Wednesday, April 8, 2020

FDA Fast-Tracks Promising COVID-19 Treatment From Johns Hopkins

From Zero Hedge:

While the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 has dominated headlines for weeks, a new method of treatment developed by Johns Hopkins Hospital has just been given special approval by the FDA to be fast-tracked.
Known as convalescent serum therapy, the antibody-rich blood plasma from COVID-19 survivors is drawn, bagged, and given to critically ill patients.
While the FDA began allowing limited use of the therapy on March 24 for hospitals in Houston and New York City (with an "expanded access program" pending), Johns Hopkins is concurrently developing the therapy with the goal of preventing otherwise healthy front-line medical staff from getting sick. The university is awaiting FDA approval for a second clinical trial on patients who are slightly to moderately ill to see if it can reduce or eliminate COVID-19.
Under the leadership of immunologist Arturo Casadevall, the Johns Hopkins team is collaborating with physicians and scientists around the country to establish a network of at least 40 hospitals and blood banks in 20 states for the collection, isolation, and processing of blood plasma.
People who recover from an infection develop antibodies that circulate in the blood and can neutralize the pathogen. Researchers hope to use the technique to treat critically ill COVID-19 patients and boost the immune systems of health care providers and first responders. Currently there are no proven drug therapies or effective vaccines for treating the novel coronavirus.
"At the end of January, I knew this disease was going to get out of China, and I knew there was a huge history of the use of plasma and serum in the 20th century," says Casadevall, a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of molecular microbiology and immunology and infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and School of Medicine. "This [medical effort] has become a juggernaut… We're racing to deploy this."
Thousands of survivors might soon line up to donate their antibody-rich plasma, according to physicians. But that's only if early promising studies on the therapy done in China are confirmed by U.S. trials that show "dramatic effects and improvements" in patients, according to Tobian. He is optimistic the therapy will do just that. "I absolutely think this could be the best treatment we have for the next few months."
This passive-antibody therapy has been used since the 1890s to combat diseases as wide-ranging as measles, SARS, Ebola, H1N1 flu, and polio—and holds the promise of keeping the virus at bay until a vaccine can be developed. (Current estimates are that a vaccine for emergency use could be available by early 2021.) During the SARS outbreak in 2002–2003, an 80-person trial of convalescent serum in Hong Kong found that people treated with it within two weeks of showing symptoms had a higher chance of being discharged from hospital than did those who weren't treated.
The beauty of the therapy, says Casadevall, is that it involves the well-established—and safe—method of blood donation. Except in this case, survivors' plasma (or serum), which contains the antibody to COVID-19, is separated from red blood cells and transfused into the three categories of recipients: the critically ill as a last-stop "compassionate care" measure; patients who are slightly or moderately ill to keep them out of ICUs and off scarce ventilators, and front-line medical workers to prevent them from getting sick. Nearly a cup of the serum (200 milliliters, or one unit) would be administered to each recipient, according to Tobian, with each donor providing enough serum for up to four patients. (Each donor, depending on body size, can provide two to four units.)
Casadevall had the vision for this treatment. He also had the wisdom not to micromanage his team of doctors, whom he set free to create their own fast-flowing mini-teams. Together, they united with peers around the world in a marathon of selfless, round-the-clock work toward an urgent common goal—to overwhelm and crush the COVID-19 virus. "Looking forward to another day of working with an incredible set of colleagues," tweeted Casadevall in late March. "Day began at 4 a.m. and will go to near midnight." In this process, doctors, researchers, and regulators from as far away as Israel and Ethiopia banded with Hopkins doctors to create treatment protocols, open labs, win regulatory and institutional approvals, identify donors, compile data, and organize and share vital information. The research effort received a welcome boost in late March with a gift of $3 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies and $1 million in funding from the state of Maryland.
"We usually spend a year preparing for the next flu season," says Andy Pekosz, vice chair of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. "What we do for flu in a year, we're trying to do in a month for COVID-19. Our window of acting is a small one." The fast-spreading coronavirus has already killed at least 70,000 people around the world, with nearly 1,300,000 total confirmed cases. Numbers that continue to grow.
