Slashdot Mirror
After Aaron Swartz's Death, the Focus Now Falls On the Prosecutors
Marcion writes "Journalists and commentators are now questioning the role of Massachusetts prosecutors Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann in the suicide of Aaron Swartz and whether they levied disproportionate charges in order to boost their own political profiles, despite being warned he was a suicide risk. Meanwhile White House petitions to remove Ortiz and Heymann have already received tens of thousands of signatures. Should these prosecutors be investigated for their actions regarding Swartz?"
Civil Serpents abusing their power for personal ends? Shocking.
They shouldn't be investigated, they should be beaten and killed by penguin vigilantes!!!!
Wow. From what you're saying, you really know absolutely nothing about this story at all, do you?
Whether the person is a suicide risk should not be a factor in the charges that are brought.
Focusing on those two (whose behavior does indeed seem pretty despicable) is going to accomplish very little in the long term. Instead, lets revamp some of the fundamentals of our so-called Justice System. Stop letting prosecutors pick and choose who to charge at their own whim, with little to zero oversight. Punish prosecutors who bring charges in bad faith. End the system of plea-bargains and return to the jury trials that are supposed to be the core of our criminal law.
Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann should at the very least be prosecuted for misconduct. If in fact the evidence points to that they piled on the charges to enhance their own political careers, after they are dis-barred, they should be prosecuted for murder.
Being publicly embarrassed worldwide = nothing to due with it.
I could see prosecutors bringing the heat down on the kid, pushing him over the edge, just to try and score political points...
This is my sig.
Putting the actual tragedy aside; it's great that people are talking about the bully tactics from US prosecution. However people need to understand that this probably is fairly systemic with a system that cares about results more than it cares about justice. It's great that people are discussing the subject, but making an example of two of the players is just a cheap trick that stops people taking a long and hard look at the game thats being played.
Maybe the issue is that he was suicidal for years and never dealt with what caused his severe emotional trauma.
[citation needed]
So if we cannot prove that there was direct causation, then are the prosecutor's actions a-okay? N. O.
People in a position of authority or trust should not be treating other human beings like dirt, because they think they can get away with it. I do not care if they are a DoJ suit or an asshole roommate named Dharun Ravi.
And Obama and Eric Holder expanded it and then covered it up when it went wrong.
Thanks for proving my point.
As I see it, if you seek public attention (both Swartz and the prosecutors), you need to be prepared for both the good and bad consequences of your actions. Why should any of the parties involved be surprised that there are all sorts of different reactions as a result of seeking public attention?
Let's not use the unknowables of the suicide in a rush to judgement. Let's wind back the clock to the day before Aaron killed himself and ask a very simple question: WTF?! As so many have already pointed out, there are so many individuals involved in so many schemes that have had REAL NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES that it is just unimaginable that they would have prioritized this case as they had, and that they would be threatening to lock up somebody whose actions were much more like civil disobedience than criminal mischief, and even less like criminal behavior.
When prosecutors prioritize cases based on their ability to really trounce the little guy, rather than to take down the big guy, we have a problem and need a new batch of prosecutors. Aaron's suicide, if it was related, only makes this case the more tragic, but no less relevant.
Lets just scare a 26 year old into thinking hes going to be forever labeled a felon... This means no job in the IT industry, one heck of a time finding housing, and good luck with quite a few other aspects of life that people take for granted. By the way, you get to do 35 years in PRISON, not jail, PRISON. The place where you either join a gang or get raped.
Ortiz's dipshit husband says "he had a plea bargain for 6 months." Oh sweet, I get to get raped for 6 months instead of 35 years. But also face the whole not ever being able to find a job, and having to live with my parents because no one will rent me a place...
I would have offed myself too. Dear DOJ, go f' yourself.
The radio DJs were jackoffs doing their thing. They just got unlucky and messed with a person who was a suicide risk. (Which should really make you think twice about being a jackoff for a living)
The prosecutors on the other hand have legal precedence and obligations when dealing with people that are possible suicide risks. They ignored them.
Someone was clearly aiming to make a career of making "an example" of Aaron. They literally told him "I am going to ruin your life. You are going to jail (effectively) forever."
If you were in Aaron's position, don't tell me you wouldn't think of killing yourself too.
yes.
Well, even though he was young at 26, he was facing 35 years in prison. So he would have possibly gotten out when he was 61, maybe earlier with good behavior, but who knows.
options:
a) End your life at 26, you'll be remembered well by your accomplishments and won't have to suffer.
b) A stressful slog through a court case that will leave you in jail for a very long time. In jail the boredom is broken periodically by suffering. If you survive jail, you'll get out, when you're elderly, and then maybe you'll be able to re-acclimate to society after you've spent more than half your life a prisoner.
Oh my, here we go with dumb ass precedence all over again. See my post on philosophies perpetuated by the GP here.
You do realise radio DJ's are far more harmless than prosecutors? I.E DJ's aren't out to jail you? You also realise that these are two completely separate issues? and that they pose very little in common with each other?
I think a phone call from your lawyer telling you that what you have to look forward too in life is being locked behind a set steel bars until your 56 and that you and your family owe a $1million debt to the US govt.
This is a pretty compelling reason to top yourself. Also consider how driven this guy is at wanting to make a difference in the world and actually contribute. This news is kind of a bit of an overall set back yeah?
The main issue is that the prosecutor was an asshole bully and threatened Swartz with 35 years in the big house for downloading publicly-funded scientific articles, and proceeded full speed ahead even after JSTOR asked them to drop it. There was no prosecutorial discretion -- they were threatening to throw the book at him for what was at best a trespassing misdemeanor. Those are the actions of a compassion-less psychopath, and I for one don't think anyone like that deserves to be a Federal prosecutor. We deserve better. So to a certain extent, Swartz's suicide is a completely separate issue.
I think a much better tribute to Swartz spirit and memory than retribution would be making some of his goals into reality.
This is a fantastic essay on the subject: http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/2013/01/14/now/
It's well past time for scholarly knowledge to be openly accessible to everyone.
No, we are blaming a prosecutor for abusing her authority and bullying a citizen in order to promote herself and in the process of doing that, which is illegal and immoral by itself, contributing to the causes that pushed him to suicide.
It's a material fact about our criminal justice system that prosecutors put people they know to be innocent away for life. Check out the Innocence Project for the grotesque details.
The reason I bring that up is because it dramatically illustrates the power and fearlessness of ever being called to account that all DAs have. The immunity from any fear of prosecution of their own crimes basically puts them above the law- a fact that doesn't go unnoticed by them. They can literally do anything they want no matter how unbalanced or depraved so long as they can dress it up as prosecutorial "zeal".. They know that the general population doesn't track on the details of cases and ALL families of accused say their prosecution is unjust , so that doesn't matter either. They can do whatever they want, however they want for any reason they want. They suppress exculpatory evidence as a matter of course- basically they play the role of good ole' Buford T Justice where they decide who's guilty and create through whatever means necessary the evidence to prove it.
Try being a minority caught in the clutches of our system. Why do you think so many poor African Americans are so totally checked out, fatalistic, knowing and cynical when it comes to matters of criminal justice? Because they know no one cares if they see anything like justice or not and that there is no real justice or just cause , there's "just us" and "just cuz" for them.
So Aaron got caught in THAT system and the video of him attempting to hide his face with a bike helmet enraged and incensed one of these DAs who had the full cooperation of the sociopaths in the upper administration of MIT.
It's a good reason to never convict / indict anyone for anything that might lead to jail. Jail is basically sado-hell where society throws people it's mad at without a shred or a care about what happens to them in there or when they get out either.
The only people you should ever indict or convict are very violent people who just cannot control themselves and will surely re-offend the first chance they get. Everyone else should walk.
As a side note, it's a fact also that they won't put scientists or programmers on juries because they are too good at thinking up potentially exculpatory alternative hypothesis and more immune to DAs wide-eyed narratives of moral outrage strung together with circumstantial doo-dads and character assassination. Juries are largely composed of retirees and gung ho Law and Order fans.
Just the threat of jail surely turned Aaron around a long time ago. Did that DA give a shit? Oh fuck no- he's bucking for bigger office, a better job, maybe political office. Anyone who puts a bike helmet over his face knows he (age what??? 24?) is doing something naughty , and now, as Lessig said, "we get to nuke you. "
No indictments. No convictions. Not until things change in this fucking country. Fuck you Conn. Fuck you asshole DAs. Too bad you need us to rubber stamp your dirty work before you can kill again. Denied. Denied denied denied denied. Fuck you.
How's this?
You should probably look up the words "misconduct", "disbarred", and "murder" before commenting on these subjects.
Now are blaming Aaron Swartz's death on everyone and anything. Was it MIT? Was it the government? Was it him being bullied by them?
Well, this sort of "who done it?" finger pointing isn't very productive. And that's because suicide is rarely a single factor. Even when the person provides a suicide note that blames one single thing or person, there's often other contributing factors. So I think the discussion here is what was the major contributing factor. It sort of reminds me of "Who Killed Davey Moore" by Bob Dylan where a boxer is killed in a ring and as he examines everyone who participated in the event shrugs any responsibility.
In the strictest sense of responsibility, we here at Slashdot that turned our gaze upon this story and turned it into a national news story that was part of the 24 hour news cycle, we might have had something to do with it by putting even more pressure on the prosecutor and Swartz and everyone involved. Some of these things are hard if not impossible to know.
At the end of the day, it looks safe to blame some of his actions on the prosecutors for being overzealous but I would caution everyone not to put the blame entirely on them or even mostly on them. You should not send the message that suicide is an acceptable way to "get back" at someone or to "really show your enemies and make them sorry." Vocally blame the prosecutors all you want, this is America. But I don't think it's healthy for us to charge them with anything lest other people think that suicide with targeted blame is a great way to make high ranking officials culpable of something.
What I wish Swartz would have done was to step up to the challenge laid before him and see it through. Start a kickstarter for legal fees, seek help from the EFF, do something. Instead he did nothing and turned himself into nothing. If you're prepared to take such extensive means to reach certain ends then you had better be prepared to face the consequences of those actions, regardless of what they turn out to be. If the consequences are trumped up, you'll get your day in court and, like so many arrested during the civil rights era, if you're right you'll be remembered fondly in the annals of history. Instead he's a corpse and a fond memory of his contributions. Indeed incredibly sad but also by his own hand.
The prosecutors did not kill Swartz. But they contributed to a situation that caused him to take his own life. They should feel sorrow for that but I see no wrong. Attack the laws they charged him with if you attack something. But if they over charged him, his day in court should have shown that. Now we'll never know.
My work here is dung.
People have a tendency to behave in ways that give them the most recognition, whether that recognition is stature, monetary reward or both.
For whatever reason prosecutors seem to be rewarded based on a win percentage, which is objective, vs. a justice served percentage which is subjective. Combine this reward system with an overcrowded judicial system and we end up with a bastardized incentive system that rewards over-charging suspects and attempting to get the suspect to plead down to a lesser charge. Either the person deserves to be tried for the higher charge or not. Using the potential of serious punishment in order to convince a defendant to accept a lesser charge does not serve justice.
I think Elliott Spitzer was a great example of this type of prosecutorial abuse. He developed a model where he went after many people who had committed no crime but were willing to plead down to lesser crimes to avoid the potential punishment and drawn-out legal process of facing a daunting legal challenge. Spitzer's final year or so when he was getting ready to run for governor was quite disgusting in that there were many people indicted during his run for governorship and the charges were dropped after the election because they weren't fully baked. I've argued that prosecutors should not be allowed to run for another office until at least two years after their last stint as a prosecutor to avoid the conflict of interest associated with running up prosecutorial win rates while running for another office.
I saw Spitzer on his CNN show after his fall from grace and he said as much when he promoted, in order to stop behavior with which he disagreed, of indicting a group of people for a crime. He said that they would never have to get a conviction because the mere threat would be enough to stop the behavior. This is a person willing to abuse his power in order to change the otherwise legal behavior of people with whom he disagreed.
Ted Stevens (Senator Internet Pipes) had prosecutors who were sanctioned and had his conviction overturned as a result. Unfortunately, his conviction was overturned after his death and cost him an election. Whether you liked Senator Internet Pipes or not doesn't change the fact that using federal prosecutors to intimidate citizens is unacceptable.
These aren't the only two cases. I seem to recall a number of prosecutorial misconduct cases over the past few years and it's a crying shame that it continues and costs so much pain for ordinary citizens.
Combine prosecutorial misconduct with the avalanche of new laws and regulations coming our way and we can expect this trend to continue mainly because we never know when we've run afoul of some law or regulation with which we are unfamiliar.
The logical conclusion of this absurd line of reasoning is that we should not charge criminals for violating the law if doing so might make them feel bad about themselves.
It's the absurdity of our public education system (can't fail a kid if it might damage their self-esteem) expanded into absurdity in the application and enforcement of the law.
So the DJs in that case convinced the nurse that she would be spending the next few years in a cage?
It's probably not a good strategy to claim that programmers and scientists aren't allowed on juries on a website full of programmers and scientists, many of whom have served on juries, and even discussed their experiences serving on juries on this site before many times.
When someone speculates, "citation needed" doesn't usually make sense.
But if it adds something, his occasional bouts of depression were no secret. In the way of a citation, I offer his own words: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/verysick
What the summary doesn't mention, I didn't see on the petitions, and haven't seen the comments so far, is that they offered six months, instead. I'd be interested in knowing if that's accurate. Anyone?
Perhaps you should as well. This is clear misconduct and Ortiz should in fact be disbarred.
Either way they broke the law. The fact that during the criminal activity they destroyed somebody's life doesn't change the fact that they illegally redistributed information that they illegally obtained.
Holding them responsible for the suicide might be a stretch, but they should still do prison time for the related fraud.
The prosecutors brought charges far out of proportion with the "crime" of...downloading a bunch of papers in order to "set an example" for other people who might want to do something on computer networks they don't understand yet somehow find threatening.
This seems to happen a lot. Massive overreactions to harmless pranks. Say something critical about the TSA or the FBI online and get put on some watch list for being a "cyberterrorist." Change your MAC address and download some freely available research papers and get 35 years and a million dollar fine for "hacking."
Perhaps it's time another example were made. Hey prosectors and government dipshits: if you don't start employing some common sense, then you're going to lose your career.
Fire 'em. Make an example out of them.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Well put.
Evolution: love it or leave it
Prosecutors persecuting people to advance the prosecutor's career? Say it ain't so!
Having bullied JSTOR and MIT into submission now the angry netizens are going for the prosecutor for making the mistake of charging an extremely popular "activist." JSTOR caved easily to bad publicity, MIT less so, but the feds skin are pretty thick.
Who would ever have guessed that the people we entrusted with the monopoly on law enforcement would grow so powerful as to spend more resources persecuting innocent people for victimless (state) crimes than appropriately pursue those who have actual violated the property of private citizens?
Do you tell yourself we just need the right government? How about no government?
Agree. Specially in light that Aaron was sucidal before.
Carlos Niebla
The simple fact is that whichever party they're a member of, prosecutors have incredible levels of immunity from the effects of both their own malice and incompetence.
To go on the attack against Republicans, here in Texas, we (the taxpayers) had to pay out a pretty hefty wrongful imprisonment fee because one prosecutor hid the existence of a bloody bandana for years, and when it was finally discovered, a second prosecutor blocked testing of it for several years more.
When the Innocence Project finally got a court to force the prosecutors to allow testing of the blood, it turned up the victim's DNA and another man's DNA... the other man having gone on to possibly kill other people while an innocent guy sat in jail in his place. No big deal, apparently. The first guy might get to face a court regarding the withholding of evidence, but his tribunal seems to keep slipping farther into the future.
At least the second guy got voted out by an angry public (though that's not going to get them their millions of tax dollars back), but don't cry too much for him, his best bud Gov. Rick Perry will keep him employed.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Does the US have some government-run place where complaints (including anonymous, whistle-blow type things) can be made against the government itself? My guess is it does, but it probably is ineffective.
Suicide sounds like the black ops code for neutralization. With all the gun control talk going around, it's difficult to determine the good guys from the bad. That which is done in darkness will surely come to the light. The truth will set you free but, it will first piss you off.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
old story. Biblical.
I think we should blame the enablers who say hactivism is a good thing and convinced Aaron that placing devices in a network closet to steal information was somehow a good thing.
Bad hackers. Bad, bad hackers.
Oracle and unix guy.
Where are they? Somewhere Demoralized, Frustrated . Like Swartz himself.
After Aaron Swartz's Death, the Focus Now Falls On the Prosecutors
The general public has almost knollege of this case. There is no focus what-so-ever, much less on the prosecutors of this case.
