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'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.'"
Well, Hal, if this is what it takes to let you sleep at night despite your and your school's part in Swartz's persecution, have at it. But I doubt too many people are buying it; at this late date pretty much everyone's mind is made up anyway.
It seems that "using power responsibly" usually means subordinating oneself to the whims of politicans and bureaucrats; to defy their will using one's technical prowess is immature, irresponsible, etc. The upshot is that if you're not a politician, you should sit down, shut up, and obey. I don't accept that.
Being prosecuted for being a whistleblower, being followed, being harassed... to expect and deal with that is common sense?
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Common sense would have dictated a year of probation with a suspended sentence for such a silly offense. Surely Hal has the 'chutzpah' to admit when he's being a shnook.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Since we all know that all the progress depends on unreasonable people, what's the point of trying to make everyone grow up reasonable?
Ezekiel 23:20
Is there a yiddish word for asshole?
The most damage Aaron could have possibly done is damage the profits of a private corporation. For that, he was hounded until he decided to take his own life.
Common sense tells me that his death is a tragedy, period. The only people who should be feeling shame are the sycophants who are defending the right of the powerful to abuse the powerless. May you reap what you sow.
Dangerously naive you say? Well, in that case, it was totally fine to hound him to death for doing nothing wrong.
Aaron Swartz was an activist. He attacked what he perceived as a corrupt system in a more-or-less open manner. That type of activism, in service of a cause he fervently believed in, was and is praiseworthy even if you perceive it as misguided. But it's worth asking whether or not he went in with both eyes open.
Absolutely Aaron Swartz was mistreated by the criminal justice system. He had the full weight of the system thrown at him, and the fact of the matter is that system is harsh. But independently of how harsh the system is, it's worth noting that Aaron clearly had few ideas of the consequences. So in one sense, prosecutorial overreach destroyed him, but in another, behavior without full knowledge of the consequences led him down that same path. Aaron could have gone on to become the next Larry Lessig if he had had guidance on how to moderate his methods and work to change the powers that be from within. Instead, he's dead. Hal Abelson doesn't get this point across well, but that's ultimately what he's trying to say.
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.
co-author of "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs", a well-known introduction to the field of computer science, and incidentally, the Scheme language.
I agree with Abelson, Swartz seems like a tormented soul who was looking for a way out, but being a drama queen^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^ dramatic sort, he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. Although the cause he chose - that academic journal articles should be free as in beer, and not just available for those willing to fork over a few bucks on their credit cards, doesn't seem to be in the same class as the type of social change that, let's say, Martin Luther King Jr. or Susan B. Anthony fought for.
So I'm glad that someone associated with MIT with Abelson's stature had the guts to step forward and say what many of his colleagues are probably thinking in private. Aaron Swartz is responsible for his suicide, not the prosecutors, MIT, JSTOR, or anyone else.
This Aaron Swartz affair has guaranteed that none of my kids will be attending MIT.
Yeah, and the steroid/PED scandal has guaranteed that none of your kids will pursue a career in the major league baseball.
Naïve to think there aren't load of scumbag professors like that one.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
People like Swartz are trying to change the world, much in the way older generations of engineers like some famous person from a large corporation called Steve, who also did things at a younger age that would be very sternly punished now.
Did anyone teach the prosecutors to be reasonable as well? That would be a change. Right now prosecutors across the country wield unreasonable powers to threaten, harass and destroy people's life without check, which is unworthy of a democracy. Is there a review going on? Did anyone caught on that the USA has the highest imprisonment rate of any country? Is the USA really more violent and dangerous than Russia or Cuba? I don't think so.
You might as well expand that to every single major University in the world. They are all the same more or less from that perspective.
I think he was reflecting on Aaron's not getting the full benefit of his Jewish heritage.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I've been trying to make sense of this whole affair, and the above metaphor helps.
Miners used canaries to monitor oxygen and harmful gas levels because canaries are more vulnerable than miners, and while a dead canary is a clear warning, a happy, chirping canary is a true comfort.
If we give the canary some free will, mixed with smarts and some innocence, we get a bird who wanted to look at the miners, who was willing to accept some degree of risk associated with flying in a mine, but who instead unexpectedly encountered poison gas.
No, the metaphor doesn't teach any lessons directly, but it does let all the participants have roles in the story, to think about them in isolation and in combinations.
When you end up with a dead canary, it is important things to discover *all* the whys.
But it may be more important to ponder the silence. To think about the fate of future canaries.
The biggest tragedy about the actions leading to Aaron Swartz's death is that he's become a martyr for a ridiculous cause. Swartz once worked with a friend of mine, and from what I've been told, "naive" isn't too far outside his personality. I'm told he was an idealist, with little regard for consequences, and often a blind faith that things would work out with good triumphing over evil. Unfortunately, he was stuck living in the real world.
