact that
| she's herself a spook - and thus didn't have immunity -
| was discovered later, during the trial.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| I stand corrected, thanks.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| For non-native English speakers, spook is vernacular for
| government intelligence agent (spy).
| microtherion wrote:
| ... or a caucasian, or an Asian, or an Afrian-American,
| or an Australian, or a heroin addict:
| https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/a23ap7q
|
| Clearly, the parent comment's interpretation is correct
| in this context. The only other use I've encountered was
| #3, I believe in James Ellroy novels.
| Lendal wrote:
| The article makes it sound like the victim was HP, an American
| company, based in America. Did I misinterpret something?
| trasz wrote:
| It shouldn't matter: jurisdiction depends on where the crime
| was committed, not on alleged victim's nationality.
|
| This only happens one way, with extradition to the US, thanks
| to worldwide bullying.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > jurisdiction depends on where the crime was committed
|
| No, it doesn't. Sovereignty is inherently unlimited.
| Jurisdiction depends on the law of the party seeking to
| exercise it. Bringing someone before the court with
| jurisdiction may sometimes require external cooperation,
| but the terms of that are products of diplomacy; there's no
| hard and fast universal rules.
| toyg wrote:
| This is a maximalist view of sovereignty that happens to
| be common in very few countries on the planet, namely the
| ones not afraid to use violence against anyone stating
| the opposite: the US, China, Russia, and a handful of
| rogue states.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This is a maximalist view of sovereignty that happens
| to be common in very few countries on the planet
|
| Its actually obligatory under treaties of near universal
| acceptance; though of course nations are free (and some
| do) choose not to exercise jurisdiction beyond their
| borders outside of those areas where treaty requires it.
| Though I think the more common choice is to apply
| jurisdiction both to citizens/nationals irregardless of
| location for at least some offenses as well as general
| jurisdiction over national territory.
|
| Its true that some countries, like the US, are more
| inclined than others to assert non-obligatory
| jurisdiction over acts by foreigners on foreign
| territory.
| throwawaycuriou wrote:
| As a US resident, if I rolled a large boulder downhill and
| fatally crushed a small child across the Mexican or
| Canadian border, would I be liable to extradition?
| mjw1007 wrote:
| There have been cases of US citizens literally shooting
| and killing Mexican children over the border, and
| extradition was refused.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernandez_v._Mesa
| hayzeus wrote:
| "Asking for a friend."
| trasz wrote:
| I'm guessing not, as the general rule is that US doesn't
| extradite it's citizens.
| relativ575 wrote:
| The US does extradite its citizens:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/03/02/972784817/2-americans-
| extradi...
| rwmj wrote:
| Are you saying that (alleged) accounting fraud against a
| company based in the US isn't a crime in America?
| ris wrote:
| Has a US company that deals with a Chinese one be considered
| to have committed a crime in China if the Chinese decide they
| have broken one of their laws? And in such a case what are
| peoples feelings about extradition?
| kube-system wrote:
| Usually when countries disagree significantly on law, they
| just don't sign extradition agreements. It takes at least
| two countries to make this decision. The US has not signed
| such an agreement, and thus, it doesn't matter what China
| thinks.
| buran77 wrote:
| > when countries disagree significantly on law, they just
| don't sign extradition agreements
|
| That isn't about "compatibility" of the laws. The US has
| extradition treaties with pretty much all of their allies
| but the conditions are mainly dictated by the US given
| their stronger position.
|
| No country's laws condones war crimes and yet no
| international court even tried prosecuting any case of
| suspected war crimes committed by the US military because
| of things like this [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-
| Members%27_Pr...
| kube-system wrote:
| I'm not talking about disagreements in the minutia of
| law. I'm talking about "disagreement" of law in a broad
| context. Extraditions to the US, even from countries with
| which the US has a treaty, are not always honored.
|
| My point is that it's not a one-way street. Countries
| extradite because they think it's in their best interest.
| buran77 wrote:
| > Countries extradite because they think it's in their
| best interest
|
| Indeed and that was my point. Treaties are signed despite
| significant disagreements in the law, that's not the
| driving factor you made it out to be earlier. The EU and
| the US historically disagreed significantly on things
| like the death penalty or drug related crimes yet the
| extradition treaties were readily signed. But interests
| are better served by avoiding retaliation.
| kube-system wrote:
| There are multiple factors and law is absolutely one.
|
| The fact that the US has the death penalty is a commonly
| cited reason that other countries deny or hesitate to
| extradite.
| chippy wrote:
| having the biggest economy, army, navy and airforce in the
| world means whats allowed is relative to that power
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| I am not sure if you are arguing if that is how it is or how
| it should be.
| Andy_G11 wrote:
| The Due Diligence HP did on Autonomy sounds like an absolute
| shambles if this article is anything to go by:
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/mar/28/hewlett-pac...
|
| 6 hours of cursory 'scrutiny' before they decided to blow PS8bn
| on the acquisition... I wonder if the (now ex-) CEO would be
| interested in buying my house?
|
| And what was the rest of the board doing when the CEO decoded to
| trample on due process to get the deal over the line in a hurry?
|
| Cathie Lesjak, the HP CFO, never even read KPMG's preliminary DD
| report (https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/business/finance-
| strategy/hp...).
|
| Interestingly, the KPMG report itself can be downloaded from the
| above site and I have given it a brief glance (thus surpassing Ms
| Lesjak's pre-purchase attention).
