Slashdot Mirror
Prosecution of Swartz Typical for the "Sick Culture" Pervading the DOJ
tukang writes "According to a report in the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, State prosecutors had planned to let Swartz off with a warning and Swartz would not have faced any criminal proceedings or prison time had it not been for the decision of Carmen Ortiz's office to intervene and take over the case."
Although the CNET article focuses on Aaron Swartz's particular case, the original article calls attention to general abuse of power within the DOJ: "It seems never to have occurred to Ortiz, nor to the career prosecutors in her office in charge of the prosecution, Stephen Heymann and Scott Garland, that there is something wrong with overcharging, and then raising the ante, merely to wring a guilty plea to a dubious statute. Nor does it occur generally to federal prosecutors that there’s something wrong with bringing prosecutions so complex that they are guaranteed to bankrupt all but the wealthiest. These tactics have become so normal within the Department of Justice that few who operate within the bowels of this increasingly corrupt system can even see why it is corrupt. Even most journalists, who are supposedly there to tell truth to power, no longer see what’s wrong and even play cheerleader."
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
How else can you hold up the charade of a dual track justice system, if some people are hunted down by the authorities with extreme prejudice, and at the same time others are too powerful to fail, you create an illusion of order and safety and create bogeymen to keep people in fear.
'Even most journalists, who are supposedly there to tell truth to power'. Tell that to the jounalists of Fox News!
How many of you did similar things when you were a kid? you want $10 from mom..."mom can i have $50", "umm no", "ok $25", "no", "$10", "ok"
it should be illegal via sentencing the prosecutor to the maximum sentence of the charged crime for charging someone with a crime only to inflate charges.
Even most journalists, who are supposedly there to tell truth to power,
I just want a journalist to tell me what happened. Do some research, so I can read it, because I don't have time to do it all myself. I don't want reporters to shove their ideology and viewpoint at me. That's what editorial pages are for.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Memorable quotes for
Looker (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/quotes
"John Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, that's power."
##
"The United States has it's own propaganda, but it's very effective because people don't realize that it's propaganda. And it's subtle, but it's actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it's funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it's funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it really serves people's thinking - it can stupify and make not very good things happen."
- Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio
##
"It's only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because that's what people do. They conspire. If you can't get the message, get the man." - Mel Gibson (from an interview)
##
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director
##
"The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA's euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing - for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy - so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to your about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it. As for the second advantage, despite frequent suggestion that the CIA is a rogue elephant, the truth is that the agency functions at the direction of and in response to the office of the president. All of its major clandestine operations are carried out with the direct approval of or on direct orders from the White House. The CIA is a secret tool of the president - every president. And every president since Truman has lied to the American people in order to protect the agency. When lies have failed, it has been the duty of the CIA to take the blame for the president, thus protecting him. This is known in the business as "plausible denial." The CIA, functioning as a secret instrument of the U.S. government and the presidency, has long misused and abused history and continues to do so."
- Victor Marchetti, Propaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History
##
George Carlin:
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehous
Showing cause isn't the same things as proving guilt though, and if you stack the charges you're massively loading the consequences if the person actually tries to prove their innocence. Like the summary points out, the issue here is that many "prosecutions (are) so complex that they are guaranteed to bankrupt all but the wealthiest". This isn't justice, it's more or less blackmail: "We reckon we can charge you with a ridiculous number of tenuously linked crimes. If you try to fight it it'll bankrupt you, and our fancy-pants legal shenanigans will ensure you'll probably do time for something anyway, so why don't you save us all the bother by admitting your guilt in this plea bargain...".
If the court system is backed up that's a reason to either streamline the system or expand it, not to circumvent what is meant to be the point of it: justice.
You can't blame others, for the choice of an individual to take their life. If you do, where does the blame end? It wouldn't...
Just because a lot of people would be blamed doesn't mean you can't blame them.
Just because a lot of people are guilty doesn't make them all innocent.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
It may, but you have the right to counsel. So the court will pay for it, when dealing with criminal charges? Unless you have the money to pay for it. And if the charges are that outlandish, it is easy to get them thrown out.
The catch is that you only get a public defender if you are indigent. If you have means, they'll be sucked dry first, then you can have a public defender. So you are finally found not guilty, but you have effectively paid a ruinous fine anyway.
In a democracy, the power is supposed to lie with the voter. The voter has power, indeed absolute power to change the leadership every so many years and in the US even sooner because isn't that why you got so many guns... and therefor, the voter is corrupt. Nice.
The simple fact is that while a LOT of people claim outrage at this case, a LOT of people ALSO want a though stance by the justice system on OTHER peoples offenses. Hang'em all and let god sort them out is a significant voting group.
An even BIGGER group of voters is "hang em all" "oh my god, you slapped his wrist, how mean!". It is a lucrative market to serve as the media, write a story about how soft the system is on hardened criminals then a story about how hard the system is on misunderstood people and you got your readership nice and enraged and yet feeling like they are caring people after all.
The DOJ YOU got is the system your society wants. Don't believe me? Nothing has actually been changed with regards to JSTOR and its policies has it. MIT hasn't stopped working with them. Academia still submit their papers to it don't they? Everybody is having a good little cry and a nice outrage at the system and then all back on our hamster wheel part of the big machine just like before.
It reminds me of Munich. How many seconds was the collecting of wealth and fame halted after the slaughter? Did a single athlete say "no this isn't right, I won't continue". In the Tour de France at least if there is some event like a rider who died, the other riders do symbolic things like letting the affected team win or ride across the finish line as a group rather then in a race. Sometimes... if the stakes aren't to high.
How many people/organizations have declared to STOP using JSTOR or to keep themselves associated with MIT? Have many MIT students have stopped going?
People forget that oppression isn't just a person at the top going "send him down", it is an entire support system beneath it. If you want to be nice it is "good men doing nothing" but mostly it is "selfish people not doing anything unless it benefits them and even then only if it doesn't take to much effort". You might blame the Klan for segregation laws in the deep south (see how neatly I avoided mentioning the nazi's and a godwin?) but that doesn't explain how easily it was implemented and supported. Every bus driver, every shop owner, every person who went into a whites only area. Did you push YOUR granddad in the face for being part of it? No? So you think the DOJ should be punished for prosecuting a criminal but racism is okay?
Life is hard, fighting the good fight all the time is FUCKING hard. Lessig is one person who does it easily by doing the fighting through proxies and getting his proxies lumbered with million dollar punishments or until a depressed young man kills himself. How many cheered Swartz on and how many gave a depressed suicidal guy a shoulder to lean on? I sure as hell didn't. I am taking the easy way out. I know this of myself and just avoid looking at myself in the mirror. SAME AS YOU!
You can convince me differently if for instance there had been a "Spartacus" event where a lot of MIT students had copied the mass download. There wasn't. If students had left MIT. They didn't. If Academia had stopped using JSTOR. They didn't. If there had been ANY action beyond a few cheap speeches.
It is even more hilarious to read articles denouncing the DOJ on this subject matter when such sites are heavy supporters of copyright and have in the past attempted to restrict fair use of their own content.
I predict that NOTHING will change. The reason is simple, NOBODY cares. Well not enough. The next election will be about taxes and employment once again and the people will vote for the guy they think is best for them (or for Romney voters, better for that rich guy they never met and will never be) and copyright is just not a big enough issue to figure in election results yet. Hell, the US doesn't even have a green party of any note.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
First, I'm Australian and not American, However i know how wrong this is.
He Stole:- Well no he didn't. If anything it was IP Infringement - and because of the way a law was made in 1984 it means it was a felony and he was going to spend 5+ years in Jail For. The DOJ took the case over from the state. The State was going to let him go with a warning, the DOJ took the case, and started stacking up the charges - 9 of them the i read - which was going to be 25+ years in jail.
Lets make this clear - if he *STOLE* a hard drive with the files on it, it would of been a slap on the wrist.
The law basically means if you break the T&C of a website or service, it's a federal crime which is what happened here.
He tried to do a plea bargain - but the DOJ said you have to plead guilty to all of them. He had a choice - fight and go bankrupt, then to jail. Plead guilty and goto jail, Or take his own life. He chose to take his own life.
Seriously, The People in the DOJ of the case should either be charged with some type of assisted suicide charges, or involuntary manslaughter.