While I agree on the principles of his actions, that science should be freely available, the actions he took to accomplish his goals were asinine. Wantonly breaking the rules of the institution you're trying to change will not actually bring about change; it just makes your opponents mad. When your opponents have vastly superior power, that's a pretty bad idea.
What makes civil disobedience an effective form of protest is that the laws broken are trivial, but the trials must be public, so the whole affair is a PR campaign. Few remember that Rosa Parks' disobedience was not the first of its kind, but rather just the best candidate to go through a full (and widely-publicized) trial. By Parks becoming a celebrity over an injustice, the whole civil rights movement gained popularity.
What I see now is a disturbing trend of irresponsible lawbreaking, under the banner of "protesting". Websites are hacked, contracts are ignored, and people with small problems feel entitled to disrupt all normal business until somebody takes care of them. Somewhere, people have forgotten that change comes slowly.
Bradley Manning could have released his information in small quantities to human rights advocates. Edward Snowden could have sent information anonymously to the EFF. There are responsible channels for changing the world, but they are slow and often frustrating. Swartz had already founded Demand Progress to fight various forms of online censorship; adding scientific lockdown to that campaign would not have taken much effort, and would be much more likely to succeed than going after JSTOR directly.
Can we as a society please stop this madness? Let's stop glorifying leaks, stop vilifying our opponents, and stop encouraging concerned citizens to become martyred heroes. Instead, let's promote patience, compromise, and a steady societal change, rather than an overnight revolution.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Generation Y (that is, the reddit crowd) sure does have a rather weird sense of "responsibility", in general.
Why should anyone aside from Mr. Swartz feel responsible for something harmful that Mr. Swartz did to himself, by himself, completely voluntarily? They shouldn't, of course.
So many members of Generation Y completely pervert the concept of responsibility in all respects. Not only is Mr. Swartz incorrectly absolved of his responsibility in this ordeal, but others with no responsibility at all are somehow considered to be "responsible".
Here we have nearly an entire generation completely misunderstanding a very basic concept like responsibility. It's quite unusual, quite absurd, and to some extent quite scary.
If mental torture didn't work, nobody would try it.
If bullying didn't work, nobody would try it.
But you're a shit, so what the hell am I doing? You're not listening.
I think the real lesson to be learned here is how dangerous the legal system really is. I do say legal system because it's not a justice system as there was no justice served here.
It's abhorrent how people can simply claim they had nothing to do with it when their actions or lack there of are the most critical aspect in this case.
May the gravity of their [in]actions weigh upon those participating or complicit in this farce. This is not a penalty or punishment, this is your wage.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Messengers delivering bad news should know that the recipients will be mad, and it's naive to assume that all recipients will be civil. Their trainers should have warned them to watch out for any signs of aggression, and to deliver their message with carefully-planned tact so as to minimize risk.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
When any organised religion exercises its power (throughout Human History) to destroy an individual, afterwards they ALWAYS make a report or announcement in exactly this form of language, decrying that the 'dangerous' individual destroyed himself (vanished few examples of females considered significant enough to be given this treatment) with 'naive' behaviour patterns. They always say that the 'Church' did not want to hurt the individual, but were left with no choice.
So MIT acts and responds like a depraved religious entity. We should not be surprised. The governance of MIT has NOTHING to do with science or engineering- just power and corruption. The vast sums of money that flow from TAXING every student at entry for 'access' to papers that do not benefit the authors, ensures that managers at places like MIT will do anything it takes to protect the yearly kick-backs that enrich their bank accounts.
This is the 'American Way'. Remember that in the USA it is EXPECTED that politicians who begin their careers as virtual paupers will end it worth hundreds of millions of dollars via the "politicians are exempt from corruption and insider trading laws" mechanism that your masters put into place when the USA gained 'independence'.
At least you can be grateful that the monsters work hard to rub your face in the truth, so even if you are naive enough to attempt to be an apologist for MIT, that line of self-delusion cannot be sustained.
with a length of rope.
It's dangerous and futile to assign blame in a suicide to anyone other than a victim. Swartz's death is not MIT's fault.
That doesn't mean that mean that MIT is off the hook for killing a plea bargain deal that JSTOR was happy with. That was wrong, but it would have been wrong even had Swartz not taken his life.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That would sure be a lot nicer than having to admit to yourself that your harsh actions led directly to the death of someone who was still basically a child in your care, wouldn't it? Well, he's still dead, you're still an asshole and thousands of idealistic young kids like him still apply to your school every year, so I guess it all worked out for just about everyone, didn't it? Perhaps as part of the new student orientation you should give the Fight Club "God Hates You" speech to all the new students. Then at least they'll know what they're in for.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I think that is blatantly apparent, but thanks for having the nerve to point it out.
Hardly. MIT operates a national laboratory (Lincoln Lab) and is essentially an off-shoot of the federal government. Yes, all schools take funding. Schools like Caltech, MIT, and others which operate national labs are extreme examples of federal entanglement.