|
| It is pretty clear from the caveats and predicating statements in
| the report (e.g. 'We make no representation for the sufficiency
| of your purposes of the procedures you selected, and those
| procedures will not necessarily disclose all significant matters
| about Target or reveal errors in the underlying information,
| instances of fraud, or illegal acts, if any.') that KPMG was
| saying 'Look, bud - you hired us in a very limited capacity,
| knowing the data was bad: the consequences of this going belly-up
| are gonna be your problem, not ours'. To be fair, this is
| probably par for the course in many transactions.
|
| What is interesting is that the report does look at revenue
| recognition, which is supposedly a major contributor to the
| eventual SNAFU (out by 38%!!! - see
| https://www.itpro.com/strategy/24554/hp-says-autonomy-revenu...).
|
| Page 26 even says 'We understand that your auditors may provide a
| grace period post acquisition to perform a more rigorous analysis
| using the industry accepted calculation methodology.' (Did they
| do this?)
|
| HP was determined to buy without looking under the hood because
| it was afraid it would be pipped to the post by Oracle.
|
| Subsequently, the Serious Fraud Office dropped an investigation
| against Lynch and Hussain (CFO) because of insufficient evidence.
|
| 38% is material enough to not just be a 'to-mah-toe / to-may-toe'
| difference of opinion, so maybe there are grounds for a further
| grilling of Mr Lynch.
|
| However, given the clear incompetence of HP's board and the
| shoddy DD they did, and the fact that the SFO could not find
| grounds to pursue the case, I would have thought that handing
| over a UK citizen to the US when he was at the time of the deal
| managing a UK co listed on the London Stock Exchange seems to
| indicate undue pressure has been brought to bear on the junior
| partner in the 'special relationship'.
|
| I won't have much sympathy for either the incompetent or the
| shady (if this is the case) if they wind up in a relationship
| that has gotten messy, but this does not reflect well on the
| extradition reciprocity of US and UK.
| abz10 wrote:
| The SFO has a habit of not finding sufficient evidence, I
| wouldn't read too much into that other than perhaps they too
| are incompetent. In my view they are also likely corrupt as
| well.
| macmac wrote:
| The US UK extradition treaty is a product of post 9/11 and
| comically imbalanced as persons may be extradited from the UK to
| the US for crimes committed in the UK which would be a crime in
| the US but not the opposite. See further:
| https://www.stokoepartnership.com/bambos-tsiattalou-discusse...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The opposite is true as well.
|
| A US person can be federally charged for violating a foreign
| law while overseas. The example used when I read of this was a
| guy convicted for wrapping lobsters for shipment in Nicaragua
| in wax paper instead of a bag (or something along those lines).
|
| It was very strange because the violation in Nicaragua was a
| misdemeanor, but the US law for committing a crime is a felony.
| Ostrogodsky wrote:
| Maybe I am getting this wrong but that is not the opposite.
|
| I think OP said: An UK citizen can be extradicted from the UK
| to the US just by having done a thing that it is illegal in
| the US but not in the UK.
|
| You said: An US citizen can be charged in the US if he
| committed a crime abroad even if that thing is not typified
| as illegal in the US.
|
| Wake me up when an US citizen is extradicted to the UK
| because he did something perfectly legal in Washington but
| which is considered a crime in London.
| mattnewton wrote:
| That sounds like the lobster seller was charged under the
| notoriously broad Lacy Act, which I have heard most often in
| arguments that is is impossible to be cognizant of everything
| that is illegal in the US, since this law roughly imports
| foreign laws. My understanding is it makes it a federal crime
| to trade in wildlife or plants that are illegal under the
| laws of a state, a Native American tribe, or any foreign law.
|
| But it is limited to trade of plants and animals, not meant
| as a general extradition agreement or to import _all_ foreign
| laws.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacey_Act_of_1900
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| And not just living plants, but also (quite dead) wood and
| products derived from wood, apparently especially if the
| CEO donated to the opposing political party (the GOP):
|
| https://humanevents.com/2014/05/30/the-true-villains-
| behind-...
| woodruffw wrote:
| Apart from being poorly OCR'd, this article espouses a
| conspiracy theory that the actual facts on the ground
| just don't support. Gibson violated U.S. Customs law by
| accepting shipments of wood that they _knew_ were
| mislabeled at the port of entry [1].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson#FWS_raids_&_Lac
| ey_Act_v...
| bsder wrote:
| Everything is always politics ... however ...
|
| Both Martin and Taylor ran far, far away from this
| scheme.
|
| Gibson absolutely deserved the whacking they got.
|
| You can get around these problems in a legal way and be
| somewhat responsible. Taylor, famously, bought all the
| ebony stands in the world and promised to buy _all_ ebony
| at the same price because the local population were
| cutting down rare ebony trees and leaving them to rot if
| they didn 't have black heartwood. This, of course,
| creates a monopoly which is its own problem ... however,
| any solution you come up with has to take into account
| that the locals _will_ destroy the extremely rare ebony
| trees for absurdly small (to us) amounts of money.
|
| You can work within the legal frameworks, and Gibson has
| more than enough staff to be able to comply. Gibson isn't
| some tiny company that unjustly trod by the government.
| Had you or I done this, we would be rotting in jail.
| Gibson merely got a fine and even got its wood back.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Conspiracy theories aside, it has been illegal to import
| many varieties of wood into the U.S. and the EU for many
| years or even decades.
