Exclusive Bill Hamilton Pres INSLAW / Danny Casolaro / Octopus (part 1 of 4)

Transcript

it's the Opperman report and now here is investigator in opman okay welcome to the oerman report I'm your host private investigator Ed oerman and you can find me at opman investigations and digital forensic Consulting if you just email me directly at opman investigations now our guest today this is a historic interview Our Guest today is William Hamilton and he is the creator of the ins law.com the promise software uh you may have heard the story we've done some shows about this in the past with uh uh Ted Rubenstein just trying to explain this complicated story that at one point was described as the octopus uh by a journalist Danny Casello who uh met an untimely demise uh but this is the first interview with William Hamilton the man at the center of this story uh Mr William Hamilton are you there yes I am thank you so much thank you so much for coming on the show I I know we've already been talking for about 20 minutes so I know there's going to be some great content here uh before we get into the whole inslaw promise octopus this whole crazy story that you've lived your life firsthand tell us about yourself who is William Hamilton I'm the uh third oldest of 12 children my wife and I have six adult children now of course and 17 grandchildren I graduated from the University of Notre Dame as an English literature major and uh went to work for NSA where I worked for seven years and uh then I I uh went to work for a public accounting firm in their management consulting department and uh answered a request for proposals to develop a case management software system for local prosecutor's office in DC which I named and it was um well thought of and it was soon uh used in many state and local prosecutors offices across the country yeah your audio dropped there for a second you named it inslaw they the company yeah and but and software was named insula or promise no promise promise okay yeah your audio dropped there for a second okay so then you you received a a you answered a a request for a bid to design this software that's right and then I named it promise yeah gotcha now I often I was wondering this now at the time cuz clearly now you know you're a Savvy guy you're in touch with all these people uh Elliot Richardson and you know he was attorney um but at the time how did you get that contract did you hire lobbyist or you just like off the shelf just no really just off the shelf it was I was interested in the courts I thought about going to law school and so it was something I I had a uh pre-existing interest in not not not promise but and not case management but courts the legal system right you know and uh so I just wrote The Proposal and uh it the request for proposal came from the DC government because the local DC does not have home rule and the local prosecutor is a division of the US attorney's office and so the DC government's office of crime analysis issued the request for proposals I wrote The Proposal it was a competitive procurement and we won it and it was like a $10 million contract right no not that that was much smaller okay and and um the uh so the uh after it was finished I went to work for the US attorney's office as an independent contractor to try to improve the software because it was the first time anybody had done something like this and so there were a lot of opportunities to make it better you know okay uh and how old were you at that time well I had I had worked already seven years after graduated from college I guess you graduate from college around early 20s right right you're about 30 years old is what I was figuring yeah yeah probably that sounds right okay so you're working for the US attorney's officer as a contractor um right and you designed the software and I guess that's where the issues came in with the the litigation right that they claimed that they owned it oh no I think that was all baloney okay they they they uh well I the most telling thing is one of the lawyers who represented inslaw rodri Hills we had retained because he had been the he was a very prominent business lawyer and uh we needed to get the justice department to agree that when the of the justice department liquidated but under the Carter Administration yeah the one that had been financing the development of Promise was called the US law enforcement assistance Administration when the Carter Administration decided to liquidate that agency we rained rodri Hills to figure out what do we do because you have to continue to invest money in software or loses its value over time you know sure and and the uh the Law Enforcement syst Administration was disappearing so where was the money going to come from for the inevitable upkeep and upgrade you know and so rodri Hills went to the justice department and asked the deputy attorney general Stan Morris for a letter confirming that the justice department would not object the end law uh creating a for-profit proprietary derivative of the software containing privately financed in enhancements and Licensing it to users for a fee across the country and um the justice department took five months thinking about it so Rod Hill said you can't let them hold hostage the future of your company and uh so he said I I think whether they like it or not the copyright law gives in law exclusive as the author of every version of Promise the exclusive rights copyright rights to the software Goa and I think I should have our copyright lawyers at leam watkinson Hills uh do a re a legal opinion on that subject and he did that and uh they confirmed that was true and then Rod Hills uh said I think I should have our copyright lawyers deliver a copy of this legal opinion to the top copyright lawyer at the justice department so that everybody understands the law he was a very smart lawyer you know and so he did it the top copyright lawyer's name was veto D Petro in the Civil Division of the justice department and uh he not surprisingly agreed it is the law you know and but most people most lawyers in fact wouldn't know something that technical you know sure and um the amendments to the US copyright law spelled all of this out years ago but but most people as I'm saying would never have had an occasion to learn any of that stuff even lawyers and I guess when you're going up against the federal government even if you have the law on your side if they want something you it's an uphill battle right yeah and it particularly if they uh they to give you a a clue at the um under the Brooks act which was named after Congressman Jack Brooks the any agency of the executive branch of the federal government that ever wanted to buy a piece of software had to apply in in advance to the general Services Administration GSA and get what's called a delegation of procurement authority to do so because the GSA had exclusive authority over the federal government's purchase of computer software for years and the uh so the at one point the general Accounting Office did a report criticizing GSA and criticizing the Office of Management budget under the Carter Administration for failing to provide leadership to federal agencies to stop Reinventing the software wheel and start purchasing prepackaged application software products because every time you if it's a common function of the government like case management or Personnel it's kind of silly to commission someone to develop the software from scratch each time it's very expensive to do that and error prone and it also seems too that they're they're the crappiest softwares out there you know um like with the whole thing with the what was that the healthcare.gov and when it first came out was Obama's former buddy you know his college roommate or something you know it's always like a deal like that which is how I wondered how you got this deal it it seems like rogi Hills he was plugged in to get this kind of deal pushed through yeah was a very smart lawyer yeah like Elliot Richardson was Elliot Richardson by the way the audience doesn't no that's the Saturday night Massacre from Watergate is Elliot Richardson who designed yeah under protest resigned yeah he a lot of integrity and very bright just like they we were blessed to have several extremely bright lawyers with Integrity you know kind of an unusual combination especially in DC yeah with this Bunch okay yeah so then then take us through this now you're going back and forth with the government about the do you own it don't you own it do you have the copyright on are you allowed to sell it uh what happens next oh what what we didn't really have to go back and forth the uh the because he got this a letter from the deputy attorney general's uh office confirming that they don't object to what we're planning to do okay and that was after the internal legal opinion I told you about from Brad Hills law firm and after they had given a copy of that internal legal opinion to veto dietro and after unbeknownst to us Vito Depetro had confirmed it in a internal legal opinion to the top uh internal contracts lawyer at the justice department where he explained what the law is the copyright law and how it affects ins Law's copyright rights and that insw had exclusive copy rights under the copyright law as the author of every version of promise just what Hills had said you know and um that the government's rights were limited to whatever data rights they had negotiated in the individual contracts with inslaw and they never negotiated any so they they had no rights they never sought to negotiate any you know and but it it was an invaluable thing to have this veto de Petro who would I had never heard of you know um issue a internal legal opinion we didn't even know he did it and we found out about it in Discovery litigation Discovery in the bankruptcy court and justi has tried to keep that copy of that legal opinion from us because it's pretty desp positive you know and uh the court we did a motion to compel production to the bankruptcy judge and he granted production and that's how we know about it how did it wind up in bankruptcy how did you wind up in bankruptcy court because the government um withheld millions of dollars under that $10 million contract right to put promise in major cities of us us attorney's offices and big cities across the country and they withheld on purpose millions of dollars in order to force us into chapter 11 and then then we assume they were going to force us into the liquidation there could be an auction of the software and it could be purchased by friends of the administration and power wow because it could be make a fortune you know gotcha and oh the