Rather than allow this to blow over, you decided to write a self serving piece to somehow make your report look unbiased.
Someone is dead, your institution was involved in the series of events that lead to it no matter what you try to otherwise claim.
You seem dangerously naive about what a knee jerk reaction from a university can cause to happen, completely moronic about attempting damage control, and have managed to bring the ire for your employer back to the forefront.
Maybe you really should have listened to your Grandmother and taken her words to heart yourself.
Sometimes it is better to remain silent and appear a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Oh, the message? Copyright is dead.
Shucks, really? I never knew, copyright is dead?!
Well, bye-bye GPL then. No copyright, no GPL. I suppose this means the MIT (sic!) license side won, since that's the closest thing to having no copyright at all.
> What's Yiddish for "Always throwing your Jewish heritage into every fucking conversation"?
There isn't an English word for this concept because the Xians spent the last 2000 years trying to keep everyone illiterate and ignorant rather than making you pass a literacy test before you could breed.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Part of using "civil disobedience" as a form of protest is paying the price. In fact, that's pretty much what makes it effective as a form of protest: it's a vital part of constructing the image you want to convey. Swartz did the deed without being prepared to pay the price. In that sense, he did indeed bring it upon himself.
Aaron Swartz did a lot of things, most of them good, some of them not so much. But the man was a fallen zealot, not a saint. It does nobody any good to put him on a pedestal.
It's not a Generation Y thing, it's a philosophical question. You're basically arguing that a defendant is wholly responsible for the consequences of his action regardless of the weight of those consequences and the arbitrary nature in which they seem to be applied. Some argue that society has some responsibility to enforce laws evenly, clearly and with consequences weighted appropriately to the harm against society done.
Do you really not get the irony of mentioning the civil rights movement while speaking about "patience, compromise, and steady change?" Do you know why there was this relatively sudden burst of demonstrations, protests, marches, and so on and so forth? Because for the past fifty years since the Atlanta compromise, gradualism was mainly used by the government as an excuse to do nothing about existing issues with no real plans on the agenda for integration. From 1895 until the 1950s, "patience, compromise, and steady change" did jack shit and only served to retard progress. That's why there even was a civil rights movement. People didn't feel like spending generations as second class citizens, waiting patiently for their great-grandkids to have a future they won't be around for and can't say for certain will even come around. There is no way to have slow, steady change on an order less than many generations, because thoughts and cultural memes get entrenched and passed from parent to child, and the only thing that'll force them out is conflict.
What you're talking about are all symptoms of a dysfunctional society and a refusal of the new social strata, and your examples are riddled with holes and victim blaming, especially because Bradley Manning couldn't've released his information piecemeal because between the volume of data and the constant threat of feds busting down your door, and regardless of what the law says there's nothing right about fifty years in jail for a few minutes in a closet unless you're taking someone's life, and then constant legal issues to the point where you kill yourself just to escape. While you're saying to stop vilifying opponents who well earned their reputations and stop glorifying leaks, what's really being said, be it your intent or not, is to just shut up, bend over, and hope it'll be over quicker this time. Change doesn't come from people lining up and merely wishing things were different, and attitudes like those don't make it happen at all. Stop blaming the victims and look who's really making people into martyrs.
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.
Don't know if it really can be legitimately called a legal system when it clearly does not work--- tomatoes are vegetables, corporations are people, HSBC launders billions in drug money... banks commit outright fraud that crashes economies around the planet... minorities get higher sentences... innocent people go broke or plea to things they are not guilty to.... people spend YEARS in court and jail without a swift trial, and my favorite one: the prisons can't even the keep illegal drugs out!
Seriously, if you can't keep drugs out of a PRISON you are a joke.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
"And we only want people to have just enough so that we can sell you more of it."
Aaron was, by every measure, an extraordinarily brilliant individual and we collectively suffered a great loss earlier this year. He was a champion of the kind of freedom that the forefathers of any free country would have themselves admired. Were it not for him, we might have been seeing people with ten-year prison sentences for downloading movies by today.
MIT feared him because because of this brilliance and brazenness. They knew he was on the fast track to upsetting the establishment. Then they continued acting like cowards and looked the other way while the full force of the US Government sought to destroy his life for the "horrible crime" of publicizing publicly-funded research (with an added dose of vindictiveness for doing the same with PACER ... also publicly-funded knowledge).
Aaron, like many of us, was frustrated and angered at how the establishment deliberately moves at a snail's pace and seeks to hold knowledge at ransom. Knowledge that gives the people power. They fear people with this power. This, apparently, includes MIT and they should be ashamed of themselves. After all, an intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome.
And, if you want to honestly talk about the dangers of exercising the power technology gives you, there's a three-letter government agency I'd like to bring to your attention who's been dangerously and recklessly abusing the power of technology in all sorts of ways. Maybe you've heard of them, they've been in the news a lot lately.
