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Aaron Swartz Prosecution Team Claims Online Harassment
twoheadedboy writes "Members of the legal team responsible for prosecution of Aaron Swartz have claimed they received threatening letters and emails, and some had their social network accounts hacked, following the suicide of the Internet freedom activist. Following Swartz's death, his family and friends widely lambasted the prosecution team, who were accused of being heavy-handed in their pursuit of the 26-year-old. He was facing trial for alleged copyright infringement, accused of downloading excessive amounts of material from the academic article resource JSTOR. U.S. attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz, who headed up the prosecution, and another lead prosecutor, Stephen Heymann, have reportedly become the target of 'harassing and threatening messages,' and their personal information, including home address, personal telephone number, and the names of family members and friends, was posted online. Heymann also received a postcard with a picture of his father's head in a guillotine."
The prosecution still has the files for the prosecution under a gag order. They are asking to extend this gag order and are using the excuse that their safety could be harmed if a judge lifted it. In reality, all they are trying to do is cover up their misconduct.
I think we all know "someone paid me money to do it so it's not my fault" doesn't actually fly. As individuals we have free will and the responsibility to behave ethically. To unquestioningly execute commands is to give up our humanity.
Throughout history we have frequently rejected "I was following orders" and "I was just doing my job". These mantras do not provide absolution.
Prosecutors have discretion. They are not required to prioritize every case and put forward the largest number of possible charges.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
"prosecution recommended a six-month sentence in a minimal security prison, instead of 35 years ....if he pled guilty to a bunch of bullshit charges (wire fraud? seriously?).
If you think it's OK to get 6 months when pleading guilty to bullshit charges on the threat of 35 years for even more trumped up charges then something is very very wrong with you.
The 35 year thing is part of the appauling farce known as plea bargaining. You should read up on it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Prosecutors recommended a six-month sentence in a minimum security prison...if Swartz gave up his right to a trial. These are scumbags that deprive people of their constitutional rights on a regular basis. They would deserve to rot in prison even if Swartz hadn't committed sucicide.
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The result, of course, is that they now believe that they are entirely justified.
Bullshit, they always did believe they were justifid. Furthermore, these people have no morals -- look up "innocence project" to see how many men prosecutors knew were innocent but still prosecuted and executed.
As a former DOJ employee involved mainly with the BOP (Federal Bureau of Prisons), I witnessed a long history of overaggressiveness on the part of US Attorneys (mainly, the AUSA's- the Assitants)... my experience with the court people was often that the AUSA's were trying to make names for themselves and build up their resumes, in hopes of: 1) becoming full US Attorneys, 2) seeking phat money employment in the private sector, or 3) eventually running for some political office.
The females I interacted with were often the most aggressive and over the top- often utilizing severe bias based on their personal lives to make decisions affecting cases... female USA's with histories of being abused by men often saw no possibility of innocence in ANY male defendant, regardless of any facts. In several instances I witnessed state prosecutors refuse to indict based on lack of evidence and/or the specifics of the defendant (i.e. no criminal history, relatively minor charge at state level), only to have a federal prosecutor (an AUSA) throw federal charges at the defendant based on something loose like "the crime involved phones (i.e. modem)", so therefore it could be considered interstate blah blah and allow federal jurisdiction. The startling statistics I discovered were the following:
over 90% of individuals indicted at the federal level are convicted without trial (i.e. plead guilty)
of the remaining approx. 10% who go to trial, 90% LOSE, and are convicted
Do we really believe the federal investigators are so good they really only catch that amount of "bad guys"?
The prosecutors often have NO CLUE whatsoever of technical details of complex issues (i.e. computer related incidents, copyright/piracy, etc). They further confuse things by often presenting information that is outright wrong or confusing to judges or others involved in the process, and often play on the fact the defendants often have no clue of the true law and their rights. At the federal level at least IGNORANCE OF THE LAW IS INDEED A VALID DEFENSE. Several federal laws have been changed over the years to add the specific wording "whoever knowingly", because in some cases obscure laws were being abused to prosecute people who had no valid way of knowing that what they did was illegal (i.e. the law was not some "common sense" thing... like a law saying it is illegal to sow grass seed on Tuesday).
I have no comment on the Aaron Swartz case as I don't know all the facts and it is always a damn shame when someone chooses to resort to suicide, but based on my personal experience with "the system" from the inside, I can say that there is no doubt the prosecutor and others on "that side" did indeed play a major role in pushing this troubled young man towards a terrible fate-- and no matter what they say to the contrary, their overaggressiveness in a case involving copyrights for God's sake was truly uncalled for and ultimately serves no proper purpose for the sake of society.
Reading the article helps. He was arrested for "downloading excessive material". In other words, he had a legal JSTOR account, he wasn't accessing it illegally, he just downloaded more material than they wanted him to. Really? That's a crime now? Even the civil matter was settled with JSTOR, but prosecutors went ahead and harassed him anyway.
One day in prison means the likely end of a promising technology career, and is one day too much for someone accused of "downloading excessive material".
Just hope that one day you don't get sent to prison for going over your mobile data usage.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
online harassment?
ONLINE harassment?!
You scum-sucking douches hectored someone into killing themselves with hyperinflated charges intended to "send a message" to score political points. MESSAGE RECEIVED . You should never work in law or government again. You probably should be in jail for abuse of power.
I would have no problem if someone PHYSICALLY broke each and every one of your collective kneecaps.
He was offered a choice, and one of those choices was "take this case to trial." He wasn't "deprived of" shit, until he "deprived himself of" living.
He was offered a choice. That choice was to exercise his constitutional rights and face years in prison, or don't exercise his rights and face months in prison. If you can't exercise a right without facing punishment from the government, you don't really have a right at all.
Plea barganing is nothing more than punshment for exercising your rights. It should be abolished entirely.
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If injustice turns into justice, resistance becomes an obligation.
For your information (and in this case I don't even mind invoking Godwin), acceptance (not support, mere acceptance) of inhumane, unjust laws is what makes dictatorships possible in the first place. You think everyone in Germany between 1933 and 1945 was a die-hard Nazi, hell bent on eliminating the Jews and all other "Untermenschen"? Trust me, no. It was a rather small minority. But they made the laws. What made it possible was the great majority of people who went "it's the law, what should I do?"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Guilty of what amounts to a pretty minor infraction. The notion that a punishment should fit the crime should have been the overwhelming concern of the prosecutors, but they showed themselves to be power-mad maniacs, or at least in one case, a sociopath who couldn't have given the tiniest shit about justice and was trying to pave a way to political career with some sort of "tough on crime" record.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
When you are commit a crime you forfeit some of your constitutional rights.
Does the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" ring a bell? Until you've had a trial and been found guilty, you retain all of your rights.
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He was offered a chance to plead guilty with a punishment of 6 months.
If he forfeited his right to a trial. Why is that so hard to understand? Rights are only meaningful if you can exercise them without interference from the government.
If I tell you that if you put your hand in a wood chip you will lose your hand. That's a fact not a threat.
If you tell me that I must plead guilty to a crime or you will put my hand in a woodchipper, that is a threat. That's what happened to Swartz, and every other victim of plea bargains.
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