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US Attorney Chided Swartz On Day of Suicide
theodp writes "The e-mail that Defendant Swartz's supplemental memorandum (pdf) cites as paramount to his fifth motion to suppress [evidence against him] is relevant, but not nearly as important as he tries to make it out to be,' quipped United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz (pdf) in a court filing made on the same day Aaron Swartz committed suicide. In the 1-7-2011 e-mail Ortiz refers to, which was not produced for Swartz until Dec. 14th — almost two years after his 1-6-2011 arrest — a Secret Service agent reported to the Assistant U.S. Attorney that he was 'prepared to take custody anytime' of Swartz's laptop, although no one had yet sought a warrant to search the computer. In Prosecutor as Bully, Larry Lessig laments, 'They [JSTOR] declined to pursue their own action against Aaron, and they asked the government to drop its. MIT, to its great shame, was not as clear, and so the prosecutor had the excuse he needed to continue his war against the "criminal" who we who loved him knew as Aaron.' Swartz's family also had harsh words for MIT and prosecutors: 'Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney's office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron.' With MIT President Emeritus Charles M. Vest currently serving as a Trustee of JSTOR parent Ithaka as well as a Trustee of The MIT Corporation, one might have expected MIT to issue a statement similar to the let's-put-this-behind-us one JSTOR made on the Swartz case back in 2011."
the US seems to have terrorized a youth into killing himself.
I'd seek gitmo for the US 'official' who performed this act of terrorism.
if we don't stop the american terrorists (gov hacks who can ruin lives at-will for essentially no good reason at all) then we all have BECOME part of them.
a message needs to be sent. TO THE GOVERNMENT. stop being asshats wrapped in the false flag of 'justice'.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
If anything good comes of this situation it would be nice if Swartz were to become the Mohamed Bouazizi of prosecutorial reform in the US. Unlikely, but one can hope.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It used to be the home of the hacker culture.
we'll criticize people that had no personal tie to a person for not recognizing their true mental state? How many immediate family members do not recognize a suicidal condition in someone? But we expect a lawyer to see it?
Fuck off asshole. If you are facing decades in prison and being forever named a felon, wouldn't you consider it?
These prosecutors need to pay for their crimes. They need to be fired, disbarred, and then thrown in jail.
Culprit #1: Stephen P. Heymann, the head of the Cybercrime Unit and lead prosecutor
Culprit #2: Carmen M. Ortiz, US Attorney (and Bostonian of the Year as Twitter tells me)
Sign the petitions:
[1]
[2]
These people seem to be soulless automatons devoid of any compassion and quite willing to destroy a life without good reason just so they can advance their own careers a bit. This behavior is the hallmark of dangerous psychopaths. People like that belong into a closed mental institutions, not into positions of power.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
A lawyer filed court documents attacking his opponent's case! How do we get from that to blaming the attorney for the defendant's suicide?
Swartz was an American computer programmer, writer, archivist, political organizer, and Internet activist. Swartz co-authored the "RSS 1.0" specification of RSS, and built the Web site framework web.py and the architecture for the Open Library. He also built Infogami, a company that merged with Reddit in its early days, through which he became an equal owner of the merged company.
On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested in connection with systematic downloading of academic journal articles from JSTOR, which became the subject of a federal investigation.[2][3] JSTOR offended Swartz mainly for two reasons: it charged large fees for access to these articles but did not compensate the authors and it ensured that huge numbers of people are denied access to the scholarship produced by America's colleges and universities.[4][5] On January 11, 2013, Swartz was found dead in his Crown Heights, Brooklyn, apartment, where he had hanged himself.
- Wikipedia
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
So he pirated a few documents and distributed them? Why did this end in his death?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Another example of the "internet is a series of tubes" mentality?
While this is a very sad story, the response over at Hacker News has been, to put it mildly, quite absurd.
For much of yesterday, each and every submission on the front page (and maybe the others; I didn't check) had to do with this incident. That's at least 30 out of the top 30 links being dedicated solely to one issue.
It gets worse, though. Many of the links were to blog articles or mailing list postings from people who openly admitted to having never met him, and otherwise never interacted with him directly. One particularly odd blog article was about some guy who "knew" Swartz through some open source code that Swartz had released. If I recall correctly, this blog post even referred to Swartz as the author's "soulmate", although they had never interacted. It was quite surreal to read.
While I can understand even 5 or even 6 submissions relating to this incident, the single-minded focus of almost the entire Hacker News community on this matter is not healthy. It doesn't seem to be letting up, either. It's almost the same situation today, with 29 of the 30 submissions focusing on this.
It really makes me think that much of this "emotion" is not genuine in any way. It's just another form of group-think, with a bunch of people who never knew Swartz in any way trying to out-do one another with greater and greater displays of "sympathy". In that sense, it's quite disgusting, and I hope that the members of that community who participated in this petty game at least feel some shame for what they have done.
Someone who sees it as not only as a steady job with decent benefits, but also someone who wants to remove the vast amounts of scum from walking the street? The scum such as those who rape and murder?
JSTOR has posted a condolences note on their website.
They deceived the court that multiple felonies were committed. And their intimidation lead to suicide. There are a multitude of charges that can be filed. Find a prosecutor with the balls to charge another prosecutor, and these two will be in jail.
* the government reserves the right to engage in bullying any time it wishes, for any reason. In this case parents are encouraged to teach their children that bystanding is appropriate and expected.
A lot of people are outraged over the prosecutorial overreach in this case (and, by extension, the tradition of prosecutorial overreach in most cases prosecuted by the federal government), and a petition has popped up to remove the DA in charge of this case: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck
It's a start, though what I'd really like to see is some proper judicial reform, so we can bring some sanity to the judicial system.
Links to the Ars coverage of this story:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/internet-pioneer-and-information-activist-takes-his-own-life/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/family-blames-us-attorneys-for-death-of-aaron-swartz/
Suicide can only be blamed on the person that did it.
I absolutely agree with you.
That doesn't preclude charging the prosecutors with a whole array of harassment and misconduct-related actions.
Unfortunately, the US has a serious problem wherein prosecutors have effectively infinite resources to harass someone; on top of which, we reward them for convictions, not for serving justice. On the flip side of that, public defenders lose money for every hour they spend on a case vs working at their "real" jobs; and since they don't generally do it as their primary job (more like an act of compulsory charity on the side), they have little incentive to care how they perform in that role. Thus, you have a supposedly-antagonistic system where both sides have strong incentive to push everyone brought up on charges to settle, regardless of guilt.
You want to fix the system? We need to have "prosecutor pays" for privately retained defense; and we need to ban settlements entirely.
Yes, that means every two-bit punk who shoplifts gets to hire Johnny Cochran. And yes, I realize how much the second point there would slow down the system - Or more accurately, it would mean nonviolent cases with no "real" damages, such as Swartz', would never have made it past a private student misconduct panel at MIT, and we'd have a brilliant but bored kid still alive.
The group of psychopaths also known as the Roswell City Council pushed Andrew Wordes (also known as the Roswell Chicken Man) to take his life in March 2012.
People often commit suicide out of a sense of revenge on the world.
If we blame the government for Aaron's actions, this encourages more people to commit suicide, so that whoever is antagonizing them gets blamed.
The best logic if we want to stop suicides is to frame it as what it always is: an individual choice. This allows us to emphasize the consequences of that choice on the individual and immediate family, discouraging that individual.
It's sort of an unwritten rule that the people who should kill themselves do not kill themselves, while the people who should not seem to succeed at an alarming rate.
Futurist Traditionalism
It's not so much the prosecutors fault, as it is a system that over zealously values intellectual property, so that the prosperous can be even more prosperous. We, as a society, have lost our bearings. Things are out of whack. I read today an article in the nytimes about sex trafficking, and how border guards in Pakistan, are on the alert for terrorists and pirated DVDs, yet ignore blatant evidence of young girls being sold into slavery. The reasoning? They want to please the Americans whose priorities are terrorism and piracy. We are broken.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
1. To reform the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 to rationalize it with the 21st century by the following measure
A. Repeal any and all language from the CFAA that originated in the Espionage Act of 1918 or its amended forms such as the McCarran Internal Security Act or the Subversive Activities Control Act of the 1950s.
