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

[ColdWetDog]

Yeah, I was going to say pretty much the same thing. In high school, a friend and I had a running interaction with NASA security at the Manned Spacecraft Center (Lyndon B. Johnson Spacecraft Center to you modern folk). This involved penetrating the MSC by walking into places we *really* should not have walked into looking stupid / innocent. This was tolerated to a large degree until we found a place were we *** really *** should not have been.

Then we were politely told by security to cut it out. Enough fun. We weren't arrested. It was logged - when my friend went to get some high security clearance they brought it up (as well as asking for the every time we had done drugs since college - every time). Didn't seem to be a problem.

I hate to think what would have happened if we had done this in the past decade. We probably couldn't even get past the first gate now. We'd be in some high security prison somewhere learning really useful things like home made weapon production instead of being nominally useful members of society.

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:Poor young people

[Jmc23]

Of course you're comparing two stupid young kids fooling around and someone working towards a reality where knowledge is freed.

fuck the "justise" system

[Anonymous Coward]

more like injustice amirite?

RIP Aaron, we'll avenge you.

So Tufte was a phreaker. He and a pal did this "longest long-distance call" thing. AT&T caught onto it of course, and a tech rang 'em up. The tech just said, don't do it again, don't tell anyone, and nothing happens. But seriously, the tech (and by extension AT&T) could have seriously ruined Tufte's life. But didn't because it was just a silly prank that didn't actually harm anyone.

By extension, one of Aaron's legal team contacted Tufte who talked to JSTOR and convinced them not to participate in the ruining of this young man's life. After all, there was no harm to anyone, and nothing of value was lost or stolen (copies were made, which Aaron subsequently deleted after being caught).

So, in conclusion, fuck the system.

Justice system reform

[Kohath]

Glenn Reynolds just posted his essay Due Process when Everything is a Crime relating in part to the Aaron Swartz case.

Cases like the Aaron Swartz prosecution are a direct result of the huge, intrusive, abusive government we have. Unfortunately most Slashdotters seem to support this government and want to make it even larger and more involved in everyone's daily lives. Will Slashdot learn anything from Aaron Swartz's death? Or are we still just a few more government programs away from living in a utopia -- this time for sure?

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: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.

It's all about liability

[denis-The-menace]

*IF* something would happen, OMG, someone could sue us!

Today, they find ways to make you regret you were even born.

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

You can't sneak into a flooded quarry to swim that's on private property.
You can't jump your bike into a river for fun.
OMG, someone could sue...

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:It's all about liability

[sjames]

Blame also the courts that refuse to understand that their process is intrinsically harmful, even to an innocent defendant. Unlike a grieving parent, we have every reason to expect reasonable and rational behavior from our courts, but we don't get it.

Re:It's all about liability

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

      Because decades of kissing ass builds up during our rebellious period. I won't say teen years because it isn't always individuals in their teenage years that are affected. You know when you think most people are morons when you point out their fallacies in their reasoning but still won't listen to you and you have to go your own way which is our way of finding things out and a partial response to the hypocritical world we've created for ourselves. Whenever you push others boundaries it's always bad in their opinion, key word opinion, the other in this case is adults/government. The fact is most things aren't actually bad, others just don't want you to do them.
      Aaron broke a few minor laws that weren't intended for his situation to bring attention to a potentially illegal scam(as far as I know most federal agencies don't allow you to double dip) being perpetrated with public funds. Never mind fully public information being restricted from the public on profit grounds. And if it's not for profit what's the point in restricting it? And what were the prosecutors doing, torturing the guy for doing the public a service to build their careers. Fact is they didn't have shit and should have dropped it when JSTOR did.

Remember Aaron!

Who hasn't?

[SuricouRaven]

I'm guessing every half-decent engineer working in computing has some of this in their past. It's part of the process of how someone becomes an engineer - exploring, testing limits, finding way to use things in ways they weren't intended to be used. I know I did, I know my coworkers did. I work in education, and we've caught a student there trying to hack our network. Give him another ten years, and he'll be the admin trying to keep out the next generation of engineers-to-be. I'm not even an engineer: I'm a lowly technician.

Prosecutorial discretion is important

[davidwr]

However, it must be wielded with - pardon the pun - discretion.

It's NOT okay to have strict liability crimes without almost universal knowledge of the crime and likely punishment.

It's NOT okay to use discretion to coerce plea agreements.

In general, the discretion should be based on published, preferably well-known guidelines that all prosecutors in a given geography and who are prosecuting given types of crimes agree on. In other words, there shouldn't be "good luck" and "bad luck" for the defendant when cases are handed out to prosecutors.

You do need proprietorial discretion so prosecutors can deal with things like local priorities, priorities that change over time, laws that have outlived their usefulness, etc. Prosecutors in a city with a high car-theft crime and a publicized crackdown would - and should - be less interested in offering mercy on new car thieves than prosecutors in a city without a high car-theft problem.

You also need to have proprietorial discretion to give leniency where the criminal act may warrant severe punishment but the criminal intent, while present, was not that of a hardened criminal or where "mother nature" has already meted out some punishment. For example, a person who steals a car to joy-ride and wrecks it causing himself severe injury should get a lot more mercy than someone who steals the car for profit. Why? The INTENT was to return the car intact, so the "criminal intent" is much less, and the person's injuries and medical bills will ensure he won't soon forget the experience.

In cases of civil disobedience, the prosecutors in an area should also have a "standard, well-known" response which may be to decline prosecution specifically to deny the citizen the public platform that he is seeking. Another "pre-planned response" may be to seek a very short jail sentence with a long probation period, with a prohibition of associating with other like-minded people during the probation period. Such a response will effectively separate those who are really willing to throw years of their life away for a cause from those who aren't, while appearing to the general public to be showing some leniency.

In the Swartz case, I wonder how differently things would have turned out if the prosecutor had said "Okay, here's our plea offer - 6 months in federal prison on reduced misdemeanor charges. If you don't take it, we'll ask the judge for a felony conviction and a sentence of 'A year and a day.' Talk it over with your lawyer and get back to us."