Copyright is causing death. There, fixed that for you.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
MIT professor says messengers shouldn't be so naive. They should know that recipients have the right to strike off their heads for delivering bad news. Their trainers should have told them that.
Nobody killed him. He committed suicide.
Oh, the message? Copyright is dead. And what is MIT doing about that fact? Getting chummy with the likes of the RIAA and Elsevier? The RIAA is a confused and vicious organization that is in deep denial about copyright.
Copyright is simultaneously dead, and at the same time so alive that it is able to 'force' Aaron Swartz to kill himself, because it turns out that nobody told the courts or the police or the lawyers that copyright had been eliminated by his decision that he didn't like it.
You can't declare copyright dead - either legally or in practice - by committing mass copyright infringement and not actually getting away with it. In that sense his message was self-evidently a failure.
And that's putting it gently.
What I see now is a disturbing trend of irresponsible lawbreaking, under the banner of "protesting".
Copyright infringement was only recently criminalized. Now its like the war on drugs only with 10X the potential for persecution.
Bradley Manning could have released his information in small quantities to human rights advocates.
Small is a relative term, especially in view of the gargantuan apetite government and large corporations developed for our personal information. And anyway, Manning approached papers like the New York times but they weren't interested in handling the info until there was a whipping boy (Wikileaks) between them and the federal government.
The events surrounding the death of Aaron Swartz have irreversibly tainted MIT in my eyes. Every time I see some colleagues' affiliation to include MIT, I can't help but take a dim view of them.
This type of post event manipulation of public opinion is a hallmark of good propaganda. You start with getting them dirty with exaggerated claims that disassociate the person from the people who might sympathize, then smear them until they are forgotten.
It looks very much like the actions of a wolf pack leader that sees a threat to their position. First cut the offending subordinate out of the pack. Then proceed to punish them until they submit or die. Then strut and publicize dominance.
A more recent example comes to mind and I can't ever know the real facts if everybody is just cherry picking to promote their own interests. I model the process and wonder why every event follows the same script?
Shots fired at the Capitol, Woman shot policeman, Woman shot at police, Woman is shot, Woman has baby with, Woman didn't shoot at police, Woman was crazy, Woman believed that government was spying on her "which is absurd" so don't think that way. Baby is safe in the arms of the people who killed their mother. NSA records of the spying on her reveal many incidents of paranoia about being spied on. Obviously deranged. Praise to the soldiers in full battle gear with machine guns that faced such a dangerous situation with such courage.
To me it looks like a directed graph that is designed to start at various points and ends where it is driven.
There is quite a difference between a nation joined in willing common pursuit and a nation where fear of consequence and psychological manipulation is the driving force. These kinds of situations never end well for anybody.
Generation Y (that is, the reddit crowd) sure does have a rather weird sense of "responsibility", in general.
Responding as a member of Generation X to your rather obvious troll, I will say that what I see in Generation Y a hope for the future that we failed at. Are you really so far gone that you have lost all sense of justice, of morality, of just basic decency and fair play? Do you really believe the vitriolic slime that was Thatcherite doctrine that every man is an island, alone?
The best thing anyone of my age can do is give all the help they can to the generations beneath us - we failed to wrest power away from the hippes that turned into yuppies, but if we pass on our knowledge and experience, but not our jaded cynicism then there might yet still be hope. Personally I think the average Generation Y's morality is a lot less warped than Abelson's will ever be.
My brief experiences on the wrong side of the law, way back when I was a youngster, lead me to firmly believe that Prosecutors are way more interested in scoring wins, making examples of people and furthering their careers than in truth and justice. To that end, they always strive to apply as many charges as they can think of and pursue the most harsh punishments available to help ensure they have the maximum leverage and/or win at least something regardless of the facts and circumstances and/or consequences (sound familiar House Republicans?). It's very easy for the accused, especially if young and naive, to be overwhelmed by this process, even with a good, reassuring defense attorney. If I faced the behavior of the Prosecutors in this case, I might also see the ultimate path Aaron chose as the only way out...
From Wikipedia:
On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested by MIT police on state breaking-and-entering charges, after systematically downloading academic journal articles from JSTOR. Federal prosecutors later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and 11 violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution and supervised release.
