Slashdot Mirror
'Dangerously Naive' Aaron Swartz 'Destroyed Himself'
theodp writes "In July, MIT drew criticism after issuing a report clearing itself in the suicide of Aaron Swartz. So, one wonders what Swartz supporters will make of The Lessons of Aaron Swartz, an MIT Technology Review op-edish piece penned by MIT EE/CS prof Hal Abelson, who chaired the review panel. Calling Swartz 'dangerously naïve about the reality of exercising that power [of technology], to the extent that he destroyed himself' (others say prosecutorial overreach destroyed him), Abelson questions 'whether the people who mentored Swartz and helped him achieve such brilliance and power had a responsibility to cultivate not only his technical excellence and his passion as an advocate but also, as my grandmother would have called it, seykhel-a wonderful Yiddish word that means a combination of intelligence and common sense.'"
This Aaron Swartz affair has guaranteed that none of my kids will be attending MIT.
Will not be getting my renewal payment now.
This opinion piece by Abelson is the equivalent of the childish "why are you hitting yourself?" game.
Swartz commits what in any rational country is a minor infraction at best, local prosecutors decide it's not worth pursuing, so federal prosecutors with immunity from any liability decide to threaten him with a few decades in federal prison.
His response was actually the most logical of all. Highlight what has become a dangerous threat to liberty by becoming a martyr.
We do need some laws that would limit the threats a prosecutor can make or imply. We saw a similar problem with condominiums in Florida. The condo associations would file suits for huge sums against a condo owner. The condo owner would be forced to retain expensive legal talent to defend and then the association would drop the suit. The condo owners were made aware that they could be bankrupted by that tactic as numerous suits just might be filed against them. The legal solution was to force the completion of each suit filed by a condo association. The same could be done for criminal law. A defendant could only be tried for the highest charge stated or implied. Since the prosecution knows they only intend to prove a lesser charge it forces the prosecution to only indict for the actual crime they feel they can prove. It takes bluffing out of the game.
Maybe if they had, they would have written essays for years prior to the Declaration of Independence, slowly building public support and highlighting the injustice of the British rule. Following the official channels, they should have sent representatives to England to attempt to have their interests heard, even knowing that their requests would be denied. After the first stirrings of independence, it would probably have taken at least ten years before support was widespread enough to actually go ahead with a revolution.
Oh, right... that's exactly what happened.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
However, that doesn't change the fact that Swartz was dangerously naive, and I don't think anyone with a clue can honestly dispute that.
Of course, we're then left to question whether naitivity is a problem with the individual, or society. We're saying he was ignorant, not stupid. That he was young and lacked crucial knowledge about the world that may have enabled him to overcome this obstacle, instead of smashing him into the rocks where a lighthouse should have been present, but wasn't. I don't think someone being naive is the fault of the person; It implies you simply don't know something, and we all have been there. To imply he should have known better, or should have known better at his age, or should have known better because... well... how can you say that? With the enormity of variance in personal experience, there is undoubtedly a few things you don't know that "everyone" else does.
Which leave us with the prosecutor, who wasn't naive and knew full well what he was doing. When you threaten someone with decades in jail, massive fines, and basically ending life as they know it, there's always the possibility they will lose their composure. The biggest badasses on the street are still the ones that cry like little girls in the back of squad cars as it dawns on them how screwed they are. If you can break a man who's got "Fuck the police" hot sauced across his forehead, what do you think some wet-behind-the-ears kid in MIT is going to do when you threaten the same?
The prosecutor knew better. There is no 'if' here, it's his job. He did know. He had to have known. So that means he did it intentionally and with full view of the potential consequences... he did it with a blatant disregard for the well-being of others. He doesn't just deserve to be fired, he deserves to be in jail for being the proximate cause of another's death; He deserves a criminal record.
Of course, fortunately for him, our legal system doesn't work that way. No matter how much shit you lay out on someone, how much abuse you give them, how many times you beat them to a pulp, to the point that they're reduced to ash... as long as they're the one that pulls the trigger and not you; You are not responsible for their death.
Swartz is dead, and nothing can change that. But what we can change is the people employed by the state prosecution -- we can remove this man's name and ensure he can never harm anyone like this again, and then start talking about reforming the system and putting audits in place so that this kind of prosecutorial misconduct is dealt with swiftly and evenly. Because while Swartz took the ultimate get out of jail card, there's plenty of innocent people in jail because they opted for the more reasonable approach of pleading guilty to crimes they were innocent of, because the odds were not in their favor and the charge sheet was long and would have kept them in jail for life if they lost a bet they already had bad odds on.
If we're going to assign blame, if we're going to point fingers... then I'd say it's 95% the prosecutor, 5% the kid. Ignorance may be no excuse from the law, but it's not an excuse for the law to abuse people either.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Why did the government treat Aaron Swartz like Al Capone? Should we have a government that does that?