Casebook
I do not have a law degree from a law school, but I have educated myself extensively about the law, particularly IT law, and not just because the law is a part of almost all IT issues about which I consult and write. I also have extensive legal experience, which is part of the reason for educating myself about the law. I have prosecuted (instituted legal proceedings against) and defended my own cases, not as a lawyer who has passed the bar, but as a pro se litigant.
My early foundational cases led to me consulting on IT law — I realized there is a great need for someone who is both a real IT expert and who also has expertise with the law, particularly IT law — and to this Apscitu Law website in support of this IT law consulting. See the About Apscitu Law page.
Links to the case summaries of my early foundational cases — Dr. Thresher v. Prof. Dr. Lohmann, Dr. Thresher v. Prof. Bedell, Dr. Thresher v. Montana — which include at their end what I learned from each case, are listed here in the Casebook. Note that most cases never actually go to trial in a court before a judge to get an official "Plaintiff v. Defendant" title, but are handled outside court by lawyers.
I still find need to prosecute and defend my own cases and so continue to educate myself about the law. These cases are similarly found in this Casebook. For confidentiality reasons I can not and will not discuss any cases I was/am involved with for my Apscitu Inc. clients, but my cases are indicative of how hard I fight for my clients.
Upcoming Cases
October 22, 2022Dr. Duane Thresher v. Governor of Virginia Ralph Northam, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, Judge David J. Novak, Case 3:20-cv-00307 — A case about disgraced Virginia Governor Ralph Northam violating, with his unconstitutional Coronavirus Executive Orders, plaintiff Dr. Duane Thresher's First Amendment right to peaceably assemble. See Hackers Own The Federal Legal System.
Dr. Thresher v. MIT Lawyer Baletsa — A national security case where the defendant, leftist MIT lawyer Jason Baletsa, hacked email accounts of major defense contractor MIT, including that of plaintiff Dr. Duane Thresher. Related to MIT Lawyers v. Dr. Thresher and Dr. Thresher v. MIT President Reif et MIT Lawyers.
Corruption and Free Speech at Columbia
By Duane Thresher, Ph.D. October 10, 2022
These days, with Twitter and Facebook being hotbeds of censorship, IT and free speech are intimately related. I am an expert in both, although less willingly so for the latter, since I became so through denial of my free speech. My denial occurred at another hotbed of censorship these days, universities, and via a major method for censorship, email. This denial of free speech goes hand in hand with corruption at the universities, as it does for government.
This article, particularly its title, Corruption and Free Speech at Columbia (today is Columbus Day), is with acknowledgement to God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley, who was essentially also writing about corruption and free speech (his book is subtitled The Superstitions of "Academic Freedom") at a university, Yale, while he was a student there, graduating in 1950. (Today Yale denies free speech to the point where some federal judges will no longer accept Yale Law School graduates as law clerks.)
CDC: Clowns of Disease and Data Control
June 12, 2021Since the Coronavirus Scare started with a vengeance, around April Fool's Day 2020, ultimate authority in the United States has been handed over to the unelected officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta Georgia, next to the NIH-funded (National Institutes of Health) Yerkes National Primate Research Center, where they experiment on primates (humans are primates). Presidential and gubernatorial executive orders, which are already of questionable constitutionality since they are not mentioned there, about coronavirus restrictions state that Americans have to do whatever the CDC says, even if it contradicts, as it invariably does, what the Constitution's Bill of Rights says federal and state (under the 14th Amendment) governments can not do. See for example
Banned-For-Life Trader and Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget Using Fake News for Stock Price Manipulation?
