Edward Tufte's Defense of Aaron Swartz and the "Marvelously Different"

zokuga writes "Data visualization pioneer Edward Tufte spoke at hacker-activist Aaron Swartz's public memorial. In his message, he described how he came to know Swartz at Stanford and how Tufte's own college hacking exploits had the potential to ruin his own life."

Comments

Poor young people

[Anonymous Coward]

The stupid stunts I did back in the '80s were as bad, if not worse, both in the real world and the BBS scene. The difference is no one stored my every stunt for posterity and instant access for all.

Re:Poor young people

[sjames]

The great hypocrisy is that the older adults implementing all of this zero tolerance all likely have a history that wouldn't stand up to the level of scrutiny they impose today.

The law doesn't care if you inhaled, it only cares if you had the tiniest trace of a dried plant in your possession.

Re:Justice system reform

[Concerned Onlooker]

"Unfortunately most Slashdotters seem to support this government and want to make it even larger and more involved in everyone's daily lives."

You must be reading a different Slashdot that I am. For instance, you should check out any post that has to do with gun control, s/w piracy or net neutrality.

Also, Swartz's death is a sad story, but I'm a little irritated that so many people are using his suicide to further their own agendas, no matter how just they may be. He left no suicide note. The claims that he killed himself because of his legal woes will always remain conjecture. The guy suffered from depression, after all, and depression is a documented killer. Ten percent of people that suffer from it end up committing suicide.

Re:It's all about liability

[DogDude]

So what's left to blow steam? Doing bad things because that's all there is left.

Kiddo, there are plenty of things one can do to "blow steam". If you want to do "bad" things, there are generally consequences, hence the "bad". I don't really know what point, if any, you're trying to make.

Re:Justice system reform

[anagama]

You know what, maybe instead of bringing out this offtopic canard about libertarians, you should read the article. It's thought provoking. Like how in the 80s prosecutors would play a game where they prosecute the person not the crime, i.e, pick a famous person like Mother Theresa and find a crime that would put that person in jail, not because they did anything wrong, but because you're such a clever prosecutor. That sounds not like justice, but persecution.

And how is the complaint that the government has made criminal so much stuff so divorced from common sense, entitled to some epithet about libertarians? Everyone should be worried because when everyone can be charged and sent to prison for random things, the government has total tyrannical power. That's an issue only libertarians worry about? I think not.

Read the essay. It's only 6 pages -- takes you a few minutes. Then come back and explain what in there sounded like the ravings of a "my property GTFO" type libertarian. It contains nothing like that all -- not even a hint. Instead it talks about how the decision to prosecute and what to charge is made in a milieu of total immunity without any consequences at all, and how that decision is perhaps the most important part of the due process rights which we are supposed to enjoy, but instead we have absolutely no protection at all when prosecutors decide to get medieval.