B. Alter the definition of "Protected Computer" so that the act only covers Federal Government and Financial computer systems, and no others.
C. Remove any and all language that creates a crime simply because a computer is involved in an activity, where otherwise the activity would not be considered a crime.
D. Specifically state that the Interstate Commerce Clause does not apply to the Act. Almost all modern communications are 1. done on a computer, and 2. interstate in nature. Whereas it is against the spirit of the Founding Fathers to have the Federal Goverment control every single communication in a Free country, this act should be adopted by the congress and signed by the President.
You're questioning his strength of character? He was charged because he wanted to liberate academic documents. He drew the ire of the Feds because he freely released court documents. He stood up against SOPA. And he helped launch Creative Commons. I'm pretty fucking sure he had a shitload of "strength of character".
For what, AC? For what, exactly, should "the prosecutors ... be fired, disbarred, and then thrown in jail?" Please lay out a compelling case based on something other than your circumstantial reasoning, ad-hominem attacks, and naked assertion?
Also: as meaningless as petitions are, they'd be slightly less meaningless if you at least courageously offered those an ability to sign a petition in the opposite direction too. In fact, this should be a moral requirement for all those who ever make a petition.
If he were a bank, like HSBC and also too big to jail, he would get away with 1/4 of his yearly profits as HSBC got away for laundry money for the drug cartels.
Fucked up system.
There are serious problems with the corruption of government using media (including hollywood and MSM) to create a feedback loop and excuse to manipulate and lie to the people.
We all know this and we also know the unreasonable pressure of the media and government to punish those who violate copyright are very excessive in punishment efforts.
The fiscal cliff fiasco sorta save after the deadline (they fail to follow their own rules) includes kickback to Hollywood.... does anyone need to ask why?. .
35 years was the maximum he could be sentenced to, that doesn't mean he was going to get it.
That case also started 2 years ago and the case hadn't undergone any startling twists that explain a suicide. Yes, after arrest I can understand, after a search I can understand, after being found guilty I can understand, after sentencing I can understand, in jail I can understand.
But in the investigation period when the lawyers are duking it out over admissible evidence? Either it had to be a slow deterioration in his mental state, which his family should have noted OR something else happened. That linked letter from the prosecutor is to trivial to kill yourself over unless you been slowly going over the edge in any case.
The guy went against the law as a form of protest, he knew that what he was doing was illegal and wanted that to change. And his treatment was legal letters. SCARY! A while ago, I called a scumbag to account himself for claiming the womens right to vote was achieved without violence by linking to just one of the countless incidents of women being arrested and tortured in jail. And these women endured. This guy offed himself over an email?
Then either he was always a unstable person OR he is a crybaby who wanted to look cool by protesting and then pissed himself when "The man" came down on him OR something else is going on entirely.
I think he had a cause, I think he could have expected that it would land him court and I don't think a person like that panics over a letter in a legal case that is/was far from concluded. That kind of person does NOT kill himself over a letter from a prosecutor. Read the letter, it is a trivial non-issue in the run up to a court case, it isn't a smoking gun, it isn't saying "we got you and you are going to federal pound in the ass jail sonny boy". It is almost saying "your lawyer got a good point but obviously I am not going to say it like that but you won this round". Chiding? Hardly.
Now I don't know him at all, don't know his personality (the real one, not the media one) but I think something more is going on. Either the pressure on him was far greater then we know, he was killed or his he had other mental issues already.
It is NOT the job of the prosecutor to weigh every communication on a silver platter to see if it might push someone over the edge. It is the job of family and the person himself to recognize mental issues and seek help. Something is missing here, normal people even under stress of an investigation do NOT off themselves over the linked letter. I would examine if there are other causes for an unstable mental condition that could have been triggered by anything, something as "trivial" as taking the Christmas decorations down.
We like when something tragic happens, to blame someone. It can be something as stupid as a cat not wanting to be petted that day that pushes people over the edge. That his family is so quickly ready to put the blame on others is to me a red flag. How hard did his family push him to succeed? Most boys at 14 worry about girls (how icky they are and how you can stop them thinking you are icky) this guy was designing RSS. Many a wonder kid has far from a happy youth. Who pushed this guy the hardest? The prosecutor or his family and friends who wanted him to achieve time and time again? Far more kids commit suicide because of pushy parents who are never satisfied then over long running legal cases that so far have NOT gone against him (as far as I know I freely admit, please feel free to put me right and show links to articles were it was becoming clear that he was going to loose this case). How hard was Lessig pushing yet again for someone ELSE to fight HIS fight for him with Lessig not being the one facing jail?
I think this case is going to stir up a real nasty mess with pushy parents and people expecting Swartz to fight everyone elses battle but him alone the one facing jail.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Sucide is never the answer to lifes problems. Never! Never give up! There's always hope that around the corner is a better tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then one day afterward, but do not give up, ever.
My sympathies go out to this young mans family and friends.
He obtained copies of the documents through automated means, but there has been no proof that he intended to distribute them (although that's what prosecutors claimed).
It's possible that he was planning on doing content analysis of the documents, for which he might've needed a sufficiently large corpus to do the analysis. (and if seems that JSTOR allows that sort of thing, but it wasn't well known, which my understanding was part of the reason they asked the case to be dropped; see http://about.jstor.org/news/jstor-statement-misuse-incident-and-criminal-case )
Yes, he did release the PACER documents -- but those were government files that should've been in the public domain; I view him to be like Carl Malamud in that regard : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Malamud .
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I agree. if the full power of the gov is coming down on you, the gov SHOULD also pay for your legal fees, and good defense people, too.
else, it is purely and clearly bullying. legal bullying.
the way we win hearts and minds in the world is by example. the Rest Of World(tm) looks at us and is not convinced that they want to import anything AT ALL like american freedom and justice.
if we don't start fixing our broken-ways, we will never be taken seriously by the world. and yes, we have dropped in our high moral ground several notches over the last several decades.
does anyone in command CARE about how we look? never mind how we act, but at least give the impression of fairness!
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
No.
Highly intellgent young adult is persecuted for the crime of downloading scientific articles from an unsecured source, which by any ethical standard shouldn't be restricted in the first place. 35+ year prison sentence is sought. The 'victim' (JSTOR) itself does NOT want to proceeed, but somehow the government think it has the right to persecute anyhow.
So basically a victimless crime that shouldn't be a crime in the first place would end up putting an intellgent and politically active person behind bars for the rest of his life, effectively robbing him of it and removing access to do what he wanted with it.
The persecution and its witch hunt to ruin, rob, and smear the life of an innocent young man lead directly to the ending of his otherwise bright and productive life. If anything that is tantamount to outright murder, even if they weren't the ones to physically hang him. This is why it is getting the reaction it is: it is an extreme example of how the government injustice system works on the federal scale.
>Also: as meaningless as petitions are, they'd be slightly less meaningless if you at least courageously offered those an ability to sign a petition in the opposite direction too. In fact, this should be a moral requirement for all those who ever make a petition.
That's one of the most sensible things I've ever read...am I still on /.?
but not nearly as important as he tries to make it out to be,' quipped United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz
Quipped? Chided? These words do not mean what you seem to think they mean.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It appears that slashdot moderators subscribe to the idea that everyone is to blame when someone suicides.
GP is modded a troll, and the abusive AC is modded informative?
I don't subscribe to the idea that another person's suicide is my fault. Only in extremely rare, extremely abusive situations might that be true.
Life is harsh. The weak will opt out. The strong will go on fighting. Did I mention that life is harsh? It's not my duty to hold the weak up indefinitely. We all need to help out when we can, but a lifetime commitment to supporting the weak is out of the question.
I liked young Mr. Swartz, and I like what he did. He was unfairly targeted. But, ultimately, he wimped out. That's a damned shame, but my attitude toward suicides isn't going to change because Swartz was popular amongst geeks.
I think to the prosecutors and many outsiders, this looked more like a case of a well-known and respected online activist challenging existing law and copyright holders, the prosecutor and the copyright holders accepting the challenge, and both sides wanting to see it through to the end to set a precedent. It just seems odd to hear now that Aaron would have wanted a quick and quiet settlement.