By Duane Thresher, Ph.D. May 5, 2021
After I wrote IT Reporting: Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel with a Fake Facebook Data Breach, I wondered why a major media news outlet like Business Insider would publish fake news about Facebook and risk a multi-million dollar libel lawsuit that Facebook could easily win. Having written Stock Market Crash Deja Vu: Reddit Violates Securities Exchange Act earlier this year, the answer came to mind: Business Insider planned to make at least that much by short selling Facebook stock and driving its price down with the fake news. I then proceeded to mail a complaint of this illegal (Title 15 of U.S. Code, § 78i(a)(2)) stock price manipulation to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), with copies mailed to Facebook and Business Insider. This SEC complaint is particularly important because it has a bearing on the federal government's current ridiculously-weak anti-monopoly case against Facebook: Federal Trade Commission v. Facebook Inc., U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Case No. 1:20-cv-03590. After mailing this SEC complaint, I was investigating who else at Business Insider should have their records, particularly emails, subpoenaed to look for evidence of the crime. I discovered that the founder, editor-in-chief, and CEO of Business Insider, Henry Blodget, had been convicted by the SEC of essentially the same securities fraud of stock price manipulation by fake news, been fined $4 million, and been banned for life from the securities industry. Thumbing his nose at and taunting the SEC, Blodget then founded Business Insider, which is the perfect cover for continuing this illegal stock price manipulation.
Federal Judiciary Reacts To Hackers: Evidence Tampering OK, Exposing NSA Surveillance Not
By Duane Thresher, Ph.D. March 17, 2021
As I showed in Hackers Own The Federal Legal System, the federal judicial system has been taken over by hackers and the federal judiciary has admitted to this and reacted. Their reaction were orders on Highly Sensitive Documents (HSDs) reworded from a directive by the same IT incompetent agency — the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (AO), particularly its director appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court — that allowed itself to be hacked in the first place and is responsible for taking care of all documents (evidence documents and court documents), now all electronic, in the federal judicial system. These orders completely ignore the document tampering — to change court decisions — that will now occur, which was the main focus of Hackers Own The Federal Legal System, and only try to keep confidential the documents, HSDs, they consider important. What the AO considers HSDs that they will really try to protect now and non-HSDs that they will leave to the hackers, since they have been hacked permanently and undetectably, is outrageously self-serving. How the AO plans to keep HSDs confidential, when they already have a procedure for sealed and confidential documents that was hacked, is dangerously IT incompetent.
Hackers Own The Federal Legal System
By Duane Thresher, Ph.D. March 12, 2021
One of the most important implications of The Doomsday Microsoft Government Email Data Breach and Doomsday II: The Massive Microsoft Email Data Breach Sequel is that hackers "own" the U.S. federal legal system, which consists of the legal departments and agencies of the executive branch and the entire judicial branch of the federal government. These organizations all used Microsoft email in some way so had their networks of computers hacked into, permanently and undetectably. The very foundation of the legal system, and what is assumed by it, is that police evidence (usually documents) and court documents have not been tampered with, but hackers can now undetectably tamper with these documents at will since these documents are all digital (a.k.a. electronic) and on computers these days. All judicial decisions are now questionable (including in some of my own cases), as some enterprising defense lawyer will soon point out to his guilty client's advantage. It's far worse than even Equifax Dead: Hacked So Credit Reports Worthless. Additionally, many court documents contain sensitive information that could be used to hurt the people involved and is supposed to be kept confidential, and all this is now available to hackers. The only solution is to go back to paper only documents, mailing them, and physical security for them. This will not only make the legal process more secure, but more fair, as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment right to due process.
Stock Market Crash Deja Vu: Reddit Violates Securities Exchange Act
By Duane Thresher, Ph.D. February 2, 2021
This article is in honor of Groundhog Day, specifically the movie, where the same day, Groundhog Day, February 2nd, kept happening over and over again. In this case though the repeating day was Black Thursday, October 24th, the start of the Stock Market Crash of 1929. And in this case the villain was Reddit, whose modus operandi was illegal price manipulation of GameStop stock, intentionally leading to a short squeeze on important short sellers like hedge funds, which could have resulted in another stock market crash and ensuing depression, particularly during the Coronavirus Scare. In this case, there are no heroes, except perhaps someone who can clearly explain all this, as I do here, since the mainstream media clearly can't.