|
| The CEO of Gibson knew that he was illegally importing
| wood, and did it anyway. His comparatively tiny donations
| to the GOP were irrelevant.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| "At one point in the saga, Juszkiewicz was told by
| government agents he could make his problems go away if
| he used foreign labor for manufacturing."
|
| Wow--
|
| (I do get we should not be importing endangered s pieces
| of wood. This seems like someone overreacted? I guess the
| moral of the story is don't play around with the feds?)
| bsder wrote:
| > I do get we should not be importing endangered s pieces
| of wood. This seems like someone overreacted?
|
| Exotic wood is in many ways like conflict diamonds. It
| funds some quite horrible people who will denude a
| country of its exotic wood if allowed--we have seen this
| in action already.
|
| Enforcement is far easier on the US side than on the
| origin side--which is normally some corrupt as hell
| dictatorship with people who are brutally poor.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I tried using Autonomy's NLP product at work in (about) 2001. It
| had good functionality but when I later heard what HP was paying
| for Autonomy, I was flabbergasted at what I thought was a very
| high price for their IP and software. I had no inside information
| of Autonomy except for trying their product, so take my opinions
| with a grain of salt.
| tootie wrote:
| They had a lot of big customers. In the web 1.0 days, Autonomy
| was the de facto search platform for any big enterprise
| project. It was the Oracle of search. Similarly, I did quite of
| projects using the Interwoven suite of products that were
| acquired by Autonomy. The software was really not very
| impressive, but it was functional enough and had loads of deep-
| pocketed customers.
| ffhhj wrote:
| > Mike Lynch sold Autonomy to US computer giant Hewlett Packard
| (HP) for $11bn in 2011.
|
| > He denies allegations that he fraudulently inflated the value
| of Autonomy before the sale.
|
| So the company is actually worth what? Let's say one half, $5
| billion, and HP expects to make how much more? Let's say at least
| twice, $22 billion. That's a large margin. Unless they expected
| to make just $11.5 billion from it.
| abz10 wrote:
| AFAIK it was good old fashioned accounting fraud. Losses booked
| as marketing expenses, lifetime revenue of contracts booked
| immediately, bundling overpriced software with underpriced
| hardware to change the revenue mix to get better valuation
| multiples. The fact that such blatant fraud could be missed for
| so long is an indictment of everyone involved.
| [deleted]
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| Idiotic, the buyer should've payed attention.
| sircambridge wrote:
| omg I worked at a company that licensed Autonomy for like a
| million dollars a year and it was complete garbage lol
| dathinab wrote:
| As far as I can tell US prisons (in generally, not necessary all
| but I think most) are basically a heap of human right violations.
|
| In that context I think extraditing anyone to the US should be
| treated as a human right violation and as such should not be
| done.
|
| And even if we ignore their prisons from a German Law POV a lot
| of their law is fundamentally in conflict with the values
| represented by the constitution and might also be in conflict
| with the human right charter, which at least for Germany (and
| potentially other countries, too) is another reason why
| extradition to the US should not be allowed.
| vizzier wrote:
| I'm not sure that UK prisons are a huge amount higher in
| quality having read news reports about them. Though state
| controlled they're far from being the nordic model of
| rehabilitation.
|
| That said, a similar argument does prevent the UK from
| extraditing anyone accused of a capital crime due to the death
| penalty being banned in the UK.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It seems like the UK certainly imprisons fewer people, which
| can affect the tenor of the conversation.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| > I'm not sure that UK prisons are a huge amount higher in
| quality having read news reports about them.
|
| Not a "huge amount" no. But from what I've read and heard,
| definitely _an_ amount.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Generally the federal prisons are better than state ones. They
| still have solitary though so there are definitely major
| issues.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| If a country does not obey human rights charters I don't
| think we'll send you to one of our good prisons really works,
| because that a prison is good is just a happenstance and
| there is no legal reason why it should continue to be good.
| wil421 wrote:
| He's not going to those kinds of prisons no matter what, if
| anything, he is convicted of.
|
| White collar crimes done by rich people go to white collar
| prisons. If you or I did this on a smaller scale we would
| probably go to regular prison but not a billionaire.
| downandout wrote:
| The kind of prison he goes to will depend on the length of
| his sentence. Federal prisons have a reputation for being
| relatively tame, but this is only true at the minimum
| security level. Inmates with more than 10 years on their
| sentences cannot be placed at minimum security facilities,
| however.
|
| The remainder of the security levels - low, medium, and high
| - are the the kinds of places you see in movies with all of
| the attending violence, sexual assaults, and generally
| nightmarish life.
|
| In the federal system, sentences for fraud are based on
| amount of loss. For an $11 billion fraud, he would be
| sentenced to either life, or hundreds of years in prison -
| and there is no parole in the federal system. That length of
| sentence would require him to be kept at a high or medium
| security facility until his death - natural or otherwise -
| even though his crime was technically white collar.
|
| Basically, if he is extradited to the US, he will never see
| the light of day, and will regularly experience every horror
| that the US prison system is rumored to have everyday for the
| rest of his life until he dies. So deciding to extradite him
| is a really big decision. It's not just a slap on the wrist -
| it's torture until he dies.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > For an $11 billion fraud, he would be sentenced to either
| life, or hundreds of years in prison
|
| Well, none of the charges has a life sentence available, so
| that option is not possible. It does look like the
| statutory maximum for the offenses at issue combined is 280
| years, but I haven't bothered to pull out the sentencing
| guidelines and see if, even, with $11 billion in frauds,
| that's likely without factors not obvious from the charges.