From the beginning, Casadevall knew he faced more than a medical problem. Plasma therapy's history was unknown to most people, so he needed to draw public attention to his cause. Realizing a medical journal commentary would reach a limited audience, Casadevall shopped around an editorial that urged the use of convalescent serum. The essay, published in the Feb. 27 edition of The Wall Street Journal, told the story of an ingenious Pottstown, Pennsylvania, doctor who in 1934 arrested a measles outbreak at a boys boarding school by using serum therapy. "A remarkable victory against a highly contagious disease," Casadevall wrote.
Casadevall fired off the essay to dozens of colleagues who encouraged him in his plan to also publish a scholarly paper that conveyed sufficient technical information to prove to the medical community he had done his homework. In four days, he and long-time collaborator Liise-anne Pirofski, head of the infectious diseases department at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, wrote what Casadevall calls "maybe the most important paper in my life"—'The Convalescent Sera Option for Containing COVID-19,' which appeared in the Journal of Clinical Investigation on March 13. Written in the cool, precise language of clinical experts, the paper concluded, "We recommend that institutions consider the emergency use of convalescent sera and begin preparations as soon as possible." But its final sentence carried a sharp and decidedly unscholarly sounding warning—"Time is of the essence."
The result? "Everything took off," says Casadevall. "Its publication coincided with the major increase in cases in the United States. The media jumped on it."
Had it not been for a tropical pet bird whose guano infected its owner in 1995, Casadevall's path might never have crossed with that of infectious disease specialist Shmuel Shoham, an associate professor of medicine at the School of Medicine. "That was how we bonded," recalls Shoham, who hammered out the first protocol for the treatment of potential COVID-19 patients.
Back then Casadevall was at Albert Einstein in the Bronx while Shoham was at Boston University, but thanks to a mutual friend, they co-authored a ground-breaking paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine that was picked up by The New York Times. Their research proved the hitherto unknown link between human fungal illness and "cockatoo poo," as Shoham puts it.
Over the years, their careers took them to different cities and in separate directions, but when Casadevall arrived at Hopkins five years ago, they renewed their friendship and became key collaborators again. In mid-February, when Italy reported mounting cases, Shoham began thinking: "If there's a hole in the boat, it doesn't matter if it's on my side or your side, we're all going down. If this is happening in Italy, there is absolutely no reason why this could not happen in Baltimore." Then he saw a tweet from Casadevall: "Plasma is going to be the solution." At first, Shoham pushed back, saying the therapy hadn't worked on influenza patients. But those patients were too ill, Casadevall replied, and in a flurry of back-and-forth tweets, he won over his colleague to his point of view.
With the virus beginning to rage in the U.S., Casadevall convened a 7:30 a.m. conference call on March 4, five days after his WSJ op-ed appeared, with a group from Hopkins' Division of Infectious Diseases. Shoham hopped on the call while driving to work. "I told them we had to do [something]," Casadevall recalls. "This was something that was just not on the radar screen. There was silence, and I said, 'We're going to need a protocol.'"
Shoham volunteered to write it. Although he typically spends two-thirds of his time with patients, by fortunate happenstance he had few patients on his calendar, and that gave him time to dive into COVID-19. By the next day he had pounded out the bare bones of a protocol to prevent infection by administering the plasma to those who had been exposed. "It was sort of a really messy protocol with highlights like a 'This Space Left Intentionally Blank' place holder," Shoham says. He finished a more detailed, but still rudimentary, draft in time for Casadevall's next conference call a few days later.
Casadevall fired off the protocol to a Mayo Clinic colleague, who converted it into one for the treatment of early-to-moderate disease, which Hopkins doctors further refined and revised in collaboration with Mayo doctors. This pattern of rapid, long-distance collaboration would be repeated endlessly among other doctors for other needs in the days to come.
"All of a sudden, centers all over the country were saying, 'Oh, my God, this is something we can do.' So, then we had big conference calls with dozens of centers," says Shoham, who is now the FDA's principal investigator for the prophylaxis study, which makes him responsible for all execution and oversight of clinical research on that protocol.
The team had to know how to collect donor serum and how to transfuse it. So, pathologist Tobian and his colleague Evan Bloch, an associate professor of medicine, came aboard. Today, Tobian and Bloch help lead the transfusion group. "We get emails every single day from other hospitals on how we start collection, how we work on the regulatory aspects," Tobian says. "And we're in touch with transfusion medicine physicians across the nation numerous times a day." The pace has been "crazy," adds Bloch, a specialist in neglected infectious diseases.