Journalists and commentators are now questioning the role of Massachusetts prosecutors Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann in the suicide of Aaron Swartz
Journalists were uninterested in this case until a young man killed himself. Now that they've written their stories and cashed their checks, they'll go back to not caring.
and whether they levied disproportionate charges in order to boost their own political profiles, despite being warned he was a suicide risk.
Of course they did, that's their job. They don't get moved ahead in their career by being fair and measured in their approach.
Meanwhile White House petitions to remove Ortiz and Heymann have already received tens of thousands of signatures.
The Whitehouse has already shown, numerous times that the petition site is a joke. They do not care, unless the petition in question is regarding one of their current policy bullet points. Freedom of the internet, and information in general, is in no way something this, or any administration is interested in.
Should these prosecutors be investigated for their actions regarding Swartz?"
They are lawyers, and Prosecutors, they are horrible horrible people. We all know this. What else should they be investigated for? This sort of thing happens every day, all the time, and it's totally legal. We've put sociopaths in charge of our legal system. This is the result.
I know that the OP wanted to make it appear like the general public suddenly had an interest in justice, the rule of law, fairness, and any number of other noble things. But they don't. They are interested Facebook, impressing their friends and their own insular problems. Comfort has made us weak.
Any defendant is free to request a jury trial. Nobody is obligated to accept a plea bargain. In a trial everything can be addressed from the gathering of evidence, prosecutorial over reach, and the guilt or innocence of the person charged. The courts have an adversarial relationship with the law enforcement agencies. The court has the power to dismiss or modify any charges presented and they do it all the time. The prosecutors determine what charges to press based upon the results of an investigation conducted by the appropriate law enforcement agencies. If the charges are not supported the court can dismiss the charges outright or impanel a grand jury to decide if the charges warrant further prosecution. The US justice system is not perfect but name one system that is.
Petition to remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office.
The criminal justice system in the USA appears to be almost entirely geared towards extracting more tax money to pay for bigger and more heavily populated prisons and building name recognition for politicians and prosecutors, and as a result is paying a colossal and unnecessary and is a world wide laughing stock. I and a lot of my friends would not consider living in the USA as a result of this Criminal-Justice system run amok, scary thuggish police, (dreadfully overpriced yet widely inaccessible health care system is also another black mark).
The Criminal-Justice system needs to be reformed towards delivering the best results for society as a whole, not venal special interest groups. Disqualify anyone within the Criminal Justice industry (prosecutors, police, guards) from running for public office for at least a few years after they end employment, also disallow campaign contributions from private prisons, and guard+police unions.
I've thought the for-profit academic publishing industry drones were the puppeteers here, but that's just my wild guess.
Our Federal legal system has gottent out of control. The laws have become too complex and convoluted for a layman to understand and the penalties have become way too large. There is a reason that less than 1 in 40 Federal prosecutions even make it to a court. The prosecutors make it almost impossible not to take a plea deal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/us/tough-sentences-help-prosecutors-push-for-plea-bargains.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
I really can't fault Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann, their behavior is what the current system demands.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Wikipedia admins bullied him too. In fact many budding young scientists have had their careers ruined due to Wikipedia ruining their citation reliablity skills
"You've let Lessig and Aaron's family shift the debate away from all the obnoxious things Aaron did, and play him as the victim."
If you face 35 years in prison for certain actions, I can almost guarantee that the prosecution won't use the word "obnoxious" to describe your alleged crimes. If the crimes allegedly committed can be described as "obnoxious", they are almost certainly misdemeanors. Hence, the point.
I know I'm going to burn some karma for saying this, but Slashdot readers need to get a grip. I remember similar calls for investigating the prosecutors when Hans Reiser was indicted, and how the Slashdot crowd was screaming for blood about the injustice when he was found guilty ... right up to the point where Reiser led the police to his wife's body.
Aaron Swartz made two big mistakes. The first was using MIT's network to download the JSTOR documents, and evading their attempts to stop him. Stop and think why MIT didn't try to curtail the Feds' prosecution: Swartz betrayed their trust by doing what he did. How would you feel if you suddenly learned that someone you trusted, and allowed access to your system, was using your network to download material in a way that was guaranteed to get some powerful people up in arms? If you're going to involve other parties in your act of civil disobedience, you should show them enough respect to ask them first.
His second mistake (in my opinion) was listening to the sort of faux bravado that is so prevalent on Slashdot. "Fight them, Aaron! Information wants to be free! Don't cop a plea!" I've read that he was offered a six month sentence in a plea bargain. Rather than take that offer (which would have given him maybe four to five months in a minimum security facility) and come out smelling like a rose for his act of civil disobedience, he decided to fight it out against an opponent with essentially unlimited resources. And where are all the armchair cheerleaders when you're the one walking into the courtroom? Nowhere to be found.
I'm reminded of the vicious attacks on George Hotz (Geohot) by the armchair brigades when he backed down from Sony's threats. Hotz was smart; he realized how futile it would be to ruin his life in a battle he could not win. Sony offered him an easy way out, and Hotz wisely took it. Too bad Swartz (or his attorneys) didn't see fit to do likewise.
Swartz had a history of severe mental depression. Did his impending trial impact his mental state? No doubt. But when you turn down a plea bargain from the Feds, you can bet your bottom dollar they are going to put you through the wringer. In the end, it was Swartz's decision to abuse MIT's network, Swartz's decision to turn down the plea bargain, and Swartz's decision to end his life - not theirs.
Aaron Swartz was a bright and talented guy with a history of mental depression who made some bad choices, the worst of which was to commit suicide. And the ultimate irony? The JSTOR papers that "wanted to be free"? At any time, anyone could have gone to a local public university library, sat down in front of a terminal, and read those articles to his or her heart's content. That's what so ultimately ridiculous about this whole unfortunate mess.
Toward any private citizen who steeps out of line. Any one who thinks this is unique to this prosecutor has not been paying attention. look at the gs programmer they are tying to put in jail for 10 years!
let remember obama put riaa layers (blackmailers) on his staff.
US Federal prosecutors have a vast array of methods they can employ to make it difficult for a defendant to exercise his rights. They can freeze assets, making it nearly impossible to hire proper lawyers to present a case. They can "throw the book" at the defendant, listing dozens or hundreds of individual charges which each must be rebutted. They can do massive "document dumps" in the millions of pages to make it extremely difficult for the defendant's legal team to analyze them all. They can use their position to intimidate the defendant's insurers and/or corporations to compel them to withhold legal assistance, as was done in several high-profile white-collar prosecutions. It takes a great deal of money to mount an effective defense against prosecutors with nearly unlimited budgets, as Federal prosecutors are.
And then of course prosecutors have qualified immunity, which means that it is very difficult to make any kind of charges stick against them, no matter how egregious their behavior. We also see this with police officers in the infamous wrong-address SWAT raids.
After some thought I decided to sign the White House petition. Honestly, I don't expect a whole lot of actual justice from our system, though I won't go as far as to call it corrupt beyond redemption. But insofar as we the people have a voice, perhaps some small measure of justice can be squeezed out of this particular case. "Justice" clearly wasn't high up on their list of reasons for pursuing the case. The prosecutors involved and their teams deserve jail time themselves for their vindictive, intentional destruction of someone's life.
-Matt
there are so many examples of this, could not agree more.
obama is using the justice dept as his personal goon squad.
that and at the behest of any corporation like golden slackers
who are crucifing a programer they had.
GIven that the threshhold for new petitions is set at 100,000 signatures, what do you think will happen if these petitions fall short. Ortiz is currently only 38,000 and Heymann only 6,000.
People will make political hay out of this unless these petitions exceed 100,000 signatures. Once the number of signatures goes beyond 100,000, the Whitehouse is forced to make a more serious response, and Ortiz cannot dismiss this as a "few malcontents". Tell your friends to register to vote on whitehouse.gov and sign the petitions. It is time to STOP the slippery slope of American government towards 1930's style practices in Germany and the Soviet Union. Don't believe it is getting that bad? Then read up on what was happening in Germany and the Soviet Union prior to the outbreak of war. People who do not learn and understand history end up recreating the same events that happened previously.
P.S. the federal vendetta against Aaron Swartz was all political. He was seen as a supporter of political movements that they would love to outlaw, and perhaps soon will outlaw, if the people do not make their voices heard. In the Internet era, petitions on whitehouse gov are the new way to make your voice heard, but the old ways (talk to your senate rep and congressional rep) are still good too.
Oh my gosh. The maximum possible sentence is not the actual sentence. In this case, he was frankly given a very generous plea bargain with a 6 month sentence, which he means he would actually be released in 3 months if he behaved in prison (which is doubtful, given that he was an immature brat).
Wow, you must be a Kiwi
the 6 months included pleading guilty to 13 felonies! who in their right mind would accept that.
Wow, you must love being raped up the ass by gorillas.
JSTOR, the company providing access to the documents, dropped the charges, and made many of the documents publicly available. It seems they got the point of Aaron's actions, and acted accordingly.
MIT did not act as decisively, and the prosecutors took it from there. I haven't heard if the prosecutors were leaning on MIT to keep pressing charges, and how they may have been doing that - I hope that information comes out soon.
The word 'should' is such a wonderful word. There are lots of things that should and should not be done. Unfortunately, reality doesn't always play out that way.
This is why civilised countries dont have elections for judges and prosecutors.
There need to be consequences for prosecutors who abuse their positions.This could be done mathematically. One abuse is when prosecutors level massive charges with the goal of pleading them down. Thus there could be a maximum ratio of charges laid vs convictions/pleas on those exact charges. Another abuse is the investigation itself. So there could be a maximum investigation to conviction ratio. Also there could be a maximum time for an investigation. If someone is investigated for years and years the drain on them is nasty. So it should require a judge's approval to continue an investigation past a certain amount of time. For a crime boss this could be a great long time but for some dumb computer case it should be 30 days or less.
When consequences kick in there should be both penalties to the prosecutor and benefits to the investigated. Much like the double jeopardy if you charge someone with something serious that you can't make stick it should then be impossible to convict them in revenge on a minor related crime. So if you charge some hacker with RICO and massive fraud but can't make it stick you can't then convict him in revenge for mail fraud because he filled out some form wrong.
Then there is the prosecutor. If these ratios are passed by a certain amount the prosecutor should immediately be suspended and their continued employment up for review. Pass the ratios again and game over they lose their job.
The last option should also be that the defense can have a single prosecutor removed and assigned to a random other prosecutor. This way the "career making" cases are then less about politics and more about justice.
Only 3% of the defendants dop not accept a plea bargain. Do you know why? Because the possible sentences are ridiculous. Decades of punishment for relatively small crimes. In the face of the possibility of spending decades in jail and bankrupting yourself trying to defend your case, chances are you will accept a deal, even if you are innocent.
When was the last time the government (or anyone else for truth's sake) was right 97% of the time? Do you really think US prosecutors are? Isn't it more likely that a lot of innocent people are in jail right now because of this rotten and distorted judicial system?
It is no wonder that US has the highest incarcerated population in the world, per capita and in absolute values. Much more people are caged there than in other "blooming democracies" like China, North Korea or Iran.
Spot on man! The endemic racism of the bogans in Aust is everywhere.
Nothing will happen here. There's precedent to not hold prosecutors accountable for their lack of judgment regardless of their motivation.
No, it didn't. There was a completely different operation by the same name under the Bush administration, but that had nothing at all to do with the Fast & Furious operation run under Holder and Obama. Two completely different things that just happened to be given the same code name.
It's a catch-22. Prosecutors are indeed highly succeptible to political trends and the fix isn't clear. We want them to be held accountable to the voters but then if they only get their job via the voters politics comes into play again. Even if not directly elected the prosecutor's bosses are elected. Grand juries can oversee things but most of the time grand juries just rubberstamp whatever a prosecutor asks.
Prosecutors have a much higher percentage of scumbags in their ranks than judges, and I'm not really sure why. I suspect it's because a prosecutor's job is just a stepping stone to more ambitious political office, whereas a judgeship is more often just a step on the ladder to a better judgeship. Possibly also because judges are expected to at least pay lip service to being fair whereas a prosecutor's job appears to be to assume that the defendant is automatically guilty.
There are many eerie parallels between the Aaron Swartz and Peter McWilliams stories.
I don't know how many years on this Earth I got left. I'm going to get real weird with it. - Frank Reynolds
Carmen asked you to stop doing this Tom. Do her a favor and stop. You are not helping her here.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It seems to be the standard operating procedure. Threaten the worst possible thing the law allows and wait for the defendant to cop to a lesser charge, then put this in your book of wins. Prosecutors without wins will lose their job, regardless of whether or not the wins were justified.
The higher the position, the more perfect you have to behave. And the higher the punishment should be for being dishonest.
OTOH, "In a mature society, 'civil servant' is semantically equal to 'civil master.'", which shows how hard this ideal can be.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
It's better than life...
What would you think is an appropriate penalty for what Aaron did? He connected a computer to a public network, and retrieved publicly available data. He may have done this in a way and to an extent that the managers of these networks were uncomfortable with. Personally, I'd say that banning him from the library would have been too harsh.
Demanding jail time and felony convictions? It is so far beyond the pale that I think we are to be permitted our anger!
And, yes, he could have read them, one by one? But could he have done a global search using arbitrarily complex queries? Fed them into a neural network? Indeed, done anything actually interesting with them? Not unless he got heaps of them onto a hard drive.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Aaron Swartz was facing allegations of computer hacking. He may have trespassed, but changing a MAC address is hardly hacking.
It's like getting banned on Slashdot, and then registering a new user name. Except with MAC addresses. If what Aaron Swartz did was hacking, thousands of Slashdot users just became criminals.
He was offered a deal of about four years. If he and/or his lawyers had been so inclined I'd bet they could have bid that down significantly. So any observation that's talking about decades in jail is skipping over some of the facts.
No we don't need to get a grip. Whenever we see injustice we have all the right to feel outrage, and I pity you if you are so apathetic that even the thought of people's non acceptance is so repulsive to you.
No matter how much you try to spin it, what was done to him was a great injustice. His punishment was by far disproportionate to the "crimes" he committed and his life was ruined by a system that threatens to ruin many more people's lives, a system that becomes more powerful and authoritative as time goes, and which is fueled by the apathy and acceptance of people like you.
Hans Reiser MURDERED HIS WIFE. Aaron Swartz ran wget -R on a web site he was permitted to access. Yup. Practically the same thing. You are so right.
As some counter examples that support one of your claims...
David Gregory, willfully and knowingly committed a firearms felony on national TV by possessing a 30 round magazine for an AR-15 while in Washington DC. He will not be prosecuted.
John Corzine stole between $600 Million and $1.2 Billion of investor money to make currency bets in the EU and lost it all. Corzine will not be prosecuted.
Eric Holder illegally ignored a sopenia from Congress reguarding the Fast and Furious program and was found in Contempt of Congress, the first time ever for a cabinet level position. He will not be prosecuted.
Sherif Joe Apraigo (sp?) was investigate by Federal investigators after he dared question if Obama's birth certificate was real.
Thats right, break firearm laws, steal money from citizens, or kill hundreds of Mexicans and you are ok. Question Obama and you will immediatly be investigated with trumped up charges.
Obama apparently deserves lifetime armed SS protection and his kids have 11 arms SS guards at their school while they are in it. You do not deserve to be able to protect yourself and suggesting your kids should have an armed guard at their school makes you an extremist bigot. We now have King George III in Washington, he is better than you and you will be punished if you question.
I believe I've read elsewhere that he would have copped to a misdemeanor, but not a felony. I also read that Heyman refused to offer any plea that didn't include guilty on all felony counts.
But did you really just compare Aaron Swartz downloading material that you admit can be obtained for free pretty easily to Hans Reiser murdering his wife? Come on, Swartz didn't kill or injure anyone, and JSTOR wasn't asking for him to be prosecuted.
The only reason a six month plea bargain even appears reasonable is when it is juxtaposed to decades in prison. George Hotz did far more damage to Sony - they did try to sue him, unlike JSTOR - and Hotz did not have to plead guilty to anything for his deal, let alone labeled a felon and thrown in prison. It's a more reasonable analogy than Reiser, but Hotz is still very different.
And you also need to consider the problems associated with being a felon. Should Swartz have given up his right to defend himself with firearms for IP and MAC spoofing? The right to vote, in some states forever? Who would hire a man convicted of a dozen computer felonies?
There is no doubt in my mind that the prosecution was intentionally trying to make him plead out by massively trumping up charges. It was originally four felonies, later nine more were added. Again, JSTOR wasn't even asking for a lawsuit, and I haven't heard that MIT wanted to sue him either, so why were the prosecutors so eager to pin so many felonies on him?