|
| > and will regularly experience every horror that the US
| prison system is rumored to have everyday for the rest of
| his life until he dies.
|
| Well, no, every rumored problem isn't real, and every real
| problem isn't experienced by every prisoner at all (much
| less daily.)
| minikites wrote:
| People harp on China or North Korea being police states but the
| United States incarcerates more people per capita than any
| other nation by a significant margin. The US justice system is
| rife with discrimination and the prison conditions are dire (as
| you point out). People should absolutely not be extradited to
| the USA until this changes.
| mc32 wrote:
| We do incarcerate a lot, however, keep in mind some of it has
| to do with the dismantling of the equally problematic mental
| health institutions beginning in the late sixties.
|
| Lots of people who would better be served in psychiatric
| units are housed in regular prisons.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| You also over-incarcerate black men by a factor of XXX -
| hardly you can use the excuse of lack of psychiatric units
| there.
| mc32 wrote:
| How do you explain Cuba, Grenada, or Maldives?
|
| There are historical factors which contribute to higher
| incarceration rates (poor, lack of opportunity,
| unemployment benefits structures (unreported income does
| not affect eligibility), etc which contribute to higher
| probability of running afoul of criminal law.
|
| Moreover, you can see a marked increase from the '80s on.
| That strongly implies economic factors (in conjunction
| with Clinton's tough on crime agenda).
|
| What precipitates this is the hollowing out of American
| jobs overseas. No longer could a high school graduate
| live on the income afforded by a HS graduate. As people's
| in the lower socio-economic rungs saw decreasing
| purchasing power, few alternatives were available to
| them. Steel Mills closed down, Shoe factories, Clothing,
| the FT cleaning crew was replaced by low wage imported
| labor, etc.
|
| Some of the same reasons are seen in countries with
| populations of poor people. Belarus, Thailand, Bahamas,
| etc.
| NationalPark wrote:
| Those were dismantled for themselves being full of human
| rights violations though.
| munk-a wrote:
| Yea - but dismantling them was the wrong answer. It was
| the easy guiltless answer where everyone could pat
| themselves on the back, but mental health treatment is a
| service that society needs and trying to solve it with
| prisons is just a terrible idea.
|
| The right answer was admitting and addressing those
| terrible abuses and fixing the system.
| eloff wrote:
| You need to drop North Korea from that to make any sense at
| all. Not only do they incarcerate far more people per capita
| than the US, but the conditions make US prison seem like
| paradise. No exaggeration.
|
| Prison in North Korea is much closer in spirit and
| implementation to Nazi concentration camps during the second
| World War, or the Soviet gulags. Many people die within
| months of being sent there.
| minikites wrote:
| >Many people die within months of being sent there.
|
| I take your overall point, but here in the US police just
| execute people on the streets and then face no consequences
| for doing so. I continue to think the comparison fits.
| eloff wrote:
| No. Trying to say they're somehow equivalent is
| whataboutism, it's insulting to the US and demeaning to
| survivors of North Korea. I know the US is not perfect,
| but you can't just go saying it's like North Korea.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Trying to say they 're somehow equivalent is
| whataboutism_
|
| Which is another name for "putting things in perspective"
| and "addressing all bad actors, not singling out one for
| the benefit of the other".
| eloff wrote:
| No. It's another name for tu quoque, a logical fallacy by
| attempting to deflect criticism through pointing out
| hypocrisy. The Soviets used it as their go-to defense for
| their hideous system by pointing to racism, prisons,
| lynching, etc in the US. As if that made their
| shortcomings acceptable.
|
| https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Whataboutism
|
| You can criticize some party or entity all you want, just
| make a logical argument free of fallacies. I don't abide
| using whataboutism to make false equivalencies. The US is
| nothing like North Korea. To compare the two, unless done
| extremely carefully, is insulting to people in the US,
| and demeaning the experience of people in North Korea.
|
| To think of it another way, if you compare working in
| McDonald's to slavery, you're insulting the people that
| work for McDonald's and demeaning the experience of
| survivors of actual slavery.
| jessaustin wrote:
| TFA does not mention DPRK, and this is the only subthread
| on this page that does. So, bringing this totally
| different nation into the discussion is itself
| fallacious.
|
| ps. this is a better "whataboutism" link:
| https://theoutline.com/post/8610/united-states-russia-
| whatab...
| zepto wrote:
| Consider Assange in Belmarsh. For the Uk to rule that Us
| prisons are human rights violations it would have to apply the
| same ruling to itself.
| vmception wrote:
| A US citizen in Norway escaped extradition to US for federal
| prison as the Norwegian top court reached the same conclusion
| plandis wrote:
| Did I miss something? The person in question is a British
| national in the UK being asked to be extradited to the US.
|
| What does Germany have to do with any of this?
| creddit wrote:
| > As far as I can tell US prisons (in generally, not necessary
| all but I think most) are basically a heap of human right
| violations.
|
| Excited to learn about the German prisons that respect human
| rights. The "prisoners" just come and go as they feel?
|
| The whole point of prisons is to take away a human's rights.
| That's like fundamental to the concept of incarceration.
|
| Or are you concerned with US prisons violating _too many_ human
| rights in comparison to German prisons?
| dathinab wrote:
| Prisons are NOT meant to take away your human rights, they
| will take away some of your rights temporary but that's not
| the same.
|
| The main point of prisons is to _temporary_ take away your
| freedom (which is often perceived as on of the most valuable
| rights) as a form of punishment for you crime, but that 's
| where it stops.