Meaning, he bypassed a website pay/firewall and downloaded some (okay, many) articles. Is that something warranting 35 years in prison? I think not. We could easily enumerate many, many worse crimes - against actual people - that get less severe punishments. It's seems there's a disconnect in this country between "protecting the innocent" - especially people vs. corporations - and the actual crime and damages. I won't say "punishing the guilty" because Prosecutors don't actually care what someone is guilty of - as long as they win.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Has it really just dawned on anyone, that it was Aaron's own lack to deal with reality of the situation that did him in? It really seems that these whistle blowers lately assume that if they feel like they are doing the right thing, there won't be any consaquences for their actions. Both Manning, Assenage, and Snowden leaked top secert material, and all of a sudden they were shocked when the force of the US government decided they didnt like that and came down on them all with the power of many suns. They all either fled, or in Manning's case had such a break down that he turned into a woman. I hate to break it all to you kids sitting in your basement, but in the real world even if you think you're doing the right thing, there will be consequences that you will have to answer for. This MIT thing is just a bunch of out of touch professors trying to make themselves feel better for trying to save their own skin because look at that they understood there would be repercussions, so I dont even know why anyone would give this the light of day. But if you want to change the world, you have to deal with what might come of it. Aaron couldn't, and he opted out.
That's how much you should trust MIT. What else is there to say?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I wonder what Professor Abelson's views are on the reality of exercising the powers of criminal prosecution, and the responsibilities of prosecutors to exhibit seykhel.
Doing something I disagree with.
We do need some laws that would limit the threats a prosecutor can make or imply.
We had one. The Constitution. It didn't work.
Fuck off. I'm not dying my skin blue.
'dangerously naïve about the reality of exercising that power [of technology], to the extent that he destroyed himself'
They are trying to set their conscience at ease by Blaming the victim.
Schwartz did not destroy himself. They destroyed him.
MIT was complicit in everything that happened to him.
Schwartz did nothing wrong.
There is a scene in Shindler's list were jewish prison laborers are constructing the baracks of a concentration camp. One of them, a young woman, goes to some nazi overseers and tells them the constructions are being done wrong, she is apparently an engineer.
She is shot for daring to talk to them.
Who do YOU blame for the outcome of that scene? The woman or the nazi? You might think that if she had kept quiet she would have been fine... but that just shows you have a lousy grasp of history. But if someone had pulled her back, she would not have died that day. And that is the message being send by this article. Don't make waves because the powers that be might kill you.
It is after all common sense to let sleeping dogs lie. I used to think of that saying as "let that otherwise friendly dog sleep" not "let the guard dog keeping you in the prison compound sleep". Possibly because that last one hardly rolls of the tongue.
Was Swartz naive in assuming there would be no consequence to disrupting the status quo? To easily panicked when he threw the snow ball and he got caught in the avalanche? Maybe but is the lesson to learn from this to never question the status quo? That would be terrible, for us all to turn into sheep because we might get slaughtered if we don't behave like sleep.
Yes Swartz was naive. Yes those around him should have been more supportive of him but the fault for his death lies solely and alone with those who prosecuted him.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Spanish may be the best language for swearing, but Yiddish is the greatest language for insulting people. I'm sure it has many words that would be appropriate here.
From what I have been able to research on the guy, he had lots of friends, was not isolating himself and was very active in what he believed to be correct human behaviour with regards to compassion and what that means in the pursuit of knowledge.
He was also worth millions.
He had no reason, whatsoever to take his own life, in fact from what I have seen had every reason to be quite happy.
He had some problems, but to the extent that would warrant his personality profile to kill himself. Also the manner of such "suicide" doesn't fit the personality profile of someone who is clinically depressed.
-Hackus
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
To work around that, the prosecutor would simply break the charges down to multiple suits. Even though the Fifth Amendment prohibits a single offense to be tried twice, the same act typically involves multiple offenses and multiple counts and can be tried separately.
It simply has to become more common knowledge that prosecutors can use any intimidation tactic, including pressing charges that are way out of the ballpark, but it is the final court ruling that holds. It also must become common knowledge that appealing is the legal remedy to fight unfavorable court rulings. As an extension of Miranda Rights, there should be law restricting the interaction between the defendant and the prosecutor. In addition to the right to remain silent, the defendant has the right to dismiss any contact with the prosecutor, maybe even going as far as allowing the defendant to file restraining order for himself and on behalf of his family and friends to be free from harassment from the prosecution. The right would openly state that cooperating with the prosecutor will not result in leniency.
I once had a signature.
What about the prosecutor that threatened Mr. Swartz with 30 years in jail for actions that most civilized people think should have been dealt with by the University administration, or maybe by the civil courts. Was it responsible to threaten a person with 30 years in jail for disregarding an EULA?
Mr. Swartz's case highlighted the odious and unjust practice of threatening people with completely out of proportion punishments to induce them to plea bargain. And as far as I can tell this is done to gain political points in the next stage of the prosecutors's career, not to improve justice.
Anarchists never rule
So, uh, you believe in instituting a Literacy Test to everybody before they are allowed to breed? Maybe even an IQ test?
This is a new twist on the ideology you generally champion here on Slashdot. Maybe you can elaborate further for us.