In a sign of these high-tech times, Casadevall has never met either man. "I don't even know what Evan Bloch looks like," he says, "and I talk to him all the time. These men are magnificent. They rise to the occasion." In-person meetings happen but are mostly regarded as "a luxury" they can't afford because they would put people at risk, says Shoham.
To analyze the serum, Casadevall called in Pekosz. Until March, Pekosz, a basic researcher, had not thought he would be so directly involved in such an effort. But after Casadevall shared his plans, Pekosz realized some of his work could support the need to measure antibodies in the blood before transfusions were done.
"It became a whirlwind, a tornado we got swept up in, part of a massive effort to treat patients and make a direct impact on the pandemic," says Pekosz. In late March, Casadevall emailed Pekosz to say Vice Provost for Research Denis Wirtz had provided $250,000 in funding to launch a new lab to assess COVID-19 antibody responses in serum earmarked for the hospital's patients.
Arturo Casadevall
"Arturo said I needed to set up a lab to do this because this may be a really daunting task in terms of the number of patients we want to treat," Pekosz recalls. "At that point, I really understood, 'Wow, this is going to be a beast unto itself.'"
A big piece of Pekosz's job—besides supervising six new lab employees, a staff that may soon double—entails advising other hospitals on how to proceed. "I can't even remember the number of institutions that have contacted me who want to do the same thing. We're trying to work with them to be as close to each other's test results as possible, so we can have consistency across sites."
After Casadevall's initial burst of enthusiasm and organizational action, he confesses there was a moment when things seemed dark. "You realize the magnitude of what you're trying to do, and, in particular, you realize there could be huge regulatory issues," he says. He reminded himself that projects like this had been done by prior generations and in other countries, and with determination, he says, "I never for a minute doubted we could pull it off."
The FDA's approval process is a two-edged sword, according to Shoham, who says one of the biggest issues is the regulatory environment. Seemingly antiquated FDA requirements have sometimes left doctors shaking their heads. A submission of an IND (the application for an investigational new drug) is not official unless it is physically mailed with numerous copies of paperwork. "We could have sent an email [with PDF attachments]," says Tobian, referring to an IND that Hopkins prepared. "Instead we [were] trying to find who can make all these photocopies and send a FedEx package, and everyone's mostly been told they need to be working from home."
Nonetheless, neither he nor Casadevall believes the old-fashioned delivery system slowed the FDA's decisions or their work. "The FDA has an impossible job," Casadevall says. "I would never criticize them. They are working really hard. Their job is safety, and our job is to get this done."
Lysander, the Spartan admiral who conquered Athens in 405 B.C., is Casadevall's hero. "He did something that was unheard of at the time," Casadevall marvels. "He spared the city, and by sparing the city, he preserved Athens.
"To me, my heroes are always humanists—people who do their job, but there is a humane aspect to how they do it," he says. "The greatest thing about being human is the capacity for empathy, the ability to care for others and be optimistic in the worst of times."
Casadevall's team lavishes praise on his leadership. "He is a force of nature," says Shoham. Brilliant, charismatic, enthusiastic, and generous is how Bloch describes him.
"Arturo pulled off what few people could do," Pekosz adds. "He got multiple institutions across the nation to pull together in this project to create the momentum that led the FDA to say, 'We have to do this, because people are moving forward.' There was such a groundswell of enthusiasm for this approach, the FDA had to pay attention to us."
For most of the team, there's been little rest for weeks. When asked how much sleep he's been getting, Bloch replies, "Last night wasn't bad—about four to five hours. It's just continuous work through weekends, through nights." What drives him is partly the worst-case scenario forecasts he reads which he says are "frightening. … You're thinking about the people in the background—the health, social, and economic impacts. Having insight into what is going on can be a little bit stressful."
"There isn't going to be a day off for many, many months," Casadevall says.
People in medicine often think about delayed gratification, according to Shoham, because they never know whether some bit of knowledge they possess today might be needed tomorrow for an unforeseen reason.
"We're not thinking about the next thing," he says. "This is it. This is the one."
Results from the trials in the two New York City hospitals are expected around the end of April. How widely serum therapy is used after that for the time being remains unclear.
"We want now to get the clinical trials done," Casadevall insists. "Compassionate use is going to be available [in the trials]. Convalescent sera is going to be used in the country, there's no question about that. It's already been deployed in Europe. I think the next task is to learn if, when, and how to use it, and for that, we have to do clinical trials."