It is only subjective to a point. The problem is, there is no neutral ground... just the extremes of "you fucking pathetic, weak, filthy criminal, die by my hand!" and "meh... you're a corporation with a lot of money and good lawyers, we'll let it slide if you pay us ten grand."
They use their power to crush the weak (poor) to gain publicity, and the money talks for rich and famous fucks. There is no fucking "justice" in the current so-called United States "justice system." None at all.
With your view of good or bad, right or wrong, crime or no crime... you're forgetting one little thing. Relativity. Stealing a single candy bar from an already heavily profiting candy store is not the same as murdering someone, and should therefore have a more relaxed--dare I say it, sane--punishment.
If you are out to "make a example", or to "crush a person like a bug" for doing something you don't like. You are a asshole, and works on something completelly unrelated with justice. If at the same time you fail to stop banksters from break the economy and still not enter jail. Then you are just a idiot that is wasting everyone time, and your criminal neglicence will be paid for this whole generation and the next. You are a bloody idiot.
You and Carmen Ortiz need to learn the LEGAL definition of theft. She should have been reprimanded for accusing him of 'stealing' in her statement. In no legal sense did he STEAL anything and quite honestly Ortiz's comments are, IMHO, defamatory.
Good-bye
Zippo01, there's no confusion here, a person charged with WIRE FRAUD who committed WIRE FRAUD should be prosecuted for WIRE FRAUD face the evidence in court and and serve a penalty for WIRE FRAUD.
Whereas, a person guilty of COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, should NOT be charged with WIRE FRAUD, prosecuted for WIRE FRAUD, and lots more extreme laws with the intention of denying them the court hearing by mudslinging.
Is it really so hard?
" The court system is already backed up, could you imagine if every charge when to trial."
MIT & JSTOR didn't want it prosecuted, it was ORTIZ that wanted it prosecuted. SHE created the burden on the court system! The original prosecutor thought it wasn't worth a judicial penalty FFS. Not only did she create the burden on the court, she then misuses the plea bargain to try to prevent the court ever hearing the case. Too risky to let it go to trial due to her mudslinging. All very very unprofessional of her.
Very unprofessional.
It sounds like it's just a game for them. You pit prosecution and defense against each other and both try to win the match. It's just that in this game the goal should be that justice is served, and not that your side wins. It also seems that the other side figured out a tactic that guarantees easy wins. I think that this outcome is kind of natural - we all want to be as good as possible in what we do. At the same time it's also horribly wrong.
Only dumb birds land downwind.
...making Carmen Ortiz an "example" of this kind of abusive behavior from the prosecution?
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck
US-citizens, your future is in your hands.
We, as in "foreigners", can only look at all this mess and shake our heads, which we do alarmingly and increasingly often...
If the prosecutor offers a lower penalty for a guilty plea, then the government is admitting that the lower penalty is sufficient if the accused is guilty, and that should be what the defendant is in jeopardy of if he goes to trial. The effect of the threat of drastic sentences for minor offenses means that most of the time, the accused is denied his right to trial by jury.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Does that old adage of "Innocent until proven guilty" still exist? Or did the media (there, I said it) crap all over it with sensationalist headlines and fuck people over "in the court of public opinion"?
IIRC, the burden of proof lies with the prosecution. If *they* were to start stacking up charges, I'd say let them! They're the ones that'll have to provide evidence of such in a court of law AND they are also obligated to present the defense with the list of charges, evidence, witnesses and such that they intend to use against the defendant so a proper response can be prepared. So, you want to bring 100+ counts of whatever, bring it!
It's like when we were kids. You show me yours, I'll show you mine...but you go first.
Hopefully, in time, the judges will start complaining to the DA's Office (or GA, or whatever applies to each particular court circuit, IANAL) that they are wasting the taxpayers' money and the court's time with ridiculous lists of charges and that they keep bringing up, only to have them dropped or dismissed for a lesser conviction or plea bargain.
Having said that, the biased media (and in today's world, who isn't?) will have you tried and convicted in the name of headlines, viewer/readership before you even get to your first day in court. It's even likely the people called to stand as jury will be tainted by something their favorite media outlet had published. You know, "because the people have a right to know", really? Are doing the CNN thing and "just leaving it there"? can't we (all of us) take some responsiblity?
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-october-12-2009/cnn-leaves-it-there
We have such a double standard in this country. We scream when a person who is charged with a crime, makes a choice and takes their life because they where charged with a crime, that we are to tough. The next day we scream when another person charged with the same or a different crime gets off or only gets a light sentence.
The "we" in those two cases aren't necessarily the same people. People tend to shout the loudest about the things they're unhappy about; thus in the first case you'll hear mostly from those who think the justice system is too harsh, while in the second case you'll hear mostly from those who think it's too lenient.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
If the court system is being backed up because everyone decides they want to go to trial because it is their right (just like they have the right to free speech and to bear arms) then the problem is not with the people (defendants) but the system - on two fronts:
1) Is it necessary for so many charges to be laid that are felonies that put people in a position where they need to go to trial
and
2) if (1) is necessary then the ability of the court system to deal with the trials needs to be expanded.
People should not feel as if they are doing something wrong if they choose to exercise their constitutional right to a trial by jury.
The article points to the prosecutors, but these are not the real problem. The real problem are the laws. Democratic principles of rule of law do not only concern rights of due process but also the laws themselves. Laws that allow sentences ranging from a fine up to 35 years in prison for the same crime at the discretion of the prosecutors and judge are inherently injust. That should be obvious to anyone.
As for plea bargaining itself, I personally have always considered that injust, too, because it mostly works advantagous to people with lots of money and smart lawyers. That's probably more debatable. Anyway its the system of laws themselves that would need a thorough reform - which will never happen.
He didn't steal. Not even in the copyright sense of words. He violated the Terms of Use. He had the right to download from JSTOR. What he didn't had was the right to use scripts to download from JSTOR. He used scripts that unattended downloaded documents from JSTOR, so he violated the Terms of Use.
He actually had a fourth choice, which Americans have increasingly taken up over the last couple of decades - go postal and shoot a bunch of people. I'm sort of surprised he didn't try and take the prosecutors with him. If you want to look at reasons for those sort of things, maybe you need to pay attention to the pressure corrupt systems like these place on individuals.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
it should be illegal via sentencing the prosecutor to the maximum sentence of the charged crime for charging someone with a crime only to inflate charges.
Yes, that'll keep prosecutors from charging anybody with anything serious... how is that good?
Lessig said it "proportionality", I think that should apply both ways.
That said plea bargains are absurd.
Either you did the crime and you do the time, or you didn't.
Maybe countries don't have plea bargains, and usually only for minor offences.
Another bug, in you system is the idea that if you're guilty of two crimes, you the sentences will be accumulated.
In many other countries, the judge must make an overall sentence based on what is fair.
Accumulated sentences is just about throwing away the key.
Boycott JSTOR! Lets start WikiSTOR / SwartzSTOR!In honor of Swartz, and a lasting tribute to research!
That is a really, REALLY unfair claim to make.
And I say that as someone with multiple suicide attempts behind me (yes, I'm a failure, I know), so allow me to rephrase that.
That is a really, REALLY stupid and ignorant claim to make. There - much better.
People do not commit suicide because of a single thing. It's not the rape alone that makes rape victims suicidal, it's the associated shame, social isolation, finger pointing and blame (it's never the victim's fault) as well, and those come from society - not the rapist, no matter how despicable the crime is.
Pinning Swartz' suicide on overzealous prosecutors is as fair as pinning Jacintha Saldanha's suicide on the radio hosts. It may be a contributing factor, but not the only one.
People are WAY too keen to blame a single thing (person or otherwise) as the cause for whatever evil they see, and are WAY too scared of thinking let alone saying that people may have a mental illness. Just look at how quick people are to blame video games for the acts of murderers these days.
You don't attempt suicide (successfully or otherwise) if you're not mentally ill, be it temporary, short term, long term or chronic.
Yes, he made the choice to take his own life. He also made the choice of knowingly breaking the law (unreasonable or not). Rosa Parks made a similar decision as did Nelson Mandela and many others around the world. But unlike Swartz, they didn't choose to take their own life.
And you can say a lot of things about the US prison system, but I'm pretty sure it is a LOT more comfortable than what Mandela went through.
"could you imagine if every charge when to trial"
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Hey, she did make an example out of Swartz, just not the kind of example she was hoping for.