Interestingly, Ortiz' office let some health care companies get away with doing some nasty things...and nobody had to plead guilty to anything, just some fines and settlements. Prescribing drugs only approved for adults to teens, putting the wrong drugs in the bottle, kickbacks for implanting medical devices unnecessarily...things that can actually injure someone...and not a single guilty plea? I would think what they did is far, far worse than what Swartz did. Using the technique of "trump up felony charges to force them to cop a plea" on a known suicide risk over a victimless crime is reckless, negligent, and unprofessional.
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Do please learn. ;p
Bush didn't [...] hound someone until he killed himself.
Entirely untrue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp_suicide_attempts
You need to adjust your medications.
I think this is really what this was. They assume not only that the perp is automatically guilty, but guilty of everything, with aggravating circumstances. I would imagine there should be a level of discretion involved, perhaps not prosecuting when the injured party asks you to drop the case...but I could be mistaken.
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You people should just stop trying to blame anyone other than Mr. Swartz for his suicide. No one else is responsible in any way for his death. He took the cowards way out rather than deal with the life he created for himself.
I'm guessing you're referring to the 2 part story in Texas Monthly. It's a good read and shows just how bad the pursuit of justice can be twisted simply because of ego and position. As a Texan, that story made my stomach turn.
This seems to happen a lot.
Yes. The Powers That Be have yet again killed Till Eulenspiegel for his Merry Pranks.
This was originally posted on ThinkProgress but I will post it here to put that 35 years into perspective for those who don't quite get it. He also was reported to have refused the plea bargain so the full book would have been thrown at him so to speak.
Manslaughter: Federal law provides that someone who kills another human being “[u]pon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion” faces a maximum of 10 years in prison if subject to federal jurisdiction. The lesser crime of involuntary manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of only six years.
Bank Robbery: A person who “by force and violence, or by intimidation” robs a bank faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. If the criminal “assaults any person, or puts in jeopardy the life of any person by the use of a dangerous weapon or device,” this sentence is upped to a maximum of 25 years.
Selling Child Pornography: The maximum prison sentence for a first-time offender who “knowingly sells or possesses with intent to sell” child pornography in interstate commerce is 20 years. Significantly, the only way to produce child porn is to sexually molest a child, which means that such a criminal is literally profiting off of child rape or sexual abuse.
Knowingly Spreading AIDS: A person who “after testing positive for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and receiving actual notice of that fact, knowingly donates or sells, or knowingly attempts to donate or sell, blood, semen, tissues, organs, or other bodily fluids for use by another, except as determined necessary for medical research or testing” faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.
Selling Slaves: Under federal law, a person who willfully sells another person “into any condition of involuntary servitude” faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, although the penalty can be much higher if the slaver’s actions involve kidnapping, sexual abuse or an attempt to kill.
Helping al-Qaeda Develop A Nuclear Weapon: A person who “willfully participates in or knowingly provides material support or resources . . . to a nuclear weapons program or other weapons of mass destruction program of a foreign terrorist power, or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be imprisoned for not more than 20 years.”
Violence At International Airports: Someone who uses a weapon to “perform[] an act of violence against a person at an airport serving international civil aviation that causes or is likely to cause serious bodily injury” faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years if their actions do not result in a death.
Aaron Swartz at risk
If you want to argue that his actions were justified and served some purpose, you need to start with the facts. JSTOR archives lots of stuff from many sources and all over the world, including academic and artistic writings from people who actually depend on writing for a living. Swartz couldn't know which parts of those were publicly funded and which parts weren't. If he succeeded at downloading and distributing this stuff, he would necessarily have distributed a lot of files that weren't publicly funded and that had valid copyrights.
Sure. But if you don't, you're playing dice with your life -- and the dice are loaded by the other side.
No, they don't. The courts are mostly presided over by former prosecutors.
When I see stories like this, I'm glad that in Canada at least, we do not vote for sheriff, crown prosecutors (aka district attorneys), dog catchers, nor judges.
It seems that leads to a spiralling who's-toughest-on-crime "arms race" which goes beyond reason fairly quickly.
(Yes, I know that higher-level judges are appointed in USA.)
Really? So was St. Jude's prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law?
Was anyone found guilty of anything? "St. Jude officials said they weren’t admitting liability"
How about GlaxoSmithKline?
But hey, at least someone was found guilty this time. His name was SB Pharmco Puerto Rico Inc. I don't think he had to serve any time in prison, though.
Or Forest Laboratories?
Someone was found guilty this time, too. His name was Forest Laboratories. No time served in prison, although there was one felony count - lying to FDA officials.
You know, if I squint really hard, I think I can see the impression left by the book that Ortiz threw at Mr. Forest Laboratories and Mr. SB Pharmco Puerto Rico Inc.
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Parent highly over-rated. As part of the Slashdot crowd, I actually did not think Reiser was innocent. While there may have been supporters, I find it hard to believe there is any actual hard evidence you could provide to back up your claim that "the Slashdot crowd was screaming for blood about the injustice when he was found guilty... right up to the point where Reiser led the police to his wife's body." As for your "betrayal of trust" claim -- I call bullshit. When you leave your networks completely open to anyone who is not even at all related to the institution, there is no such thing as "trust." It's plain-and-simple "we don't care." If it were the case that only, say, students were allowed to use their networks, then perhaps you "trust" argument might holds some water. Your argument is as silly as when bank leaves all of its deposits out in the open and "trusts" that not only its members but the general public will not steal any of that money. If Aaron had taken that plea bargain, do you think there would be much scrutiny regarding over-reaching prosecutors using their powers for political gain? Or would JSTOR still release 4.5 million articles of research for free? Despite the great tragedy, many are hoping that this tragedy will result in a lot of positive changes (that is the hope, anyway). Your speculation on Hotz is just that -- speculation. Why do you automatically assume that Hotz had no chance of winning? (He had jailbroken other devices before, and it was legal). Who's to say he didn't get paid a large sum for his agreement to never hack Sony products? After all, Sony would have had some pretty bad PR for destroying a kid's future, even if he were guilty (but who's to say) of breaking the law with respect to hacking the PS3. However, I digress with speculation -- much like your own. Let's stick to what little facts that are available. You cannot abuse a system in which there are virtually no laws. MIT's wireless networks were open to anyone and everyone. As for the JSTOR articles -- you don't get to read them for free. Your tax dollars helped pay for the subscription fees that the public libraries and universities have to pay in order to get full access to JSTOR. What is really ironic is that we now have to pay extra (in the form of taxes which go to support these subscriptions) for access to materials we already paid for (in the form of research grants, etc. given by public entities such as the NSF for example).
I've read that he was offered a six month sentence in a plea bargain. Rather than take that offer (which would have given him maybe four to five months in a minimum security facility
Here is a case that expresses the duality of the situation: the judge went far above the prosecutors' recommendations. So. Once you plead guilty to 17 felonies the prosecutor's promise is no guarantee - but there will of course be no appeal. And the sentence in that case, 25 years, was for a myriad of offenses: robbery, attempted murder, kidnapping and so on was less that Ortiz prosecutor proposed for Aaron if he was put to the work of actually trying the case.
Six months offer for 17 felonies would just stoke the fires of outrage. 12 days each? So there was not ever an actual federal case in the lot? This, if true, would be an admission that they were oppressing him without due cause. Of course, there would be no record of it anyway and if were weren't actually involved in the case - say, the US Attorney's husband, we would have no way to know. Him I don't believe.
Not that it matters at all. As another one of Mrs. Ortiz's victims discovered, once they have you in the system they never let you go.
You apologists for this horrifically broken system need to get a grip. This is outrageous.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Citations? Links? References? Proof?
Oh, we should just take your word for it. Because we know you are always correct.
I'm particularly impressed that you can read the minds of the dead, since you just know that "the prank phone call had nothing to do with her death".
Generous? What fucking planet are you from? He didn't hurt anybody. He didn't kill anybody. He wasn't out for a profit. He downloaded some data that anyone can access for free by going to the right place.
Six months for that crime is not generous. It's bullshit. Would you think a six month plea for jaywalking is generous?
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As a side note, it's a fact also that they won't put scientists or programmers on juries because they are too good at thinking up potentially exculpatory alternative hypothesis and more immune to DAs wide-eyed narratives of moral outrage strung together with circumstantial doo-dads and character assassination. Juries are largely composed of retirees and gung ho Law and Order fans.
It may not have been anywhere near where you're located, but I happen to know a programmer that has been on a jury. He was the hold out who prevented a conviction, since even though there was strong circumstantial evidence, there wasn't evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
Was the room he entered locked? No.
Was it in a publicly accessible area? Yes.
Were there any signs on the door saying "employees only" or anything to that effect? No.
Did JSTOR want the case dropped? Yes.
Did he have to agree to any terms of service in order to use the network or JSTOR? No.
No one, and I mean no one, is saying he shouldn't be held accountable for what he did wrong. But if you were caught jaywalking and the prosecutor wanted to send you to prison, I have a feeling that you might have a problem with that.
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This is intended to be informational, and I'm happy to be corrected in outline or points by prosecutors out there...
The best current practice for prosecutors is to file all possible charges that can be filed for a single crime, and then hope one or more sticks when the case is presented to a jury.
It should be one crime, one charge, but that's not required by law, so they interpret this type as shotgunning as within their requirement t prosecute to the full extent of the law. Don't like it? Change the law. Your congress-critter won't change the law? Change congress-critters -- this you CAN do.
The prosecutorial carrot: When they know that they are being a dick, they typically offer a deal, which always requires a guilty plea, but which may only involve a fine and/or a suspended sentence + parole. The actual resulting penalty can be negotiated down, but the plea is always non-negotiable.
The prosecutorial stick: We will prosecute you on all charges, and ask for the penalties to be applied consecutively. You should be out about the time Moller Air Cars are in widespread use, i.e. past the end of your life.
The only question the prosecutor owes us an answer to at this point is whether or not they were aware of the depression, and declined to enforce a suicide watch. If so, that is criminal negligence, malfeasance of office, involuntary manslaughter, and -- well, whatever litany of charges the prosecutor that charges them thinks can be made to stick, for the one crime of not setting a suicide watch on a known suicide risk.
It's a game of chicken, and if neither side blinks, then it goes to trial, and a judge informs and instructs the jury on matters of law, and the jury gets to decide.
When it goes to the jury, then
where the justice system can, via the jury, decide if the statutory to be applied to a person they have found to be guilty of one or more of the charges is unreasonable. If they do, then they can vote to find the defendant not guilty, regardless of technical guilt, in order to prevent the enforcement of the statutory penalties, over which the judge has very little control, beyond imposing them and then either subtracting out time served, to nullify them, or suspending the sentence. At which point there may be judicially or statutorily imposed parole on the suspended sentence, which the judge can waive in the first case, or which the judge can also suspend, in the second case.
Either way, there are plenty of options apart from taking the deal: (1) run - worked for Assange, (2) off the prosecutor - a bit extreme, but less so than offing yourself, (3) go to trial and win, (4) attempt to negotiate the deal lower, then attempt to obtain a sentence of time served or a suspended sentence, (6) go to trial and lose, but file an immediate appeal, requesting suspension of the sentence pending the outcome of the appeal, (7) attempt to delay the trial until the prosecutor can be thrown out by an election/recall election thanks to political activists on Slashdot and elsewhere, (...) ...
The point is, he was by no means at the end of his rope, and it had to be the depression or other mental health issues attributable to Swartz himself, since this was not a forced check leading to a checkmate, and the game was by no means over.
Funny, Eric Holder made the same claim to Congress. They asked for evidence of such and he had to recant that statement 4 months later because he would have faced jail time for lying to Congress under oath.
But, I'm sure you are more of an expert on this than the Congressional hearings and Eric Holder.
BTW... The Bush version put trackers on the guns, tracked the guns, and had Mexican officals on board with the operation. Once they found a tracker not in one of the guns they immediatly stopped the program. Obama's version did not have trackers on guns, did not attempt to track the guns, and did not inform Mexican officals about the program.
But you did get the MSNBC talking points correct, so that should count for something.
The problem of prosecutorial overreach (disproportionate charges) is not remotely special to the Aaron Swartz case; it happens millions of times every year across this country, in fact in every criminal case that occurs. What is it now, 95% of all criminal cases and imprisonments fail to go to a jury trial? That's because the prosecutors can pile on centuries-worth of charges without any check or restraint, and the expected value of any jury trial becomes automatically negative (i.e., plea bargain at terms dictated by the prosecutor). I think it's close to the top problem with the USA; it's directly the cause of us having the highest incarceration rate in the world, ever in history. Every time someone talks about laws as "tools" for police and prosecutors it's code-language for that fact of prosecutors can charge anyone they take a disliking to with centuries of possible charges to crush them, economically and spiritually.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
This is how the justice system should work. To be exact : the prosecutor doesn't assume the defendant is guilty, they only assume the police is right, and build the legal case to prove it. That does mean that they assume everyone else is wrong.
Because that's really what happening at trial : police ("the state") versus defendants. Obviously IF it gets to court, by that point the prosecutor does indeed think the defendant is guilty. Why ? Because otherwise he'd have dropped the case before embarrassing themselves in public.
WTF?
1. Don't ever cross or embarrass Barack Obama.
I've been disappointed by him in many ways, particularly with his DoJ, but... you think he personally got involved in this? Holy conspiracies, Batman.
2. Don't use technology, about which he knows nothing except how to pick up the phone and order another drone kill.
I bet you think he's an expert in Teleprompter technology though.
I thought he was rather technologically savvy. He had and loved his Blackberry back when first elected (when they were the device used by connected executive types. He appointed a PhD, not a partisan hack, to DoE, etc. Besides, he didn't invent the use of drone strikes, even though he does abuse the use of them IMO.
3. If you intend to do something illegal, and you failed to give POTUS or his agent hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in advance, you are going to be in big trouble.
Wait, are you talking personal bribes or corporate lobbying? Since you brought the current president in at the exclusion of previous ones, it seems like you're implying personal bribes in which case you must be stoned or an utter wingnut.
And do look at the treatment of Bradley Manning. Can't blame that on Boston prosecutors.
His treatment was over the top but surely not unexpected. By any POTUS. Previous one would've likely sent him to Guantanamo.
"Don 't get mad. Get even," said one of the also Chicago-mob-connected Kennedys.
I see; it seems like a wingnut political screed. Ignore officially sanctioned torture, illegal gun running (Iran Contra), and go all the way back to the 1960's for that juicy turd.
It's how they do business there. This all has little or nothing to do with a couple of twits in Boston and everything to do with President-for-Life Obama, with perhaps the continuation of millions of dollars in defense contracts for MIT Lincoln Labs thrown in.
Now you've completely gone insane.
Good day to you, sir.
This was originally posted on ThinkProgress but I will post it here to put that 35 years into perspective for those who don't quite get it.
... But you won't bother to clear up the misleading implication that this was over one charge. How many counts was he facing? 13. If we apply the same number to the various "comparisons" you listed, they'd all be in the range of 100-400 years. 35 looks a lot more reasonable when it's *actually* in perspective, no?
Plus, what you leave out is that these would have been concurrent, not consecutive... So 3-5 years, tops.
If you honestly believe that the prosecutors were wrong and should have used their discretion here, as I do, then there's no need to lie or make false comparisons.
No, we are blaming a prosecutor for abusing her authority and bullying a citizen in order to promote herself and in the process of doing that, which is illegal and immoral by itself, contributing to the causes that pushed him to suicide.
What did the prosecutor do that was illegal? Cite a statute, or withdraw your slander.
The prosecutor could have used discretion and gone for a lesser charge, or even a nolo proseque agreement, and probably should have... But we can disagree with her decision without simultaneously spreading malicious lies.
Actually, those rooms are locked and have signs on them. And that part of MIT is not a "publicly accessible area", it requires valid MIT identification. Harvard ID is usually accepted for the campus areas, due to various joint programs there. I'm not sure if Aaron found an unlocked room, or picked locks: picking locks is a very popular hobby around MIT, and fairly common at Harvard.
So no, it's not "publicly accessible". And Aaron was clearly stealing, not out of a single attempt, but over the course of months, trying to steal the complete JSTOR inventory. Free publication of all that material would have put a very effective non-profit out of business, a non-profit that goes to the trouble of collecting, maintaining, and providing organized access to tremendous research resources.
I'm not glad he's dead: I wanted to see him in jail, and learn what being a white "smart" boy in a crowded cell block really means. Being bright does not give you the right to screw with my exams, or my lab's research work.
In case you missed it...JSTOR, the injured party in question, asked them to drop the case.
Charging people with felonies when the victim said "no dude, it's cool, no harm no foul" shows a stunning lack of discretion.