The Red Cross is seeking people who are fully recovered from COVID-19 and may be able to donate plasma to help current patients with serious or immediately life-threatening COVID-19 infections, or those judged by a health care provider to be at high risk of progression to severe or life-threatening disease. For more information, visit the website of the American Red Cross.

Glancy Law Class Action AOSL

The Legally Troubling Treatment of COVID-19 Meetings as Classified

From JustSecurity.org

During my 30-year career in the Department of Justice, I litigated or supervised a great many cases defending the government’s decisions to classify information.  Most of the cases dealt with records that had a clear connection to national security, intelligence, or sensitive military matters: records about the use of drones in counterterrorism activities, detainees at Guantanamo, and CIA interrogation, even photographs of Osama bin Laden’s body.  While the government and whoever was seeking the records disagreed about whether the information was properly classified (or whether it had been publicly disclosed nonetheless), the connection to national security was obvious.
But there was no obvious connection to national security about the information that we learned last week the Trump Administration has ordered classified.  The White House reportedly ordered the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to conduct meetings concerning the COVID-19 virus in a classified setting.  Given that disseminating timely and accurate information to the public is a key component in any response to a pandemic, classifying discussions about a pandemic unfolding in the United States appears to be unprecedented.  As a former HHS official noted, “it’s not normal to classify discussions about a response to a public health crisis.”
That is not to say that HHS, or its component the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), may never classify information.  One can imagine information (say, the location of virulent pathogens that could be used in a terrorist attack) that HHS and CDC must classify to protect national security.  But from what we know of the COVID-19 meetings, they involve nothing of the sort.  Admittedly, public information is thin.  But we know that the meetings involved the government’s response to the emerging COVID-19 outbreak in the United States.  It appears that the meetings involved the discussion of possible quarantines, since one of the officials barred from a meeting was a legal expert on the validity of quarantines, who then had to be consulted after the meeting.  And the government has not articulated publicly any reason for classification, although one HHS employee said he was told it was because “it had to do with China”—hardly the type of specific justification I could have defended in court.
So: Is there a legal basis for classification of the information in these meetings?  It’s hard to say definitively without more information, but there is reason to doubt that the Trump Administration is acting within the bounds of the law regarding COVID-19 classification.
The Legal Framework
Executive Order 13256 contains detailed procedural and substantive requirements for classification.  Briefly, a “classification authority” must determine that disclosure of the information could be expected to cause damage to national security; the information must fall within a specified list of categories; and the government cannot classify information to hide wrongdoing or avoid embarrassment.
When the government must defend in court its classification decisions—typically in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)—the government receives substantial deference when it asserts that information sought by a request is classified.  Exemption 1 of FOIA requires the government to show that the information is “properly” classified, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(1); in applying that standard, courts allow the government to withhold the material if it can articulate a “logical” and “plausible” reason that release of the information can be expected to damage national security.  In other words, the courts are not going to second-guess the government’s assessment of what national security requires or what damage the release of certain information might cause, but they will require the government to explain the basis of its determination in a way that makes sense.
What all of this means is that the government must articulate a logical and plausible reason that release will harm national security, and must explain how the information fits into one or more or the categories set out in the Executive Order.  While it is possible that the government can meet this standard for small snippets of information discussed in the HHS COVID-19 meetings, it is unlikely the standard is satisfied for the bulk of what appears to have been discussed.  And remember: excluding key experts from the COVID-19 meetings means that they’re unable to learn from and inform those entire discussions, not just any small classified portions.
Do COVID-19 Discussions Relate to “National Security”?
The touchstone of classification authority under Executive Order 13256 is “national security.” The Order’s three levels of classification are defined by the degree to which disclosure of the information could be expected to damage national security:  Top Secret (“exceptionally grave damage to the national security”); Secret (“serious damage to the national security”); and Confidential (“damage to the national security”).  And the classification authority assigning the level must be “able to identify or describe” the damage to national security.
The Executive Order defines “national security” as “the national defense and foreign relations of the United States.”  That definition is admittedly vague, as courts have acknowledged, but it is not so vague as to preclude a commonsense application of these terms.  “National Defense” has “a well understood connotation”; it refers to “the military and naval establishments and the related activities of national preparedness.”  And “foreign relations,” even broadly interpreted, requires a connection to U.S. relations with foreign countries.
It is difficult to see how discussions about the appropriate response to COVID-19 in the United States relates to the national defense or foreign policy without interpreting those concepts so broadly that they lack any meaning.  While the National Security Council (NSC), which is involved in the COVID-19 response, may have information worthy of classification, discussions regarding how the virus is spreading in the United States, the number of people infected or who might become infected as the virus spreads, the development of a vaccine, and what actions might be take in response (such as quarantines, cancellation of events, and public outreach) do not naturally fall within any reasonable definition of “national defense” or “foreign relations.”  In my decades of defending the government’s classification decisions, I never saw a judicial decision acknowledging or even implying that keeping people safe from a naturally-occurring virus amounts to “national defense.”  Other FOIA exemptions, of course, could conceivably shield some discussions surrounding the virus, such as privileged legal advice.  But classification?  I don’t see it.