|
| You are sentenced to 10 years of prison not 10 years of
| torture, and potential random death.
|
| If your arbitrary put people in solitary confinement, expose
| them to unnecessary risk from other inmates or risk of health
| due to absurd temperatures you are effectively arbitrary non
| lawfully adding additional punishments on top of the prison
| sentence a person has. Which is in direct conflict with what
| a state of law is supposed to be.
|
| I mean lets say you committed a minor crime with a small
| prison sentence of but now you are forced to stay in a room
| which massively increases your chance of dying in the next
| few hours (heat+ heart disease), this means instead of being
| sentenced to 2 weeks of prison you are now sentenced to 2
| weeks of prison + torture + a high chance to it arbitrary
| getting a death sentence.
|
| Furthermore the worse the prison is the harder it gets to
| proper rehabilitate the person afterwards, which gets worse
| in the US due to treatments of ex-convicts. But again your
| sentence was 2 years in prison not 2 years in prison and
| hardly any chance to life a normal life afterwards even if
| you try.
|
| The last point is even worse because it's not just bad for
| the convinced, it's especially bad for the rest of society
| which now has to coop with a increased crime rate as direct
| consequence of how prisons are handled. Which in turn will
| cause more people to be dragged into situations where they
| will commit crimes leading to a vicious crime increasing
| cycle.
|
| There are more then just a few studies which relatively
| clearly show that treating prisoners as imprisoned but still
| human and help with rehabilitation will decrease effective
| crime rates and will in total benefit society, even if it
| might sometimes seem unfair in specific cases.
|
| EDIT: To be clear the temperature is just one easy to
| understand example, but not the only problem and not
| applicable to all prisons. For people not aware of it, during
| very hot days some prisons get so hot that using ventilators
| or water vapor makes the situations worse, e.g. the are blown
| over by the ventilator is so hot that instead of giving your
| body a chance to cool it heats it up further.
| creddit wrote:
| > Prisons are NOT meant to take away your human rights
|
| > The main point of prisons is to temporary take away your
| freedom
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak
| paxys wrote:
| As the article says, the deal was already investigated by the UK
| and they dropped all charges back in 2013. It is weird for the US
| DoJ to pick it up now, obviously on the behest of a large
| American corporation.
| dheera wrote:
| "He denies allegations that he fraudulently inflated the value of
| Autonomy before the sale."
|
| Don't _most_ startup founders fraudulently inflate the value of
| their startups?
|
| "We are going after a 100 billion dollar market"
|
| Yeah right ... only a tiny fraction of that market wants your
| product.
| bhelkey wrote:
| > "We are going after a 100 billion dollar market"
|
| IANAL - That doesn't sound like fraud to me.
|
| A highschool athlete saying 'they are going after attending the
| Olympics' isn't lying. A highschool athlete without Olympic
| experience saying 'they won a gold medal at the Olympics is
| lying.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Frankly I don't think anyone should be extradited to the USA. I
| just have zero confidence in the US legal system.
|
| Prosecutions seem politically motivated. Punishments are
| unreasonably harsh (I suspect to drive plea deals over actual
| trials). The quality of your defence depends entirely on how much
| you have to spend. And there seems to be a weird bias making
| prosecution and conviction of foreigners more likely for no
| reason beyond them being foreign. The US also seems to like
| extradition for people who's crimes didn't even happen in
| America.
|
| This case seems very much to fit that last criteria. If the deal
| was subject to British law, why isn't any accusation of fraud?
|
| It doesn't help that our (I'm a brit) extradition agreement with
| the US seems filled with its own issues (extradition requires no
| evidence and doesn't seem to allow the usual defences). That's
| without getting into the humanity of us prison system.
|
| Edit: Being down voted on HN is really annoying because it won't
| let you reply if your down voted. Even to replies to your
| comment. Thanks for your comments, I'll try and reply tomorrow!
| dontbenebby wrote:
| > The quality of your defence depends entirely on how much you
| have to spend.
|
| I'm not disagreeing but he's quite affluent so no worries
| "mate".
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Yeah, that is true. Maybe he'll get off despite being guilty?
| :)
| analognoise wrote:
| The smiley face makes it sound like you think that's a good
| outcome for fraud?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| No, sorry.
|
| I won't comment on his guilt/innocent. I don't know
| either way.
|
| My smile is bemused/embarrassed that we've reached a
| point where he will go and stand trial in another country
| for an allegation of something that happened here, and
| whether he is found innocent or guilty won't really
| effect my opinion of him because my faith in the system
| is that low.
| analognoise wrote:
| Oh, ok.
|
| That makes more sense; thanks for the clarification.
| creddit wrote:
| > Being down voted on HN is really annoying because it won't
| let you reply if your down voted. Even to replies to your
| comment. Thanks for your comments, I'll try and reply tomorrow!
|
| This is wildly untrue.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| no it isn't
| creddit wrote:
| I have a comment from earlier today that is downvoted to -4
| and I can reply to it and other comments just fine. This
| has always been true for me.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Is it?
|
| I've been rate limited. Its taken me 60min of hitting reply
| to you to get this comment in How come that only happens when
| I have a down voted comment so I just assumed.
|
| Error message: You're posting too fast. Please slow down.
| Thanks.
| fouric wrote:
| The HN software increases the rate limit threshold for
| posters that meet certain criteria that are designed to try
| to catch those not participating in constructive discourse.
| How effective the filters are, I cannot say, but that's the
| intention.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| To be honest, it's miles better than reddit so I can't
| really complain.