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Did he take specific actions to get around security apparatus that were in place? Yes
Did his physical actions show a clear knowledge that he was doing something he should be? Yes
End of Story - It's not like any criminal ever actually says "I did it"
...of power is that, beyond anything else, the prosecution was essentially trying to put forth the claim that violating a website's terms of service constitutes unauthorized access. This has happened once before, in a Lori Drew case, and the judge vacated the conviction on the basis that such a reading of the law does not pass constitutional muster. If violating a TOS is a criminal offense then, by extension, any website can arbitrarily invent new criminal laws.
It's plainly obvious that such a scenario would be completely unacceptable. They are not elected legislators, they don't get to make laws, that's how the rules work.
Surely the prosecution must have been aware of this, but they pushed ahead anyway, which I can really only consider to be malicious behavior, and in the event that they *were* somehow unaware? Well, then they're simply grossly incompetent. Either way, they deserve to be an example of what not to do, and ideally one that their peers will remember for a long time. It's doubtful that will happen, of course... but it is most assuredly deserved.
According to another article, they upped the signature requirement from 25K to 100K....so let's get the ball-rolling and /. it.
US Federal prosecutors have a vast array of methods they can employ to make it difficult for a defendant to exercise his rights.
I would argue that it is even worse that they are not compelled to bring charges against anyone breaking the law.
They could decide not to go after you, and that's that (comes up a lot when trying to bring charges against police officers or other prosecutors). The fact that they can pick and choose who gets charged in the first place is even worse than their ability to overreach when they do bring charges.
We should all read "Three Felonies a Day." http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358395982&sr=1-1&keywords=three+felonies+a+day
Here's the basic gist. There are a ton of laws all of us run afoul of. The only reason any of us are not in jail is because a prosecutor has decided not to prosecute us.
A federal prosecutor will first seize all your assets. You'll get some court-provided lawyer. And then the feds will bring a case of amazing complexity against you. If they don't get you on the main charges, they'll probably get you on obstruction.
If they want you in jail, you are going to jail.
Most people don't commit suicide when faced with this, but it is horrible nonetheless.
Point by point:
Re Reiser. Yeah, a lot of Slashdot readers need to get a grip. On the other hand, I remember more the Slashdot readers who were saying "we don't know enough" and "let the police do their job".
Re first mistake. Did Aaron see MIT's PTB as an ally, a neutral party, or part of the problem?
Re second mistake. You state, "Rather than take that offer (which would have given him maybe four to five months in a minimum security facility) and come out smelling like a rose for his act of civil disobedience". No. One, "would have" and "maybe"? Make up your mind. Two, felony records carry long-lasting social, financial and bureaucratic stigmas. http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/01/towards-learning-losing-aaron-swartz-part-2
Re Hotz. Hotz was not facing federal prison time and a felony record. Sony vs Hotz was a civil suit.
Re decision. Yes, those were all Swartz's decisions. And those decisions did not occur in a vacuum. Federal prosecutors (one or more of Carmen Ortiz, Stephen Heymann, Scott Garland) decided to charge Swartz with federal crimes, decided to pursue jail time, decided to ignore JSTOR's objections, decided to escalate the charges, and decided to ignore the warning about Swartz being a suicide risk (despite Heymann being the prosecutor in an earlier hacking case where a suspect committed suicide).
Re ultimate irony. Feel free to visit your local public university library - and research the number of towns that don't have local public university libraries.
Answer: Kill Them !
And that's how the human race ended. The prosecutor, backed into a corner, threatened with losing his job and harried at every turn by a virtual mob on the internet, felt he had no recourse but to take his own life. The subsequent round of finger pointing led to more suicides. Each time, the frenzy grew worse. Within 6 months, every user of the internet had killed themselves. The few remaining humans were either too old or too young to care for themselves. Within another year, there were simply none left. Absurd, you say? Perhaps. But that's the way it is, on the other side of... The Scary Door!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Certainly. But we cannot behavior to ever improve (or not decline) unless we can get some kind of consensus on what "should" happen. We must begin with a moral argument, or contests of power devolve to exercises of power merely for power's sake.
We as a society need to ask whether any prosecutor "should" be asking to put a young man away for stealing a few textbooks longer than most rapist-murderers end up in jail. Is that a constructive usage of the moral power of the state? Obviously not. At best, the prosecutor is psychologically torturing an alleged criminal. Gawd forbid the prosecutor wins the case! Should we as a society pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of court costs, around a million dollars in jail costs, and lose a highly productive citizen, so a prick lawyer can put a feather in their cap?
JSTOR is not-for-profit. And a very effective one: they really do provide a useful service, and their fees are quite moderate for the kind of indexing and archiving they provide.
Overcharge and force a plea bargain. Guilt or innocence, civil or criminal matter be damned. If you don't think this is a case of prosecutorial excess then I think you should don a powdered wig, invent a time machine, and go back and tell George Washington, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and the like to just get the hell over it- and pay the kings taxes. Hope Aaron's parents go after the prosecutors civilly like OJ's in-laws went after him.
"If you plan to do something and act in a way proving you know it's not permitted, cause harm and then continue anyway - yes, you fully deserve to get hauled into court and held accountable. If you can't do the time, don't do the fucking crime. Don't physically trespass, don't steal resources, don't harm system that don't belong to you, don't prevent others from accessing services they paid for, etc."
Some things are so true, the most you can do is quote them. If you don't DO the thing, you don't get prosecuted. Simple, really. Then your state of depressiveness is irrelevant.
Oh, and I'll add . . . gosh golly gee whiz Buffalo Bob, he was an "activist". Well that certainly justifies lawbreaking, doesn't it?
“As a parent and a sister, I can only imagine the pain felt by the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, and I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy to everyone who knew and loved this young man. I know that there is little I can say to abate the anger felt by those who believe that this office’s prosecution of Mr. Swartz was unwarranted and somehow led to the tragic result of him taking his own life.
I must, however, make clear that this office’s conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably. The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his acts for personal financial gain, and they recognized that his conduct – while a violation of the law – did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases. That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct – a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. While at the same time, his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation. Ultimately, any sentence imposed would have been up to the judge. At no time did this office ever seek – or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek – maximum penalties under the law.
As federal prosecutors, our mission includes protecting the use of computers and the Internet by enforcing the law as fairly and responsibly as possible. We strive to do our best to fulfill this mission every day.”
In other words you would make a fine Federal Prosecutor.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"JSTOR's mission is to foster widespread access to the world's body of scholarly knowledge".
These are not songs pirated for someone's amusement and profit, taking cocaine away from needy media executives. The very purpose of writing them in the first place is to put them in "the pool of human knowledge" that others may learn what they have, test them, and build upon them - that progress might advance for all mankind. Not in "forever less a day" when the copyright expires, but immediately upon publication. This nonprofit organization purports to want them disseminated, not to serve as the gatekeeper that holds them reserved for a privileged and wealthy few.
So. No wonder they didn't want Aaron prosecuted. His proposal was to actually help them fulfill their own mission. In death he has laid their hypocrisy bare.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
“As a parent and a sister, I can only imagine the pain felt by the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, and I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy to everyone who knew and loved this young man. I know that there is little I can say to abate the anger felt by those who believe that this office’s prosecution of Mr. Swartz was unwarranted and somehow led to the tragic result of him taking his own life.
I must, however, make clear that this office’s conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably. The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his acts for personal financial gain, and they recognized that his conduct – while a violation of the law – did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases. That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct – a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. While at the same time, his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation. Ultimately, any sentence imposed would have been up to the judge. At no time did this office ever seek – or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek – maximum penalties under the law.
As federal prosecutors, our mission includes protecting the use of computers and the Internet by enforcing the law as fairly and responsibly as possible. We strive to do our best to fulfill this mission every day.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case
Same shit. Prosecutor drummed up false charges to appear "tough on crime", and score political points.
And for those who thinks "don't do the crime if you can't do the time, ignorance is not a defense", I encourage you to read the following book:
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594032556
Chances are you have already committed hundreds of federal felonies in your life without you knowing it.
Those who claim ignorance is not a defense is a de facto racist, as those who just immigrated from some other culture will be most vulnerable from zealous prosecutors. For example, possession of child pornography is legal in Japan, and bribery and kickbacks are legal in Russia.
An easy fix:
All criminal charges requires the government to pay for the defendant's legal cost, with the lawyer of the defendant's choosing, with no deductible and no billing limit. (no incompetent public defender BS).
New Economic Perspectives
Or make them serve the extra time they tagged on to all of the prisoners they convicted.
Man, most of the comments here are just gross. People arguing semantics or pet ideas over the grave of someone who's just recently died.
Everything will be taken away from you.
You don't pick a fight against someone stronger than you. You beat up the little one's to score victory points. This is how most school bullies, mass killers, and prosecutors logic works.
This is a country where you had someone with full military gear scoring kills in movie theaters, universities, grocery stores and elementary schools, because their target is easier to deal with compare with those living in an military or terrorist compound.
New Economic Perspectives
1st: IANAL, but need one to interpret this,
We all know the NSA is splitting and filtering the backbone in the CO's courtesy of the Patriot Act,
but my recent browsing of this article: http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/docs/ccmanual.pdf
Does this suggest that the NSA is in violation of the CFAA?
and did the US attorneys involved with Aaron Swartz's prosecution ever read this ? or the Bill of Rights?
NSA, TSA, DHS, DEA, ICE, all totally out of control, individual fiefdoms, all with political aspirations...
just my 2 cents, same as my paycheck.
Sherif Joe Apraigo (sp?) was investigate by Federal investigators after he dared question if Obama's birth certificate was real.
what? he was under investigation for at least a year before arpaio ever heard the word "birther". and the investigation was related to civil rights abuses.
wtf are you talking about
The issue is that it sends a bad message to everyone else "I can break the law if I can convince the injured party it is OK". That is the difference between a civil action and a criminal action. It comes down to the fact that Swartz did not have permission when he did the actions. Perhaps the reason JSTOR wanted to drop the charges was to stop the publicity. Maybe they did it to make themselves look good knowing full well that the persecutors would not drop the case.
35 looks a lot more reasonable when it's *actually* in perspective, no?
No.
Where does the 35 years number come from. That is the maximum sentence not the minimum There is also differences between consecutive and concurrent sentences. On one end of the scale, that people keep pointing to, with maximum consecutive sentences the years add up fast. On the other end with minimum concurrent sentences, early parole for good behavior, etc he could have been out in a few years. One valid tactic is to pile on the charges and plea bargain for a much shorter concurrent term.
There were NO laws broken, fucktardacious self-grandizing mother fuckers should be shot, by spit-wads, from aids patients until dead.
And here I am thinking the revolutionaries won the war of independence.
Ha! The USA is a the laughing stock of the western world
set up a .Onion site accepting BTC towards a pool to pay an assassin to deal with those prosecutors with "extreme prejudice". Im sure there is a hitman out there somewhere willing to accept a few million BTC in exchange for proof of hit. Aaron is avenged, prosecutors and politicians have a new thing to fear for getting out of line. Win WIN!
If i had the first clue how to code HTML id do it myself. but as it is, i would have to code it in assembler somehow.
Lessig condemned Swartz's action at the time.
it's not at all clear for how long all of MIT's subnet was blocked.
the indictment merely claims that some servers crashed, fairly meaningless without context, and that their service was "impaired," whatever that means. one suspects that if something substantial had happened, they would be more specific. anyway, it's a far cry from "crippling access for SEVEN THOUSAND institutions."
i can only imagine that MIT's criteria for sysadmins are pretty stringent. if the MIT network people gave half a shit, they could have easily found him and called the cops: look up his IP addresses, associate them to the pool available to the switch, put a patrol there or review security tapes. instead, it took three months until someone "observed" him entering the room in a furtive manner.
i rotate mac addresses to get by an utterly ridiculous intra-network data cap so i can actually get work done. maybe i should get 35 years too? oh no, they would just tell me to knock it off, if they cared, which they don't.
you have a valid point overall, but it's significantly weaker if you look at these things in actual context. in short, crimes serious enough for even the possibility of 35 years in prison shouldn't be so unimportant that the criminal can flagrantly commit the crime for three months.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
For grossly abusing their position, and exaggerating the charges, they should be jailed, or at least dismissed entirely.
It's ridiculous that in America a person is guilty until proven innocent, especially when JSTOR asked to drop the charges.
I also blame the MPAA and the RIA for creating this trend of exaggerating impact in the first place. They are indirectly accountable for this.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
That's why we have words like "should". That's what it means! To be but is not.
This kind of tautological realpolitik reasoning is used to bludgeon people away from aspiration, and the effect is to provide manipulative moral support for known harmful policy. The way something is, in itself, is not a defense of the way something is. It's just a statement of fact. It's not insightful. We all know that insofar as people in positions of authority and trust treat other human beings like dirt, by definition that is the way reality plays out. I share the above poster's aspiration to negate that reality. Don't you?
What do you think you're contributing, by belittling aspiration? It's not as if the aspiration is particularly radical or far-flung. It's basically embedded in the philosophical underpinnings of my (and presumably your) society. Do you enjoy the smug satisfaction of waving in others' faces that you're ahead of the curve in accepting and embracing a hostile, corrupt, soul-crushing reality?
The real problem is that too many people incorrectly think that this is what the prosecutor's job is. In fact, the prosecutor's job is to exercise judgment about which crimes to prosecute based upon the available evidence. In particular, the prosecutor's job is not:
Doing anything on that list is prosecutorial misconduct, and in an ideal world, would result in sanctions and, if willful, criminal prosecution of the prosecutor in question.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I just saw it here: ...Prosecution of the case continued, with charges of wire fraud and computer fraud, carrying a potential prison term of up to 35 years and a fine of up to $1 million.[50][51] One of Swartz's lawyers revealed prosecutors told him two days before Swartz’s death that "Swartz would have to spend six months in prison and plead guilty to [all] 13 charges if he wanted to avoid going to trial."[52] After Swartz's death, his attorney Marty Weinberg told press that he "nearly negotiated a plea bargain in which Swartz would not serve any time", but that bargain failed because "JSTOR signed off on it, but MIT would not."[53]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
Here are the links 50 and 51:
http://crln.acrl.org/content/72/9/534.full
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us-government-ups-felony-count-jstoraaron-swartz-case-four-to-thirteen.shtml
True, he might not have gotten the full 35. I would even feel fine placing a $20 bet that he would get a shorter sentence. For him the stakes were much higher. To me the threat of such a sentence seems like a form of psychological warfare.
piling up charges is actually not how the system is meant to work.
for it's bargaining(ridiculous!) position the da was publicly pursuing the max sentences.
anyhow, the wire fraud is max 30 years. more than manslaughter... and technically it's very hard to just do one count of it in any case.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Oh, so you support battered wives being forced to recant by angry husbands? Prosecutors have discretion over pressing charges for a reason.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Look, I think the prosecutor overreacted. But he was not permitted to access it! He broke into a wiring closet using a disguise, and kept circumventing their increasingly-specific bans. Not only was he not permitted to access it, but he *knew* he was not permitted to access it. I mean, I get the whole MIT hacker thing, but at some point you have to say "ok they mean it" and back off. If I did what he did at my school, whose network folks are no less liberal than MIT's, I'd get sent to student conduct so fast it'd make your head spin and I'd have to do some serious 'splanin about what exactly I thought gave me any right to deny access to the other twenty five thousand people at my school who were trying to use the resource they had paid good money (in the form of tuition) to use. Don't forget, in order to stop his actions, they ended up blocking MIT's entire class A because he kept jumping IPs.
But he didn't even go to MIT! So he was just some guy coming in and fucking with their network and fucking up their students and faculty's access. What do you do as a network admin? Once your "get the message" bans keep getting circumvented and you can't call OSC on him, you call the cops. He would've been lucky to walk away with a trespassing conviction and a restraining order, plus whatever Jstor wanted as the primary injured party.
Now, I don't know why the feds got involved. It doesn't sound like MIT did that (though maybe didn't discourage it strongly enough), and it sounds like Jstor tried to call them off. The prosecutor was clearly out of line here, but let's not pretend he was just goofing around. And let's CERTAINLY not pretend he was "permitted to access" it. He might have been (I don't know if he had an account) until they BLOCKED HIS ACCESS due to his actions that they didn't like, and at that point he lost his "permission". In any case he certainly was not "permitted to access" a locked wiring closet to stash a laptop in. It's not 1985 any more, and you can't just break in and screw around with someone's network without any problems. Even at places like MIT.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
"...The US justice system is not perfect but name one system that is."
If you can't afford proper counsel to assist you with going through the legal morass prosecutors generate then it's more imperfect than you think.
This would thwart any prosecution. "This is my lawyer, he charges 1 billion per hour".
so freedom is just too free for you, huh? No victim, no crime. how obvious is that (not, to you)?!