He became an example of the result of the tyranny of the modern American State. (Honestly? He's not even the best example, but he's very prominent. Which is exactly why Ortiz and Heymann chose him. )
Incidentally, Shirly Sherrod lasted how long when that deceptively edited video of her was released, compared to how long Ortiz has lasted after an egregious miscarriage of Justice that she was responsible for was shown?
Seems the Obama administration has its priorities...
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
People do not commit suicide because of a single thing. It's not the rape alone that makes rape victims suicidal, it's the associated shame, social isolation, finger pointing and blame (it's never the victim's fault) as well, and those come from society - not the rapist, no matter how despicable the crime is.
So what are you saying here - if someone is raped, were previously fine, but then kill themselves because of shame that it is not the rapists fault? If not when is anything totally anyone's fault - if I beat you and left you in constant pain and paralysed then it would be your perception of pain and societies's provision and reaction to disabled that did it!
Pinning Swartz' suicide on overzealous prosecutors is as fair as pinning Jacintha Saldanha's suicide on the radio hosts.
In both cases they started a course of events that lead to someone committing suicide. Their degree of blame depends on to what degree they could have foreseen the risk, and to what degree they could have seen any unjust negative consequences for the victim (e.g. if I want to make you feel bad and you end up killing yourself I am more to blame than if I accidentally bring up a touchy subject that leads to it.). There is no doubt tough that to some extent they are to blame.
And Internet Tough Guys sling mud on them afterwards, thinging this makes them something besides vultures. Except that real-life vultures serve a necessary function, so the comparison is unfair to the buzzards. Sorry, janitor birds.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Of course, it is "sickening" that federal prosecutors overcharge, that they have so much power, and that so many cases end up in federal court to begin with. But it's Congress that is responsible for this development; you can't blame the prosecutors (for many years, they were required to charge everything they reasonably could).
It's ironic that Swartz is becoming a poster boy for this, given how linked to progressive causes he was. A large reason for the huge transfer of power to the federal government is due to progressive causes. You want less of this kind of heavy-handed federal government action? Stop handing more power to the federal government and take it back to the states. Of course, you the have to live with the fact that people in Tennessee may not share your views on gay marriage, abortion, weed, evolution, guns, or welfare. But then, you don't have to live there (and fortunately neither do I).
Lets get off the "he was innocent" kick. Swartz broke into a server closet, installed his own hardware behind MIT's firewall so he could download files he was told he was not authorized.
How many of those things was he actually indicted for?
A six month jail term was reasonable for the crimes committed.
Which crimes do you think he was charged with?
I already know the answers to these questions. You apparently do not.
which completely discounts the fact that he broke into a storage closet, Setup the laptop hooked without authorization to their network to run the scripts that violated the TOS.
Look, he knew what he was doing was wrong and that there would be consequences or he wouldn't have gone to the elaborate route he did to gain access to that closet and network. That, IMO is what caused the wire fraud charge.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
The key issue (that I see) can lead to abuse is the widespread phenomenon of 'plea bargaining'.
It is this mechanism that provides an incentive for the DOJ to heap unreasonable amounts of far-fetched charges on a single suspect. The sole objective is to render it unattractive for the suspect to let the case come to court and thereby pressure the suspect into copping to specific charges.
There are two reasons to do this. The first is based solely on cost reasons (as with most decisions in the US), as in: it's costly to prosecute and it's cheap to file charges. If you can get suspects to plead guilty and accept the penalties, you've handled a case cost-effectively.
The second reason is that people have sought for means to make things sufficient hot for extreme cases (like e.g. mafia bosses) who are likely to shrug off most charges that can be proven against them beyond reasonable doubt. For such cases people saw fit to impose totally disproportionate penalties for relatively innocuous offenses.
Unfortunately this practice has been adopted for general use, specifically for serving as a deterrent against law-breaking by increasing the perceived risk of law-breaking. As in :
perceived risk = probability of capture x potential penalty
In the Middle Ages they used torture, mutilation, branding and suchlike to up the potential penalty to "deterrent values". Nowadays we use disproportional (and crippling) fines and equally disproportionate (and equally crippling) prison sentences for the same purpose.
People who complain ought to realise that this setup is very 'American' in nature and that it continues to exist only because a majority doesn't think it worth changing this aspect of the system.
Of course the whole thing can be changed: simply lower maximum penalties to proportionate values and invest (much) more money in increasing the probability of getting caught in order to keep the perceived risk of lawbreaking constant. It's completely feasible, but expensive.
Only people here don't want to hear that: they (collectively) prefer to destroy the odd individual in order to maintain the balance of terror on part of the law by the cheapest means available.
It's a choice (if a callous one), and it has nothing whatsoever to do with awarding the DOJ "too much power", let alone with the DOJ being ''corrupted by power". The DOJ simply does what it's told to do ... by the outcomes of a democratic process. If you don't like it, then have it changed.
Swartz broke into a server closet,
You're making it sound like he broke in, which is untrue. The closet was unlocked. Since you're talking semantics, this is important. That would reduce it from breaking and entering and criminal damage to trespass which carries a much smaller penalty.
so he could download files he was told he was
Irrelevant. JSTOR dropped charges.
The Swarts case was not an example of how the system is broken because the process was cut short. A six month jail term was reasonable for the crimes committed.
Isimply cannot believe the level of obtuseness displayed by your post. If you believe that threatening a man with 50 years in gaol so that he capitulates to a 6 month sentance without trial is not broken then I simply do not know how to even beginning to explain the basic concepts of justice and fairness to you.
And if you thing that 50 years is reasonable for trespass, then there is no hope.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If I could be half the loser that Swartz was, I'd be a proud man. If we were all half the loser that Swartz was, we'd be bathing in utopia.
What happened? He downloaded some papers from the public library in an automated fashion and shared them for his colleagues.
Sure, if by "some" you mean "4+ million", by "public library" you mean "a private datastore" and by "in an automated fashion" you mean "by sneaking into a computer room and illicitly connecting to the network".
I'm disgusted by the DOJ charges too, but people like you who try and gloss over the facts of what he was doing are just making the rest of us look bad. The DOJ response was ridiculous even given what he actually did. No need to pretend he was just innocently downloading a couple of papers from Gizmodo...
Life needs more saving throws.
It is only subjective to a point.
Which is to say, all of it.
You can carry a club and intimidate voters outside of a polling place and get away with it under this Department of "Justice" (if you're black).
All charges dropped.
Go ahead and mod me down, but you know very well I'm telling the truth. Eric Holder is a racist through and through. Evil is as evil does.
1. Quote Martin Luther King as saying disidents should be proud to go to jail.
Not everyone is heralded like Mandella with a large base of supporters and international attention. Most are swallowed up by the penal system never to be heard from again. Only their family remembers. Look what happened to John Kiriakou who blew the whistle on illegal torture. He's gone away for 30 months. http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/01/28/convicted-cia-whistleblower-john-kiriakou-confronts-government-talking-points-on-nbcs-today-show/
Whistleblower John Kiriakou said "I am proud that I stood up to our government. I am not a criminal. I am a whistleblower. Torture is illegal and it’s officially abandoned in our country and I’m proud to have had a role in that." Sounds a bit like Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death". A hero right? And yet...
Don't expect the media to save you. NBC's Savannah Guthrie began her interview of him: "Some people say you betrayed your former colleagues in order to raise your media profile in order to sell books and get a consulting business going." Are *you* going to be holding a candlelight vigil for a cad of a man who betrayed his country to sell books?
Don't expect the judge to save you: The US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema said on Friday that Kiriakou had damaged the CIA. She called the sentence, the result of a plea arrangement with prosecutors, "way too light". Before issuing the sentence, the judge asked Kiriakou if he had anything to say. When he declined, she said: ''Perhaps you have already spoken too much.''
This book tells how once you're jailed the public think you deserve it and quickly forget about you. http://books.google.com/books?id=Tu5RB6YHf10C&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=51Ya4U8XFt&dq=lynch+in+the+name+of+justice (Go to page 43 of this Google Books preview).
2. Swartz broke the law and should do the time.
These posts are usually accompanied by an anal exploration of the relevant statute by watched too many courtroom dramas and thinks they are real life, but was there ever an Episode of Law & Order when McCoy said "Let's fuck this college kid over! I want a promotion! "
People who post these overlook the whole point that these are unfair laws. Volokh showed how unfair they are when he wrote a TOS that could be used to send anyone to jail named "Ralph".
