Worldwide Aaron Swartz Day Memorial Hackathons This Weekend

New submitter sterlingcrispin writes: There are hackathons taking place all over the world in memory of Aaron Swartz this weekend, November 8th and 9th. The goal is to "bring together the varied communities that Aaron touched to figure out how the important problems of the world connect, and to share the load of working on those problems." If you are interested in open access, privacy, free speech, transparency, citizen activism, human rights, and information ethics please attend, promote this event, and contribute to its growth.

I'm organizing the Los Angeles meet up and would love to see you there! Here are the other cities hosting one.

Comments

Ideally

[rmdingler]

Some group would make public the government's abuse of surveillance

and the public outcry would break the decibel record set at a college football game.

Dream big, right?

Re:Ideally

[SuricouRaven]

The accusation levied is that the prosecutors overdid the intimidation in their efforts to get to to accept a not-very-good plea bargain. It's a standard procedure: Inform someone that they could go to jail for decades, their life effectively owner, unemployable when they do get out, financially ruined, reputation in shreds. Throw in some scary talk about how dangerous prison is to leave them wondering how they'll survive in a place filled with violent criminals. If all goes to plan the subject will be so terrified they'll accept any plea offered. Prosecutor gets a good politically-advantageous outcome and the taxpayer is saved the cost of a drawn-out and expensive trial. There are downsides though - innocent people may be pressured into pleading guilty this way, and occasionally someone just can't take the pressure and has a breakdown, which is what happened here.