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
They may be immune from punishment, but they are certainly not immune from being kicked out of the job.
You must not have been around for Reiser then. God that was 5 years ago...
Read this for fun: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/08/04/28/2243232/hans-reiser-guilty-of-first-degree-murder
I've kept in mind since then how easy it is to get caught up into a "everybody online agrees with me so I must be right" mindset.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Prosecutorial misconduct, yes, IMO. Sufficient to get them thrown out as prosecutors, maybe. Sufficient to get them sanctioned, maybe. Sufficient to get them disbarred, probably not, unless you can show a pattern of such abuse.
Murder, definitely not. There's no mens rea/malice aforethought. No intent = no murder. Manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide, perhaps, but not murder. That said, if they were prosecuted using standard prosecutorial practices these days, I'd expect them each to be charged with one count apiece of:
and about eighteen other charges just to make sure that one of them sticks. And this is what's wrong with the justice system in America today. The people who get that sort of treatment seldom deserve it, and the people who deserve that sort of treatment seldom get it.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
"And then of course prosecutors have qualified immunity"
Maybe we should kill a few, then they wouldn't think they are so immune.
Crimes against one's person, and crimes against a nebulous - at best intellectual property concept are and should be treated very differently.
He was offered a deal of about four years. If he and/or his lawyers had been so inclined I'd bet they could have bid that down significantly. So any observation that's talking about decades in jail is skipping over some of the facts.
Are you vaguely familiar with what passes for the American prison system? In 4 years, there's a decent chance he'd have been raped repeatedly and possibly contracted a terminal disease.
Neither JSTOR nor any other such organization would be necessary if academics had the personal courage to publish their work online, freely available to all. That it is their ethical obligation to do so is clear. But they choose to help perpetuate the old system by publishing in 'high impact' journals that further their career ambitions. Information is free. Right. Well, it should be. But only the academic community itself can do anything to make that a reality.
It must be really hard to get around in a world when you can only see black and white and nothing else.
In what way does this case parallel a battered spouse situation?
Who had more money: JSTOR/MIT or Defendant?
Who had more power: JSTOR/MIT or Defendant?
How bruised was JSTOR/MIT by Swartz' actions?
What kind of future threat to JSTOR/MIT's physical safety did Swartz represent?
Seriously man -- your comment is a symptom of what's wrong with the Feds -- no sense of proportion, no sense of reality, no sense of fairness. It's either black or white.
But beware -- when you start to lock up people for the rest of their lives based on trivial things, those people might think stuff along the lines of "what the hell, might as well bring a gun and shoot someone if I'm caught making this photocopy of a magazine because if I'm going to do that kind of time, might as well do a crime to fit it."
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
it's speculated feds got involved because they had been trying to nail him for previous activities(about dumping case law cases into the open). trespassing and restraining order might've been in order. but considering that he would've gotten away with less now if he had beaten the security guard to death...
what changed from 1985 by the way? why the fuck was it ok for woz&jobs to sell phreaking equipment but our generation can't do shit?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
They may have offered six months, but that doesn't mean he would have only spent six months in jail because the judge can ignore the Prosecutor's agreement and give 5 years per felony. They wanted him to plead guilty to 13 felonies.
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/01/towards-learning-losing-aaron-swartz-part-2
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Obviously, you are an American, one of the breed who thinks the rest of the world doesn't exist or doesn't matter. In my country, you cannot just "go to the library" and read those academic papers for free. There is no such library. If you look at the research that comes out of this place, you will see that it makes overwhelming reference to material gathered online -- because there's no alternative source. Yes, we have university libraries. But some years we have to suspend classes midwinter because there's not enough funding from the state to heat the classrooms. What do you suppose those journal fees mean in a system like that, Mr. American? The journals should be made freely available to everyone everywhere online. That's just clear. Any argument to the contrary is only a cover for supporting the profits of middlemen who control the system for their own benefit and lock out two-thirds of the world. But I wouldn't expect anybody in your country to understand this.
I have, for the longest time, believed that a law should exist. This law would specify the a prosecutor shall not bring up more charges against a defendant than they can prove guilt. And, if a defendant is found innocent of charges, that the prosecutor should serve the maximum sentence of those charges had the defendant been found guilty of the charges.
The difference between Swartz and Resier is that one trespassed on MIT campus and breached a TOS to copy works that are in the public domain. The other murdered his wife.
Swartz did go into MIT, and did copy the files. Unlike Reiser before he confessed, there's not really any doubt over what Swartz did. The difference is that Swartz was facing a potentially higher prison time than Reiser!
How is that just? Even the proffer of 6 months federal time - with no parole, so he'd serve the full 6, and a hefty fine to boot - was an insane price, especially given he was already facing bankruptcy, and being a felon would drastically impact the rest of his life and career. And when he refused the deal, they basically told him they were going to throw the book at him.
JSTOR wanted the charges dropped, so that leaves trespass of MIT. Trespass with no harm caused. Sure that's worth ruining a young, very talented and idealistic's guy's entire life over? Because I'm sure not.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Interestingly, most of comments are about how to blame someone for his death, not how to help people in depression. It is clear that if he had lived to the day of court he wouldn't get 35 years, I don't think he would get any prison sentence at all. It seems like that despite all cheering from the crowd he was very very lonely in his life (and in this fight). And believe, almost only thing which can push man to the edge is loneliness. So I while there's discussion about inhumanity of prosecution in general (because humans can forgive, but not artificial entity as state, I get it), but this discussion is going on like forever, and all I see is most people using this as platform to express their opinion (these arguments - I have heard them all). Come on, do you really think he just did it because pressure was too big? Actually depression can act very strangely - sometimes it crumbles under such weight, especially if you have close personal and emotional support. It can make you fight instead of fleeing.
So my pick is - he must be feeling very lonely to do this. Which is not a cause of prosecution.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
It is psychological warfare but I see no problem with sending someone to prison for six months for doing what Shwartz did. I see no problem with saying "If you are going to make use spend all the time and money to go to trial we will make it worth our while. On the other hand plead guilty to something we all know you did and you'll be out in six months". Sorry but I don't believe in "He threatened suicide so we go light on him". Allow that and everyone will start doing it.
Then there is the question of the defense attorney. If he was so concerned that his client was going to commit suicide then why didn't he have him committed for evaluation?.
on my own Google Plus Page.
My reply was (substituted wording before quotes).
Okay assuming he's guilty on all counts in reality. "Is a $4,000,000 fine and 50 years in prison reasonable for this crime? For padding on your part let's pretend he stripped naked directly after successfully downloading everything and instantly uploading it to a remote Bit Torrent server, ran up to the librarians desk and took a diaretic shit right in the middle of it does that justify 4 million dollars and 50 years? "
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Hotz was smart; he realized how futile it would be to ruin his life in a battle he could not win.
And the fact that the so-called justice system can threaten to ruin someone's life (and simultaneously advance the career of the person doing the threatening) is acceptable to you? If the crime was truly so bad, by all means, go ahead and throw the book at someone. The fact that a much lesser punishment is ultimately considered acceptable (ie the plea bargain) should tell you that the initial proposed punishment is nothing more than a "negotiation" tactic, with one party in the negotiation holding all the power, and with a perverse set of incentives to boot (the prosecution wants to win, but doesn't want a court case, as those take time which could be better spent racking up more wins through quick plea bargains).
They're members of the Obama administration.
Can we maybe not politicize everything along party lines, and instead simply recognize injustice when we see it, and demand justice whenever it's needed?
When you don't plea bargain, you statistically have a high risk of being found guilty. When you're found guilty and you didn't plea bargain, statistically, you get a much higher punishment than the plea bargain would have given you. Statistically, the chance that you get the maximum possible punishment is quite high. That is where the 35 years comes from. Look up how many people in the USA take a plea bargain and how many are found guilty amongst the ones that don't. Either the system is incredibly effective, or it's so broken that people opt for the bargain even if they aren't guilty. Given the amount of people that are now being found innocent with new DNA technology finally being applied to their old cases, the system fails way too often to be called successful.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
This is about much more than just suicide.
These prosecutors had an eye on him since he tried to free PACER documents from their paywall. You may remember, when he made the PACER documents free, it triggered an FBI investigation, which resulted in no charges being filed. From this moment on, the DoJ had their sights set on him, waiting to jump on him. Of course their best line of attack was to use the CFAA to get the job done against him when he, later, tried to free the JSTOR documents which are also being paywalled.
His death is tragic, and we all lose a fighter for a more open, honest government and a place where scientific information is free for all people.
That the government would target him shows what kind of place we live in.
"Those are the actions of a compassion-less psychopath, and I for one don't think anyone like that deserves to be a Federal prosecutor. We deserve better. So to a certain extent, Swartz's suicide is a completely separate issue."
There's something else, the prosecutors miscalculated. Aaron's personality probably didn't allow for giving up. The prosecutors didn't realize that which is another reason they should be out for playing something so minor into something lethal. From the message Aaron wanted to fight but didn't have the money to do it and it seems he would rather die than give in to trumped up charges. Given the end result of the charges death would be preferable anyway with wining breaking him and if the 6 month option had been offered he would have seen it as an act of weakness telling him they had no case. No matter what he would've lost and I think he saw that quite clearly.
I think lawyers since they are a part of the legal infrastructure should be public servants only with no real authority and no options to move up. Essentially put them in their place. Pay them accordingly too which should get them paid less than script kiddies.
"Threaten the worst possible thing the law allows and wait for the defendant to cop to a lesser charge, then put this in your book of wins."
Then the innocent defendant gets out of prison a hardened criminal looking for payback and no other options. Wipes prosecutor and family. Town gives criminal job and medal for getting rid of terroristic prosecutor. Wow, we need more of those criminals.
Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.
"At least the second guy got voted out by an angry public (though that's not going to get them their millions of tax dollars back), but don't cry too much for him, his best bud Gov. Rick Perry will keep him employed [theagitator.com]."
What you didn't hang him or shoot either one? What ever a political lynching is called. You sure this was Texas? i figure at least you guys would do the right thing.
lol... no prosecutor would take any case ever again.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
You are correct. Intellectual Property laws are civil laws, not criminal. Violating copyright should result in civil action. In this case, JSTOR could choose to sue Aaron Swartz.
The only involvement of law enforcement should be to possibly serve warrants and to act as bailiff in the Court.
The taxpayers should not be footing the bill for law enforcement action in non-criminal cases. However, we keep electing right wing socialists who believe the government's job is to ensure that corporations earn the profits they are 'entitled' to. This idea of corporate 'entitlement' leads to a redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the corporations, and we end up with Aaron Swartz facing more fines and jail time than if he had robbed a bank at gun point.
Not only are corporations people, they are more important than regular people!
You want a big-name prosecutor to be soft on somebody or ask for less than the maximum sentence every time some body cries while they're in the lock-up? If we go down that road the country will be in anarchy in less than six months.
No sig today...
In jail the boredom is broken periodically by suffering.
"Suffering?"
The USA prison system glorifies prison rape, especially for young geeky types. 35 years as somebody's bitch while the guards joke about your 'suffering' isn't worth 20 years of freedom as an old man. Let's face it, he's not going to have a fancy retirement plan. He's looking at a miserable existence when he gets out.
Some people's stay in prison isn't much different from their normal life (gang-bangers). It may even be fun - you get your own prison bitch to help relieve the boredom.
Other people have a house, friends, outside interests, hobbies that are taken away (no Internet access, no gadgets, no Arduino+LEDs to play with ... or whatever) and they end up as the gang-banger's bitch. These people lose everything if they get locked up. It's a thousand times more punishment than the gang-banger receives. This the real injustice of the system, and it's why he chose not to go there.
No sig today...
She failed to see that 50 years in an American Federal Prison wasn't a fitting punishment for this person/crime.
Even the injured party didn't think so but she bullied them into pressing full charges.
Just to make herself look good.
No sig today...
Wrong.
The DA is there to represent The People in seeking justice and only secondarily as the prosecutor for that justice against the defense. The first job of the DA is to impartially and with discretion decide whether the case is worth pursuing at all and if so what charges to bring. This is not a power given to the defense and the DA is expected to impartially play the role of a juror applying reasonable doubt here.
So it's not the more than mildly brain-dead "blue-team / red-team let's get it on! " scenario you learned from watching Law and Order re-runs. IN fact the whole "deep voiced voiceover" that precedes each Law and Order episode deliberately and malignantly mis-presents and distorts the adversarial structure of the the judicial system by identifying
In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups -- the police who investigate crime, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.
When in reality the "two equally important" sides are the prosecution and the defense, which have decidedly UNequal powers.
The prosecution and the state has practically unlimited funds to pursue cases- defendants are often indigent.
Prosecution has the power to decide charges,; defendants can suck it up.
the prosecutor has a repeating, ongoing relationship with both the police and the judges who in turn decide cases and issue \subpoenas \ decide on admissability \ decide on each objection and motion. Defendants are generally poor strangers around these here parts who likely won't be seen again.
DAs party with, socialize with, marry into, have kids with, and generally travel in the same social circles with judges , the police and other lawyers, including defense lawyers . Defendants are strangers around these parts who likely wont' be seen again.
Maybe if you got your ideas about how the system is supposed to work from civics class instead of Fred Thompson TV shows, you'd understand why people are upset over the state of criminal justice in this nation.
Aaron did something illegal - that's a given. He was being prosecuted. That's a given.
He took the easy way out because he was a coward and didn't want to face what he'd done. That's a given.
I agree with you about the need to use the need for state power to be used in a "constructive" manner. However your description of Swartz alleged crime as "stealing" falls into the typical intellectual "property" trap that equates virtual "things" with real life objects. It's this comparison with real life "stealing" that appears to underlie the aggressive prosecution of the case.
A quote from the wikipedia article about Carmen Ortiz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Ortiz) best sums up this attitude:
'Ortiz was the U.S. Attorney whose office prosecuted the Aaron Swartz case. In a 2011 press release, Ortiz wrote, "Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars."'
See the danger? Despite all the rhetoric the Big Media companies bombard us that depict file sharers as digital thieves, nobody as far as I know has been successfully prosecuted for stealing an mp3 or mp4 of a hit song or movie. For copyright infringement, yes, but to get sent to jail for stealing an mp3, you'd have to steal the iPod it's stored in.
Aaron Swartz made two big mistakes.
Those were mistakes, but they were well meaning mistakes that he didn't have to die for. The prosecutors made mistakes too, and they were far less well meaning.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Yes, yes, and yes. Especially since the "injured" party asked to drop the case. When in fact, there was really never any injury at all to begin with.
Charging people with felonies when the victim said "no dude, it's cool, no harm no foul" shows a stunning lack of discretion.
You forget. This is the USA, the land of the free. Where people go to prison for years for crimes that have no victim at all.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Those are the actions of a compassion-less psychopath, and I for one don't think anyone like that deserves to be a Federal prosecutor.
But with the furore that certain right wing shock jocks whip the public into at times these are exactly the qualities you need to be elected.
I dont read
This guy was just another lowlife Anon type loser. King of the Anon type losers actually.
He off'd himself because he's a loser, not because he was facing jail.
That /. is getting a hard on for "justice" just shows that most of you morons are Anon type losers too.
i say that any attorney that can be shown (in civil, not criminal court) should be held at the very least financially responsible for the interests of those who die under their harrassment. strategic lawsuits against defendants, plaintiffs, or tenants is still an immortal superhuman being (and with more than 20 people in its employ, most likely an unethical one with a hidden sociopath. (the corporation with human rights that will never die) just slowly chipping away at real life for the benefit of nameless faceless people. it is one tip of the multi edged sword of corporate and governmental corruption designed to wipe out humanity and they all deserve to pay for what they are doing, and if there is a god, or any justice, truth or sense of right, they will pay more dearly than they imagine they have ever been cruel.
Well, ok, up to 150% of what the prosecution are being paid then...
Another interesting idea may be to allow sanctions to be levied against, or to give a successful defendant a cause of action against a prosecutor who brings charges which are eventually found not to have been supported by a preponderance of the evidence (ie if they couldn't get over the civil standard, the charges should not have been brought).
FGD 135
I hope that you still have karma after posting this set of facts.
I am (not really) shocked how often the Slashdot crowd howls about white guys getting off with white collar crimes and then turns around and attacks the prosecutors for vigilant prosecution of a white guy who allegedly committed crimes. Just like Democrats vs. Republicans--it's all a matter of which side are you on. To hell with principles.
He allegedly: stashed a laptop in a network closet (eavesdropping?), bike mask over face to escape identification, actions which result in Denial of Service for the rest of us, running from the cops. I will leave out all of the "conspiracy to" charges.