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/eo20120803gw.html
http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop-Reveals-Arrested/dp/1556526377
http://www.volokh.com/posts/1227896387.shtml
Yes, he set up a computer to perform the downloads. Yes, this was violating the terms on which he was on campus and getting access to JSTOR. But he didn't steal, and that's what I was correcting. If he actually stole something out of the closet, he would have gotten an one year sentence, and be done with it. But he was charged with 25+ years of prison and an US$1 mio fine. And that's where things go out of hand. And that's why some people are upset. It's like shooting people for spraying walls.
Therefore Obama will not remove Ortiz from office.
"...he broke into a storage closet" ==> which is not theft
"setup the laptop hooked without authorisation" ==> which is not theft
" violated the TOS" ==> which is not theft
What was your counterpoint again?
Government, especially the western style democracies didn't happen by magic. They were won by people who believed they could change the system and did. Once there were monarchs who rule, now they just collect a massive wage for not doing much at all. So our ancestors did not create a perfect society but they did improve society.
But now for everyone who cares, there are far more who want to keep the status quo. See the bitter hatred targetted at Julian Assange, Stallman, the whole wallstreet protests. The elite don't need to attack their enemies, the plebs will happily do it for them. Rock the boat and you will be thrown overboard by the slaves.
Oh we disguise our attacks behind claiming we want our heroes to be perfect. Oddly enough NOT something we demand of celebrities in other fields. Just that if you dare to suggest a small way in which the world could be made a better place, you better be holier then the pope and then you will be slammed for being to holy.
People REALLY do not like change, they can tolerate a LOT of badness if just it means they don't have to think, act or take a side.
And it is that way that tyrants rise to power. There is no need for a secret world government and such nonsense conspiracies. All it needs is for everyone to look away.
Trust me, I know. I am doing it myself. Just the daily drain of life has indeed made me give up. The little hamster wheel is all I want after all. Sad. BUT that is MY fault. Not the fault of anyone else. I gave up doesn't mean you should. But I can understand why people like Swartz buckle under the pressure and the people who claim his as their champion should ask whether they overloaded the guy or not. Let Lessig face a long jail time, maybe then his legal cases will actually be good and not wishful thinking.
Oh wait, accusing Lessig of not being perfect am I. Told you I had given up.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You should kill yourself for something you believe in. We'd all be better off.
Irrelevant. JSTOR dropped charges.
Irrelevant because JSTOR is not the one pressing the charges the Federal Attorney is.
One has to be stupid to take "you could get 50 years for that" seriously. His defense lawyer would also have to be incompetent to let him. Many offenses have high maximum penalties but few defendants get the maximums. Publicizing those maximums is just playing to the sympathies of the public and has nothing to do with what would actually happen.
And if you thing that 50 years is reasonable for trespass, then there is no hope.
Had Swartz only entered the room, looked around and left then 50 years would have been way too much. That is not what happened. Swartz dd many other things while in the closet and would never have gotten 50 years as that was the maximum sentences.
Isimply cannot believe the level of obtuseness displayed by your post. If you believe that threatening a man with 50 years in gaol so that he capitulates to a 6 month sentance without trial is not broken then I simply do not know how to even beginning to explain the basic concepts of justice and fairness to you.
Excellent cop out. You can not explain it because you have no basis for your explanation. I think it is completely reasonable to tell a defendant" Look, you can plead out to charges we all know you are guilty of or we can go to court on the off chance that we make a mistake. If we go to court we will charge you with what ever we can under the law and you may be up for a lot more time. Your choice, plea to what you did or role the dice." The reason it is not broken is that no system in the world could survive if every single charge went to court.
*IF* the claims were correct, he was not guilty merely of violating the Terms of Use of JSTOR, but also trespassing at MIT. Yes, neither of these are theft, but it is an oversimplification to claim he only violated the Terms of Use. It's like breaking into someone's office in order to illicitly photocopy something. Even if "photocopying without permission" is a pretty mild crime, and even if it were dismissed as "minor", there would still be the issue of breaking into someone's office and (temporarily) taking stuff.
From one of the indictments:
11. Between September 24, 2010, and January 6, 2011, Swartz contrived to:
a. break into a restricted computer wiring closet at MIT;
b. access MIT’s network without authorization from a switch within that
closet;
c. connect to JSTOR’s archive of digitized journal articles through MIT’s
computer network;
d. use this access to download a major portion of JSTOR’s archive onto his
computers and computer hard drives;
e. avoid MIT’s and JSTOR’s efforts to prevent this massive copying,
measures which were directed at users generally and at Swartz’s illicit conduct
specifically; and
f. elude detection and identification;
all with the purpose of distributing a significant proportion of JSTOR’s archive through one or
more file-sharing sites.
Where are your references?
liar liar pants on fire. It doesn't help your argument to present allegations as facts. Without proven facts the rest of your post is manure.
Swartz was charged witih wire fraud, computer fraud, unauthorized access, and computer damage. His actions met the legal definitions of all those provisions of the CFAA.
It seems that almost everyone who calls for "reform" either does not have an alternative or comes up with a simple solution that fails under any scrutiny. It is very easy to point out flaws and much harder to come up with a complete solution. This is a challenge for all the "Reformers" out there: What is your alternative?
This reminds me of The U.S. vs. John Lennon.
John an Anti-War Activist ... Aaron an Internet Activist.
Sadly both John Lennon and Aaron Swartz ended up dead ...
And the US Govt (and other govts around the world) do not seem to have learned anything from what happened fourty years ago.
The reason it is not broken is that no system in the world could survive if every single charge went to court.
Saying "everyone else is doing it!" or "justice is hard work!" does not mean the system is not broken. It is, and the fact that you can't see the problem with plea bargaining indicates that you're anti-freedom. You might as well be a TSA supporter.
The other catch is that the public defender will be payed less -- usually dramatically less -- to defend you than the prosecutor is paid to persecute you. In Virginia, the state pays public defenders $120 to represent you for a class 1 misdemeanor, which carry up to five years of jail time.
At the standard legal rate around here, that means you get half an hour of representation, if you're lucky.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
He did not "break in" to a storage closet. He walked into an unlocked room that was already being accessed by others, including a homeless man. He was never charged with the crime of breaking and entering. MIT had the option to have him charged with that, and they declined to do so. He covered his laptop as any sensible person might have done, to conceal it from others who could have walked into the unlocked room (and did) and taken it had they seen it sitting there in the open. Again, MIT had ample opportunity to have him charged with breaking and entering, as well as trespassing. They, as well as local prosecutors, declined to do that.
Eggshell Skull Rule (you take your victim as you find them) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull_rule
- the DOJ should be held responsible for their tactics. If it turns out he was weaker than a mob boss who would laugh at a 50 year sentence as a fake game, then the DOJ should not be applying the mob boss tactics. If they do - then they should be held responsible.
- that said we have a serious case of insincerity and gaming going on in our legislature. They make up penalties that don't fit the crime which gives the DOJ a wide lattitude to decide what to ask for. A crime and penalty should be more keenly matched and it is the legislature who we have hired to represent us in determining the appropriate match of crime/punishment- how have abdicated that authority to the DOJ - purposely so the DOJ can game the citizens with threats of disproportionate punishment.
I'm just surprised CBS let cnet write this article.
The court system is already backed up, could you imagine if every charge when to trial. Nothing would ever get done, and most important people would complain (louder then ever before) about being called for jury duty all the time
Abso-fucking-lutely. Maybe then the courts would spend their time productively, prosecuting actual criminals, rather than for breaking one of the constant stream of bullshit laws we're buried under because of bad business models, idiotic ideologies, and someone's magic sky daddy shaking his finger.
It would be an improvement the courts actually had to weigh the choice of holding a trial for an axe murderer, or the guy with peculiar dietary tastes because dipping your fries in your Frosty is an abomination unto Nuggan.
If someone thinks other issues are more important than everyone's freedoms getting violated by the TSA on a daily basis, I can only conclude that they're either evil or just naive and highly unintelligent.
Loss of topsoil is only one of the issues considerably more important than your puny human "rights". It's damn hard not to confuse your differing priorities for concern and action with ignorance.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
He didn't steal he didn't break in he was just a poor guest. He went someplace he was not allowed to go took things he was not allowed to take. This is what we have volumes of law books instead of just 10 Commandments. He knew what he did was wrong, if he was trying to make a statement he should have.
