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DoJ Admits Aaron Swartz's Prosecution Was Political
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from a blog post by Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, founder of corporate watchdog SumOfUs.org and partner of the late Aaron Swartz:
"The DOJ has told Congressional investigators that Aaron's prosecution was motivated by his political views on copyright. I was going to start that last paragraph with 'In a stunning turn of events,' but I realized that would be inaccurate — because it's really not that surprising. Many people speculated throughout the whole ordeal that this was a political prosecution, motivated by anything/everything from Aaron's effective campaigning against SOPA to his run-ins with the FBI over the PACER database. But Aaron actually didn't believe it was — he thought it was overreach by some local prosecutors who didn't really understand the internet and just saw him as a high-profile scalp they could claim, facilitated by a criminal justice system and computer crime laws specifically designed to give prosecutors, however incompetent or malicious, all the wrong incentives and all the power they could ever want. But this HuffPo article, and what I’m hearing from sources on the Hill, suggest that that’s not true. That Ortiz and Heymann knew exactly what they were doing: Shutting up, and hopefully locking up, an extremely effective activist whose political views, including those on copyright, threatened the Powers That Be."
I'm looking at the political manifesto being quoted, and the only bit of data was this quote:
> A Justice Department representative told congressional staffers during a recent briefing on the computer fraud prosecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz that Swartz’s “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” played a role in the prosecution, sources told The Huffington Post.
*OF COURSE IT DID*. It shows that *Swartz* was being political, and that messing with copyright apart was, *for Swartz*, a political act. That means he's going to do it again, and encourage other people to do it again, and it's a completely relevant part of criminal prosecution and sentencing. If someone doesn't believe what they did was wrong, or believe that it was a political action, it makes them more likely to do it *again*.
And make no mistake, Swartz had repeated opportunities to stop, and he was screwing with research worldwide, not just at MIT. He *deerved*( prosecution.
I just love it. You socialist morons who in such great numbers attack conservatives and support ultra liberal radicals like Obama your virtual king, what do you have to say?
Who runs the DOJ? Holder, stooge of Obama and the left, tyrants all of them.
Or am I missing something and it this all in reality the fault of the EVIL BUUUUUUSH!!!!!
You fucking drones.
Capthca: ENFORCER
Bwhaahahahahhahahahahahah
OMFG are you seriously putting this jerk who downloaded some files along with the likes of Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr.?
You idiots just continue to amaze me with the depths your ignorance. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to let you morons vote.