What was the point of Aaron's copying of those journal articles then in the first place? It's not like JSTOR is a greedy academic publisher, it's a not-for-profit that has been trying to make academic content available more cheaply and probably has been walking a tightrope between cheap access and dealing with unpleasant and greedy copyright holders.
What do you want the reverse petition to say?
Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann should be nominated to Supreme Court ...
Will this work for you?
How many MIT student pranks ended with felony charges?
I highly recommend reading Alex Stamos' thoughts on Aaron Swartz:
The Truth about Aaron Swartz's "Crime"
http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/
1. Swartz wasn't facing 30+ years unless he already had a bunch of prior violent felony convictions. Under the federal sentencing guidelines, he was facing maybe 6-24 months if he was convicted of everything.
2. It was a victimless crime if you don't count anyone that works/studies at MIT, works at JSTOR, or uses JSTOR anywhere in the world. The entire campus was cut off as JSTOR/MIT scrambled to stop Swartz, who repeatedly attempted to circumvent the blocks put up by JSTOR/MIT over a period of weeks. Reports from JSTOR indicated that Swartz activities were causing servers to crash and were impacting other users. JSTOR backed down because of bad publicity, not because Swartz caused no harm.
3. Trespassing, breaking and entering, unauthorized use of a computer system, and denial-of-service attacks are all crimes. Prosecutors don't need support of every victim or even any victim to pursue a case because they represent the People who have an interest in stopping such activities. Every day, wife beaters are convicted despite the protests of their spouses. You would think a law professor would know this kind of stuff but Lessig, by all appearances, is not much of a lawyer just a supreme bullshitter.
4. Swartz had a lot of time to realize that he should probably stop his activities because the admins were on to him and trying to stop him but instead he escalated his crimes.
5. Harvard must be incredibly embarassed to have brought this guy on as a Fellow in their Center for Ethics.
6. There should an award in memory of Swartz for the person who's own actions cock up the greatest streak of good fortune. Maybe he didn't screw up as bad as OJ Simpson but you can't have a memorial award in the name of someone who isn't dead.
Ditto what Rick Zeman said. There are thousands of petitions on the internet, and several sources of those petitions send me emails daily, asking me to sign petitions.
I often want to sign the stupid petitions as "opposed", or whatever.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I definitely have no problem with this very civilized conversation thread. It's clearly indicative of a society that has advanced beyond our cave dwelling ancestors; and to the point where both parties can reach an agreeable diplomatic conclusion. Wouldn't you agree?.
Thanks.
Seeders on the JSTOR file went from 55 to 395 since he killed himself.
Now force-seeding to help grow the swarm.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Yeah, there's a victim complex in the west. I don't think it applies in this case. Like Alan Turing, who also killed himself, the man was a hero who hit his limit for how much he could take. There's so much apathy towards so many issues these days I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often.
and won't be fixed by itself. You can get 30 years for making public something that should be, get sued for millons of dollars for copying a few songs, sued for billons for doing common sense implementations. But if you screw the entire world economy (causing indirectly the dead of thousands of people) you get even more money, driving drunk have barely any legal consequences or carrying assault weapons in populated areas for "defense" is all ok (to put very few examples, is far worse than this). Justice is a nice meaningless (or with a real meaning that have no relation with what people think it means) word by now.
And you can't use the legal or political system to fix it, as not only they broken it, but would break it even more given the opportunity (i.e. the golden opportunity of asking them to fix it).
With a hopeless situation like this, im not surprised that people suicide themselves when this mess touch them.
That used to be role of the media.
Then media was consolidated in the hands of the few with vested interest in not shaking the boat when they have installed their own captain and navigator crew.
What makes you think this 4th branch of government wouldn't just get corrupted like media did?
All prosecutors are criminals. They care about number of convictions, not right or wrong, not innocent or guilty, and certainly not justice. This entire incident only highlights what happens all day, every day in our legal system.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
You mean the scum who have no power and influence. And of course the innocent who get railroaded. Those are the people prosecutors go after. But in our two-tiered justice system, the type of scum with vast sums of money and political friends -- slap on the wrist.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213 :
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
This is not a commentary on right or wrong. We're not talking about a young man with an IQ of 65 on death row for a crime he may not understand. Aaron Schwartz was by every reckoning a very smart man. He must have at least considered there could be consequences and repercussions for his actions. Imagine the idea that zealously prosecuting famous people publicly is a career maker...the Giuliani Axiom, if you will. 35 years? IANAL, but you never see these white collar cases serving or being sentenced to anything close to the maximum of all the charges stacked together. Mr Schwartz was intelligent enough to realize these things. It is highly likely, given his incredible success at such a young age, that he was ill prepared to deal with bad things happening to him. ______________Feel free to mod this down without conscience: I was born poor, stayed that way for a good while, and bad things and I are not at all strangers.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
If the GP AC had made more than just a passing joke (tying in recent gun and sexual assault cases at the same time, it takes some skill and luck to pull something like that off), then AC would not have been marked a troll. Throw in the response that JSTOR *withdrew* its allegations, but the prosecutors pursued the case anyway, and we have a situation where there are serious questions about the prosecutors.
Specifically:
Why did they pursue a case when the plaintiffs want out?
a) Was it because they thought what he allegedly did was so terrible that it must be prosecuted?
b) Were they thinking this was a meal ticket to fame?
I don't know, and I'd sure as hell like to find out. If it was a), then I'd like to know what's happening with our laws and to our justice departments so make a copyright case like this so "life and death." This is especially damning in the light of the US attorneys not pursuing HSBC for aiding terrorism and organized crime. If it was b), then these people are pretty sick, and I would hold them partly responsible for Aaron Swartz's death, at least morally if not legally.
He was probably unwilling to yield to such pressure. And do you know what happens when you don't? They go through with the maximum threatened and crush you like a bug. And everyone blames you for not accepting the lesser bargain.
Actually, it pretty much is. Not for someone who makes a living committing crimes, of course. But for anyone who wants to ever make a good living honestly. Few companies hire felons for any but the most menial positions, and many companies even vet contractors for felonies as well.
And of course, there's always the question of whether he'd have survived prison. People willing to stand up for themselves, but without the personal physical strength to back it up, nor the social ability to assemble a gang of followers, are unlikely to do well in prison
I've never understood this "suicide is the fault of the victim" mentality. Sure, they're the one who pulled the trigger. But a person in that mental state isn't rational, and may not be sane at all. You have to consider who drove them to that state, if anyone, and who ignored the warning signs, cries for help, or outright helped push them into making an irrational decision when they weren't in their right minds. Maybe they don't deserve the harshest penalties for their (in)action, maybe they didn't really have any ill-will or motive behind what they did, but just ignoring their share of the blame is ridiculous.
I'm not equating them, I'm saying they're both heroes. Swartz was trying to stand up against what seems to be a copyright controlled government (the JSTOR issue, SOPA, etc). We could use a lot more people like him. I'm also saying that when you push a person past their limit bad things happen. It's not easy standing up for what you believe in surrounded by either apathy or abuse.
Anyone who thinks suicide is easy hasn't tried it. Trust me, staying alive is evolution's biggest imperative. Going against that takes tremendous courage and a careful analysis and calculation that life isn't worth living - it's possible that the true wimps are those that don't have the guts to end it. Suicide is also a uniquely human trait.
I hope that when the time comes I'll have the courage to slit my throat if it's the right and logical thing to do.
Since he was charged with something that could result in that much jail time he was also entitled to a federal public defender if he couldn't afford his own lawyer.
That's the thing, from what I read he WAS prepared for this. Wasn't this an act of civil disobedience, which by its very nature requires the person doing it publicly accept punishment?
And lets not forget he didn't even distributed those documents. The potential victims did not press charge, arguably he didn't do anything illegal at all, and still was facing a possibility of 50 years in prison.
As a side note, in my country (Argentina), this is why we have what's called "Constitutional Warranties" (or "rights"). The reasoning behind these is that the state, as you mentioned, has infinite resources to prosecute an individual, while he, of course, doesn't. This puts him in a situation of inequality against the law. Constitutional rights are "habeas corpus" in particular, and many others. It's my understanding that some of these rights are currently suppressed in the US right now (especially when you're flagged as a "terrorist").
I'm sure the US has equivalent provisions in their law (you have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford one, the court will assign one for you).