Information wants to be free? the people who made the information don't have the same opinion.
> Lets get off the "he was innocent" kick. Swartz broke into a server closet, installed his own hardware behind MIT's firewall so he could download files he was told he was not authorized. I guess I can come into your home and use your bandwidth to do anything I want. He broke the law.
Nobody is disputing he broke the law.
"only whites can sit here" was a law.
"you must wear a yellow/pink/red.... star" was a law.
getting to your home and use something of yours for any purpose is breach of territory which will get you into trouble in the entire animal kingdom. So, not the best of arguments IMHO.
All research are done with public funding or private tax - deductible funding is by default belongs to the public domain.
The DOJ criminal division hasn't done a thing to prosecute any of the heads of Wall Street firms that have destroyed the lives of millions by engaging in fraud but is willing to destroy the life of a promising young men for a victimless crime.
See: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/untouchables/
Thankfully, Lanny Breuer resigned after this documentary came out but it seems like the DOJ is rotten to the core. Eric Holder needs to go next. Obama should get someone in there to clean out the stables.
Carmen Ortiz?
Allow us to charge you with some heavy-handed crimes, and see how well you handle it.
Such is the cost of being a 'social' being; when the group turns against you, even if you are purely innocent, you still pay.
I am John Hurt.
Your country is no different. Neither is mine. In fact, these laws and punishments are pretty universals.
http://www.zdnet.com/au/cybercrime-bill-passes-senate-set-to-become-law-7000002971/
The law may be bad and the sentencing guidelines overly punitive, but given they're on the books, I'm not seeing what the DOJ did wrong here. Prosecutor seeks the max sentence he thinks he can get. Defense seeks the minimum sentence it thinks it can get. They meet in the middle. That's the way it generally works, no?
Only criminals go to court, they get what they deserve.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/require-free-access-over-internet-scientific-journal-articles-arising-taxpayer-funded-research/wDX82FLQ
And there is only one thing that will stop the show from
continuing.
That thing is force.
Since few people are willing to do what it takes to exert the necessary
force, the overwhelming probability is that the show will go on.
The fact remains that the US has MORE prison inmates, period, than
any other country in the world. That alone indicates the system is flawed.
Prosecutors today grew up watching the dubious shenanigans, prosecutorial over-reach, mis-application of law, and prosecution by agenda of Dick Wolf's NBC program, Law and Order.
Guys, it's just fiction, and a TV program created to perpetuate Hollywood Limousine liberal propaganda.
So the Savior of the Left is having Army drills in U.S. Cities, His D.O.J. is on a tear and even the left wing media is describing His D.O.J as a "sick culture".
We are one a well worn path that has been blazed by the best of Despots.
Do you have your AR yet?
Not liking the outcome doesn't make the steps leading to it wrong.
"His name was James Damore."
pure and simple. Start high/ low (depending on your position) and meet in the middle. Imagine buying a car. Yes, I know it's someone's life, but negotiation is negotiation.
Excellent cop out. You can not explain it because you have no basis for your explanation. I think it is completely reasonable to tell a defendant" Look, you can plead out to charges we all know you are guilty of or we can go to court on the off chance that we make a mistake. If we go to court we will charge you with what ever we can under the law and you may be up for a lot more time. Your choice, plea to what you did or role the dice." The reason it is not broken is that no system in the world could survive if every single charge went to court.
I like your look at plea bargaining through rose coloured glasses. In practice, it's used to railroad people into submitting to charges without trial because the risk of being found guilty of a vast number of vastly overblown charges is simply too great. It is a fundementally broken system for this reason.
It's also unjust for other reasons.
If the person is guilty of crimes deserving of s particular sentence, then why should they get off so easily?
And the whole "we all know you are guilty" thing. What about you know, the presumption of innocence?
Plea bargaining is just a corrupt, unjust hammer used because the prosecutors and police simply want to get someone fro a crime and they don't even seem to care if it is the actual perpetrator.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Relevant comic: http://www.pereanu.com/comic/us-justice-system/
We've been electing officials for years who have taken as stance as being tough on crime. So we're only getting what we've been asking for.
We The People, have gotten exactly what we asked for.
Indeed.
All that can be said is that the mere fact that there are many people instead of few who have taken those steps does not automatically make them right.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
All you have to do is sit on a jury and vote innocent on anyone that is brought up on a stupid law or on charges that are way over the top.
There are lots of aspects of law that have nothing to do with jury trials.
go to trial because it is their right (just like they have the right to free speech and to bear arms).
Your privilege to a trial is subject to the same restrictions as your other Constitutionally guaranteed privileges.
I was similarly once offered the choice of pleading guilty to a misdemeanor which never factually occurred, or spending (conviction guaranteed, per my legal counsel) five years in state prison for a felony which also did not occur. If I still had those old Criminology textbooks then I could cite the universal and pervasive nature of this type of occurrence.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
A day in court may be a constitutional right but it is not a moral right when everyone knows the defendant has committed the crimes.
The entire point of having a trial is that individuals are innocent until proven guilty. There is no such thing as "everyone knows" because by definition you cannot know all the facts until they are presented. Having your day in court is absolutely a moral right whether the person is ultimately guilty or not.
The reason why journalists are useless is because of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axU9ngbTxKw
Since this case, ALL news reporters don't give a fsk.
All because it's not illegal to report false news in the US.
(it is in Canada, BTW. That's why Fox News North got canned!)
The problem now is that they are operating on the the corollary:
" It is *legal* to make up news in the US. "
Joe six-pack is too busy looking at dashian tatas on TV.
The elite love it because it gives them a license to print propaganda under the pretext of "news".
If normal people tried to do the same, they'd call it slander.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
It was not irrelevant, because it caused tremendous mental and emotional stress, leading in this special case to panic and even suicide. Not everyone has nerves of steel or no emotions at all to face the possibility of a 30+ years long sentence (for mere copying of a bunch of files, wtf?!), even if it was only a theoretical maximum. Unless they're hardened criminals with experience in the legal proceedings of the US judicial system, which Aaron was not...
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Like I said before, there is a very stark difference between being harassed by a co-worker, radio personality, school bully, neighbor, etc., and being harassed by the government. The government effectively has infinite resources, and all of the other threats don't. You can escape the other problems, but the government may choose to keep you prisoner in one way or another.
There is a difference between blaming people who are representative of themselves, and people who are representative of something much bigger than they are.
People are giving Ortiz the "Just obeying orders" get out of jail free card. Wasn't accepted at Nuernberg. Wasn't accepted at the Eichmann trial.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The "just obeying orders" card was played at Nürnberg and by Eichmann. Didn't work. For the system to work, prosecutors must first and foremost pursue justice, or they will fall into disrepute. Right now I wouldn't trust Ms. Ortiz in charge of a pebble on a highway intersection. That does nothing to encourage people to obey the laws.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The job of the prosecutor is to prepare and present the prosecution case. The prosecutor should have NO input into sentencing at all. It should entirely be down to the judge, who should be guided by criminological opinion and research. That after all is the function of a judge: having heard the evidence and the decision of the jury, to pronounce sentence.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The persecution replaces rule of law.
Even most journalists, who are supposedly there to tell truth to power
Bah ha ha ha! That's as funny as people who shout "Take the power back!" Back?! Ha ha ha ha!
In May 2009, Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry recommended Ortiz to President Obama for the vacant United States Attorney position in the District of Massachusetts.
Don't forget his incompetent forensic analyst who claimed on his blog that Swartz "did nothing to cover his tracks."
What do you expect from an entity called the "Department of Justice" and for the record there are no "journalist" in the MSM.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
A)breaking and entering charges were on the state level and were dropped(and was going to be continued without a finding of guilt as they couldn't prove that he intended to commit a felony afterwards)
B)he had authorization to use MIT's network
C)he had authorization to use JSTOR through MIT's network: any random passerby had authorization to use JSTOR through MIT's network
D)not a crime, they only had an issue with the rate at which he downloaded
E)he wasn't charged with a crime for this
F)he wasn't charged with a crime for this
Actual charges:
A)wire fraud
B)computer fraud
C)unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer
D)recklessly damaging a protected computer
As DoS attacks can fall under D), that might have ended in a conviction, if it weren't for the fact that JSTOR denied that they suffered any harm.
