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White House Responds To Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz's Prosecutor
First time accepted submitter devloop writes Petitioners requesting the White House remove D.A. Carmen Ortiz from office for gross prosecutorial overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz, received today what amounts to a denial from WhiteHouse.gov. "Aaron Swartz's death was a tragic, unthinkable loss for his family and friends. Our sympathy continues to go out to those who were closest to him, and to the many others whose lives he touched. We also reaffirm our belief that a spirit of openness is what makes the Internet such a powerful engine for economic growth, technological innovation, and new ideas. That's why members of the Administration continue to engage with advocates to ensure the Internet remains a free and open platform as technology continues to disrupt industries and connect our communities in ways we can't yet imagine. We will continue this engagement as we tackle new questions on key issues such as citizen participation in democracy, open access to information, privacy, intellectual property, free speech, and security. As to the specific personnel-related requests raised in your petitions, our response must be limited. Consistent with the terms we laid out when we began We the People, we will not address agency personnel matters in a petition response, because we do not believe this is the appropriate forum in which to do so."
How many times has this administration embraced a petition and moved forward with it?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
This is probably the best response possible to an "I demand you fire that person who has made me angry" rant. The petition could have asked for some reform to the prosecutorial discretion system which allowed her to hound Aaron in the first place, or maybe to the ridiculous wire fraud law that she used, but demanding the head of someone who annoys you is, one: ineffective scapegoaterry, and two: asinine entitlement.
...for Whitehouse.gov as a platform to spur/enact popular initiatives?
0 for 15,000?
Do I believe that 5000 internet dorks signing a petition should compel action from the government? Not at all.
Do I believe that having such a forum should be useful to a government to see what things are 'catching the public's attention'? Sure.
Do I believe that Whitehouse.gov petition site was *mainly* meant as an anodyne to Obama supporters to make them *feel* connected when in effect it is actually meaningless? Absolutely. I believe the actual record of initiatives that came from this proves my point over what, 7 years?
-Styopa
This is one reason why some of us want to stop giving the government more power. Because they can never be held accountable when they misuse that power and hurt people. No one in power is ever guilty of anything. Care and recklessness are rewarded equally.
It's easy to say you're for "openness" (and whatever other buzzwords) when you never have to actually live up to any sort of standards. Why should anyone listen or believe or trust? Apparently, we shouldn't.
..we do not believe this is the appropriate forum in which to do so.
Presumably if the White House believed that such a forum existed, it would have mentioned it. So, essentially, the White House is saying that no forum exists to "address agency personnel matters". But one of the main things the president is supposed to do is insure that good people are executing the laws and policies of the USA.
Sometimes I wonder if Obama wakes up in the morning, looks himself in the mirror, and says "How can I undermine the American public's faith in democracy?" People were angry with all the nonsense that was going on in the Bush presidency and they elected Obama with the hope that he would change it. But he hasn't. It's like he's trying his best to prove that democracy doesn't work.
Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan are widely regarded as some of the very worst presidents in the history of the USA. They were all about civility and comprise and the rule of law - pretty much just like Obama. But then Lincoln came along did what he had to do to get rid of slavery - civil war, suspension of habeas corpus, etc. And he's remembered as one of the best presidents in the history of the United States.
Obama hides behind bureaucracy in order to excuse his moral cowardice. Fine, he's gotta be who he is. But he shouldn't be surprised when he goes down in history with the likes of Pierce and Buchanan.
*cough* *cough* fuck off *cough* *cough*
If you want the internet to remain open and free, then why are you allowing copyright to lock it down?
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
"How many times has this administration embraced a petition and moved forward with it?"
How many times has this administration helped make the U.S. government better for its citizens in any way?
The U.S. government has been arranging that the rich get richer, allowing the violent to be more violent, and helping those who want to make money by killing people.
For example, the "Affordable Care Act" is, in my opinion, in the direction of other recent changes in government. Instead of 2 organizations between you and a health care provider, there now are 3 or 4. The ACA gathers money from those like myself who never get sick. See, for example, Oregon Health Care Cost Increases under the Affordable Care Act.
The ACA was announced and pretended to be in operation before the software was ready: How Obamacare's epic fail exposed our government's biggest tech problem. Whoever is at the top of the U.S. government was obviously completely incompetent. (Often a U.S. president merely pretends to be in charge, hiding what is actually happening, and who is arranging it.)
The ACA helped technology companies take advantage of state officials who are completely ignorant about technology development. For example, Oregon sues Oracle over failed Obamacare website.
Quoting: Oregon's suit, filed Friday in state court, alleges that Oracle, the largest tech contractor working on the website, made falsely convinced officials to buy "hundreds of millions of dollars of Oracle products and services that failed to perform as promised." It is seeking $200 million in damages.
If you love the U.S. like I do, help deal with the immense problems and lack of good leadership.
Governments need to make their jobs cushy, because a) they are already fraught with risk, b) they couldn't afford the salaries if they weren't this cushy. Protection from being fired is part of the job.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
So to be clear, those choices that she made were not her choices, and its scapegoating to want her fired for making those choices because 'the system'.
Nope, she made the choice to load on bogus charges to try to force a plea bargain, that was her choice within her power. She also did a lot a press work around the same time promoting herself and making statements that called into question her grasp of legal principles like 'theft'.
She is not a scapegoat, she is an bad prosecutor.
Joe Biden is the copyright industry's puppet and was paid to introduce hard prison time for copyright violation:
http://www.cnet.com/news/joe-bidens-pro-riaa-pro-fbi-tech-voting-record/
Note the date. This was already known before Obama's first election. The copyright industry bought themselves the vice presidency.