I have no idea if he killed himself "because of the prosecution." But I would bet dollars to doughnuts that he was going to do prison time. He (apparently) committed a crime, played hardball, and he realized that he was going to lose. He was ruined.
"Hey, you've done nothing wrong, but you could still end up in jail for a long time. How about only going to jail for 4 years?"
Yeah, sounds about fair.
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/NATL-PHI-COPY-Professor-Freed-5-Years-After-Conviction-for-Wifes-Murder-187266921.html
Seriously.. This is so fucked up.
A man commits what the Judge called 'the most horrific crime ever in Montgomery County', and he gets 5 fucking years.
Aaron collects information that already should be free to the public due to the use of public funds/wages to generate it and they drag him through court for years and constantly threaten _30_ years?
Seriously. Maybe a fine and community service for the unauthorized access but 30 years? No wonder he went off the deep end. My brain is melting just thinking of how unjust it was.
America is dysfunctional.
That was not the point of what he said. He was not equating murder to running wget, which is not "all" Swartz did. That leaves out the breaking in, hiding a laptop, and repeatedly degrading the network of a school he did not belong to. The point he was getting at was that the Slashdot crowd is quick to rush to the aid of "one of our own" regardless of circumstances. Suicide is a uniquely personal decision. He made that choice, not anyone else involved. It's a very sad and unfortunate decision. The other part of his point is that people like the Slashdot crowd with the "fight the man" mentality are a large part of why he didn't accept the plea bargain. He did exactly what he's being prosecuted for. What is the point of fighting it? I would press the fight only if I was actually innocent. To reiterate... yes the documents are open to the public. The manner in which he obtained them was _not_. Six months in minimum security which would likely have been shortened for good behavior is not completely ridiculous considering.
You must be new here. Stick around long enough, and you'll find blatant lies, ad hominem attacks, and illogical hypocrisy modded +5, Insightful. That's not even counting the few posters who have blatant sockpuppets or fanboys modding them up.
And we are doing nothing to stop it.
"My aggressive behavior was not the cause of this.... besides they were clearly asking for it."
Wow, that excuse works for bullies, rapists, *and* zealot prosecutors.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
Felons ... aren't allowed to vote
Bullshit. I vote every six months, and didn't have to do anything special to get permission after my conviction.
If course I share the grandparents aspirations. However, aspiration without action accomplishes nothing, and 99% of the people saying, "X should not be so!" or "We should be doing Y" is, to steal a quote, as effective as solving an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.
And this ignores the fact that the various Shoulds are usually incredibly simplistic and naive views that completely break down the moment you start to dig at them. It is pointless to Should anything that is more complex than a fundamentally basic human behaviour, because it just doesn't work.
eg: People should listen to each other more. That's all well and good until you try to apply that to a janitor with zero scientific learning, trying to tell you their theories about particle physics. Why should I waste my time listening when he clearly doesn't know what he's talking about?
There is nothing in this world that can be solved by something as simple as a Should. If people see some kind of problem that they genuinely want to fix, then they need to get off their rear and come up with a plan of action, and follow through. Or find someone else who already has such a plan, and help them out.
Sitting in front of a computer, or a beer glass for that matter, and proclaiming that "This shouldn't be so!" is just ineffectual whining. Any smugness that you interpret from my post is a projection on your part, because I feel no smugness in pointing out how ineffectual the parent is. If people feel upset because I'm pouring cold water over their navel-gazing-on-a-soap-box, that's their problem. Not mine.
You have posted this same idea multiple times in the same thread. It does not change that he willfully did things he knew was wrong. There should have been some sort of punishment for that. The biggest harm was not done to JSTOR, but the facility he did that in. Conversely, the descriptions of the case I read stated the closet he entered was in fact locked. Swartz didn't even wait to see if he would just get probation. He made a very final decision before that could happen.
No, in 4 years, he would have made a lot of little craft projects, and done some manual labor in the form of raking the herb garden.
They don't send white collar criminals into lockup with fucking rapists and drug dealers, dumbass.
Exactly -- black and white -- it's this kind of thinking that leads to a more dangerous world because when the punishment for shoplifting is death, you might as well commit a murder to ensure you don't get caught. We aren't quite there yet, but we're well on our way. The Feds already kill people for exercising their first amendment rights provided they're Muslims. They seem to hate geeks too so we'll see where this is in ten years.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
To go on the attack against Republicans, here in Texas, we (the taxpayers)...
I just want to point-out that this injection of politics is what keeps our public intellect in the crapper: I'm glad to hear about the good-ol'-boys-ism among Republicans in the sense that I know who to oppose, but in the American socio-political discourse community this kind of insertion has an implicit function of asserting that the other major party that sits opposed to them are on the side of right: I lived across the obudsman of a certain Democratic senator in the State of Colorado and you know what? The Democrats are politicians too: scumbags, much like the lawyers who currently run the judicial system, talking to themselves how wonderful it is and how it's not about justice for the individual, but protecting rights over long periods of time: "abortion of justice" is only said when the media and public demands it, but they talk to themselves about how "the process took its course": when the "social" programs like social services do injustices as heinous as has been done to your first guy, it takes year to get the "children" back, who by then often aren't children, and it's worse than the judicial system, however, because as an administrative body they combine functions of all three branches and essentially judge themselves: and try to get your day in court and the courts say "you have to follow the process of the administration", and once you do they often say "we defer because of their process", and all of that was intentional:
I simply oppose the leftists, democrats, and progressives of this nation because their statism crosses party lines: and hence the bare, minimal difference between the parties, who simply seek the same outcomes via different means. At least the Republicans don't advocate forcing everyone to pay for abortions through taxes and health care plans that punish private businesses for hiring and private citizens for not engaging in commerce--but you know what? They don't "right now", and I know why: because it's not politically expedient. More fundamentally, of course, they are just a reflection of the spineless, unprincipled, morass that is the moral and intellectual thought of the American people, who have, you know, a form of self-righteousness, but at the end of the day want their t.v.--"shut up kids!"
Kudos for fighting those bastards btw.
Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.
Maybe we should kill a few, then they wouldn't think they are so immune.
Careful. You used to be free to make jokes like that. Now you're likely to be thrown in Guantanamo Bay (either literally, figuratively or metaphorically). If you happen to be out of the country they might decide to skip the preliminaries and just kill you.
You're a piece of work.
Guess what doesn't help aspiration lead to action. Attacking people for expressing their aspirations.
So, fred... how much did you donate to Aaron's defense fund to help fight this great injustice?
What's that? Nothing? Oh well, I guess you're right anyway. Ranting about injustice after the fact in a mostly-anonymous online forum has pretty much the same effect as supporting a vigorous defense of a test case designed to change an unjust law.
What punishment? He hadn't even gone to trial, by all accounts I've read!
And you, fred. And you. Because you don't actually go out and try to right the wrong, you sit in your comfortable desk chair and whine about injustice, and can log off feeling smugly superior, because you've "done something" to fight injustice. Except you haven't. You've convinced yourself that your bitching here is valuable, and changing the world, but I assure you, it's not - you've been bitching about lots of things here for a long time... and I haven't yet seen anything change as a result. At some point you have to admit to yourself that your whining is simply your narcissism at work - you like to feel like you're expressing bold opinions, and so you do that here on Slashdot, where the prevailing biases mostly agree with yours - this gives you the positive feedback of saying, "Wow, they modded me insightful!" without the actual real-life discomfort of having to do something effective.
I envy you, really - it must be nice to be so smugly convinced of your own superiority that you can't see what a useless, tired hypocrite you are.
Information I read a day or two ago either here or on osnews indicated that the publisher had chosen to drop the charges. The prosecutors chose to carry it on.
That is a False Choice argument, and utter nonsense.
The question is whether, given the very broad range of options the letter of the law allows, the prosecutors (apparently) should be incentivized to go for maximum possible sentences always, even if those sentences are stratospheric relative to the moral merits of the case.
This is not just about the particular question of visiting justice upon one alleged perpetrator. This victim of suicide is just the pretty little canary in the coal mine. Is this this desirable for society as a whole? Do you think putting this person in jail for 35 years serves your interests? Are we as a society so desperate and fearful that we need to make examples of everyone by the means of every tool of psychological torture the letter of the law allows?
The prosecutor took a case where the actual victims thought it best not to prosecute, and threatened a future productive tax paying citizen and society as a whole with a few million dollars of pain. How is this a good idea?
You don't know me and therefore you have absolutely no clue about what I do or what I do not do, still you feel in the right to try to use what you imagine I do not do as excuse to justify your apathy and talking down those that at the very least express their outrage against unfairness and authoritarianism, which is considerably more than you do. All that behind the mask of an anonymous post.
You should look at the mirror and be ashamed of what you see. You are what is wrong with our world.
Seriously?
You are using the term 'attack' remarkably loosely. Did I tell him that he's wrong and that he give up? Did I tell him to shut up? I'm looking at my post and I can't find any such thing. I fail to see how what I said can be construed as an attack on their aspirations. All I said was that reality isn't straight forward, and I will point out that you have not countered that statement.
If someone genuinely wanted to do something about it, then a random comment on an internet board isn't going to do anything to stop them. All your post does is prove that you like wasting people's time by creating storms in teacups, and that you are incapable of seeing the forest from the trees.
I'm sorry, but we're talking about serious hardball here. Do I have to remind you that someone is DEAD because of what's happened? We're talking about powerful people that have proven that they have the ability and the will to completely destroy other people's lives for personal ambition.
And you're worried about me hurting someone's feelings? If someone is so weak that they are going to be dissuaded from doing something as important as fighting a power that large, because of one random person's internet comment, then said person is not capable of taking on the challenge to begin with because they can't be relied upon to stand up to the least bit of pressure. And let me tell you, the pressure will be a LOT more than a random internet comment.
Maybe instead of going around trying to act all high and mighty from your arm chair, you actually take active part in some sort of political campaign to do something about this?
I was not upset at your comment in the least (and accidentally replied to the wrong parent, BTW, sorry). If you want to chide "hey, that sounds good, but what are you going to do about it?" I would consider that comment a tangent from the immediate topic with some genuine merit, if but on the snarky/presumptious side of things.
As I see it, the practical problem/question is whether prosecutors should be incentivized to go for astronomically high sentences, simply because the letter of the law allows such. That is a solvable problem, once consensus on the silly little "aspiration" can be achieved.
Or we could just indulge in "navel-gazing-on-a-soap-box" by lecturing each other on "navel-gazing-on-a-soap-box". Self-referential humor is most especially funny when spoken without irony!
Stop and think why MIT didn't try to curtail the Feds' prosecution: Swartz betrayed their trust by doing what he did. How would you feel if you suddenly learned that someone you trusted, and allowed access to your system, was using your network to download material in a way that was guaranteed to get some powerful people up in arms?
Someone *I* trusted and whom I provided access to our system, broke the shift handle off a rental fork truck and threw it away without telling anybody about it!!!
Motherfucker!
But that's where it ends. Because
a) I don't know who it is
and
b) If I did, they would get a verbal reprimand or 1-3 days off work
Trust is violated every fucking day. Get used to it and try to surround yourself with the better ones.
Here in Minnesota we elect state judges and there was one woman running for a judgeship whose lawn signs said "Police endorsed" -- I thought really? Why would I ever want to vote for a supposedly impartial judge who is in cahoots with the police? Would anyone stand a chance with this judge if they were brought up on criminal charges?
At a minimum this judge should never hear criminal cases since there will always be an appearance of bias due to her political association with the police.
But even so, judges seem to have close relationships with prosecutors because prosecutors are in front of them all the time. This alone seems to introduce bias, especially since both tend to want to curry favor with each other.
As for prosecutors, there should be an impartial panel who decides if the charges can be brought at all, similar to a grand jury but staffed by people who have no ties to the prosecution and who aren't under the prosecution's control or influence.
Every. Fucking. Time. If I had a penny for every time I saw this conversation in these stories...
"HE WAS INNOCENT LIKE LAMB!"
"Try actually reading the indictment, he did cause some trouble."
"OK, BUT JUST 4 MAKING INFORMATION FREE HE WAS GONG TO B IMPRISND 4 35/50 YERS, OR EVEN LYF OMG!!141"
"Actually, he was offered a plea bargain for 6 months. He would likely have gotten at most a few years, according to sentencing guidelines."
"OK BUT 7 YEARS IS STILL ALOT AND HE WOD B RAPD EVERY DAY LOL!!11"
Has *anyone* considered actually done some research before joining the ragefest? Come back when any of your imaginary outrageous scenarios *actually happen*. Oh, wait, we will never know what his sentence would be, because he *killed himself*. I guess it's anyone's word then. A billion trillion years, PROVE ME WRONG!
Well spoken, freprado.
Most people interpret the ancient phrase ("an eye for an eye") as an example of a vicious system of justice. That interpretation is not quite wrong, but it misses the main point. The actual main point of "an eye for an eye" is to baldly state that punishment must be proportional or it will be hateful in the eyes of justice and God.
The ancient wise men were trying to carry us away from a world of completely arbitrary tit-for-tat revenge, where "justice" is inflicting whatever you can get away with, because all who are not friends should be assumed to be enemies. Proportionality in the justice system was an explicit cornerstone in building civilization.
What we have on hand is just one memorable example of what probably happens a million times a year: that we as a society accept (or encourage) prosecutors to ignore all common sense and completely dispense with proportionality, because that is the convenient means to rack up guilty pleas (or political points).
Should we tolerate a justice system where the People's representatives are undermining the foundation of civilization?
FTFY.
One more time: How much did you donate to Aaron Swartz's defense fund?
Unless they've got real evidence, and are not just calling up Annie Dookhan and asking her to put the evidence in the fast lane. (Wonder if any of the prosecutors calling her on her personal cell will be investigated.... nah.)
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
This is how the justice system should work. To be exact : the prosecutor doesn't assume the defendant is guilty, they only assume the police is right, and build the legal case to prove it. That does mean that they assume everyone else is wrong.
I don't think this is appropriate at all. If a prosecutor has reason to believe that somebody is innocent, they should drop the charges at once. Why make an innocent person bankrupt themselves to try to prove their innocence?
I'm sorry, did I miss JSTOR filing charges and then recanting them?
In fact, did I miss Aaron Swartz having the power to coerce JSTOR into requesting the charges be dropped?
Or is it the case that Mr. Swartz had no ability to coerce JSTOR and that JSTOR never filed any charges to recant?
:(){
Read Orin Kerr's latest discussion on this. A lot of the charges against Aaron would duplicated under multiple statutes for the same act, and Mr. Kerr recommends removing the redundant laws.
:(){
Because the possible sentences are ridiculous. Decades of punishment for relatively small crimes.
Lets see... George Ryan got a six and a half year sentence for bribery, one act of whch caused the fiery death of a whole family. That's a Rediculously long sentence? Rod Blagojevich is currently serving a fourteen yeat sentence for seventeen felonies, most of which are related to selling the President's Senate seat! That's a long sentence? In Illinois, murder gets 20 to life. You think 20 years is over the top for MURDER? Armed robbery, 6 to 30 years.
You know, when you hear this bullshit you just might want to check your "facts". The reason there are so many US citizens in prison is our incredibly stupid drug laws. Legalize dope 3/4 of "crime" goes away.
Before asking the financial information from others please give your name, your social security number and tell me how much you earn. Attach all the necessary documents to prove it please. Oh, wait, you are an anonymous coward...
Truth is you wouldn't have a way to know if I was lying if I told you I donated 10, 100, 1000 or a million dollars to anything, so what is the point in asking, Mr Troll? Actually your argument is flawed from the start as I would be a narcissist if I started to speak about myself and how much I do. I do what I think I must and I speak whenever I feel I must. You do neither. But by all means, keep to your disgusting apathy. Keep feeling right about staying quiet. It will take you far.
Actually, he did agree to terms of service in order to log-in to the networked computer that he used. When he was given his username it came with a service agreement and set of rules that he implicitly agrees to by using that username.
Most people in prison are not there because of murder or serious crimes, and neither because of drugs. A lot of countries have even more restrictive drug laws, and still a lot less people incarcerated. And citing a senator who got away with light punishment is a hardly a good way to make your point on the matter. Bankers and CEOs of big corporations get it easy too if you want to keep at the trend.
He entered the wiring closet. He didn't break in. MIT has a long history of allowing turists access to the campus. When I was 18 or 19, I used to hang out at 7ai all the time, and even brought a machine in and hooked it up to the network in the machine room so that I could download some stuff from the FSF archive on prep. This remains the norm, from what I've been able to glean. MIT's treatment of Aaron was not the norm. Of course, Aaron pissed them off, so that's not surprising. But going from there to "breaking in" is simply not accurate.
He. Didn't. Break. In.