People literally keep killing themselves to stop the USA. Who is naive here again?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Society can be responsible for Pushing a person in to a corner where they have limited options and that is what happened here. Possibly spend the rest of your life in prison or take the easy way out. Should he have fought it sure. Was he in a mental state that would allow him to function well enough to mount a defense and fight the charges while being badgered by people in positions of authority, well not really hence the suicide. Depression is a strange mistress and when being forced into serving what would amount to a life sentence in prison for a trivial infraction what would you chose? The Prosecution is at fault, they were the bully and should be treated as such.
and many people still think it's a shame that copyright doesn't work and fantasize that they could someday produce something that can be "protected" by copyright,
Everything that everybody produces IS copyrighted. By default. Even your comment above this. Inherently, because you typed it in, it's copyrighted. Now, don't let your head explode.
FUCK YOU. ASSHOLE.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Federal prosecutors knowingly threatened a physically small guy with no criminal record with decades of prison rape for what could be described at worst a non-violent, victimless crime.
I am puzzled. MIT is acting like most corporations: when in trouble, bury your opposition in paper. Has anyone resigned, or been fired? That's how you know a large entity wants to make sure higher-ups understand what's expected of them*; anything less is just window dressing.
BTW, it would be simply courtesy to give family members a chance to look at such a report before it goes public, which is what I presume that MIT did here. I at least would give both MIT and John Schwartz that much respect.
*Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres.
The prosecutor aims for a high degree of punishment because they hope for a plea bargain, with every intention of keeping the maximum sentence recommendation intact in the event that the case actually goes to trial. It is a way to undercut the constitutional guarantee of trial by jury by raising the stakes so high that a jury trial becomes an untenable gamble.
Thus the Ortiz-Heymann tactics in this case should be seen as what they were, an untenable subversion of basic constitutional rights, by persecutors with a goal of putting notches in their belt, hoping to gain political points with an ignorant public afraid of any and all "crime".
> Committing suicide to avoid this process, for example, is not a responsible thing to do.
What is your opinion of armed rebellion against an unjust government? Because the particular case of Swartz's suicide strikes me as a strange kind of passive-aggressive version of armed rebellion.
On a related note, I just finished using my $14.90 "quarterly free" allocation on PACER to upload documents to RECAP. Some history about RECAP can be found here. I encourage everyone who admired Swartz to open a PACER account and continue the work of populating RECAP.
Actions and their consequences should be clearly defined and predicable. To ask whether his mentors gifted him with an education in common sense, is to to imply that common sense would predict the the vindictiveness with which he was treated.
I think people would argue that no one with common or any other kind of sense could have predicted the response he got.
His death is not his fault and not the prosecutors fault. It is the fault of our society in not clearly delineating the consequences to be expected for actions and giving prosecutors more and more laws to pile on the charges until death seems the best alternative.
... somebody doing HER JOB. The guy was a CRIMINAL, he wasn't a saint healing children.
He broke the law and the prosecution was seeking the maximum penalty for the crime. That was HER JOB. That is what she was supposed to do.
Just because you sympathize with the criminal does not change the fact that he broke the law.
There are consequences for your actions. Being threatened with the maximum penalty for the crime is one of them.
There are caps to damages that can be sought in civil cases. Caps to the monies awarded. I think we need to look into prosecution caps: Rules that make it impossible to pile on charges in cases where no human was threatened or harmed and no property permanently damaged or destroyed.
Whether or not Swartz was naive, or not, or his suicide was justified, or not, all of us who respected what he stood for can continue his work on such a low flame that none of us runs any significant risk.
For example, I just finished using my $14.90 "quarterly free" allocation on PACER to upload documents to RECAP. Some history about RECAP can be found here. I encourage everyone who admired Swartz to open a PACER account and continue the work of populating RECAP.
Stuff I wrote five years ago about Princeton, but applies to MIT as well: http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html ... We are witnessing a historic end to scarcity of many things (maybe not all, but enough to be a new global Renaissance). But is Princeton University helping prepare either students or the rest of society for these changes? Or is it instead an institution under stress, crashing into these trends instead of moving with them? Or is it perhaps conflicted in how it sees itself and its future, and so trying to do both these conflicting approaches at once? :-) "
"Post-Scarcity Princeton, or, Reading between the lines of PAW for prospective Princeton students, or, the Health Risks of Heart Disease
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
...a person persecuted such that they suicide doesn't choose retaliatory homicide instead. If you are checking out anyway that removes the consquences for taking out the enemy.
If you die, they win. If they die, you win.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Feeling a sense of connection and responsibility for your fellow humans is a very good thing, and those who don't feel it are called psychopaths for a reason.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Can someone tell me why it's newsworthy that MIT clowns exonerate themselves & blame their victim?
Other than to demonstrate how low some people can go.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
What a horrible example of how not to behave as a decent human being.
Agreed. Abelson should be ashamed of himself.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Because last I checked, this thread is about MIT and aaron. Not canaries.