Sadly, constitutional warranties are exploited here and it's common for lawyers and judges to "bend" the meaning of those rights and have rapists and murderers walk free while they await trial, and years of their punishment are subtracted from these. Then, for "good behavior" they get early release so basically, if you have a good lawyer-judge combination and a long trial, you could even skip prison completely.
We don't have juries here, nor sentences are dictated by single judges. "Criminal" has to be unanimous by 3 judges. (Criminal=penal, civil is the same word).
As an extra curiosity: our supreme court has ruled that aggravation of charges by re-offense (recidivism) is unconstitutional, because it goes against the idea that the jail system is for the "rehabilitation" and later " social reinsertion" of criminals. The court basically (and dangerously) ruled that if a criminal commits the same offense, it was the system's fault for not rehabilitating him properly. Which leads to a question: why is a life sentence legal, then?
I'm sorry, but he doesn't get points for maybe possibly getting the expected punishment for his, perhaps ethical, but definitely illegal actions. Perhaps he was fighting the good fight, but to me, he checked out when the consequences showed up. That's not heroic.
I'm tired of would be crusaders who think that the are invulnerable to the law. There's a reason some people are heroes and others decline to stick their neck out: there are real consequences. If he thought what he was doing was right, fighting in the courtroom is probably the central arena for getting your case to the people. Anyone going down this path should know that a courtroom is a likely place for them to end up and that is likely where he might have done as much good as he might have done had he succeeded going unprosecuted.
Lets not forget the damn settlements, which is criminal justice should be just illegal. Only 3% of the criminal cases in US go to trial. The rest of the accused are bullied into settlements with the offer of a few years against the threat of ridiculous sentences of 50+ years for relatively small crimes.
Kevin Mitnick got royally shafted for the crimes he committed. He was grossly mistreated and denied a swift trial, access to the evidence in the case against him and by all means, fair representation. What can happen to Mitnick, could happen to any white/grey/blackhat hacker, regardless of what they are accused of or how much of what they are accused of is actually true. In reality, Swartz could very well be looking at 5 years behind bars and the rest of his working life probation. For some reason US courts tend to put people in jail longer for hacking a computer and not stealing anything than for multiple violent armed robberies lately. He may not have gotten 35 years, but losing everything you have and not having a way to get back on track when you're out of jail is going to make most people rather depressed.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Do you know that you need to prove you cannot afford a defense (any defense at all) to even use one? Did you read what the posters above you wrote about their lack of incentive to do their jobs well?
governor's race now. If she had any hope of running for governor, as many claim that she does, this kind of PR should put an end to it. Bullying a 26 y/o until he commits suicide isn't going to play well even if the average person doesn't understand the case. And if what has been said so far about the case (i.e. ambitious prosecutor trying to make a name for herself over-zealously pursues disproportionate punishment for a victimless crime when she probably doesn't even understand how a network operates or what JSTOR is), then she is even more screwed. It's a small consolation but at least it's something.
A simple "I am in substantial disagreement with the requests in this petition," would probably be sufficient.
You don't have to think that they are great people or jurists to not think that their actions warrant jail time and disbarment.
Why is this modded as troll? People are responsible for their own actions. A person's death is a tragedy, but searching for people to blame after every death is stupid.
Do you know what a public defender is?
Either an underpaid version of a lawyer doing a job they'd rather not, or the bottom of the legal barrel that can't get a better job.
Are you aware that they are available to those charged in all criminal prosecutions?
Are you aware that the truth of that depends on your financial situation and willingness to bankrupt yourself defending against an opponent with essentially infinite resources?
The 6th amendment guarantees your right to counsel. It doesn't guarantee your right to free, or even necessarily very good counsel.
A petition is not, nor should it be, a voting mechanism. It is not a poll, but a way to demonstrate if a large enough number of people care about an issue. Once enough people sign a petition, then you set up a vote.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
He wasn't facing decades in jail. He was facing the possibility of decades in jail. He didn't even fight. I don't know him, and I don't know enough of the particulars of this case to definitively say whether he acted cowardly or not, but on the surface, it does look that way. Regardless, my heart goes out to his friends and family. Coward or not, suicide is one of the most selfish actions an individual can take. Even if your life sucks at the moment, you are more than your own life, and suicide hurts those who care about you far more than it hurts yourself.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
I have an alternate proposal. The total cost of investigation + prosecution must be available for the defense. That is, if the cops and the crime lab and the prosecutors office spend $500,000 on the case, then you get that amount for the defense.
The reason is simple - if someone is clearly guilty, the investigation is comparatively cheap. And if the cops spend a million bucks on prosecution, this usually means their case is weak and they are trying to amplify this weak signal as much as possible.
It should also be noted that depression is considered a mental illness, not a lack of character. It's likely that he was unable to pay, not unwilling.
who can consider this : Aaron Schwartz had to take risks, and act as he did, because he was intelligent and brave, AND, he wasn't strong enough to endure the consequences. Some people seem to forget that everything' s not about reason and calculation. He, obviously, deserves full respect. Even if he didn't measure the adversity.
I thought deceiving the court was the primary job of lawyers. Every time I have needed lawyers it was either to manipulate the court in ways I didn't believe I was able to, or to provide extra intimidation to the opposition.
If everyone was completely honest and forthcoming, we wouldn't even need lawyers. Judges would work just fine on their own.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Uh, no. Strength of character. Asshole. When you're dead, you're gone. No more life, no more things you love. At least with life you have a *chance* at redemption.
Yeah, look at this guy. Another weak-willed loser who didn't have the balls to tough it out.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
What can happen is we put JSTOR out of business.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Suicide can only be blamed on the person that did it.
Really? Do you have children? If someone was holding a gun to your child's head and said they would blow their brains out if you didn't jump off of the 30 story building you were standing on, who would be blamed for that suicide? I doubt any suicide is as black and white as you make it out to be.
Better known as 318230.
I think that could be done, but a petition is usually simply a request to have your grievance addressed, it's not binding legislation. In that sense, it is one of the tools for minority participation and not a vote. You probably don't want to see how the vote on the issue would come out necessarily, as that might cause the majority to become overbearing on the subject.
In short, all Obama is doing with the site is binding himself to actually taking the time to formulate a response if it hits a certain number of signers. That response could be: "LOL, no", and in this case probably would be a much more polite formulation of that.
this was his final statement, his final way of making a point.
When I was in grad school, there was one tenured professor who was true scum; had only graduated 3 PhD's in 15 years, had an affair with a student, had one student who had previously committed suicide, I can go on. At the same time, he had over 300 publications and books to his name, was known and respected in his field, and was a fellow of a prestigious academic society. During my third year, his second student committed suicide. This was the tipping point; within the year, the professor was forced to retire and is no longer overseeing students.
I can only hope this tragic event becomes a tipping point for copyright reform as well.
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
Time to think about college choices...
OK a new size TV
Alan Turing might not have killed himself. He was simply careless with a science experiment. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092 Vincent Van Gogh might not have killed himself. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/new-biography-argues-van-gogh-did-not-kill-himself/ Take away these famous cases and the link between genius and suicide disappears. It's actually very unusual for genius at his or her peak to commit suicide. The peak is the ultimate high.
...and what law was broken?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/family-blames-us-attorneys-for-death-of-aaron-swartz/
Stamos goes on to write that MIT runs an “open, unmonitored and unrestricted network on purpose. Their head of network security admitted as much in an interview Aaron’s attorneys and I conducted in December. MIT is aware of the controls they could put in place to prevent what they consider abuse, such as downloading too many PDFs from one website or utilizing too much bandwidth, but they choose not to.” In addition, he wrote, MIT did not require users of its network to agree to any terms of use, nor did JSTOR take any steps to prevent large-scale downloads of its PDFs.
"millions of dollars".. in ACADEMIC papers? really?
worst case is trespassing because he entered the network closet w/o permission. tresspassing does not warrant 30 years. ever.
overzealous resume padding is the reason the US Atty continued with this sham.
And yet plenty of other people kill themselves as inmates, right inside prison walls. Your point is?
Guess you will have to always be puzzled. The rest of us know damn well to look in the filth and scum for the evil pricks who ultimately triggered the act.