"there is something wrong with overcharging, and then raising the ante, merely to wring a guilty plea to a dubious statute."
-----
This is not limited to Federal prosecutors. State District Attorneys do this too.
"It doesn't help your argument to present allegations as facts. Without proven facts the rest of your post is manure."
I agree. In addition it was a minor local issue, one that MIT should be used to by now and the local officials didn't think anything of it. The feds should've never been involved at all.
And to top it off, the public defender's caseload will be so large that he can't even remember all of the names of his clients on any given day.
It'd be nice if it was, but their actual job is to sell get as many viewers/readers as possible so that the advertising revenue keeps rolling in.
The point is that the system is intended to be about getting at the truth, not wracking up a nice good win/loss record or making examples of people.
Fuck you for comparing copyright infringement and breaking/entering with segregation or the holocaust.
Indeed. It's a case of two wrongs.
Should Swartz have gotten some punishment for what he did? Yes.
Should he have gotten (or been threatened) a potential life sentence or more from an overzealous prosecutor. No.
If he had been facing a substantial (but not unreasonable/life-ruining) fine, or a few months in jail, then we probably wouldn't be talking about this right now (and he'd still be alive).
Students pay a fortune to go to university. Every student is a captive consumer of products and services provided by the university. JSTOR effectively taps a significant monthly subscription from every student, generating an income beyond belief.
The non-profit status of JSTOR is designed to fool cretins into thinking JSTOR doesn't make money. JSTOR makes insane amounts of money. This money gets fed into massive salaries, kick-back payment schemes, and extreme expense accounts. A university that uses JSTOR has many VERY happy administrators.
Aaron threatened the income of a very large number of extremely corrupt individuals. Today, access to academic papers could be provided AT ZERO COST if an organisation like Google was tasked with handling the archives.
JSTOR's continued existence is more than corrupt financial self-interest. The is, without a doubt, a significant amount of elitist pressure to prevent the 'unwashed masses' from having easy access to such learning material. There are those that still see universities as fortresses, with the ultimate power to decide who gets in.
Decent people KNOW that anyone with access to the Internet, anywhere on this planet, should be able to read any academic paper they want, at no cost. People who willingly wish to use their own time to advance their own knowledge by learning the knowledge of others advance the WHOLE Human Race.
Depraved monsters, on the other hand, think only in terms of power and profit. They would not care if most of the Human Race continued to live in the dark, so long as their clique appear to have a superior position in society.
Aaron was squashed to death by a combination of both kinds of Human monster. The filth feeding on the obscene income generated by JSTOR, and the elitiest scum that judge their own success by the degree of others' failure to advance.
But the DoJ is as political as anything else.
Otherwise... well, Tom DeLay, former Speaker of the House, was convicted in Texas of money laundering for campaigns...*THROUGH THE RNC*. Laundering money requires at least two guilty parties... so why hasn't the DoJ RICO'd the RNC, instead of going after small, easy fish?
mark
Humans still have not evolved enough to stop these childish "oppression over other" games. It's seems to me that people just love to oppress and impose their own ideology(laws, religion, controlling your lifestyle, etc...) over another, ego problem. Well, what was the reason behind the overzealous prosecution of Aaron? Was it because the prosecutors are sociopath's(huge ego's) and just love to oppress or was it to make a name for themselves and climb up the corporate ladder(ego problem again). But than we have Aaron trying to impose his own ideology on MIT and JSTOR dictating what they can and can't do with the documents and such. It's same thing with people who download mp3's and movies illegally because they don't agree with the owners pricing scheme or terms of use of the product even though nobody is forcing them to buy it. People will do whatever it takes to feed their own ego.
Aaron Swartz versus the Phantom Giant
When Aaron took on SOPA, he took on AT&T and as he was later to find out, Chris Dodd, whose family has been on retainer to the Rockefeller family for generations, dating back to their ancestor, Samuel Calvin Tate Dodd, the attorney to John D. Rockefeller, who created a holding company each time Rockefeller’s Standard Oil supposedly sold off a business unit (during the court-ordered breakup), moving the stock ownership to the holding company, then in turn establishing ownership of said holding company at one of Rockefeller’s foundations and/or trusts.
Chris Dodd’s father, Thomas Dodd, had no less than at least three Acts of Congress passed in futile attempts to curb the famous Dodd corruption (most notably F.A.R.A., or the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and amendments to it).
Are the Dodds still working for the Rockefeller family? Well, that depends on the mystery ownership of AT&T. Going back to the early 1900s, John Moody, the original founder of the infamous Moody’s rating service, said that AT&T was part of the Rockefeller Trust, originally financed by Morgan, but either sold, traded or shifted over to Rockefeller.
We do know that AT&T loves Senator Jay Rockefeller, and that Jay Rockefeller loves AT&T, as witnessed by the manner in which he led the way in the Senate to grant them retroactive immunity regarding the warrantless wiretapping during the Bush Administration (which continues on, BTW).
From the site link below. . . .
http://attpublicpolicy.com/tag/jay-rockefeller/
Posted by: AT&T Blog Team on January 25, 2011 at 4:08 pm
“Chairman Rockefeller has long made public safety and national security a top priority for this country. We applaud his commitment to the public safety community and his tireless efforts to ensure that first responders have the resources they need to support a nationwide wireless broadband network. This legislation will result in a truly interoperable public safety network and will free up new spectrum and establish funding mechanisms to support the operation and maintenance of this critical network.”
Many people don’t realize that the old AT&T has been reconstituted back to its original, albeit even more powerful and richer self, thanks in part to Bill Clinton’s signing of that Telecommunications Act of 1996 --- all except Verizon, but in tracking the circuitous ownership of Verizon it appears to lead back to the same ownership as AT&T!
Why would AT&T target Aaron Swartz, through their federal prosecutor proxies?
We used to marvel, back in the late 1970s, how AT&T set out to destroy the telecom upstart, MCI, which would have shortly gone out of business, had not AT&T pulled their access to long distance lines, thereby allowing MCI legal recourse, eventually netting MCI enough monies (from the legal settlement with AT&T) to continue on with their precarious business existence for a few more years.
AT&T --- and the Rockefeller family --- has only one strategy: the scorched earth policy! Now, former IMF stooge and presently an economics prof at MIT, Simon Johnson, would have us believe that the Rockefellers, led by the crafty David Rockefeller, gave away their billions to “charity” --- they morphed from murderous robber barons to “philanthropists”?
So the Rockefeller family, worth an estimated $30 billion in 1960 (when one billion was an unimaginable sum), are now only worth $2 billion?
Puuuhlease --- repositioning the Rockefeller fortune to various foundations, trusts and unregistered trusts to hide their wealth and ownership was, and still is, the standard tax dodge; nothing particularly surprising there. (The norm today is to create an LLC, or Limite
We should nationalize the legal profession. If you get charged with a crime, the government pays your lawyers the same amount it pays prosecutors.
No matter where you go, there you are.
. . .otherwise you would know there has been much, much unbridled corruption among prosecutors over the past twenty years, almost exponentially increasing about every four to five years. ..."
"you can't blame the prosecutors
Which is why your comment is so absolutely ludircrous, if not a planted one, perhaps????
Never heard about Gov. Don Siegelman? Sue Schmitz? All those whistleblowers who weren't supposed to be fired, hounded out of their jobs, or far worse, sent to prison? Never heard of Shakir Hamoodi, or John Kiriakou? The lady doctor at EPA who was just reinstated, after the fed court found in her favor, no thanks to the Bush-Obama administration's attacks on her?
You can indeed blame the AG, Lanny Breuer, and all the corruption at that most corrupt of places, bad citizen, you most indeed can . . . .
it does not matter what sentence he is threatened with as it will never be imposed."
What color is the sky where you live? Innocent people go to jail all the time.
Most eloquently spoken, good citizen!
The Ballad of Aaron Swartz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Qb0tCgNzbjk
And IMHO, please allow me to add . . .
The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth
I despise Fox, better known as FoxFiction, for the very same reason I despise PBS and the Frontline show which appears on it; they both are nothing more than propaganda vehicles. I’ve ranted enough over the years about Rupert Murdoch and his criminal propaganda operations, but for the concise lowdown on his “legalization” of news fictionalization, please read Kristina Borjesson’s outstanding book, Into the Buzzsaw (a fantastic achievement by Ms. Borjesson).