Manning tried to hand his info to the NY times and the washington post. Botg ignored him. But of course, to a brainwashed sycophant like yourself, federal prosecutors threatening someone with life in prison for a civil suit the prosecution originally dropped is less offensive than a culture where power is routinely threatened by leaks. Poor fucking baby. Cold fjord, is that you?!
A. Hey, this guy's really smart! B. Therefore, any character judgent he has ever mafe about anyone in his industry is correct
C. ???
D. Profit
Have you ever driven over the speed limit? What would you do if you were stopped for speeding, but instead of being given a speeding ticket you were put on the evening news and a prosecutor told you he was going to destroy your life because what you were doing was endangering children.
I sure as hell wouldm't kill myself.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
How do you know who made it? Did you forget to log into one of your sock puppets before posting? You fucked up. You disinfo trolls are terrible at this--so many fake avatars and you can't manufacture a false consensus to save your lives.
It appears the argument was that he believed the threats aimed at people around him and so killed himself to stop those threats from being carried out. For some reason that's supposed to be his fault and not the fault of those issuing the threats, who we are supposed to all assume by default are liars exceeding their authority?
Here's a suggestion - jail those who lied about their authority for impersonating people who do have that authority and manslaughter as well.
Snowden ran. Manning was successful at concealing his identity until someone he trusted sold him out. Assenage used to be described as paranoid before he took up residency in an embassy toilet. With all three of your examples they were definitely worried about some sort of consequence instead of suddenly shocked as you suggest.
People repeatedly vote for the Repubmocrat party, people invest in Nigerian schemes, people believe the cops will help them, people believe governments "take care of their interests", people believe their ticket will win the lottery, people believe science produces solid facts, people believe doctors will help them live longer, people believe a pill will make them healthy and attractive, people believe their team will win if they wear their underwear another day, people believe there are careers in IT, people believe their partners marriage vows, people believe what they see on television and in the papers, and on and on and on...
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Pardon me? You, your parents and your grandparents have not fought for anyone's freedom.
If you're Generation X, then you were born in America between 1965 and 1980.
a bit late to the party on this thread but i need to say this, my siblings and i span 1967 to 1988 in birthdates, our grandfathers certainly did their thing in ww2, one was a fireman in coventry and one was a boffin, their contemporaries were certainly dying overseas in one of the few wars where despite certain questionable actions by the allies the general cause was clearly right.
Help me understand why Wikipedia hasn't added this to their listing of manifestos.
"A manifesto is a published verbal declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifesto
"Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for
themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries
in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of
private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the
sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.
There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought
valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure
their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But
even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future.
Everything up until now will have been lost.
That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their
colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them?
Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to
children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable.
"I agree," many say, "but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they
make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it's perfectly legal â"
there's nothing we can do to stop them." But there is something we can, something that's
already being done: we can fight back.
Those with access to these resources â" students, librarians, scientists â" you have been
given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world
is locked out. But you need not â" indeed, morally, you cannot â" keep this privilege for
yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords
with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.
Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been
sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by
the publishers and sharing them with your friends.
But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or
piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a
ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral â" it's a moral imperative. Only
those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.
Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate
require it â" their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they
have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who
can make copies.
There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the
grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public
culture.
We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with
the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need
to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific
journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open
Access.
With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the
privatization of knowledge â" we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?
Aaron Swartz
July 2008, Eremo, Italy
"
https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt
15TW = 15,000 Nuclear Reactors. (Approx. one accident a month.)
6 months.... and a felony conviction. From the point of view of "special deterrence", the felony conviction was the major point. You can't do much reforming as a felon; surviving takes all your effort.
Orin Kerr's major point seems to be that they screw people over this way all the time and we're fine with it, we only complain when it's a rich white nerd, so he got his just desserts. Of course, the fact is that no, we're NOT all fine with it. And even if we were, one injustice wouldn't justify another.
where 960 Jews, under a hopeless siege, committed suicide rather than submit to Roman overlords.
The rest of the "I did nothing wrong" trope is -- "And if I did, it was all the victim's fault." Just ask Prof Hal Abelson, who proves that while he knows the words needed for responsibility, intelligence, and common sense (even in Yiddish), he has zero comprehension of their meaning. Just like doctors investigating doctors and cops investigating cops and lawyers investigating lawyers, one should not be surprised when a university sets up a panel to investigate itself, that the investigation turns up nothing in the way of wrong-doing, and it will use that "nothing" to explain away its culpability. Legally speaking, he is probably correct. It was an ambitious, out-of-control DoJ p.o.s. who deliberately drove Aaron Swartz to his death. But MIT did nothing to even try and stop it and may even have exacerbated the situation by just plain standing by as this case unfolded in its Kafka-esque way. So morally speaking, their hands are just as red with his blood. What's the Yiddish word for that, Professor Abelson?
Description
Blueprint for information revolution.
Creative Commons license: Public Domain Mark 1.0
Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for
themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries
in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of
private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the
sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.