Aaron Swartz had hit the jackpot and was rich at a young age. Only in his particular subculture was he then led to pursue self-destructive acts instead of following basic human instinct that 95% of the people in the world would jump for joy for a chance to have: being able to settle down, buy a house, get married, and have lots of children. It's incredible to me how narrow minded are people in the United States towards how other people live in other countries. My experience with graduate students from other countries is that often they are married and even having children while in graduate school while trying to get by on graduate stipends and pursuing their studies. But instead of bemoaning their fate, they are happy with their families, for they know they are blessed. Children are a blessing. A subculture that rejects this is sick, sick, sick. Aaron Swartz had it made financially. He was given terrible advice from his subculture and his upbringing. These are the people who should be ashamed for ruining a bright young person's life.
They also are set up in a system where they virtually never have to bear the consequences of their screw-ups and overreaches.
Parent needs to be mod'ed up.
Life is harsh. The weak will opt out. The strong will go on fighting. Did I mention that life is harsh? It's not my duty to hold the weak up indefinitely..
Pretty funny considering that fear of death is hardwired into each of us. Most people will do *anything* for just one more day of life - kill an innocent, sell out their family, anything. This is not 'being strong', this is just being slave to your animal nature. The same people start blathering about "cowardice" any time they see mention of suicide, to forget the fact that they are pissing themselves at mere thought of death. Someone already mentioned Thich Quang Duc - internet tough guys like you don't have a fraction of his bravery and willpower.
Anyone who thinks suicide is easy hasn't tried it.
I'm going to prove you wrong, as soon as I find someone willing to click "Submit" once I've done so.
paintball
Got any proof that suicide is uniquely human? Lots of animals do commit suicide, what's iffy is the amount of intention. For example, whales beach themselves sometimes over and over even after being rescued -- is it intentional or is it because of a navigation issue? Bees commit suicide to protect the hive -- do they do it unknowingly? I think biologically they would have to "know" on some level, or else they wouldn't be sparing enough about it. Many mammals risk their lives to protect their young -- it can be regarded as suicidal behavior.
1) He could be reasonably prepared for huge fine or probation, but not 30 years in prison. Hello, he just downloaded some documents not went on killing spree
2) Suicide has been used many times as especially strong form of protest
Have gnu, will travel.
To commit suicide knowing the consequences, you have to grasp the concept of mortality. Now I fully believe that animals have feelings, emotions, and thought. But to say that an animal understands that it's going to die one day is a bit of a stretch I feel. When an animal sees another dead thing, do they know that it will happen to them one day?
Of course animals will die to protect their young. And of course they're afraid of pain. You don't need a knowledge of mortality to be afraid of pain. Animals (including humans) are sparing about suicidal behavior because it's painful. Now a human who doesn't feel pain will still not want to die because they're aware of their mortality and are afraid of "where they will go", and they "don't want it to end".
What of animals who can't feel pain? I'm willing to bet they won't care about their "life" as much since I doubt they're aware of themselves as mortal creatures.
Specifically:
Why did they pursue a case when the plaintiffs want out?
a) Was it because they thought what he allegedly did was so terrible that it must be prosecuted?
b) Were they thinking this was a meal ticket to fame?
There are many civil crimes that, when crossing a monetary threshold, turn into criminal actions which do not require a plaintiff to press charges.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Would the corollary also apply? Every dollar you spend must be matched by a corresponding dollar donation to the prosecution case. That way rich people can't buy justice by outspending the government.
The real bullies and cowards are the downvoters. Don't expect any change from a forum whose very nature encourages online bullying.
That is what a trial resolves - if whatever the defendant did was illegal or not. Unfortunately, he chose not to resolve that question leaving it up to the next guy to do.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Any executioner trying to put someone behind bars for 35 years, only for distributing non-copyrighted information that should have been free in the first place, is 'going personal'.
Prosecutors damn well know how to contribute to, or even create a 'suicidal condition in someone', but some don't give a shit because they are paid for it.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Didn't you ("we the people") vote for that?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Wow, you sound completely clueless. It's extremely hard to get a job as a public defender these days, and jobs as a FEDERAL public defender have always been very competitive and prestigious. Everyone who gets those jobs has many years of dedication to public service under their belt.
If Carmen had any dignity she would kill herself out of shame and guilt. She is directly responsible for the death of another human being. I would hope that she would want to pay for that in some way. That would be justice.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
All those wonderful project he did like RSS and free software. However, I fear it may have made less able to stand the fearful pressure of federal prosecution hardball. Its not your routine traffic ticket.
Is it civil disobedience just because you say it is? Please give me your email address so I can email you before I am about to break some law so that I know whether or not my actions are civil disobedience.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Are you saying that he wanted to be caught? That he was caught intentionally?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
This is the evil that we can fight today. There are other evils, and other days.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
There's no need to end up in a courtroom if you are willing to kill yourself first. Suicide makes you immune to pretty much any punishment. He could have shot one of the prosecutors and escaped punishment by just killing himself. Being suicidal, genuinely suicidal, makes you tremendously powerful for a short time. It allows you to completely ignore any consequences of whatever action you might want to take. And the idea that suicide isn't heroic is merely your opinion. I disagree.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
If everyone was completely honest and forthcoming, we wouldn't even need lawyers. Judges would work just fine on their own.
If everyone was completely honest and forthcoming we wouldn't need judges either.
Fifty years of Yippie! 1968-2018
There is nothing more sad, more disheartening, than the death of a decent person.
I didn't know Aaron Swartz, although I had communicated with him online on several occasions; a highly intelligent young man with a prodigious mind and noble spirit.
Aaron evidently reached the decision, to spare his family and friends future pain, he would forfeit his own life; in ancient Rome they referred to it as "Falling on one's sword."
Yet another fatality of Obama's War On Whistleblowers, the dramatic extension and expansion from the Bush administration.
Today, Gov. Don Siegelman sits in a penitentiary, his only "crime" was wishing to increase educational access for the many; an authentic democrat, so very rare today.
Today, an Iraqi immigrant, Shakir Hamoodi, who sent small sums of money to his close relatives back home for medical and food emergencies, also sits in a penitentiary, yet another humanist, or "criminal" in America?
Today, a brave CIA whistleblower of the criminal and barbaric torture taking place, John Kiriakou, faces two years in jail, thanks to Obama and life in the land of the lawless.
Aaron Swartz, Bradley Manning, Gov. Don Siegelman, Shakir Hamoodi, John Kiriakou and others, too many others, a roster of the best of America, wasted lives in others pursuit of never-ending corruption.
A bizarre BBC report the other day --- and bizarre is the only accurate description for both BBC and their news report --- ran an attack piece on WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, nonsensically juxtaposed against the newspaper strike in China!
They --- the BBC and Australian news --- once again perpetrated lies of "sexual assault of two women" against Assange?
Having read all the legal documents, in both English and Swedish, I observed NO verification of such lies, only that Sofia Wilen, the younger woman who first approached Julian Assange, wanted nothing to do with such false allegations, and that the government-affiliated Anna Ardin (one of her many aliases), appears to have been the driving force in stirring up such vicious stories! (When the publicity became too much for Anna Ardin, she was spirited off to Israel, where a member of the Bonnier family was ambassador at that time.)
http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/suspicious.pdf
The one common factor, known to Americans, which is evident in both the attacks on Wikileaks/Assange and the illegitimate and amoral incarceration of Gov. Siegelman, is Karl Rove.
Rove appears again and again in the background, as the puppet master pulling the strings to take out Gov. Siegelman, and was financed in his multiple trips to Sweden, around the beginning of the WikiLeaks' episode, financed by the Bonnier family, one of the media giant families of Europe and among the top ten media corporations in existence. (Virtually everyone on the Swedish side who has been attacking Julian Assange is financially connected to the Bonnier family: the attorneys, Anna Ardin, the Bonnier-employed reporters, the Justice Minister, etc., the only exception would be Sofia Wilen, the young lady who quickly distanced herself from the horrendously unfolding events.)
Aaron Swartz, both believed in, and fought for, free speech and freedom of the press, an incredibly shrinking freedom which has been all but co-opted by the ruling oligarchs through their corporations today --- does anyone really know who owns AT&T, after all?
Recently, some technically astute friends ran a series of tests, and observed that the most heavily censored sites: Huffington Post, boingboing.net, Naked Capitalism, The Guardian, etc., are considered to be some of the more "liberal" sites on the 'net --- nothing could be further from the truth!
