U.S. government hits Bankman-Fried and attorneys with 4 million pages of discovery documents
cryptoslate.com
U.S. prosecutors have unloaded a massive amount of discovery documents, lawyers for former FTX CEO Sam-Bankman Fried said on Aug. 25.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/2935925

U.S. prosecutors have just unloaded a massive amount of discovery documents, according to lawyers for former FTX CEO Sam-Bankman Fried on Aug. 25.

In the relevant court filing, lawyers broadly objected to the government’s intention of opening access to discovery materials — that is, evidence and legal information — while Bankman-Fried is held at the Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn (MDC).

Lawyers emphasized that the amount of information at play is an issue, stating:

“We further object to the Government’s production, just yesterday, of an additional 4 million pages of discovery. The Government cannot be allowed to dump millions of pages on the defense less than six weeks before trial.”

Elsewhere in the filing, lawyers said that discovery information amounts to terabytes worth of data to date, adding that millions of additional pages are forthcoming.

Bankman-Fried’s lawyers also complained that the government has no plan to deliver the discovery documents to their client at MDC despite his rapidly approaching trial date. As such, lawyers urged the court to provide Bankman-Fried with internet access. They stated that current plans, which allow Bankman-Fried to meet with lawyers twice a week, are not sufficient to accomplish the data review that is needed. “No substitute”

Lawyers argued that there is “no substitute” for Bankman-Fried’s work on the case, asserting that their client has extensive knowledge of companies involved in events and is uniquely capable of locating relevant documents “quickly and efficiently.” Though Bankman-Fried has been provided with a laptop, lawyers said that this device has limited internet access and does not allow him to collaborate with lawyers or access his previous work.

Bankman-Fried’s lawyers further noted that their client previously compiled specific data into a spreadsheet with millions of cells. They said that he spent between 80 and 100 hours per week reviewing discovery prior to his imprisonment.

In light of the situation, lawyers urged for Bankman-Fried’s temporary release, which would allow the former FTX CEO to work with the defense and access the internet five days per week in a dedicated courthouse working space.

Lawyers have pressed for those release conditions since at least Aug. 18.

  • skellener@kbin.social
    41·
    1 year ago

    So if you break too many crimes, it’s too hard to defend? Sounds like the same whining coming from Trumps lawyers.

  • Thormjolnir@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    404·
    1 year ago

    While I think that he deserves to be held accountable, I agree that that’s a silly amount of pages. Even if you were to understand fully 100 pages a day for your case and not forget any of it, it’d still take 109 years to be ready. I know there are teams for it, but still it’s a silly amount of pages

    • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
      37·
      1 year ago

      A lot of lawyering is done automatically at this point. 30,000 emails at a page each email can be digested and have relevant information produced within a half hour.

      Packages like Litify, Lawmatics, and Clio exist to move terabytes of data into five page summaries in about two to three hours if you have the right analyst working it.

      Law offices complain like this to see if the judge will give them some extra time because extra time is extra time, but something like 10TB for complex business cases is pretty normal run of the mill stuff for some of the top tier analysis software.

      Millions of pages just sounds big if you try doing by hand, but no law office at this level has some paralegal or team of paralegals trying to run through millions of Excel spreadsheets or emails. Law offices have long since left that whole error prone approach.

      Given what’s been said about the data so far, even in the most complex situation, two weeks tops for any software product worth its salt to chew through all of it and have a solid foundation to what’s being presented.

      Shit like this has been automated for like the last fifteen almost twenty years now. So many people think automation coming to kill all the jobs, man most people don’t even realize how many it’s already killed.

    • JoBo@feddit.uk
      12·
      1 year ago

      The numbers sound big (and they are) but a lot of it will be stuff that can be scanned out pretty quickly. He does not have to read and absorb every word, just understand which particular sets of records are being presented as evidence of criminality.

      I do agree that he should be given enough time to prepare his case. He can stay in prison for as long as it takes. Had he not broken his bail conditions, he could do it from the comfort of his parents’ home. But he did, so he can’t.