There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought
valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure
their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But
even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future.
Everything up until now will have been lost.
That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their
colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them?
Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to
children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable.
"I agree," many say, "but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they
make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it's perfectly legal â"
there's nothing we can do to stop them." But there is something we can, something that's
already being done: we can fight back.
Those with access to these resources â" students, librarians, scientists â" you have been
given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world
is locked out. But you need not â" indeed, morally, you cannot â" keep this privilege for
yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords
with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.
Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been
sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by
the publishers and sharing them with your friends.
But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or
piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a
ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral â" it's a moral imperative. Only
those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.
Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate
require it â" their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they
have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who
can make copies.
There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the
grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public
culture.
We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with
the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need
to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific
journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open
Access.
With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the
privatization of knowledge â" we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?
Aaron Swartz
July 2008, Eremo, Italy
https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt
Why isn't this on wikipedia's list of manifestos?
15TW = 15,000 Nuclear Reactors. (Approx. one accident a month.)
Apparent or not, it counters the AC's original point. AC was suggesting that bringing up Jewish heritage was just semi-solipsism (or not-so-semi narcissism) on the part of the author of the article. And I was countering that it was actually a relevant perspective because Aaron, the subject of the article, shared in that heritage.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I am ignorant of the case and its implications, but this is what I gleaned from a quick read at the links. 1. Swartz hacked into a system and stole its contents using the MIT network. 2. Boston legal found Swartz and prosecuted. 3. Swartz kills himself under the pressure. 4. MIT said that its hands were clean. Where is this talk of Democracy, NSA, and freedom coming from in this thread? I see property stolen. Unless Jstor is taking public domain and hiding it behind a paywall, where does anyone begin to think that work is theirs and not the originators/owners? Unless MIT gave consent for Swartz to use their network in this endeavor they had nothing to do with this theft beyond the ethical teachings on their campus. Again, I don't know the depths of this case or issue so maybe I am missing the obvious, but from a quick read this is not at all that amazing.
uhm, the Prosecutors have pushed for and received broad, sweeping laws from Congress and the States that allow them to "crack down on crime." The problem is as the net has gotten bigger, there are cases everywhere where small fish get caught up and suffer tortuous charges for very petty things. That's how our Liberals and Conservatives in the country can sleep better at knight knowing that their jack-booted law enforcement is on the case. I had to hire an attorney a few years ago for my son because he decked a kid in school who'd taken a swing at him. He was facing a misdemeanor assault charge with up to a $4000 Fine and 6 months in jail. This was at 14 and happened because the schools are now treating petty incidents as crimes and it's happening all over the country because of the war on drugs and zero-tolerance policies. It's a direct result to make our schools "safe." https://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/arrested-futures-criminalization-school-discipline-massachusetts-three-largest-school
It doesn't make them safe and schools all over the country now resemble prisons in terms of their policies and on-site police to enforce bullshit. It's a great lesson to teach our youth. How about breaking your arm for leaving crumbs on the ground? Doodling on your desk? Flying a paper airplane?
Yet, you want more laws to reign in prosecutors? We have enough laws and enough police all wearing their swat gear and bullet proof vests all supplied with funds from the DHS. While we were sleeping, this nation became a Police State and from your rights on the street to the prosecutors the deck is stacked against you and while we fault the Prosecutors here, which they should be, we also have to remember that if there wasn't a set of laws on the book that they could charge him with there wouldn't be a problem. The CFAA is overly broad and needs to be changed, narrowed or eliminated but the risk here is that we could get worse legislation by that band of Retards on Capitol Hill. http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/hackers_hell_many_want_to_narrow_the_computer_fraud_and_abuse_act/
Swartz is one case, he at least had visibility. Think of all those souls in Prison who had a public defender and a plea deal lessening the charges or the duration of the sentence possibly faced. That's the game, build a case so big that if you go to trial the Prosecution by leveraging these vague laws will try to throw the book at you and put you away forever. That's why Aaron took the route he did, a big case, felony charges, years and years in prison and the Prosecution had the tools to do it. He should have put his faith in a Jury and the Legal Process and fought, instead he died and everybody is still debating it but not really doing anything about it. Why? Because we've become accustomed to all these new broad laws and powers we put in the hands of our government. That's so we're taking an active part in stopping crime. Crime is bad, so let's give the police and the prosecutors the tools they need to fight crime. The problem is broad-scoped laws can be used against you even though you send one too many e-mails or encourage to your members to do so.
It's time that the American public took back it's government and removed the Democrats and Republicans or at least took the approach of voting out all the incumbents. That's your last bastion of hope here folks because if you don't you'll get the same bunch of retards being re-elected over and over again and since they don't fear the voter, they'
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
we failed to wrest power away from the hippes that turned into yuppies
Wow, when did this happen? I was there and I never saw hippies with any power, who knew?