The best that one can say for the Trump Administration’s approach is that a very small snippet of information might be subject to classification.  Discussions with foreign governments about the global pandemic might fall within the realm of foreign relations.  And internal discussion about the effect of the virus on military preparedness or how our enemies might use the pandemic against United States interests could conceivably be related to national defense – although one wonders why HHS would be leading the charge if that were the case.  But it appears doubtful that discussions were limited to issues like those, if they were discussed at all.   And it should be obvious that while the virus may have originated in China, it is absurd to use that to conclude that all discussions concerning the virus somehow relate to national defense or foreign relations.
To be sure, meetings that discuss classified material often are held in classified settings, even if not all of the conversation and communications during the meeting will touch on classified issues.  But merely holding the meeting in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) does not automatically confer classified status on the information discussed.    Nor would it make sense to exclude government experts from all parts of a meeting in which only a fraction involves classified information.  Moreover, notes taken during the meeting regarding unclassified matters, or records concerning the discussions, are not classified unless the information meets the legal requirements.
Fitting COVID-19 Discussions into Required National Security Categories
Even if one could conclude that the HHS-led COVID-19 discussions related to “national security,” it would be hard to satisfy other important limits set out in the Executive Order.  In addition to articulating the requisite level of damage to national security from release of the information, the classification authority must conclude that the information pertains to one or more of eight specified categories of information.  That’s tough in this situation.
Most of the categories in the Executive Order are obviously inapplicable.  No one could reasonably assert that COVID-19 meetings conducted by HHS involve “military plans, weapons systems of operations,” “intelligence activities,” or the safeguarding of nuclear facilities.  And only the most feverish of conspiracy theories can posit that meetings regarding the government response to COVID-19 involves “the development, production, or use of weapons of mass destruction”— and even that far-fetched theory would not encompass discussions concerning efforts to respond to the virus.
The Executive Order’s other categories also provide little basis for classifying the information.  It is proper to classify “foreign government information,” but there is no indication that the HHS-led COVID-19 meetings were limited to discussing information received from foreign governments, which still would have to be confidential to warrant a finding that disclosure would harm national security.  And, as already discussed, it is unlikely that much (if any) of the information concerns “foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States.”
There are two categories that arguably might apply (after all, government lawyers are very good at finding legal justifications); but their application to the COVID-19 meetings is dubious at best.  An agency can classify “scientific, technological, or economic matters relating to the national security.”  And classification may be appropriate for “vulnerabilities or capabilities of systems, installations, infrastructures, projects, plans, or protection services relating to the national security.”  Again, it is hard to see how these categories would cover more than a small amount of discussions regarding COVID-19.  Not all scientific and technological matters are covered: only those related to national security.  So scientific discussions about the nature, danger, and spread of the virus do not fall within this category.  And while the next category may cover discussions about America’s vulnerability to biological attack, discussions about the general inability of the U.S. health care system to handle the crisis do not “relat[e] to national security.”
Moreover, even if one of these categories applied, it remains a mystery precisely how release of COVID-19 discussions would harm national security.  To be sure, a fertile imagination could dream up scenarios in which release of certain discussions could harm national security.  If, for example, there were evidence that the virus was an act of biological warfare, or if the discussions concerned a plan to prevent enemies from taking advantage of the crisis to mount an attack, public awareness that U.S. officials were aware of these facts and taking steps to address them could conceivably damage national security.  Or if U.S. officials received highly confidential communications from a foreign government on sensitive issues, and acknowledgment of the issue itself or the fact that the U.S. is corresponding with the government in question would harm foreign relations with other countries, there might be a case for classification.
But none of those potential scenarios appears to match reality.  And even if any of these elements are real, they would not justify classification of matters such as the spread of the virus on U.S. soil and the ongoing efforts to mitigate that spread across the American people.
Prohibitions on Classifying Information for Certain Purposes
It’s not just that classifying COVID-19 meetings isn’t justified under the Executive Order; what’s worse is that classifying those meetings may run afoul of affirmative prohibitions contained in the Executive Order.  The Order explicitly prohibits classification of information to
(1) conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error;
(2) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency;
(3) “restrain competition”; or
(4) “prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of the national security.”
In addition, “[b]asic scientific research information not clearly related to the national security shall not be classified.”
The media has reported that officials ordered the meetings classified simply to limit the number of people who could attend them and to prevent leaks.  If that is true, classification would violate the express terms of the Executive Order prohibiting classification to “prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of national security.”
Conclusion
Because it has the benefit of deferential judicial review, the government usually wins when it defends in court withholding information as classified.  But that deference, the Supreme Court has explained, is based upon a presumption that Executive Branch officials “have properly discharged their official duties.”  That presumption, in turn, rests upon maintaining the longstanding credibility of the Executive Branch.  When the day comes that the government presents a case for classification so shaky that it looks implausible, the courts will step in and begin taking a closer, more skeptical look at Executive Branch classification decisions.  If the classification of the COVID-19 meetings ever goes to court, it will take a great deal of explanation—perhaps even imagination—to convince a court that the decision to classify all of the matters discussed is supported by the law. 