And all of Slashdot, reddit, etc. looked away, nanana I can't hear you, and voted for that. You voted for this strong prosecution, which Biden implemented as instructed to. The White House are hypocrite psychopaths if they are denying it. The voters are huge hypocrites if they are complaining about it - they shouldn't have voted on this policy. And they will deny it and look away, and vote psychopaths into power again. How fucking convenient for everybody.
The petition system is truly ingenious.
It's a way for the administration to line up 10-, 20-, 30-, 100-thousand people who think the administration is wrong, and then have delivered to them a customized message which tells the signers how wrong they are about things on a very specific topic.
The White House Petitions are designed to serve the administration, not the citizenry.
Especially prosecutors. Prosecutors, in fact, absolute civil immunity from the consequences of their courtroom hijinks. They can literally, with malice aforethought suborn perjury, withhold evidence that proves innocence (not just cast doubt) and other things and you cannot sue them. Why? The Supreme Court a long time ago ruled that if prosecutors could be sued into the ground for their courtroom conduct it would "unduly influence" their decisions to bring cases.
So you can sue a cop who beats you up because that's not within his training and there's no good faith defense. A prosecutor, legally trained with a JD, can intentionally commit a felony against you in a court of law and your only resources are as follows:
1. Plead with another prosecutor to prosecute him.
2. Get a friend/relative/street thug to meet him in the court parking lot with a baseball bat.
Because the civilized option 3) of taking matters into your own hands in a civil court is completely impossible and has been for a few decades.
'nuff said
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
What is the appropriate forum to get the agency to address these matters?
Swartz was an idiot, not a hero. Stop making him a religious idol. Has anyone criticized Carmen Ortiz for the prosecution that her office led on Whitey Bulger or Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?
No, they have not. This petition isn't about Carmen Ortiz, it is about more people trying to make a hero out of a fool. Carmen Ortiz worked hard to get to where she is, don't paint her as a super-villian just because Swartz crapped himself when he realized how stupid his choices were.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It's "retarded" to become hostile when someone doesn't describe things perfectly.
With sensibly designed insurance, like the unemployment insurance our corporation pays, for example, the cost decreases if you never or seldom use it.
Also, drinkypoo's comment just below adds a more clear explanation:
"The problem is that it [the ACA] is actually a system of graft from stem to stern. The health insurance companies must be eliminated if we are to have working health care in America."
It probably felt good to work out some anger by writing this petition, but it was obvious from the start that the administration would not answer it meaningfully. A more useful petition, that might have some hope of answer, would demand that the government articulate its position on the proportionality of the charges laid in the case, the validity of prosecuting when the victims don't want to, and the appropriateness of using inflated charges to extract plea bargains.
They control 50% of the money
...what? Troll better. Really.
So a brilliant fellow was bullied to suicide and well that's his own damn fault. Yes, our government can definitely be trusted with the power we entrust them, who knows who might be a terrorist. Maybe you're next.
Are you saying that there is no working health care in Germany, the Netherlands, Japan or Switzerland?
There is more than one way to make a "working" health care system. With sufficient regulation you can have an efficient health care system which utilizes private insurance companies (and private health care providers). Once properly regulated those insurance companies nolonger compete with eachother on who is best at denying care or filtering out the expensive patients, but rather on lowering administrative costs and incentivizing preventative care.
MIT, the organization whose access was used to download the documents, declined to press civil charge
Whether civil charges are pressed is completely irrelevant to indictment for criminal charges. If you break into my house but don't succeed in stealing anything of value, you can face criminal charges regardless of whether I sue you in civil court.
and according to the report on MIT's involvement "MIT never requested that a criminal prosecution be brought against Aaron Swartz." (page 13) and "MIT did inform the prosecution that it was not seeking punishment for Swartz,
And whether an organization decides to "press charges" may be a factor, but is not the only factor in whether somebody is indicted for a crime.
and it did inform the defense that it was not seeking any civil remedy from him." (page 14). JSTOR, the organization whose documents were copied, declined to press civil charges.
Again, whether the parties involved seek civil remedies has nothing whatsoever to do with whether there was a crime that a person can be indicted for.
A quote in the MIT report attributed to JSTOR said "The criminal investigation and today’s indictment of Mr. Swartz has been directed by the United States Attorney’s Office. It was the government’s decision whether to prosecute, not JSTOR’s.
Now you got it. It's not MIT's decision, nor is it JSTOR's, whether the person is indicted for a crime.
...When the two parties who were affected choose not to proceed with civil charges and don't press for criminal charges, is calling for criminal charges that carried a possible 50 years of imprisonment and a $1 million dollar fine,
...or a plea bargain of 6 months in prison. But Swartz decided he would rather die than admit he'd done anything wrong.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
A jaywalker also knows he's doing wrong. That doesn't absolve the prosecutor who tries to contort it into a terroristic threat and prosecute a felony.
I'm fine with prosecutors pressing jaywalking charges to jaywalkers.
RT has a very strong bias. It's actually worse than the national enquirer or the weekly world news, because it is trying to be propaganda and tell lies that will be taken seriously. Much like the Pravda of old, which is now a much better read because it isn't a propaganda organ.
I fail to see the *cough*s. It was quite literally "fuck off" without any even remote veiling.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes he can!
Nobody said anything about DOING anything, though. Fuck, people, learn to read and understand the implied meaning.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Women control over 50% of the wealth. I know you don't like this fact but it doesn't make it untrue.
That seems accurate, assuming you're talking about in the USA. A 2009 study in the Harvard Business Review said women controlled 51.3 percent of wealth in America. A Virginia Tech page, for comparison, says women control 60% of America's wealth (http://www.wlp.givingto.vt.edu/wealth/).
The reason is that, in general, women tend to outlive men. So the wealth tends to flow, eventually, toward women
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Or, at least, the lower receiver of an internet.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.