The most heavily censored English-speaking countries on the Web? Canada, the UK and the USA.
Most despicably, network neutrality appears as dead as Aaron Swartz
May he never again have a good night's sleep, and my his name live forever in infamy.
Robert B. Myers
MIT, SB '72 Course VIII
the education system and the culture is at fault.
New Economic Perspectives
Sure, and all trials end with the absolute truth, right? Nobody innocent has ever been found guilty, right? In the face of penalties of 50+ years (which are illegal in most civilized countries in the world) betting on the fairness of the system seems to be a very bad idea.
Even if he was considered not guilty he would still have spent every money he had just defending himself from false accusations. How is that fair and honest? How just is a justice system where any prosecutor can pretty much screw your life of innocent people without consequences for him?
Please list all the drugs you were on when you wrote or edited this summary. Because fuck me it must have been a trip.
In Prosecutor as Bully, Larry Lessig laments, 'They [JSTOR] declined to pursue their own action against Aaron, and they asked the government to drop its.
Liberty.
And exactly how do you expect them to man up and kill them themselves? They already voluntarily submitted to gun control legislation in the hopes some might eventually get passed.
Seriously, I'm betting most of the people yelling for the prosecutors heads are the same people yelling for the government to take the guns and keep us safe. If there was ever a wake up moment,.... oh well... I guess I should stop
"federal public defender"
Great, a "lawyer" who barely passed the bar, with no budget, and who doesn't want the job is going to defend him against a veteran prosecutor with pubic support and infinite resources. I'm sure that will work out well for the kid. The slow grind alone over something so simple has probably been sheer hell. At this point, I'm sure he wasn't irrational at all. He saw his options and realized this was all that was left. Killing yourself isn't easy but was all he thought he had left. Maybe now something will be done about prosecutorial reform. I remember something about the ' the alter of liberty must be fed with the blood of martyrs and tyrants'. Let's make this martyr count.
celle
I'm not equating them, I'm saying they're both heroes.
The difference is Turing was persecuted for what he was, Swartz was prosecuted for what he did. Turning was not trying to make a point, sadly Swartz probably was.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Also: as meaningless as petitions are, they'd be slightly less meaningless if you at least courageously offered those an ability to sign a petition in the opposite direction too. In fact, this should be a moral requirement for all those who ever make a petition.
Bullshit.
It is not your opponent's job to lay out your case for you, that is your job.
I guess being lazy sucks.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Considering that JSTOR dropped the charges and they were threatening 30 years in prison, I'll politely disagree with you. Also, wasn't homosexuality actually illegal at the time in England?
Orwell was a manual, and Brazil a training film.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
Not true--just because both sides of an argument are honest and forthcoming doesn't mean that they're both right. They often have different understandings of a situation that come from their own unique perspectives and beliefs. Judges are useful arbiters for determining which side is correct.
Rob
Yep, it's what other nations call "lobbying".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Animals witness the gory details of death more regularly than most modern humans, I've seen myna birds gathered around dead relatives on the road on many occasions. I think they understand the same thing could happen to them and are fearful of it, but I doubt they understand it's inevitable.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If you're co-operative, you might go to such a prison. If you insist on standing up for yourself, they make an example out of you by putting you in the pound-you-in-the-ass variety.
And so the tactic of civil disobedience is neutralized, simply by the other side raising the stakes.
The world doesn't give a shit. They could have sentenced him to 35 years and all he'd get is a mention on Slashdot (and the world at large doesn't give a shit what us geeks think) and maybe a footnote in a newspaper.
I guarantee you the prosecutor made perfectly clear what was going to happen to him if he didn't take whatever deal was offered. And that's probably why he killed himself.
Again, nobody with any power was on his side. Even half of slashdot is willing to consign him to Hades for violating the law. Lawrence Lessig says what he did was morally wrong. With friends like that, you don't even need enemies.
Prosecutors give you two choices -- take what they offer, or accept torture and rape for decades in prison. When they come across someone too principled to deal who believes the other option is real (and it is), what else would they expect?
I don't disagree with you in general. If he won, however, he would have had a possibility of furthering the cause of changing this broken system using his visibility and story.
Indeed, he likely could have made much more of a difference even if he had decided to spend every last penny he had on his defense (and then the government would have been required to pay for the remainder of his defense), fought the charges, won, and then committed suicide leaving a detailed explanation of how the case the prosecutors couldn't prove had destroyed his life (in reality, after winning, he probably would have decided to abort the "suicide" part of such a plan given his age, skills, and visibility).
Personally, I think prosecutors (the organization, not the individual prosecuting attorney) should be required to pay every "reasonable" expense of defense if the defendant is not convicted with some sort of prorating if multiple charges are brought and only some result in conviction (perhaps using the maximum possible sentences of the various charges to prorate the entire defense bill since trying to tease apart which minute of lawyer time went to defend which charge is probably infeasible). Similarly, if the defendant is found guilty, she should be required to pay the government's reasonable cost of prosecution to the extent they have the resources to do so after victims of the crimes are compensated (so, for example, Bernie Madoff's assets would have all gone to those scammed, not the government for their prosecution costs).
As well, I think it would be appropriate that prosecutors must make all specific threats of additional charges in writing and that once the threat is made, the defendant can demand that the threatened charge (which the prosecutors are less likely to be able to prove if they are threatening to "overcharge") be pursued and that lesser charges for the same act be dismissed with prejudice (subject to some restrictions). The result being, of course, attempts to bully by overcharging would backfire often (leaving the government paying for a defense to a charge that they never really expected to win and giving the defendant a pass on lesser charges).
Some of these requirements for prosecutors to pay for defense of failed prosecutions and the defendant's right to force charging the highest threatened charge may be subject to court approval/review for various reasons. For example, if the preponderance of the evidence shows that the defendant actively misled (vs., fore example, just refused to talk to) prosecutors and that resulted in a higher real or threatened charge than appropriate, the prosecutor should be able to make the lesser charges and not have to pay for any defense related to the higher charges.
This would, of course, unfortunately clog up the court system as prosecutors and defense attorneys adjusted to the new game.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
He didn't die for what he believed in. He died to escape.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
He was fighting it. He was fighting it for years and they just kept putting more pressure on. Documents that should have been available to him from the beginning were locked away and kept secret despite him fighting for them. The idea that he wasn't facing decades in jail is made under the assumption of a successful defense, which was being denied to him the entire time. Looking at the surface of the situation and deciding they were selfish for removing themselves from it? The selfishness and cowardice that people go off about when someone does this, is entirely their own. They're too caught up in their own selfish expectations of how others should act and feel that they will outright deny the events and reasoning leading up to someone offing themselves because of it. Seriously, it's disgusting.
Personally I think that making deals illegal in criminal process would already go a long way to make things more fair. Currently only 3% of the cases go to trial, 97% take deals. From those 97% it is very likely that a considerable part is innocent but were bullied into accepting the deal at the threat of great legal costs and absurd potential penalties.
If deals became illegal prosecutors would have to work to condemn people and would end needing to prioritize serious crimes instead of having all time and resources in the world to persecute the few that do not take the deals.
I'd like to see more oversight on plea deals.
However, completely banning them is heavy handed. Sometimes suspects will gladly plea guilty to a lesser charge when they are guilty of a greater charge but the prosecutor decides, for example, that a diversion program plus probation (possible under the lesser charge) is better for all than a prison or jail sentence (the minimum punishment under the greater charge). Such arrangements are sometimes the result of the prosecutor looking at the details and the personal situation of the individual and convincing themselves that the suspect accepts responsibility. To force everyone to go to court instead of having the suspect plead guilty to the lesser charge in exchange for the greater charge being dropped would waste everyone's resources.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
This person needs to be in charge of the investigation into the sub-prime mortgage fiasco.
Then maybe some charges will actually be brought against the people running these 'too big to fail' banks.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Nowhere else in the world such deals are allowed and for a very good motive. In truth you are blackmailing the accused into giving up on his constitutional right to defend himself. This system combined with the ridiculous high prison sentences people can get are things designed to be abused.
That is mostly why US has the greatest number of incarcerated people in the world, and by far, and the greatest number of incarcerated people proven innocent afterwards too.