He broke into a wiring closet using a disguise, and kept circumventing their increasingly-specific bans.
So, trespassing? Violating Tos which is breach of contract. Somewhere I'm missing where Felony status becomes reasonably involved.
You don't know me, and you don't know what I take part in. You're making a lot of assumptions, both about me and about the person you hit with the "that's not the way the world works".
Yeah, someone's dead. Actually, a lot of people get dead because of the way our politics works. It's an enormous challenge to even put a leash on this, much less halt it. And one of the things that destroys efforts to do so is a hostile environment that makes people feel shitty about expressing their ideas. Yeah, maybe getting feelings hurt isn't the end of the world. But it's also not productive. If you actually want people to take action, what are you contributing to that by going internet tough guy? Does it take any more effort to not be a dick to people on the internet just because you can?
Creating a positive environment for discussion can help lead to action. For fuck's sake, creating a positive environment for discussion is a worthy end in itself. Think about it.
The end fact is that it was he himself who ended his life.
Look, my impression is that Aaron Swartz was a kind, thoughtful, intelligent, socially conscious person, subject to bouts of depression, His death is a great loss. It'd be great to have someone other than Aaron to blame. If it were not the prosecution, by his nature, other dire circumstances could have lead to the same tragedy.
As the originators of the situational pressure, the prosecution had an obligation, were they aware of his state of mind, to prevent Aaron from acting as he did under the situational pressure. There had to be some awareness of his mental state in order for them to effectively pressure him, but perhaps not of the depression (or perhaps otherwise). But they had no obligation to not pressure him, and in fact, had a duty and obligation to the public to the contrary, to pressure him as much as possible within the bounds of their office and of the law.
When someone dies, we like to look around for someone other than the person who died in order to assign blame. That's just human natures, and it's why we have safety warnings on things where the safety warnings exist not to actually protect anyone, but merely to deflect blame should someone act irresponsibly.
In large, people are responsible for their own mental state, and must be held accountable for their actions conducted while in that mental state. In rare cases, their actions may be compelled by their mental state, and, where possible, steps taken to prevent them from harming themselves or others. But it's not always possible, and in those cases of impossibility, tragedy lives. Aaron Swartz's death was one such.
In any case, I'm personally sorry for your loss.
This was originally posted on ThinkProgress but I will post it here to put that 35 years into perspective for those who don't quite get it.
... But you won't bother to clear up the misleading implication that this was over one charge. How many counts was he facing? 13. If we apply the same number to the various "comparisons" you listed, they'd all be in the range of 100-400 years. 35 looks a lot more reasonable when it's *actually* in perspective, no?
What are you smoking? Distributing 13 files should be punished more harshly than selling nuclear weapon designs or killing somebody? Apparently a human life is worth about 4 file transfers. I'd hate to have you on my death panel. :)
I've only been there on college tours, to be honest, so you probably know better than I.
But I wouldn't be surprised if the rules had changed, even at MIT. The network is "mission-critical" now in a way it wasn't even 15 years ago. Putting myself in a network admin's shoes, I would get a complaint about some abuse and block the machine when I found no record of it. And then when - instead of notifying the NOC of what he was doing and asking permission - he circumvented it, I would put in effect a better block (maybe he didn't get the message?). But he took it further than that, and that's when I consider him an intruder or an attacker, since I told him (with my blocks) that I wanted him to cut it out, and start escalating it up. Which since he wasn't a student meant the cops.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Six months for what amounts to a prank in terms of impact to the institutions involved? Oh, and no doubt one of those draconian "don't touch a computer for 5 years" paroles as well.
Sorry, that data should be in the public domain to begin with. The punishment doesn't fit the crime.
Kids talk in class too, and we don't stick them in prison for six months. And you know, just as you fear everybody does it as a result. Next thing you know kids will call each other names as well.
To be fair, I don't think it was "OK" for the phreakers either, but they just didn't get caught much. It's pretty much the same today.
From Wiki: "In fact, Bell responded fairly quickly, but in a more targeted fashion. Looking on local records for inordinately long calls to directory service or other hints that phreakers were using a particular switch, filters could then be installed to block efforts at that end office. Many phreakers were forced to use pay telephones as the telephone company technicians regularly tracked long-distance toll free calls in an elaborate cat-and-mouse game. AT&T instead turned to the law for help, and a number of phreaks were caught by the government."
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Clearly it had "computer" in it, which is scary enough to involve the Feds.
Assuming everybody was acting in good faith, they probably would've gotten involved because of the Jstor angle, and then dropped it after Jstor was satisfied with their restitution.
It sounds like the prosecutor went like 10 steps over the line on this one, I agree. But the crime he committed against Jstor is a federal offense, mostly out of necessity (otherwise you could avoid charges by just making sure the target was in another state)
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
"Trivial" is in the eye of the beholder. He broke the law, his problem.
Thanks for your input, Inspector Javert.
This was originally posted on ThinkProgress but I will post it here to put that 35 years into perspective for those who don't quite get it.
... But you won't bother to clear up the misleading implication that this was over one charge. How many counts was he facing? 13. If we apply the same number to the various "comparisons" you listed, they'd all be in the range of 100-400 years. 35 looks a lot more reasonable when it's *actually* in perspective, no?
What are you smoking? Distributing 13 files should be punished more harshly than selling nuclear weapon designs or killing somebody? Apparently a human life is worth about 4 file transfers. I'd hate to have you on my death panel. :)
Committing 13 crimes may (provided the sentences aren't applied concurrently) be punished more harshly than committing only 1 crime? Heavens to Betsy!
Barack Obama was and is the bought and paid-for stooge of Wall Street, none of whose really bad guys have gotten even a slap on the wrist. One of them became Secretary of the Treasury. To show what a tough guy he is, he bombs the s**t out of people who can't shoot back and makes sure that people who do things like Occupy Wall Street, cooperate with Wikileaks, or do anything that embarrasses him, are treated harshly. As to what you do or do not know about Chicago politics, or its history with Presidential elections, not to mention your ability to evaluate mental health, stick to your day job. As to his mastery of technology, you'd have done better to have cited his election day performance, which actually demonstrates an understanding of how to use technology to do direct marketing. For a president, we have a fantastic call center director with a really mean streak, which most call center directors do have.
I can't believe I just replied to someone who thinks that owning a Blackbarry demonstrated a mastery of technology. Maybe it is time to take me away. He got what all the other cool dudes were getting, that's all, which is probably how you do technology, too.
I can't believe I just replied to someone who thinks that owning a Blackbarry demonstrated a mastery of technology. Maybe it is time to take me away. He got what all the other cool dudes were getting, that's all, which is probably how you do technology, too.
Having a Blackberry was not an example of "mastery" of technology but of being comfortable with it and having some understanding of its use.
As opposed to a typical "pointy-haired boss" type, or Obama's predecessor.
BTW, you state that Obama is a stooge of Wall Street, which is hard to argue with, but manage to ignore that his rival in the last election was Wall Street incarnate. You also ignore that his predecessor was also a bigger friend to Wall Street ("You're my kinda people - the Haves and the Have-Mores").
You seem like the type to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.
So, yeah, your bias is showing.
knowing full well that the persecutors would not drop the case.
I see what you did there.
<Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
You're so f**king smart. I voted FOR President-for-Life Obama. My stocks are doing great. Romneytwit would have been a disaster for Wall Street. I really, truly think the money people lost their minds in the election cycle. Your consummate mastery of popular wisdom and the single entendre is simply stunning.
I didn't ask why the Feds were involved. I asked why what he did was even considered a Felony.
You don't appear to know what the word "given" means.
I don't "give" it to you. Very few here "give" it to you.
You sound like an ignorant authoritarian who doesn't even know the details of the story in question and has no interest in learning. Because learning is haaaaard. Much easier to submit to the control and direction of the authorities.
That's not a given, but it's an extreme likelihood.
And it makes you more bovine than human. Nice job. Be proud.
Faster!
Hire somebody with good writing skills!
Blame Congress! Make them know it's not our fault! Save our necks!
The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his acts for personal financial gain, and they recognized that his conduct â" while a violation of the law â" did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases
Uh huh. Now tell me, who was it that actually levied those charges -which you are now saying you KNEW were inappropriate- in the first place?
And take some responsibility, you little worm, rather than blaming congress and guideline books.
You are revolting.
FTFY again.
One more time: How much did you donate to Aaron Swartz's defense fund?
In one of your earlier rants, you said, "Whenever we see injustice we have all the right to feel outrage." You DID try to make it about you - about how you feel "compelled" to make a stand over this atrocious injustice! But, apparently, you feel it's only an injustice worthy of outrage when somebody dies and a bunch of ignorant fools get wound up over it, making it safe for you to "make your stand." Is that about the extent of it? Where were you talking about this injustice, prior to it suddenly coming into vogue here on Slashdot? How much money did you donate to help Mr. Swartz defend himself against this injustice? I'm waiting for you to prove me wrong - why do you insist on making ad hominem attacks, instead of meeting the criticism head on with examples of all the work you do to fight injustice like this?
That is to say, "I don't do much," and "I speak when it's fashionable to hop on the bandwagon," apparently?
None of which alters the truth of anything I've said one whit. Answer my question, or admit that you're a hypocritical fraud, please. You, and most of the other people commenting on this issue here, are nothing but disgusting parasites, using the suicide of a bright young man to further your own political agenda.
Why are you so mad, little troll? Did I expose a nerve? Do you need so desperately to justify your own apathy? Poor little troll...
Thanks for confirming that you're a fraud and a hypocrite, fred! Stay gold.
Still mad? We can work on that. Repeat to yourself: "I am not a failure" several times per day every day. Eventually you will accept it as true as you do with every other bullshit you say.
"It turned out that ... the prank phone call had nothing to do with her death."
Well, that's all right then. I'm so glad the nurse's ghost took the time to contact you from beyond the grave to tell you that.
Seriously, WTF makes you or anyone else think they know precisely *what* had "anything to do" with her death? It's not uncommon for people to have suicidal thoughts - but it is significantly more uncommon for people to act on them, and that action is something that can be triggered by an unusually traumatic event. Without the event, that nurse, and Aaron Swartz, might well have worked through their bouts of depression and emerged into "normal" functional adults.
Millions of people do that, every year. I've done it myself. But if someone had humiliated me in front of a worldwide audience when I was at my lowest point? Or threatened me with 35 years in jail and never working again? - I don't know what I might have done.
I read about this earlier today and after all the sensational accusations against the prosecutors, I looked deeper into the facts. As sad as this death is, it is completely unreasonable to blame the prosecutors for Aaron Swartz’s suicide. I suspect he suffered deeper mental health issues that were the actual cause of his suicide, not the prosecutor’s actions. I do not deny that there is unfairness in the US Justice System and that sometimes innocent people are prosecuted and even wrongly convicted, and there is good reason to try to correct that in general. However, that is not what happened here as the charges had not even been brought to trial. It is impossible for me to say whether the charges against Swartz were valid or not, but regardless, the US Government has an absolute obligation to prevent and prosecute all forms of computer hacking and IT security breaches and his choice to commit suicide was his alone. Aaron Swartz was a Stanford graduate and a member of the Harvard Center for Ethics, and reportedly one of the top computer minds of his age. He was well educated and by no means an innocent, naive youth. He absolutely had to have known that his actions at MIT were a violation of the law. In fact, it is pretty obvious he downloaded the JSTOR to purposely provoke the US Government and make a political point. It was entirely Aaron Swartz’s choice to choose the rebellious path he took. He could have just as easily applied his talents in another direction. To me there is nothing wrong with picking the more rebellious path (I have done it myself at times), but one has to accept the consequences of doing so. You cannot take on the US Government in the area of computer hacking and expect them to look the other way. Computer security is a major problem and a very valid one for the US Government to be concerned about. The entire country could become non-functional with a bad enough computer virus or security breach. In addition, if Swartz chose to be a hacker rebel, then he should have had the courage to fight it out and convince the jury he was innocent or accept that he was not innocent and gone with the plea deal. If you are really an anti-establishment rebel, 6 month of jail time should not be that big a deal and you should be proud to serve it. There are people imprisoned in the US for 30+ years for simply selling or possessing marijuana (which IMHO is a lot less of an actual problem to US security than computer hackers). You don’t take on the US Government and think they won’t make your life hell. Suicide is always the coward’s way out and is no one else’s fault. The prosecutors in this case were only doing their job and as they are also required by law. They are not responsible for Swartz’s actions in anyway. I am sure he has loved ones that are grieving him deeply and his death is a loss to society, but the only one who caused his life to end on January 11, 2013 is himself.
You idiot. Barack Obama has nothing to do with this.
I would love to see a loser-pays system with equal funds for both sides. Here is how it would work:
1. The stakes of the case are used to set the legal budget for the case. The more at issue, the higher the budget (can apply to both civil and criminal trials).
2. Half the money is allocated for each side.
3. Lawyers are required to bill the court for their services. Everybody can choose their lawyers, but they cannot pay them out-of-pocket. Lawyers face sanctions if they violate this, and I'd go a step further and ban lawyers and their employers doing trial work from engaging in any other type of work (so they don't play cost-shifting games).
4. For civil trials the court awards costs against either party as it sees fit, up to 100% of total costs. Any judgments are paid out by the court immediately to the prevailing party, and the losing party becomes indebted to the state (ie the winner doesn't have to collect). The state handles collecting on costs/judgments as it does any other public debt.
I'm sure this can be refined, but the bottom line is that both parties get equal representation.
Your basic point seems to be that since you think the items stolen should be in public domain makes getting at them by any means OK. Sorry but breaking and entering, breaching computer security and making copyright material publicly available is very different from talking in class. There are no known prison sentences for talking in glass but there are for the crimes Swartz committed. If you are going to do the crime be prepared to do the time.
What would you consider a punishment that would have fit the crime?
What are you smoking? Distributing 13 files should be punished more harshly than selling nuclear weapon designs or killing somebody? Apparently a human life is worth about 4 file transfers. I'd hate to have you on my death panel. :)
Committing 13 crimes may (provided the sentences aren't applied concurrently) be punished more harshly than committing only 1 crime? Heavens to Betsy!
Yeah, I guess your argument does make sense in some world where all crimes are punished equally, from jaywalking to mass murder (err, well, single murder - if you kill 24 people in a mall that would be like rolling stops at two dozen intersections).
I'd have given him a fine of a few thousand dollars for a first offense (especially since he seems to have means - I'd be easier on some kid with no assets). If he kept it up maybe I'd keep in prison for a week or two.
That's if I really felt it necessary to punish him at all. I'd probably just talk to him and give him a warning to start with.
But hey, I guess I'm soft on crime. When my kids don't clean their bathroom I don't throw them out on the street either. I'm sure they'll grow up to be serial killers.
Important fact, JSTOR a private company:
"Early on, and to its great credit, JSTOR figured 'appropriate' out: They declined to pursue their own action against Aaron, and they asked the government to drop its. " (emphasis mine)-- Prosecutor as Bully, Lessig
I'm actually sad if JSTOR gets tarred by anything here. They may not have agreed with Swartz's actions, but they didn't want him sent to prison over them, and they were the supposed harmed party.
MIT, however, decided to betray its core principles, and they had status as a "secondary victim."
"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."-- Prosecutor as Bully, Lessig
The irony here is that people who know about "the MIT way" would not have expected this out of MIT, but might have expected it out of JSTOR, However, JSTOR deserves a complete pardon here. They refused to play ball with a politically ambitious Fed, and basically should have no blame in any of this.
Meanwhile, MIT should have offered to turn this over to the Federal Prosecutors:
MIT Hall of Hacks.
Why settle for one hacker when you can capture an entire gang? So much evidence, I'm surprised Carmen Ortiz wasn't drooling. I mean, someone stole a police car and placed on the Great Dome! Surely she could have gotten someone prison time for that. Probably every student at MIT has done something that Ortiz and Heymann would find "Juicy," so really they should go hog wild!
[snark]Frankly, shouldn't administrators who allow such a museum, a celebration of criminality and, even worse, disrespect for the rules do some time themselves? They are misleading their students into a life of crime![/end snark]
Frankly, if I were a student at MIT with any talent, I'd be looking to transfer. MIT is over.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Again the flippant comparison of a non crime with a crime. By the way, Swatz is 26 years old and been legally an adult for over 8 years. He is far beyond a kid.
You're confusing a lot of things here : ... are not. This was a criminal case.
1) "no harm no foul" is only for civil cases. Fraud is perfectly OK if nobody lodges a complaint. Theft, breaking and entering,
2) MIT did not want to drop the charges (which means that of the many proposals offered by Mr. Swartz they were the only one who insisted he could not get off by buying his way out of this).