The other day, Frontline broadcasted a show on their take on why none of the guilty parties have gone to jail for all the financial fraud --- and law breaking and violation --- involved in the financial meltdown that we hear and read about on an almost daily basis. It was so thoroughly contrived and such nonsense that any self-aware human had to be nauseated by it!
Some years back, an editor at the Seattle Times explained to me how they falsified the news (this was during a heated and argumentative discussion, when I accosted them about some highly misleading stories in their rag): the newsy interviews the disinformation specialist --- usually a corporate lobbyist --- who spews forth their lies, therefore the reporter/journalist/editor bears no legal culpability whatsoever --- since the interviewee was spouting the lies and fiction.
Of course, the newsy never bothers to ever verify, or fact check, anymore!
Frontline did this most effectively, although they still were culpable in repeating the Wall Street and US Chamber of Commerce talking point nonsense.
The mortgage foreclosures, a relatively small percentage at the beginning, had really nothing to do with the economic meltdown, it was almost superfluous (although it would figure among the global insurance swindles, it was really only one of a host of factors).
It was the never-ending ultra-leveraging of the debt, over and over and over again.
Securitization, or the transforming of debt into securities, the selling of financial instruments based upon the ongoing and future promise of payment of said debt, then selling more financial instruments based upon those financial instruments, then selling even more financial instruments based upon those, etc., etc., etc.
That’s ultra-leveraging, but again, only part of it --- they also re-securitized the original securitization, and re-re-securitized again, then re-re-re-re-securitized again, etc.
Layer upon layer upon endless layer of debt/financial instruments: why there are so many multi-billionaires and so many people struggling today.
Add to that still other components: something they call rehypothecation, or using other collateral as your own (really a form of fraudulent borrowing, ostensibly illegal in the USA, but legal in the UK (but it never stopped them here in America, now did it?) by the banksters, speculators and derivatives dealers.
Now add to that all the insider speculation, wash trades (the trading back and forth by speculators to drive up, or down, commodity and stock values), and LIBOR rate manipulation (please remember, that LIBOR manipulation affected an estimated potential of $800 trillion worth of contracts --- that’s TRILLION, or 1,000 billion times 800 --- super-sized numbers which derived from all that ultra-leveraging --- so they manipulated their manipulations . . ).
So when Frontline is too damned lazy to consult some law books and relies on the DOJ’s Lanny Breuer to spout nonsense (a guy who made his big bucks defending the people he’s supposed to now be investigating when he worked at Covington & Burling with Attorney General Holder) and they repeat the Wall Street mantra about the so-called underlying causes of their meltdown (“nobody could have foreseen it” / “unexpected consequences” school of f
I assume then that you read every TOS you agree to in it's 50 page entirety? The legal system is not based upon needing permission to do anything. If doing things without explicit permission was disallowed, innovation would be implicitly forbidden. Criminalizing people who do not fit the normal mold of expected activity has a strong chilling effect on progress. The whole point of a capitalist society is that you are given a set of rules and you operate in an otherwise unbounded way in order to maximize benefit.
Also, remember that copyrights are designed to promote innovation. The copyright must last long enough to adequately reward the copyright holder such that they are encouraged to continue to innovate. Much like patents, copyrights are supposed to expire after this "adequate" amount of time so that the entire public can benefit from the knowledge. This process appears to have been hijacked by those with financial interest. This is an obvious and antisocial activity that has negative effects on the productivity of all sectors of society. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Copyright_term . People went around complaining about how much education costs while lawmakers went and extended the copyright term to 95 years! The most recent textbooks which can be distributed freely are from 1918. This is essentially an "education tax" that we are all needlessly compelled to pay which is then collected by private entities with conflicting political interests.
Why would such a smart kid who no matter how you sugar coat it broke the law commit suicide?? For as you put it such a small insignificant crime?
Jack of all trades,master of none
In theory you are correct, and that is how it is supposed to work. In practice we see the exact opposite. The only people in the US that are innocent until proven guilty have paid a legal team an enormous amount of money. Go spend a day in circuit court watching cases. Usually they are open to the public. You may find it rather enlightening.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
He was not convicted yet. He was truly facing 6 months in jail and could not handle that. How do we know he would not have committed suicide if he was sentenced to one day in jail. As for not knowing the system, that is why he had a lawyer. If the defense lawyer could not explain the real possibilities then it is not the prosecutor's fault. The fact that Swatrz acted on a "could" and didn't wait for the sentence says a lot about his particular mental state.
The resumption of innocence is upheld when the defendant walks in and pleads guilty. It is a protection from being punished for a crime before a verdict is entered. For example one can still vote if charged but not convicted.
Plea bargaining is just a corrupt, unjust hammer used because the prosecutors and police simply want to get someone fro a crime and they don't even seem to care if it is the actual perpetrator.
Excellent broad generalization about a system that is used all over the world for centuries and has worked quite well. I agree there may be some instances where you are correct but there are many more instances where just sentences have been bargained for.
He was probably afraid of the very real chance his family would be bankrupted by the complex trial, and possibly years of appeals to follow, with no guarantee of not actually being found guilty.
In fact, I'll one-up you : Obama cannot fire Heymann because his appointment isn't political. He's just an ordinary federal employee. Ortiz petition scored 40k partially because Kos clarified that Obama can fire her.
We aren't really trying to get him fired though, not really. We want to ruin his political ambitions, which incidentally were why he pursued Aaron and James until they both committed suicide.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Look, he couldn't know what he was truly facing. This is post-factum knowledge... and it was before Carmen Ortiz grabbed the case from state prosecutors. If he really had the suspicion that he was facing the rest of his life in jail for something as petty as what he did -- and sadly this suspicion was not entirely unfounded --, committing suicide before being sentenced, was from his perspective the only thing he could do, lest he be jailed and put under permanent suicide-watch where it would have been too late. Of do you think committing suicide in jail is easy?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
It is not only this, it is also abhorrent to the principles of natural justice for a prosecutor, who will undoubtedly have some bias against an accused person through their exposure to evidence against that person but only limited exposure to evidence in favour of that person, to both determine what charges should be brought and what sentence should be given for those charges.
To be honest, my main problem isn't with plea bargaining as a concept (I'm an Australian legal practitioner and will generally discuss these kinds of matters with police and attempt to amend charges, etc), what I am against is a lack of judicial oversight for the process.
If a "plea-bargain" case comes before a Judge or a Magistrate, they have a duty to their office, to the accused and to society to take care to ensure that a person isn't railroaded into pleading guilty where there is insufficient evidence to establish charges before the Court and to ensure that a person doesn't plead guilty if they don't honestly believe that they have done something wrong/are guilty. In addition to that, the Judge or Magistrate has a duty to ensure that any sentence passed by the Court is "correct" (ie is proportionate, consistent with prior sentences for similar matters, a suitable deterrent to society at large, and adequately punishes the accused for the crime).
Where a Judge or Magistrate simply sentences in accordance with a plea bargain, the Judge or Magistrate ignores these duties and abrogates the power of the Judiciary (the Court) and vests it to in Executive (prosecutors office), which also poses an issue for the doctrine of separation of powers.
what you said, plus:
- the attitude that news should be free, or the perennial "I can just get it from Reuters/ AP."
- an audience moving towards broadcast journalism instead of printed news. You can fit more info per square inch than 60 minutes ( harr harr, get it?)
- we get shit when mistakes happen. Despite printing retractions or corrections in the next issue. Then people bitch about going back to AP/ Reuters again.
- oh, and long hours with shitty pay.
That pretty much sums up why I left the newspapers. The quality of the audience has declined with the quality of the news, and vice-versa.
Look, he couldn't know what he was truly facing.
"Ignorance of the law is no excuse".
Of do you think committing suicide in jail is easy?
The national suicide rate is about 12 in 100,000. The suicide rate in prisons was 47 in 100,000 in 2002. So yes suicide is possible in prisons.
The same Eric Holder whose idea of justice is sentencing people to death in a Star Chamber? Not likely. When told he was not following due process over the drone killings, his response was that he could follow due process without involving the courts. And this is the Obama government's top lawyer! http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/07/opinion/la-ed-holder-20120307
And to top it off, public defenders don't put any effort into anything but the most serious capital cases. They don't have the time or resources that the so-called 'Department of Justice' has.
