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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?
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Just out of curiosity, exactly what "offense" did he commit that you think is worth even a year's probabation with a suspended sentence.
He used MIT's computer system to accomplish what it was designed to do. All he did was do a lot more of it than the designers were expecting.
There mght have been a civil copyright issue here, but none of the copyright holders appeared interested in pursuing such a case.
And there definitely was a "using more than your fair share of shared resources" issue, which is not a crime (unless you're a federal prosecutor with an axe to grind).
To me, "common sense" dictates that MIT should have pulled him aside, and informed him that his massive downloads were not acceptable, and if they didn't stop, he would be officially banned from using MIT's network in the future. Once banned from the network, if he continued his activities he would *then* actually be guilty of a crime worthy of prosecution.
Don't tell me to get a life. I had one once. It sucked.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. . . .
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.
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>Just out of curiosity, exactly what "offense" did he commit [...] ?
Looking sexy while being raped. This article is nothing but a tech version of 'blame-the-victim'.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
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
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.
That generation's utter miscomprehension of the concept of responsibility causes some of them to mistakenly think that holding somebody (like Swartz) responsible for objectionable behavior is "mental torture" or "bullying".
We could try to hold the prosecutor responsible for her objectionable behaviour, but she doesn't give a shit. Decent people would feel that being responsible for a person killing themselves is like mental torture; she obviously doesn't.
I always find it amazing how Americans apply the concept of responsibility so selectively.
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".
Exaggerating the severity of the alleged crime to further her career is not her job, she is not a defence attorney she is a public prosecutor, she should be sacked.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.