Let's Make This Simple: Zoom Is Malware

Submitted by Mark Jeftovic, founder of EasyDNS
We've covered Zoom in these pages before.  Back in #AxisOfEasy 104 it turned out that the Zoom installer was installing mini-web servers on your computer, and it wasn't even taking them off when you uninstalled Zoom, leaving your device open to all manner of vulnerability.  It took Apple acting on its own to push out an unscheduled update to fix Zoom's problem before they got to it.
Last week we outlined how Zoom was sending telemetry data about you to Facebook, even if you don't have a Facebook account.
In the intervening week, all sorts of data points and news items came out about the (lack of) privacy issues with Zoom:
  • On April 1st, a (former NSA) hacker released two new Zoom 0-days that enable a hacker with local access to a Zoom session to take over the software to install malware.
  • The next day Krebs on Security reported on the fast spreading "Zoom Bombing" phenomenon where pranksters and miscreants were war dialing Zoom rooms, looking for ones without password protections and crashing the meetings, hurling insults and profanities at the participants.
  • It gets worse, turns out Zoom Bombing is a thing now, so the perpetrators are recording videos of their antics and releasing them on Tik Tok and who knows where else.
  • On the very next day (the cat came back....) it emerged that because of the naming scheme Zoom uses to create the files of video recordings participants make of their sessions, those records were easy to find and access on the web.  
  • Toronto's Citizen Lab reverse engineered the Zoom client and found that they had "rolled their own encryption scheme" and that it's pretty lousy encryption. Their report is here.
  • Arvind Narayanan, a professor of Computer Science at Princeton distilled it down thusly, "Let's make this simple: Zoom is Malware"
All of which has culminated in at least two US states Attorney Generals (so far) launching investigations into Zoom's privacy protections (or lack thereof).
Here at easyDNS we are working to facilitate video conferencing and remote collaboration tools for you and your teams and families.  We're relying on open source tools like Matrix and Jitsi that use peer reviewed, publicly accepted encryption techniques and will seek to put the data under your control and nobody else's.  Watch this space.