IIRC, the burden of proof lies with the prosecution. If *they* were to start stacking up charges, I'd say let them!
Talk is cheap. Let's see how you feel when those stacked up charges could result in you spending the rest of your life in prison based on the opinions of 6-12 strangers you know nothing about and whom the prosecutor has had a chance to dismiss for being too sympathetic to 'innocent-until-proven-guilty" and "cops sometimes lie". Your innocence and their lack of evidence will not necessarily keep you out of prison.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Take someone in poverty. Something falls out of their pocket, but from the cop's angle it looks like they dropped it. In my state (Washington), that's a $1,000.00 FINE.
Yes, a thousand. I'm neither in poverty or someone who has ever faced a fine for littering, but I worry about the latter and I worry about people who are both.
This is because my child-like naivety about law enforcement being "the good guys" was done away with some time ago. A small traffic matter, the details of which are irrelevant and I certainly was at fault - and saying so, but how the cop took to it and how the judge behaved when I went to contest were surreal.
The cop had no interest in what happened. Nor did the judge. Photos I had, etc. It did not matter. No interest. You have about as much information as they did. I messed up, does it matter that the law cited by the cop could in no way match what happened? Don't be silly, of course it doesn't matter.
Fortunately my employer at the time, someone who had ridden along with me and knew I was so conscientious (a nice way of saying OCD) that I would use my turn signal to back out of parking spots, my seat belt when simply moving my car in a driveway or would refuse to drive when I had forgotten my wallet, knew to ignore the infraction.
Should the event or one like it ever occur again, I'll be quick to retain a lawyer regardless of expense instead of wandering in believing in the ultimate good of the system, but I digress. I worry about people who do not have understanding employers. People who are on the line, something small happens and they face these same incompetent fools. People who cannot retain a lawyer.
A falling piece of paper can mean not making rent, ending up on a street, not being able to shower regularly, being dismissed from employment for smelling bad, etc. A speeding camera that goes off a little too early (a recent local news story regarding some school zones) may mean the same or simply being dismissed from employment as a danger/liability.
In economies such as this one, the end result can be death. Either via Swartz's method or hypothermia.
I've often heard estimates of around $50,000/year per prisoner.
Cause he isn't Nixon. He's by no means perfect, but that is irrelevant. Cite one example of him doing something illegal in order to harm his political opponents.
It's like 6-year-olds being expelled from school because they used their fingers to form a gun on a playground.
If we were sane, you would be correct saying the DOJ had no business being involved in this.
Are we sane?
Just go with the popular vote. It would be so easy to do.
Well he really only had two choices. One was to flee to a country without an extradition treaty. The other was to kill himself. He must have had his own reasons for choosing the latter without even trying to flee from this giant prison of a country. Probably because he was already unhappy and didn't think he would be happy as a fugitive for the rest of his life. For some people prison simply is not an option. Death is preferable. I certainly would choose death over even a year in prison. Let alone 5-35 years. Death is a no-brainer in that situation.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Pinning Swartz' suicide on overzealous prosecutors is as fair as pinning Jacintha Saldanha's suicide [dailymail.co.uk] on the radio hosts. It may be a contributing factor, but not the only one.
Contributing factor? I'll take that. Probably a major contributing factor. If he had had a choice to avoid prison he almost certainly wouldn't have killed himself. If you don't kill yourself when you are facing 35 years in prison, well, then you probably never will. I see it as pretty similar to killing yourself when you have untreatable cancer.
You don't attempt suicide (successfully or otherwise) if you're not mentally ill, be it temporary, short term, long term or chronic.
Bullshit. People kill themselves for many reasons. If it's a dumb reason I might agree. This was definitely not a dumb reason. Was the guy depressed and unhappy in general? Probably. Lots of people are.
Even if he were 'mentally ill' in some way, by some definition, it doesn't change the fact that Ortiz pushed him over the edge. His death can be directly attributable to her actions.
It would be one thing if he deserved to die for what he did. Like if he had raped and murdered a family or something. But all he did was put a laptop in a closet and download some files that should have been freely available anyway, which was kind of the whole point. Technically his major crime was violating a ToS, which I think a lot of us don't believe should even be a crime in any circumstance.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
And I really have to say F* the people behind the "Build the Deathstar" petition. Yeah. Ha ha. Funny, but there are people who are trying to use the petitions to effect real change. Not stupid prat boy jokes.
You are missing the point: trivial things are now illegal. If you have ever been less than entirely honest in an e-mail or letter then YOU TOO are a felon and any federal employee who doesn't like you - or decides to use you as career fodder - can jail you for wire fraud or mail fraud. Same if you have ever made a 'mistake' on your tax return. Wondered why the IRS audited the CIA waterboarded whistleblower back 7 years? Because it's an easy way to jail someone. Getting Al Capone for tax evasion seems clever, but giving prosecutors like Oritz a joker means you must trust them not to abuse it for career-building instead of justice. Pick the prisoner, and choose the crime.
The sad part with this guy's post is that a significant portion of the world would agree with him because they have no internal sense of authority.
Such people are called, "Authoritarian Followers". They cannot determine any sense of direction or meaning in life on their own, have no internal understanding of right and wrong, and so *require* an outside force to tell them what to do and what to think.
The actual behavioral code of the authority is irrelevant. It wouldn't matter if the authority said, "You need to stuff grapes up your ass every morning". So long as the majority of the population agreed that this was the way things are done, the authoritarian follower would dutifully shove grapes up his ass every morning, because it would make him feel safe.
Beta-dogs need their Alpha to tell them what to do, or their lives would dissolve into a mess of fear and confusion.
Hurry up and evolve. You have that nice frontal lobe. Use it once in a while.
The first amendment to the US Constitution specifically mentions the right of speech in redress of grievances and our courts have a long history of allowing pro se representation in cases heard before them as part of that right. The record for pro se defendants, especially in criminal matters, is not as bad as generally believed. For example, only 26 percent of the pro se defendants in one study ended up with felony convictions, while 63 percent of their represented counterparts were convicted of felonies (see TFA). A college educated adult probably stands as good a chance as most public defenders when arguing their own case and may even have certain tactical advantages over the prosecutor, especially in a jury trial where careful and well reasoned arguments may serve to elicit additional sympathy from the jury for the "honest citizen" representing himself.
Those aren't charges, those are allegations, as the indictment states. You'll want to start with "Count 1" at paragraph 34. Everything he was charged with relates to accessing JSTOR's computers without authorization, something JSTOR itself did not want to prosecute.
Where are your references?
That same PDF and basic reading skills, I guess.
it is only at 50k votes..... take this cunt whore of satan off the taxpayers employment rolls.
just name your favorite libation when you come to nyc (if you dont mind visiting decaying empires in the death rattle) and i will have a case of it ready for you and your friends
Read the counts and you will see they mention MIT computers as well as JSTOR computers. You seem to forget that Swartz played cat and mouse with MIT sys admins for days. All of MIT was blocked from JSROR for a period of time due to Swatrz's actions.
The other issue is that these are criminal charges and not civil charges. The reason for someone withdrawing a complaint is difficult is so that there are no back room deals to pay off the plaintiff. One of the main reasons for criminal sentences is to deter others from doing the same crimes. If they can get swept under the rug by a back room deal then the justice system falls apart. It is not OK to break the law if one of the injured parties says it is OK.
Playing the blame game is the most convenient, and lowbrow, way to shift blame on to another, but never, ever excuses those miscreants and cretinous swine responsible; nothing excuses Ortiz, the others, those involved with the prosecution and arrests of Don Siegelman, Sue Scmitz, etc., and Obama's War on Whistleblowers (the continuation and expansion from the Bush administration). As long as the DOJ and DOT are simply subsidiaries of Wall Street, such corruption continues unabated. sgt_doom
Someone needs to investigate the DOJ, which is often used to exert the will of corrupt leaders (like our current president) and has little to do with justice for the American people.
Correction: *every* system in the Western world but one survives fine without plea bargain. Plea bargaining occurs outside the US, but is the exception, not the rule. It's an American thing, even to the bad economy of putting people in jail to save money on courts. The US has 7 times the number of people in jail than European countries.
References? You seem to be drawing a correlation between plea bargaining and the number of people in jail without providing any numbers on the extent of plea bargaining in Europe vs the US.