Announcing The Apscitu Law Website
January 6, 2021Announcing the Apscitu Law website, in support of Apscitu Inc.'s IT law consulting; see Services and Consulting. For more about the website see there the About Apscitu Law page, which also replaces the old Legal page on the Apscitu website. For relevant cases see the Casebook on the Apscitu Law website. The Casebook includes the early foundational cases that established my (Apscitu Inc. CEO Dr. Duane Thresher's) legal expertise and led to Apscitu Inc.'s IT law consulting and the Apscitu Law website. The Casebook will also include later cases, and describe upcoming cases in a blurb at the top of the listing.
MIT Lawyers v. Dr. Thresher
December 7, 2020MIT Lawyers v. Dr. Thresher was my (Dr. Duane Thresher's) fourth case; see Casebook on the Apscitu Law website. It was intertwined with and led to the cases Dr. Thresher v. MIT President Reif et MIT Lawyers and Dr. Thresher v. MIT Lawyer Baletsa. This case was my first as a defendant and happened after I had started Apscitu in Virginia and had long been an MIT alum.
As much as it hurts me to admit, MIT has dramatically decreased in IT excellence, including security — to the point of incompetence — from when I was getting my B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science there. Like all other universities, they, i.e. non-MIT-alum MIT administrators, have traded off academic excellence — to the point of incompetence — for political correctness, particularly diversity. This incompetence has led to corruption. I cannot help but to try to fight all this, if just in protecting MIT's reputation I protect my own a little. Thus for years I have been fighting MIT about its political correctness, IT incompetence, particularly regarding email and security, and more recently corruption.
Dr. Thresher v. Montana
December 2, 2020Dr. Thresher v. Montana was my (Dr. Duane Thresher's) third foundational case; see IT Law Expertise in my Credentials on the Apscitu website and About Apscitu Law and Casebook on the Apscitu Law website. Actually, it wasn't just one case — living and running a business in Montana led to numerous cases. Montana is perpetually at the top of the list of most corrupt states and this is well-earned. A big part of the reason for this rampant corruption is that Montana is full of incompetents, particularly IT incompetents (but also lawyers, etc.); see Principles of IT Incompetence (IT Hiring: IT Incompetence Breeds Disloyalty and Corruption).
Dr. Thresher v. Prof. Bedell
November 18, 2020Dr. Thresher v. Prof. Bedell was my (Dr. Duane Thresher's) second foundational case; see IT Law Expertise in my Credentials on the Apscitu website and About Apscitu Law and Casebook on the Apscitu Law website. This case started while I was working as a network engineer at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center in Alaska, where I did some research and work on cellular telephony (which itself involves important IT law issues). When I then started my own business, Thresher Networks LLC, in Montana, I continued this cellular telephony research, including buying from Amazon.com a just-published book, Wireless Crash Course — A Real World Perspective, Third Edition, by Paul Bedell, published by McGraw-Hill, Steve Chapman editor. Paul Bedell was/is a professor at DePaul University in Chicago, in the College of Computing and Digital Media, whose dean was/is Dr. David Miller, and used/uses the book in his courses.
Dr. Thresher v. Prof. Dr. Lohmann
November 17, 2020Dr. Thresher v. Prof. Dr. Lohmann was my (Dr. Duane Thresher's) first foundational case; see IT Law Expertise in my Credentials on the Apscitu website and About Apscitu Law and Casebook on the Apscitu Law website. This case was from when I was still in academia, doing research at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Germany. My wife, Dr. Claudia Kubatzki, and I worked for Prof. Dr. Gerrit Lohmann, in his climate modeling group.
Evidence in this case can be found in the article I wrote about it, Corrupt German Climate Science, for my controversial website, RealClimatologists.org (see Climate of Incompetence), particularly in the lawyer email thread referred to in that article.
FBI Hacking Investigation Negligence Lawsuit
By Duane Thresher, Ph.D. February 22, 2018
My family and I, particularly our young daughter, were the victims of not one but two(!) health insurance company data breaches: Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services and Premera Blue Cross. At the time (2013 – 2015) these were two of the worst data breaches ever.
It was officially pretended that identity theft was the only concern from these so only cheap credit monitoring (probably using the now-hacked Equifax) for a couple of years needed to be offered as a remedy. However, child abductors, including pedophiles, find this information invaluable since it includes names, addresses and medical records, which is personal information that greatly aids a child abductor.