    Tuesday, April 7, 2020

    AOSL Alpha and Omega Semiconductor deadline to file looms Glancy Prongay and Murray GPM class action litigation firm


    From GlancyLaw.com 4/7/2020:

    LOS ANGELES, April 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP (“GPM”) reminds investors of the upcoming May 18, 2020 deadline to file a lead plaintiff motion in the class action filed on behalf of Alpha and Omega Semiconductor Limited (“Alpha and Omega” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ: AOSL) investors who purchased securities between August 7, 2019 and February 5, 2020, inclusive (the “Class Period”).
    If you suffered a loss on your Alpha and Omega investments or would like to inquire about potentially pursuing claims to recover your loss under the federal securities laws, you can submit your contact information here or contact Charles H. Linehan, of GPM at 310-801-2829, via email shareholders@glancylaw.com or visit our website at www.glancylaw.com to learn more about your rights.  
    On February 5, 2020, post-market, Alpha and Omega issued a press release announcing its financial results for the second fiscal quarter of 2020. Therein, the Company disclosed that the U.S. Department of Justice “recently commenced an investigation into the Company’s compliance with export control regulations relating to certain business transactions with Huawei and its affiliates (‘Huawei’).” Moreover, “[i]n connection with this investigation, [the Department of Commerce] has requested the Company to suspend shipments of its products to Huawei.” Alpha and Omega stated that “financial performance in the March quarter will be negatively impacted by the Huawei shipment interruption and by additional professional fees incurred in connection with the investigation.”
    On this news, Alpha and Omega’s stock price fell $1.48 per share, or 12%, to close at $10.85 per share on February 6, 2020, on unusually heavy trading volume.
    The complaint filed in this class action alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company’s business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants failed to disclose to investors: (1) that the Company’s export control practices were in violation of applicable laws and regulations; (2) that, as a result, the Company was vulnerable to regulatory scrutiny and liability; and (3) that, as a result of the foregoing, Defendants’ positive statements about the Company’s business, operations, and prospects, were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis.

    Credit Suisse Turned To Its Own Rich Clients For Emergency Funding

    From Zero Hedge:

    Why rely on central banks when your own clients have more capital than most central banks? That is the question the second biggest Swiss bank asked itself in recent weeks during the unprecedented market crash and collapse in liquidity, when it wasn't clear when and under what conditions central banks would step in.
    As a result, Credit Suisse turned to its own ultra-high-net-worth clients to bolster its balance sheet and its ability to lend as markets sank last month and companies started drawing down credit lines to weather the coronavirus pandemic, according to Bloomberg, which reported that institutional clients, family offices and billionaires were offered notes that pay a 2% interest on money that’s kept with the Swiss lender for a least a year, according to a person familiar with the matter.
    The notes, which were issued as a form of structured product, were sold in the first weeks of March to shore up lending capacity as coronavirus infection rates began to rise sharply.
    "Structured products are part of our product portfolio, specifically tailored to address the needs of professional investors and wealthy private clients,” Credit Suisse told Bloomberg.
    "Typically, those products have terms of several years and can –- depending on their risk profile and lifetime -- generate very attractive returns."
    Credit Suisse - and other firms that has issued similar structured notes - have been selling the securities to underpin lending after corporate clients rapidly drew down credit lines afraid banks may lock them out, a pernicious process we described recently in "Banks Suffer Record $200BN In Outflows As Frenzied Companies Draw Down Revolvers" and ""They’ve Left Me High And Dry": Here Is The Real Reason Companies Have Drawn Down A Record $293 Billion In Revolvers."
    Demonstrating vividly why its critical to have not just very wealthy friends, but even wealthier clients, the structured products drew interest from investors seeking higher yields amid negative interest rates on deposits in Switzerland (yes, 2% is now considered a very high yield). As a result, some clients moved money out of rival banks to buy the notes, according to another person, whose bank has seen investors leave to buy Credit Suisse’s products.
    Of course, it's only a matter of time before the rival banks offer a similar product with a slightly higher rate and the money is moved back from CS to them, but that's the topic of another story 2 weeks from now.
    With negative interest rates of 0.75% on deposits in Switzerland, Credit Suisse and its biggest rival UBS Group AG had previously begun to charge wealthy clients for excess cash holdings, leading to some outflows as investors sought better returns.  While Credit Suisse already has sufficient liquidity -  or so it claimed - it issued the notes to boost lending capacity further in anticipation of a period of increased volatility, a Bloomberg source said, not to mention even greater liquidity needs.
    Translation: the worst of the current crisis has yet to pass.