| creddit wrote:
| I have the occasional comment that goes negative and it's
| never been an issue whatsoever.
|
| It's possible then that HN has some other criteria that are
| limiting you? Possibly you go negative very often or
| something. I've also not hit a rate limit before either,
| though I rarely comment super densely.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Who knows? There is a page someone put together somewhere
| that I think addresses some of the HN automated rules I
| think but I can't find it quickly.
|
| The point is, being an arsehole is my right and asking
| about it is a hippa violation and my name is Karen and I
| want to speak to the manager! /s
|
| Edit: thinking about it, I have been quite unpopular
| recently as I'm not super on board with big tech being
| evil or monopolies law being the right tool to fix it...
|
| Edit2: I think this is the page I mentioned above
|
| https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
| throwaway4good wrote:
| "Prosecutions seem politically motivated."
|
| Maybe because in the US prosecutors are elected / directly
| appointed by politicians, whereas in Europe they are in
| generally part of a self-selecting career bureaucracy.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > The quality of your defence depends entirely on how much you
| have to spend.
|
| This is true, but Mike Lynch has plenty of money to spend on
| lawyers.
| beebeepka wrote:
| How about Kim Dot-com. Dispatching special forces for a geeky
| fat dude making entertainment execs unhappy by facilitating
| piracy
| OJFord wrote:
| > extradition agreement with the US seems filled with its own
| issues (extradition requires no evidence and doesn't seem to
| allow the usual defences)
|
| Is that bad or unusual? It's no different than being required
| to appear in court in your own country 'without evidence'
| really is it?
|
| IANAL but AIUI extradition just means one country will uphold
| the other's standard of compelling you to appear in its court.
|
| (resp. also serving sentence if tried in absentia.)
| LatteLazy wrote:
| A few thoughts from the top of my head:
|
| * In the uk you'll get police bail for almost all accusations
| (police bail means meaning released from jail, agreeing not
| to contact other people involved and not to leave the
| country). In the US I don't think you get bail, except for
| cash bail? And even then, you cannot go home or go to work,
| you're stuck in the US awaiting trial. Bye bye job. Bye bye
| marriage maybe given how long US trials, appeals, counter
| appeals etc are.
|
| * The US and UK have pretty different justice systems. If you
| were dragged to the UK for trial, you can forget attorney
| client privilege. Or any real challenges to the evidence
| against you. Illegally collected evidence is still admissible
| here and if you confess to your solicitor, he has to plead
| guilty for you and inform the other side.
|
| * Also, there are a lot of things that aren't crimes in one
| country but are in the other. Should you think about English
| law before you take actions in America? What if you're drunk
| in a field with your cow? That's illegal in the uk. Fancy
| coming over to be tried for it?
|
| * the above leads to anothet issue: you can use extradition
| to bypass the constitution. You can be prosecuted for
| critiquing the president right, 1st amendment? Only you can,
| German makes it illegal to criticise foreign leaders, so
| Biden or Trump can ask them to extradite you, and have you
| tried there. Even though you've (presumably) never been to
| Germany. Sound good?
|
| Extradition usually requires some evidence (the same as being
| charged locally). It seems weird the police won't have enough
| to hold me overnight, but I can be bundled onto a flight just
| because.
|
| Extradition usually requires your crime to be committed in
| the place you're going for trial. That's partly to avoid
| stupid laws (ever critisized the king of Thailand? That's a
| capital crime over there) and party to make it clear who
| prosecutes (england prosecutes crimes in England where
| they're our problem, ditto the USA).
|
| Edit: -3? Really?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition#Bars_to_extraditio.
| ..
| jen20 wrote:
| > Is that bad or unusual?
|
| Unusual, I don't know. Bad, yes, absolutely.
| OJFord wrote:
| Why? It's not obvious to me.
| abz10 wrote:
| The Serious Fraud Office has corruption problems; so I wouldn't
| expect much justice out of them at all.
|
| Mike Lynch is the bad guy in this. Autonomy was an intentional
| fraud that was offloaded into HP - with the help of Goldman
| Sachs and Meg Whitman (if my memory serves correctly.) The
| fraud was well known in the small Cambridge tech community as
| their former workers warned others about it. It's hard to
| overstate the effect Autonomy had on the UK tech scene. It
| split my former peers along ethical lines.
|
| As bad as US justice is; in this case it may still be better
| than the UK.
| __coaxialcabal wrote:
| At one point Miles asked Apotheker why he hadn't read
| Autonomy's most recent financial results around the time of
| the deal, asking incredulously: "You didn't have 30 minutes?"
| Apotheker responded: "I was running a $125 billion company,
| sir, and minutes are pretty precious."[1] [1]
| https://www.businessinsider.com/leo-apotheker-
| abandon-11-bil...
| [deleted]
| maverick-iceman wrote:
| What's up with these people seeking refuge in UK and Europe?
|
| They are basically US territory if you are a criminal wanted
| enough.
|
| English speaking people can also basically live everywhere in the
| world given how spoken the language is.
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| > Artificially inflated
|
| Can someone please explain why is this company any different than
| any US company? In my eyes they are all artificially inflated. I
| love Tesla for instance but please P/E ratio of 654.03 isn't that
| the same thing? (it is genuine question)
| hogFeast wrote:
| Because they were fabricating sales numbers, channel stuffing,
| misreporting expenses...Autonomy was a fraud, the numbers
| weren't real, the CFO is already doing time.