" He was charged because he wanted to steal academic documents."
FTFY
If you can't add anything of value then kindly STFU. Seriously, morari's point is spot on. We have prosecutors that are elected to positions. The basis of those elections (and appointments) are always CONVICTIONS, not JUSTICE. The system is broken, but not irreparably. It is the portion of our population who, when witnessing the unjust tribulations of others, decide to stick their thumbs in their ears, wiggle their fingers and mutter "nay nay ne nay nay" that are the ultimate cause of this dysfunction. Those unwilling to acknowledge that people are wrongfully prosecuted and convicted. Those that can't seem to understand that the wrongful conviction of an innocent person is orders of magnitude worse (in the vast majority of cases) than the failure to convict the actually guilty.
It is blood-lust and arrogance and an extreme lack of empathy (which, ironically, certain media personalities have tried to make a dirty word) that are at the root of this cause.
No one is asking for anarchy. Simple accountability is all. Prosecutors executing their oaths of office based on what is just, not what pays off best for them. Serving justice will frequently require doing that which does not further your career, that is the nature of public service. If one can not make the distinction between self-interest and public-interest, then one should not serve as a prosecutor.
Not a fan of republican democracy I see. If they take away the guns, how will we every have our own Red October. I guess that is the logic.
Had this gone to court, he had no chance of winning. Zero. The prosecutor would say scary things about him, the jurors would take the "the law is the law" attitude (because anyone who doesn't, doesn't get on a jury) and convict him. Then the judge would go ahead and give him a high sentence, on the recommendation of the prosecutor, who would assure the judge that Swartz was a dangerous cyberterrorist or whatever.
His conviction might make page 2 of the technology section of a few newspapers (and, of course, Slashdot). Mostly, nobody would hear about it at all.
You mean the scum who have no power and influence.
Does it matter they have no power or influence, if they raped or murdered? Or are you just raving and ranting for the sake of it?
This petition thing has really been effective at wasting people's efforts. You do realize the only thing which happens if this gets enough signatures is there's a response which boils down to "No", right?
I don't understand this mindset at all. I'm far from a hero, but if I end up with nothing to lose, then my instinct would be to fight the people who are putting me in jail with all I have, even if just to spite them.
In civilized countries, a defendant is considered innocent until proven guilty. It is at the charge of the prosecutor to prove that he is guilty. It is my understand that it is not the case in the US, and that it is at the charge of the defendant to prove that he is innocent.
Just want to say that no one has ever been "proven innocent" in a U.S. court. The best you can do is be acquitted or found not guilty.
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/01/mit_regrets_any_role_tragedy
People, what happened to you? I grew up in the communist block, and we used to like the USA, the country where you could express your opinion, where there was real justice, where anybody could live a decent life if he was willing to work, without everybody else trying to rob him... This seems so long ago. Now I see exactly what we have overthrown some 23 years ago - a totalitarian state with security everywhere and unprosecutable prosecutors (who watches the watchers? well, nobody does), where the government bullies a smart, standup guy, and his neighbours are so twisted by all the intellectual property hype that they don't do anything about it but rather rationalize their apathy by explaining to themselves how he actually did commit a crime. Looks to me like the terrorists already won, your precious freedom is long gone, and your stay in Afghanistan is just a waste of money. Feel free to hate me for this opinion, at least you will have some illusion of freedom ;)
I urge anyone who wants to have an informed opinion on the topic to read this for a legal analysis (and also to return for "Part 2" when available). This is an informed opinion, and obviously one which you need not agree, but it's difficult to have an intelligent discussion unless you consider points raised in this analysis.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
It is simple, I do NOT know what it is like to be him. But I do know that sometimes when a person needs support, people instead push them on and on until they break. It is the job of the law to push, it may not be right but this was NOT a kid not knowing that what he would do would lead to trouble. Did people around him support him or push him? Just because someone is really smart doesn't mean they need a shoulder to lean on instead of people looking up admiringly asking what trick you are going to do next.
Most suicides happen because those that blame others the hardest did themselves not do enough. It is human nature. Sadly the flame that burns brightest often burns shortest, especially if others are blowing on it to make it burn even faster. More people then the prosecuter have to look themselves in the mirror. Especially Lessig, the guy has a history of fighting his wars over other peoples backs and backs break. And that is not right.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
His case was only due to go to trial in a few weeks and the party he had "wronged" was on his side! As said, I could understand suicide if you he had been found guilty or heard his sentence of spend his first night in jail. But in the middle of the pre-trial?
And were was his support? If he was so worried about the trial why weren't there people with him?
What I am trying to say is that the letter is NOT a gigantic event that pushes a sane person over the edge, so either it was something else OR he had been slowly loosing it over time under the pressure of the trial.
If it was another major event, what was it. And if he had been slowly loosing it under the pressure of the upcoming trial, WHICH IS PERFECTLY UNDERSTANDABLE, why didn't he get more support from his family and supposed friends?
I think we will find a case of a young man continually pushed throughout his life to excel, to live up to a standard few of us could meet, to fight everyones fight who collapsed under the pressure. But blaming only the single straw that broke the camels back is wrong, blame applies to all who loaded the camel. As has been pointed out by others, including legal experts, the "chiding" email is barely that. Was it the final straw? Then who had overloaded this guy that it was the final one? And what was their agenda?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm sorry the sarcasm slipped by you. I guess my tags got eaten by the system. It has to do with begging the government to disarm you while at the same time becoming increasingly outraged at their actions.
Red October was when a Russian sub from a book right?
Look what happened to TVShack's Richard O'Dwyer who infringed on copyright. The US authorities blatherred about extraditing him from the UK and sending him to jail for 10 years, in the end he ended up with a slap on the wrist.
I feel sorry for people who commit suicide, but you can hardly ever say that it was an optimal outcome to their situation, unless you're talking about someone in constant severe pain with a terminal condition.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Personally I think that making deals illegal in criminal process would already go a long way to make things more fair. Currently only 3% of the cases go to trial, 97% take deals. From those 97% it is very likely that a considerable part is innocent but were bullied into accepting the deal at the threat of great legal costs and absurd potential penalties.
Personally, I would never admit to a crime I hadn't done, regardless of the "deal" being offered. Once you're admitted to a crime, you've got almost no chance of convincing people later on that you're innocent, and you've still got the stigma of a criminal conviction affecting your future employment and so on.
I would make an exception if the death penalty were involved as a likely outcome of not confessing to a lesser crime. But that is an example of one of the many problems with having capital punishment.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
the jurors would take the "the law is the law" attitude (because anyone who doesn't, doesn't get on a jury) and convict him.
So the conviction rate for US juries is 100%? Really?
If that's the case, your society has a far wider problem than stupid copyright laws.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
So you would risk, for example, 35 years in prison instead of taking 5? That and using every penny you have defending yourself? That is the kind of deal they offer, and they will make every possible effort to make you get the 35 if you dare not to take the deal.
Shooting yourself in the head is by no means foolproof. There are other, more certain ways of killing yourself if you really want to.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Suicide can only be blamed on the person that did it.
Really? Do you have children? If someone was holding a gun to your child's head and said they would blow their brains out if you didn't jump off of the 30 story building you were standing on, who would be blamed for that suicide? I doubt any suicide is as black and white as you make it out to be.
Congratulations on coming up with an extreme and totally implausible edge case to try to disprove a general point.
Say an evil terrorist had a young child as a hostage, and said that unless you raped and tortured that child, they (the terrorist) would explode a nuclear bomb that would kill hundreds of thousands of people. Does that mean that, because the question of child rape and torture isn't black and white, it won't always in the real world be a bad thing?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Copyright is 90% for the benefit of lawyers. Congress is 51% lawyers by volume. This is not a coincidence.
Question everything
And so the tactic of civil disobedience is neutralized, simply by the other side raising the stakes.
You are quite wrong. If you do something as an act of civil disobedience, the greater the penalty the better the publicity. It makes the State look worse, especially if the penalty is disproportionate.
Once you have been caught knowingly performing an illegal act you WILL be punished. The question is whether you think your own personal suffering is worth it for the cause you believe in.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Even half of slashdot is willing to consign him to Hades for violating the law.