        • Alto@kbin.social
          81·
          1 year ago

          Which it will be. Do you think lawyers/their staff need read every single word on every single page or something? That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works

          • balls_expert@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            13·
            1 year ago

            Stop being unreasonable and start realizing that parsing, or even receiving and storing 2 terabytes of documents is beyond a lawyer’s technological abilities. There is no world in which 2tb of documents are needed for these discoveries.

            Also how do you make sure you haven’t missed something?

            Because If it’s in the discovery, you’re compliant. You can hide what you don’t want them to find next to stock_market_fluctuations_2022-10-05T05.55.to.06.00_xmv.csv down 14 folders in google drive

            So no, not fair

            Just for an idea of what 2tb feels like, if you read the bytes sequentially to do a single string search, the most performant algorithms go about a speed of 10GB/s. That is 3.3 minutes and you’re not even case insensitive still

            • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
              3·
              1 year ago

              lmao you don’t even know what legal tools exist to examine this volume of documents.

              Do some research if you’re going to be up in arms about stuff. Do even more research when you decide to be up in arms about how a billionaire gaming the system is somehow being treated unfairly after ripping millions of dollars off people, creating these terabyte repositories of illegal transactions.

              • balls_expert@lemmy.blahaj.zone
                1·
                1 year ago

                Literally go ahead and name one

                If you’ve ever worked in IT with attorneys you’d know better

                But go ahead, tell me one name of a “legal tool” that can parse 2TB. Actually name any single one. Go ahead. Biggest one starts with an E.

  • mateomaui@reddthat.comEnglish
    13·
    1 year ago

    If they were using Quickbooks for FTX accounting, I could see how this could be overwhelming.

    No sympathy, bro.

    • hoshikarakitaridia
      7·
      1 year ago

      This.

      They might have had an argument that this is sanctionable discovery, but his client broke the rules so many times that the court begged the prosecution to ask for punishments against sbf and he finally got his bond revoked.

      This filing does not exist in a vacuum and this is the definition of fuck around and find out.

    • ares35@kbin.social
      3·
      1 year ago

      you forgot to account for paper jams and calls to hp support because a new cartridge wasn’t recognized by their firmware as 'genuine… then the time to run to costco for a couple non-hp printers to finish the job.

    • spauldo@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      The trees aren’t a big deal, really. Most paper comes from farmed trees. It’s the chemicals they treat the wood with to break it down into pulp that’s the real problem.

    • fiat_lux@kbin.social
      31·
      1 year ago

      Checked math, you’re right. And 50ppm is only a slightly slower laser office-scale printer, so fair enough on that too. I have seen a 100ppm printer in a court, but even still that’s literally weeks of printing.

      We really need to re-evaluate this whole legal paper data storage model, the judicial system alone must be chewing through the Amazon.

      • sharpiemarker@feddit.de
        1·
        1 year ago

        Cheers! Thanks for double checking. I want to believe they had it on a thumb drive but everything in me says it was truckloads of boxes.

  • orcrist@lemm.ee
    4·
    1 year ago

    The key manipulative point is that it’s measured in “pages”. Everything depends on what the files actually are, not what they would be if you printed them out.

    And I suppose that many of these files are from the company itself. If so, the defense and CEO had them for a long time.

  • balls_expert@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    56·
    1 year ago

    That is insane. I didn’t expect the government’s attorneys to textbook abuse the discovery process

    How about some good faith from the fucking government

    • detalferous@lemm.ee
      11·
      1 year ago

      He’s a billionaire with a seven figure (?) bail.

      Why can’t he get enough lawyers to filter what’s important and have his primary team review it?

      He was not in jail, but he tried to influence witnesses.

      Now he’s in jail and complaining about it. He deserves no second chance.

      • balls_expert@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        14·
        1 year ago

        More than a terabyte of documents.

        You’re not talking about a second chance you’re talking about not having a single chance