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| But how people from HP they have not noticed fraud during due
| diligence process?
| bmsleight_ wrote:
| HP Paid 70& premium on the share price. Bit of a hint HP
| paid too much.
| rwmj wrote:
| HP can be both incompetent and at the same time have missed
| the fraud that it is alleged Autonomy were trying to hide.
| SirSourdough wrote:
| Tesla's P/E is a function of stockholders inflating the stock
| price. The allegation here (by my limited understanding) is
| that Autonomy lied about how much revenue the business was
| actually generating. It's not illegal to have your stock price
| inflated because of demand for the stock, but it is illegal to
| lie in your financial statements.
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| OK but how is that possible? Before you sell a company there
| is a long due diligence process, where all papers and
| everything else is given to inspection, and I can imagine
| team of 10 people lawyers accountants and experts going to
| every, note, paper and even paperclip.
|
| Also isn't rule of market capitalism, if I am the seller I
| can put any price in the product/service I own, if you do not
| like my price you do not have to buy?!
| ekster wrote:
| Even if the paperwork is going to be double checked, it is
| still fraud to lie on it.
| SirSourdough wrote:
| The short answer is that HP didn't identify the fraud when
| they did their due diligence. Just because you look at a
| businesses financials doesn't mean you'll identify fraud
| they are trying to hide.
|
| As far as the seller determining the price, that's true but
| the price they set is set on the basis that they aren't
| lying about what they are selling you.
|
| If someone sells you a pure gold box that turns out to just
| be aluminum wrapped in gold foil, that's fraud even if you
| agreed to pay for the pure gold box. The seller did not
| provide the thing you agreed to pay for. It's the same in
| this case, the seller allegedly lied about what they were
| selling to get HP to agree to an inflated price.
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| That scenario looks fishy to me, even when you buying
| second hand car you do bit of exploration and for buying
| something with price tag of PS11,000,000,000 well you dig
| a bit deeper, and due diligence is not just going to your
| financial statements and what is usually accessibly in UK
| publicly. During that process you dig trough everything,
| bank statements, expenses, salaries, earnings, revenue
| streams ... everything.
|
| Personally, I think it is impossible HP has not seen
| something like that, or they have sent complete idiots to
| do due diligence.
| analognoise wrote:
| Even if they sent idiots to do the DD, if they find out
| later that there was fraud... it's still fraud. You can't
| just yell "No taksey backsies!".
|
| Given the list of sophisticated financial fraud
| mechanisms charged, even if it WAS mismanaged, it was
| still fraud.
| _se wrote:
| I don't think you understand the complexity of this type
| of finance or the sophistication that's possible while
| committing fraud. These things are not necessarily simple
| to detect.
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| Maybe I don't as it must be some very sophisticated fraud
| when checking all in the following list they missed
| something like that.
|
| " Corporate attorneys generally review all the company's
| financial information from the last five years, including
| income statements, balance sheets, cash flow and audit
| reports. Other financial documents that may be reviewed
| include projections, budgets and forecasts for the
| financials of the next five years and assess whether they
| are reasonable. Finally, corporate attorneys generally
| review all credit agreements, debts and contingent
| liabilities. "
|
| https://www.priorilegal.com/deals/mergers-
| acquisitions/manda...
| _se wrote:
| Yes, and the entire point of this type of fraud is to
| deceive this exact process. The fraudster knows what due
| diligence is going to be performed.
| himinlomax wrote:
| > I love Tesla for instance but please P/E ratio of 654.03
| isn't that the same thing? (it is genuine question)
|
| You can't fault Tesla for idiots buying the overpriced stock,
| as long as they don't misrepresent their results.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| This case is about inflated accounting numbers, not the stock
| market's speculation.
| bartread wrote:
| > But Dr Lynch has argued that HP used the allegations to cover
| up its own mismanagement of Autonomy after the 2011 deal.
|
| I have no comment to make on Mike Lynch's guilt or innocence in
| this matter, because I simply don't know enough about him or
| about Autonomy (despite working in an office just across the road
| for 3 years leading up to the sale)[0], but tough to argue that
| HP wasn't mismanaged during this period, and therefore tough to
| assert that this mismanagement wouldn't have extended to
| Autonomy. Could this have made HP easier to dupe, or did they not
| get duped and just do a bad job? It's going to be weird if the
| outcomes of the civil and criminal cases end up disagreeing on
| this point.
|
| And I think whatever the outcome, it reflects badly on HP: if
| he's not guilty then it adds weight to his assertion about
| mismanagement, and if he is guilty then it means they _were_
| duped during DD (and may in addition have mismanaged Autonomy).
| Neither of these is a good look.
|
| _[0] I do know a handful of people who have worked with and for
| Mike Lynch: some of them really rated him, some really don 't.
| It's about what you'd expect for a prominent business executive.
| As I say, I have no basis on which to form any kind of opinion of
| him._
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _tough to argue that HP wasn 't mismanaged during this
| period, and therefore tough to assert that this mismanagement
| wouldn't have extended to Autonomy_
|
| How is this relevant? If you get sold a computer, are delivered
| a turtle, and then kill it because you forgot to feed it, it
| can simultaneously be true that you were (a) incompetent and
| (b) defrauded.
| lumost wrote:
| In the context of DD, it's possible that these items were
| disclosed to HP and HP simply didn't care/think through what
| was going on.
|
| If the actions weren't criminal, but instead the result of a
| CEO/company not using accounting best practices/pushing too
| aggressively then HP may not have a civil or criminal case.