I really don't think that's the case. It's just that some of us would say that if he did break the law, he can't have expected not to receive some form of punishment. That doesn't mean we think he should have been locked up for 30 years, or whatever ridiculous punishments were being threatened.
In the UK at least, for a non violent white collar type first offence, you'd get maybe a suspended sentence or community service and a small fine. The main problem would be that you had a criminal record, but I don't see what else you could expect.
If the US punishments are extravagantly disproportionate to the crime, that is the fault of your whole legal system, not just one prosecuting attorney.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I didn't say they tried rapists or murderers, though they do sometimes. I said they work to remove scum. For example, Al Capone was tried for tax evasion, but he's well known as being a suspected murderer.
On the contrary to your statement, it's really you who has no idea what you are talking about. Of course, unlike you, I'll be more mature than to wish suicide upon you. After all, I graduated the 7th grade a long time ago.
He believed that information paid for by tax dollars should be free, not costing 10 cents a page or whatever to download.
I'm sure most people here would agree with that. That doesn't mean that any of us are entitled to break the law without repurcussions. If a law is bad, you campaign to get rid of it.
If you go down the civil disobedience route, you have to be prepared to suffer for it. And it's probably not a good idea to do that if you're prone to clinical depression as this young man seems to have been.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It's like complaining that your doctor didn't pass top of his class from the most prestigious medical school in the world. So what? He's still a qualified doctor.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The big question for me in this article is how a professor at MIT can investigate MIT. They are after all his employer and a manifest conflict of interest. I do not mean to impune the integrity of anyone, but I just do not see how a MIT professor can be objective and free of pressure to find that MIT free of responsibility. This is not to say that MIT acted especially irresponsibly. From my armchair position it seems primarily the result of aggressive and disproportionate prosecution. MIT bears responsibility to the extent that they could have acted to prevent a manifestly disproportionate response. In fact, if I were a MIT student I might want it clarified that infractions of school IT policy won't put them in danger of a 30 year jail sentence.
He didn't die for what he believed in. He died to escape.
I'm not sure there's really a difference. Nobody wants to go to prison, but that may be a consequence of actions you take in support of your beliefs. He changed the consequences, which pretty much means he took control.
If anything, this actually does more for his cause than going to prison. If he had gone to prison, the government would use that as an example that nobody is above the law, and how they showed they're going to be tough on people who did what he did. Now instead we're finally having the conservation on how prosecutors are pushing for too hard a punishment for non-violent crimes. The way I see it, he turned a loss into a win.
Perhaps it will be of no effect. However, the prosecutor isn't going to enjoy the effect, not when she introduces herself and someone says "Oh your are the one who hounded . . . ." BTW, the petition is well over halfway to the 25,000 mark.
End MGM. Get prospective parents of boys to Google: Men do complain
Perhaps you could document this and provide examples? This isn't about killing oneself, it's about calling for the heads of government run amok while at the same time voiding yourself of any means of recourse.
It's like a car mechanic on crack who claims he does crack cocaine in order to work on more cars so he can make more money to buy more crack but sells his tools to purchase more crack. Pawn shops all around the country are full of tools from idiots who need to make a buck but sold off their ability to do so in their trade for a short term satisfaction.
This is a tragedy, and has massive potential in civil court. If you can turn someone with inside knowledge of what sounds like venal prosecution, Swartz' family could really bloody the nose of the DoJ and its' agents or assigns. It won't bring back the brain that helped do so much good, though. This is really just a sad sad story.
--- Say something clever. Pretend it was me. Thanks.
I am not at all sure that petitioning the President is ever all that effective, although I think that even career lawyers in the Justice Department do have to answer in some part to a court of public opinion, even given the possibility that the separation of powers is broken by partisan gridlock, given the right amount of negative information even a powerful JD prosecutor could be made to pay dearly for something the public sees as unjust. Of course if the Congress were to get involved and the guy was hulled before the Justice Committee to answers questions in public, what he says and is disclosed could ruin the rest of his life, even if he isn't disbarred. So, there are sanctions, even if they are informal, and they may be based on the cleansing effect of public disclosure. If there is enough dirty linen, it will get aired. And we better hope that being concerned for freedom of expression continues to make it so.
Fuck off asshole. If you are facing decades in prison and being forever named a felon, wouldn't you consider it?
These prosecutors need to pay for their crimes. They need to be fired, disbarred, and then thrown in jail.
Culprit #1: Stephen P. Heymann, the head of the Cybercrime Unit and lead prosecutor Culprit #2: Carmen M. Ortiz, US Attorney (and Bostonian of the Year as Twitter tells me)
Sign the petitions: [1] [2]
Fuck off asshole. If you are facing decades in prison and being forever named a felon, wouldn't you consider it?
These prosecutors need to pay for their crimes. They need to be fired, disbarred, and then thrown in jail.
Culprit #1: Stephen P. Heymann, the head of the Cybercrime Unit and lead prosecutor Culprit #2: Carmen M. Ortiz, US Attorney (and Bostonian of the Year as Twitter tells me)
Sign the petitions: [1] [2]
Fuck off asshole. If you are facing decades in prison and being forever named a felon, wouldn't you consider it?
These prosecutors need to pay for their crimes. They need to be fired, disbarred, and then thrown in jail.
Culprit #1: Stephen P. Heymann, the head of the Cybercrime Unit and lead prosecutor Culprit #2: Carmen M. Ortiz, US Attorney (and Bostonian of the Year as Twitter tells me)
Sign the petitions: [1] [2]
Fuck off asshole. If you are facing decades in prison and being forever named a felon, wouldn't you consider it?
These prosecutors need to pay for their crimes. They need to be fired, disbarred, and then thrown in jail.
Culprit #1: Stephen P. Heymann, the head of the Cybercrime Unit and lead prosecutor Culprit #2: Carmen M. Ortiz, US Attorney (and Bostonian of the Year as Twitter tells me)
Sign the petitions: [1] [2]
Fuck off asshole. If you are facing decades in prison and being forever named a felon, wouldn't you consider it?
These prosecutors need to pay for their crimes. They need to be fired, disbarred, and then thrown in jail.
Culprit #1: Stephen P. Heymann, the head of the Cybercrime Unit and lead prosecutor Culprit #2: Carmen M. Ortiz, US Attorney (and Bostonian of the Year as Twitter tells me)
Sign the petitions: [1] [2]
These dudes were going for Aarons head to make a name for themselves, most ass hats just don'
Whoa, hold the phone there, bubba. The federal defender's office is elite; when a position opens up experienced lawyers with Ivy League educations fight each other for the job. While not as adequately funded as US attorneys' offices they aren't on a shoestring budget. Speaking as an experienced lawyer myself I would take a federal public defender any day of the week if I was charged.
to be involved in hacking crimes - They arent involved in Murder crimes, they arent involved in child rape crimes, they arent involved in gang killings - unless those happen to cross state or international lines. the whole point of the constitution is that the states can take care of themselves most of the time - and the federal government often just messes things up and wastes peoples money. the Feds should be saved for the Important Stuff - like tracking Osama Bin Ladin.... fun fact, while dozens of FBI agents were chasing down the racist scaremonger stories about "Chinese Spies" in 1999, what was really happening was that the 9/11 hijackers were in the US learning to fly airplanes. - while the CIA's Bin Ladin unit was having political squabbles and the few people who were trying to warn about the hijackers were being sidelined.
no? then they are not financial institutions.
phone? is that really something that the Federal Government, with its Fourteen Trillion Dollars in Debt, really needs to be worried about?
They weren't after him for downloading articles. They were after him because of his work on demandprogress.org, rootstrikers and other political activism. As with the dubious accusations (not charges) against Assange, the charges over Schwartz' alleged crimes were trumped up to stop him from doing what he obviously considered important work: political activism challenging the status quo.
If one has to finger point, one has to finger point oneself.
We, the people, are the guilty party.
It is because of us, the people, who allow the government to do whatever the government wants - including filing trump up charges against Aaron Swartz, - we should at least be frank to ourselves of our own guilt.
Without the consent of the people, government can't do what it does.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
if you made a phone call to sheboygan and you payed for it, thats interstate commerce. if you use the App Store, thats interstate commerce. should your brother have a Federal Case against him he guesses your password and installs a jokey screensaver? because thats what the law currently reads.