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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?"
They're members of the Obama administration. They can do no wrong. Just ask Tim "Turbo Tax" Geithner or Eric "Fast and Furious" Holder.
Civil Serpents abusing their power for personal ends? Shocking.
This reminds me of the British nurse who committed suicide after being prank called by a team of Australian DJs. Everyone blamed the DJs for pushing her to kill herself. The family even sued them to get money from them because they felt that they were owed compensation.
It turned out that the nurse had threatened suicide before, had a history of depression, and that the prank phone call had nothing to do with her death.
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?
Maybe he had a history of depression and had talked of suicide before. And maybe he would have killed himself anyways. And the real issue is not that he was up for charges for 'hacking' or whatever term the media is using this week. Maybe the issue is that he was suicidal for years and never dealt with what caused his severe emotional trauma.
I know the sexier story is that MIT and the government killed Swarts. Just like it was sexier when those Australian DJs killed that nurse. But the reality is that suicide is a major, I believe the biggest killer, for people Swartz's age. So this is not an anomaly death for his age group, it's a common occurrence in society. Mental health is the issue here. Not his trial for 'hacking' or whatever.
They shouldn't be investigated, they should be beaten and killed by penguin vigilantes!!!!
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.
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.
I'm engaged in suicidal ideation and you'll be sorry!
When will Slashdot stop running law stories without having a freaking clue what they're talking about? Notice how they almost always end in a leading question--"Should the prosecutors be investigated?" without even proposing any ideas for what the answer to that question might be. Of course, they can't just put the honest answer of "no", despite that there isn't even the slightest hint that they have done anything that violates any law, rule, or professional code, because that would ruin the sensationalist story.
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.
yes.
1. Don't ever cross or embarrass Barack Obama. 2. Don't use technology, about which he knows nothing except how to pick up the phone and order another drone kill. 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. And do look at the treatment of Bradley Manning. Can't blame that on Boston prosecutors. "Don 't get mad. Get even," said one of the also Chicago-mob-connected Kennedys. 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
How ironic. Bush3 is worse than Bush1 + Bush2.
Perhaps you should as well. This is clear misconduct and Ortiz should in fact be disbarred.
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.
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?
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.
He was offered 6 months. He refused the plea deal.
He trespassed onto MIT property, into an MIT building (while purposefully hiding his face), into a network closet, where he then installed a machine and stole power+data for several months (don't blow this off, people - looked at colo prices lately?) He intentionally avoided identifying himself through MIT's network registration portal. He rotated MAC addresses to prevent being barred from DHCP and from having his equipment located.
JSTOR had to block a range of MIT addresses, which cut off researchers at part of MIT.Aaron worked around it. So JSTOR had to block ALL of MIT.
When they weren't blocking him, he was impacting JSTOR services because he was pulling articles at such a high rate. Even then, it wasn't enough for him - he bought a second machine and used it to also pull down material, which caused JSTOR servers to crash.
Despite this, Aaron kept pushing. He knew he was harming others, he knew he was harming JSTOR, and he selfishly prioritized his 'activism' over it. So the guy who was supposedly for freedom of information was actually crippling access for SEVEN THOUSAND institutions. He was a speed bump for scientific process for three months.
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.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit, by the way - and they're not a "paywall", they're a library which stores, catalogs, indexes, and makes available electronically, journals. Which costs money, because it involves equipment, power, people, etc. How would you feel if you worked there as a sysadmin, and some activist was crashing your servers to Free Teh Researches? And your boss was pissed because you didn't seem to be able to stop it? And you had to spend money out of a limited budget on equipment? Or time dealing with it, instead of patching servers, or working on deploying a feature, etc?
How about the MIT network people, who were trying to chase down some asshole who was forcing JSTOR to block their researchers?
Congratulations, everyone. 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.
There were a dozen ways someone with his talent, public platform, and industry connections could have done to improve access to academic literature. He didn't. He did a LOOK AT ME EVERYBODY publicity stunt that harmed thousands and required virtually no effort, talent, thought, or skill - and had virtually no practical application. Vomiting hundreds of gigabytes of academic papers on The Pirate Bay doesn't doesn't solve any of the issues around freeing up academic research or help the flow of information.
Please help metamoderate.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Nothing will happen here. There's precedent to not hold prosecutors accountable for their lack of judgment regardless of their motivation.
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
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.
Featuring Aaron Swartz: http://zekeblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/homophobia-in-the-hacker-ranks-2/#UPDATE
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.
This seems to happen a lot.
Yes. The Powers That Be have yet again killed Till Eulenspiegel for his Merry Pranks.
Aaron Swartz at risk
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.
:(){
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.
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.
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
...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.
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?
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.
“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.”
"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.
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.
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...
"...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".
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.
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.
This site has become so Australia-centric it's sickening.
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!
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.
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.
Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.