There's 2 things at work here. First, because you cannot be tried for the same crime twice, the US attorney has to bundle everything in one case. That means the complainants for this one case are three : the white house, JSTOR and MIT, and this cannot be split up.
Second, in order to get a settlement, the US attorney needed agreement from all 4 parties, complainants and defendant, for any given proposal. The white house did not seem to care, and accepted all proposals. JSTOR accepted some proposals, refused others. MIT refused some propals and accepted others. Aaron Swartz refused any proposal involving even minute amounts of jail time. No single proposal was acceptable to all 4 parties, so the case would have gone to trial.
3) At that point the US attorney did what is prescribed by the law : send a text detailing everything she was going to do to all parties. This means Aaron Swartz got a letter that there was going to be a court case, that he was going to get charged with X,Y, and Z and what the maximum punishment was for every charge, and a total. The letter also specified that there was still the option of a settlement, and detailed one of the settlements that all parties except Mr. Swartz agreed with, just in case he had trouble remembering.
4) Probably Mr. Swartz heard from his lawyers at this point that while the judge would never impose the maximum sentence, he was relatively likely to get stung with at least some jail time, and should reconsider his refusal of the 6 months jail + damages proposal (clearly he had enough money, he actually offered them more damages in return for no jail time). The alternative was going to court and giving himself over to a judge.
5) Mr. Swartz killed himself.
Again the flippant comparison of a non crime with a crime..
Crimes are nothing more than violations of rules. I can set rules for my house, and the government sets rules for the country. Neither has any real moral authority behind it - just the force necessary to enforce them. If I want to put my kids out on the street I can do so (after jumping through various legal hoops - just as any prosecutor must), and they'd basically be powerless against me. That wouldn't make doing so right - but it WOULD be completely legal.
And frankly Swartz is much more of an adult than most - he had the courage to stand up for something at great personal risk to himself. The way our tax dollars were used to persecute him makes us all guilty of something much worse than a "crime."
Can you refresh my memory? How much did you say you donated to Aaron Swartz's legal defense fund again?
Oh yeah. You didn't. Keep fighting the good fight against injustice, clown.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons would disagree with that statement:
Drug offenders make up 47.4% of the Federal prison population, the single largest category of offenses in the system.
By comparison, violent criminals make up ~13% of the federal prison population, using this guideline for classifying violent crime: "The United States Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) counts five categories of crime as violent crimes: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault." (source)
The AC is right - reform drug laws & sentencing, and the largest single category of offenders in the federal prison population - comprising nearly 50% of federal prisoners - go free. This would ALSO cut our incarceration rate roughly in half.
Such as? According to the Drug Freedom Index, the USA scores a "1.5/10" rating at the federal level (some individual states fare better, but not buy much) - which means that most drugs are illegal, and there are prison terms for possession/use, along with mandatory sentencing guidelines in at least some areas.
You know what countries have scores lower than 1.5 on that list? It's actually a fair short list, and not exactly a "who's who" of progressive first world nations:
Algeria, Bhutan, China, Dem. Republic of Congo, Indonesia, North Korea, Kuwait, Malaysia, Oman, Singapore, Syria, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Yemen.
And here's the list of countries that ALSO scored "1.5" (tied with the US' Federal rating) - again, not a lot of forward-thinking liberal first-world nations in this list: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Burma/Myanmar, Cuba, Egypt, Guyana, India, Iran, Jordan, South Korea, Laos, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Vietnam.
So let's review the key points:
1) The US has some of the most draconian drug laws (and drug-related mandatory sentencing regimes) in the world, and certainly among the strictest in the "affluent western country" category
2) The US has spent enormous amounts of time and money prosecuting these crimes zealously - War on Drugs, remember?
3) People IN the US are generally a lot more affluent than people in the other countries with similarly strict drug laws - meaning that if you're going to engage in drug trafficking, the US is a great place to smuggle it to, because you've got a lot of people who can afford your product. I doubt the colombian cartels are searching desperately for new ways to expand their markets into North Korea or Somalia, where the average person is dirt poor by US standards. Spare me the "hurr durr I am the 99%" responses, the simple fact is that even the poorest people in the USA (with very few exceptions), have a far better standard of living than the poor in just about any other country on the two lists above.
3) Nearly 50% of the inmates in federal prison are there for drug offenses
In summary - the largest single group of criminals in prison are drug offenders. Decriminalize most of these drugs, and you've just about reduced the US' incarceration rate by nearly 50%.
These individuals (Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann ) are only concerned about their conviction rate and personal/political games the same as most DA's. The must be held accountable and made to face criminal charges for their actions
Frank
This is a perfect example of Charles de Montesquieu's comment -- "There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice." The actions taken against Aaron Schwartz are the same style actions taken against dissidents in East Germany under the STASI, in Russia under Stalin and Putin, in China under Mao, and in Germany under Hitler. If these two "people" are allowed to remain as prosecutors, we are, in effect, saying that this sort of behavior is acceptable when it should be nothing of the sort.
BTW, my name is Kyle Michel Sullivan. I don't believe in posting anonymously...but for some reason Slashdot's still calling me an Anonymous Coward, even though I logged in. Not cool.
You mean, like, ummm, running some of the widely available fulltext-search indexing software, e.g. the Apache Solr?
What did that comment have to do with political parties?
Has anyone accused you of being an anarchist? It seems that you think any law (rule in your terms) that you do not agree with can be ignored and trivialized. Sorry but our elected officials have not decided that refusing to clean the bathroom is sufficient social implications to rate prison time. They have decided that breaking and entering, tampering with computers and dissemination copyright material without authorization is serious enough for incarceration. That is the difference between a parental rule and a law. Attempting to equate the two is absurd. It is not about "I have the power to enforce this so I will". It is "this conduct is a determent to society so must be deterred in some way". If you disagree with a law change the law otherwise all we have is anarchy.
Since Swatrz is "much more of an adult than most" then why compare his actions with the actions of a kid? That is another difference in the situations you bring up and the actual situation.
If we went with what you want, an insignificant monetary fine, there would be no "great personal risk to himself" as there would be no real consequences.
Do you really think it would take less police and prosecutor time to prove what he did based on a shorter sentence? No matter how long the sentence is the state still has to prove it's case. He knew what he was doing was against the law. He knew the penalties for the crimes, He chose to do it anyway.
Still mad, little troll?
Or at least admit to the court that they have a reasonable doubt.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
And then of course prosecutors have qualified immunity, which means that it is very difficult to make any kind of charges stick against them, no matter how egregious their behavior.
It can be shown that the government does not have the right to extend immunity (or right to pardon) to members of government that violate other people's fundamental rights arising under the 9th Amendment (rights retained by the people) or the 10th Amendment (rights reserved to the people).
The argument uses a fundamental technique of logic, dating back at least to Euclid, known as "proof by contradiction".
It works as follows: we assume the government CAN extend such immunity. Therefore, the government can prevent any member of the government from being penalized for ANY action taken to prevent rights being asserted under the 9th Amendment. If there is no penalty for such actions, the assertion of any right that might otherwise be reasonably asserted under the 9th Amendment can be blocked. Therefore, there can be no rights "retained by the people". However, the Bill of Rights explicitly provides for rights retained by the people. We have a contradiction: the original assumption was false, and the government CAN NOT extend immunity to prosecutors who violate other people's fundamental rights.
Further, from an ethics perspective, a legal system in which prosecutors can do absurd or abusive things to other people creates an artificial demand for the services of legal professionals as a class in society, to protect people (at least, to protect those who can afford the services of the legal professional) from abusive prosecution. In short, we have an ethical conflict of interest in the legal system, not just on the part of the legal professionals engaged in prosecution, but on the part of all legal professionals as a class in society.
If we suppose that ethical conduct on the part of members of government and the legal profession is a fundamental right, and that even the appearance of conflict of interest should be avoided, then the conclusion follows: as a matter of ethics, prosecutors do NOT have the right to abuse people by any means or mechanism.
If only the courts worked on pure logic, your argument would be convincing. Unfortunately, precedent and political considerations outweigh any possible application of pure logic. If you ever saw the sort of specious nonsense that passes for a "reasonable argument" in constitutional law, you would despair of the future of the republic.
When in reality the "two equally important" sides are the prosecution and the defense, which have decidedly UNequal powers.
Which is the whole point of the criminal justice system in the first place, obviously. That's what upholds the law. The reason law works is that the power is massively on the side of the organisation upholding the law, and everybody else is at a massive disadvantage. This means that in any physical or monetary fight, the executive is all but guaranteed to win any fight. In order to guarantee this, the executive has unlimited financial means (subject to approval from congress), and while it is demanded that they gradually ramp up the violence they use, in order to have as little total violence as possible, they will (after trying other means, such as a settlement) use any amount of physical force necessary to subdue suspects.
Making it impossible for the state to sue suspected criminals, financially or through other means - I do hope you can see why that is a horribly bad idea.
If your issue is that using violence and criminal acts such as breaking and entering to "free" non-public uncopyrighted information is perfectly a-okay, then I would suggest that first you convince congress of this, and second you remove all information from any building you don't want anybody breaking into.
You do realize that Carmen Ortiz did not have a choice, right ?
She proposad a number of settlements, and there was always someone not accepting (for most proposals - that would be Aaron Swartz). She HAS to bring the case if not settlement is reached and that's exactly what she said she would do. She followed the law. Aaron Swartz tought the prospect of a court case, after committing a crime, is so horrible that he simply killed himself to get out of it.
If you cannot accept judgement, then frankly, you have no place in any lawful society. If you kill yourself at the first hint that you might have to face the law, then go to a place that doesn't have them. Somalia or whatever. See how you like a society without laws.
I don't get what the big deal is. Lots of criminals do this, at least if you look at absolute numbers. Knowing full well they're guilty and if caught, they'll be charged and incarcerated, and they create situations in which the police is forced to kill them or just outright kill themselves or have "accidents", usually with cars. This is not exactly news.
If you take offence with what he did not "really being a crime" then you should be demanding the law be changed, please direct your queries to your local congressman (which a few people are doing and I applaud that initiative). If you take offence with settlements offers "sounding" threatening, how about we go back to the old system, and any case that isn't ridiculous (in the opinion of a judge) be brought to trial ? Of course, Mr. Swartz killed himself rather than accept a judgement, so presumably that would also have led to his suicide... If Mr. Swartz wanted to point out this law is bad, then he should have committed civil disobedience in the spirit of many before him, and gone to jail and served exemplary in incarceration.
You do not get to protest laws by committing crimes, and demanding you go unpunished. It just does not work that way.
Has anyone accused you of being an anarchist?
Certainly nobody who knows me well. I'm all for the rule of law. I just think that laws are only valid if they serve the public interest. We have elected officials to help ensure that this is the case, but the fact that they're elected does not guarantee this.
I don't see how this law serves the public interest, so it is unjust. The reality of course is that if you defy an unjust ruler the effects are about the same as defying a just one, and often worse. The government certainly has the power to enforce its laws, however unjust. However, none of this changes the fact that the law is unjust.
A majority vote does not change an unjust law into a just one.
When you say "this law" what are you talking about? Breaking and enter? tampering with computers? Copyright infringement? What is wrong with those laws? Everyone keeps harping on the the maximum penalties when we all know few get the max.
Isn't this pretty much what the bdsm scene is based on?
When you say "this law" what are you talking about? Breaking and enter? tampering with computers? Copyright infringement? What is wrong with those laws?
The works being copied should have been in the public domain to begin with, so there should not have been copyright infringement.
In any case, there is nothing wrong with having reasonable laws covering any of those things. The problem is that the penalties are draconian. Copyright laws used to be used to punish people running large scale printing operations copying popular books. Now they're used with the same penalties to punish people for downloading a song or movie - something generally considered acceptable by the public.
Everyone keeps harping on the the maximum penalties when we all know few get the max.
The purpose of maximum penalties is to force defendants to accept a plea bargain for a lesser penalty. Suppose I think you're ugly and should be locked away, so I point a gun at you and tell you that if you voluntarily agree to being locked up for 5 years I won't shoot you. Does that make the 5 years in prison acceptable?
If a guy pulls a prank like this he should get community service or a fine. Instead he was threatened with 30 years in prison with the goal of getting him to agree to 0.5-30 years in prison (he'd have to plead guilty and then take what the judge gives him with no guarantees), the loss of voting rights for life, and the near-impossibility of ever getting a professional job in the future. Frankly the latter two penalties shouldn't even be considered constitutional, but they're commonplace for felony convictions.
The works being copied should have been in the public domain to begin with, so there should not have been copyright infringement.
So your opinion that the law is wrong means you can ignore it? Does that mean that of you really believe that the abortion clinic should not exist you are within your rights to burn it down? That is not the way the legal system works. Lobby to have the law changed.
The purpose of maximum penalties is to limit prosecutorial misconduct so they can not threaten 100 years for stealing a loaf of bread. They are also not sized for every possible crime that can fall under that law but the worstcase. Any good lawyer will tell his client the true probable sentence that would be imposed for that person's crime. It is based on common law and precedent.People rarely get the max for non violent property crimes and they usually serve their time concurrently for multiple charges.
It comes down to this, the six month plea bargain sentence was reasonable for the crimes committed. The defendant thought death was a better option. Sorry but that is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Where were his lawyer, family or friends to see he was having trouble and commit him or stay with him for his own protection?
So your opinion that the law is wrong means you can ignore it?
I said the law was wrong, and those those who enforced it were wrong.
You can of course ignore any law at any time whether it is right or not. If the law is wrong then you're right to ignore it, and if the law is right you're wrong to ignore it. Either way you're likely to rot in jail.
That is not the way the legal system works. Lobby to have the law changed.
I never claimed it was how the legal system did work - only that this was how it OUGHT to work.
I will of course try to change the law, but lobbying is largely reserved for those with lots of cash. That's why we have so many wrong laws to begin with. In the meantime 99% of the population will ignore the laws they feel are wrong, and from time to time a few of them will get made examples of. Such is the US concept of justice.
The purpose of maximum penalties is to limit prosecutorial misconduct so they can not threaten 100 years for stealing a loaf of bread.
Gee, that is comforting. Maybe you'll only get 35 years for that particular crime at worst... But, that is theft of a physical good - most likely you'll get off pretty light for that. Try to "steal" some music online and you could easily face a suit for 100 year's worth of wages at least.
Any good lawyer will tell his client the true probable sentence that would be imposed for that person's crime.
No doubt this is why Aaron killed himself. He was very likely to end up in prison for years, and generally have his life ruined after he got out. There are cases of people who have been offered plea bargains for time served and continue to rot in jail because they turn them down. Why would they do this? Because they're innocent and don't want to allocute to a crime they didn't commit. What other motive would they have. People are constantly being let out of prison after many years served on the basis of new evidence.
It comes down to this, the six month plea bargain sentence was reasonable for the crimes committed.
That's your personal opinion, and the law, but certainly not a fact. And he wasn't offered six months - he was offered a prosecutorial recommendation of six months that the judge could ignore.
Where were his lawyer, family or friends to see he was having trouble and commit him or stay with him for his own protection?
I dunno, but as far as I'm aware none of them were out to get him. What do you want them to do, lock him up before he gets hauled off to prison? And who are you to call them to account? Clearly you aren't looking to make things better for the next poor soul to end up in his place. As taxpayers we're certainly accountable for his death, even if we outsource the dirty work to government officials.
Gee, that is comforting. Maybe you'll only get 35 years for that particular crime at worst... But, that is theft of a physical good - most likely you'll get off pretty light for that. Try to "steal" some music online and you could easily face a suit for 100 year's worth of wages at least.
Lets keep on the subject at hand. This is about criminal litigation and not civil litigation.
And who are you to call them to account?
His lawyer was concerned enough to bring up the possible suicide yet not concerned enough for another human being to do anything about it. The lawyer dropped the ball.
What do you want them to do, lock him up before he gets hauled off to prison?
If that would have saved his life, yes. Perhaps he could have even served his sentence in the cushy hospital.
Clearly you aren't looking to make things better for the next poor soul to end up in his place.
If by "poor soul" you men someone who broke several laws and threatened suicide then no I am not looking to make it better next time. The response to someone threatening suicide is not dropping charges it is institutionalizing that person in a hospital.
As taxpayers we're certainly accountable for his death, even if we outsource the dirty work to government officials.
That is your opinion. In my opinion there are two people accountable; Swartz' lawyer and Swartz himself.
That is your opinion. In my opinion there are two people accountable; Swartz' lawyer and Swartz himself.
Well, the beautiful thing about America is that you're entitled to your opinion no matter how wrong it might be, well, as long as you don't make too many waves visible to those in power.
You can actually make waves too, but only if you don't break any laws, which is pretty much impossible these days...