|
| The time that Microsoft failed to acquire Skype's IP comes to
| mind.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > The time that Microsoft failed to acquire Skype's IP
| comes to mind.
|
| Huh, TIL! I had no idea about that: https://www.iam-
| media.com/article/648B260AFA518A71125F0E77C3...
|
| That said, I don't believe that was why Skype lost
| relevance after Microsoft bought them: Microsoft was
| seemingly intent on compromising the Skype UX to promote
| the then-named Windows Live service - and they didn't
| combat the problems with spam on the service - and the ill-
| advised and ultimately reversed decision to force-convert
| Skype accounts into Windows Live accounts in a hamfisted
| way that left me personally with 3 duplicated accounts and
| no easy way of managing them - especially after they
| decreed that Skype will only support 1 account per Windows
| account in their flagship Windows 8-exclusive client and
| remove secondary instances from the legacy client, and the
| list goes on...
|
| ...I'd summarise it as them alienating their own fanbase
| and the tech-thought-leader community, which led to them
| (us?) seeking different platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram,
| Facebook Messenger and Skype quickly becoming irrelevant.
|
| When they relaunched Skype's new desktop client as an
| Electron app I knew they had stopped caring about it -
| because they immediately lost all of the advantages of
| having platform-specific clients, which is especially
| useful for video-conferencing due to the limitations
| imposed by Chromium (which are far better now than they
| were, but still...)
| Closi wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: The Skype brand was critical to
| getting decent uptake in Lync (rebranded as Skype For
| Business) and these users were migrated across to
| Microsoft Teams which has been overwhelmingly popular (at
| least in the UK it's the de-facto conference app).
|
| It's not totally clear to me that Microsoft would
| actually be doing well in the space without the Skype
| aquisition, but considering they bought Skype for 8.5bn
| and Zoom now has a market cap of 100bn my assumption is
| that Teams is valuable and maybe the price was worth
| paying.
| bartread wrote:
| It's relevant to HP and their shareholders, and it's relevant
| because there is an ongoing civil case in the UK, which makes
| this situation on criminal charges in the US more interesting
| and unusual, and finally it's foundational to Mike Lynch's
| argument with HP[0].
|
| It's entirely possible that we might see different outcomes
| in these cases. Maybe a difference in outcome between civil
| and criminal cases is a more common occurrence than I'm aware
| of (certainly O. J. Simpson springs to mind), but it seems
| unusual to me, and especially across international
| boundaries.
|
| _[0] Again, I haven 't followed these goings on that
| carefully, but my impression is he's hewn pretty closely to
| this line of argument throughout._
| arthurcolle wrote:
| This is a hilarious example. I hope I get delivered a turtle
| by accident some day.
| zerocrates wrote:
| I also have no real knowledge about the situation, but it's
| also plausible for the two to be related: that is, you were
| easy to defraud _because_ of your incompetence. Which of
| course doesn 't make the perpetrator any less culpable.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Because nothing is that black and white. As regards the civil
| case you must be able to show harm. If I sell you a house
| with a foundation that is only built to last 10 years and
| then you burn the house down, you can't sure me for damages
| so long as the crummy foundation had nothing to do with the
| house burning down. To win damages you must be able to show
| harm. So the entire civil case hinges on the root of the poor
| performance of the company after purchase.
|
| On the criminal side it's all going to hinge on whether the
| accounting practices rise to the level of fraud. That's
| trickier to nail down than you may think because a certain
| amount of liberty is often taken in trying to project growth,
| future earnings, etc. HP is likely going to present the
| subsidiary's poor performance as evidence that the accounting
| did rise above the level of normal wiggle room. The defense
| will surely attack that argument.
|
| But as long as HP had access to enough of the company's
| finincial documents to identify the accounting practices in
| question it will be hard to prove out and out fraud.
|
| Edit: ENRON is a good example because as clear cut as people
| believe that fraud was, it wasn't so obvious at the time.
| Writing down future contracts as earnings wasn't unheard of.
| They just followed that logic to an unsustainable conclusion.
| Which in the end clearly was fraud but it took hundreds of
| small steps and it's hard to say exactly when it did become
| fraud.
| laumars wrote:
| It's relevant because that's his defence. As cited in the
| article we are discussing.
| orf wrote:
| Extradite the killer of Harry Dunn, Anne Sacoolas first.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| I don't usually like being too political, but as a brit I came
| here to say the same.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-56246511
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| While I think it's unlikely she'll face the justice she
| deserves, at least her intelligence career is likely in
| ruins. It's hard to be an effective spy when most of an
| entire country a) is at least passively aware you exist and
| b) thinks you're a complete piece of shit to the point the
| newspapers would know if you so much as fart. She still
| should be extradited and she still should be in prison, but
| in the whole heap of bullshit that's UK-US extradition
| agreements we should take what comforts we can.
|
| I'm usually quite the Atlanticist but in matters of
| extradition I think we should simply tear up those
| agreements. What's the justice in the US being able to
| extradite autistic teenagers who've never set foot on
| American soil at the behest of MPAA and RIAA human scum, yet
| we can't extradite a literal killer?
| wavefunction wrote:
| Why not extradite both!
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| That's what I was getting at.
| C19is20 wrote:
| Where's the politics?
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| > Where's the politics?
|
| In the seemingly lopsided extradition treaty between the US
| and the UK.
|
| (Which I was hesitant to comment on directly simply because
| we risk veering away from the core focus of HN - which is
| arguably the technology angle of this story rather than
| UK/US extradition policies)
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