Chelsea Manning Archivist Excludes Hacktivist Jailed By Carmen Ortiz From Aaron Swartz Day (huffingtonpost.com)

New submitter Danngggg writes: As you may recall from Slashdot last year, alleged Anonymous hacktivist Martin Gottesfeld has been imprisoned without bail since federal agents arrested him on board a Disney Cruise ship in February of 2016 to face hacking charges brought by controversial former U.S. attorney Carmen Ortiz. Though he's the only activist after Aaron Swartz to face a felony CFAA indictment from Ortiz, apparently Aaron Swartz Day organizer and Chelsea Manning archivist Lisa Rein don't want to include Gottesfeld in the festivities this year. So, he has taken to Huffington Post to argue that his story should be told this November 4th and, perhaps with a sense of irony, to publish some potentially scandalous Signal messages allegedly sent by Rein to his wife revealing what seems to be disdain for hacking in general and Anonymous in particular. Indeed, Rein seems to borrow from the movie Mean Girls in her contemptuous rejection of Mrs. Gottesfeld's appeals on behalf of her embattled husband. What does the Slashdot crowd have to say about whether Gottesfeld's story belongs at Aaron Swartz Day as well as Rein's alleged attitude towards his significant other?

"One might think that my voice would be welcomed at Aaron Swartz Day given all that the late internet/freedom of information activist and I share in common," writes Gottesfeld. "For starters, we were both indicted under the same controversial federal law, the CFAA, by the same Boston U.S. Attorney's Office and indeed under the tenure of the same notorious U.S. Attorney, Carmen Ortiz. Both of us have been persecuted for doing the moral thing; Aaron for trying to make taxpayer-funded research available to the general public and me for stopping the torture of an innocent child."

Comments

Who the hell are these people?

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary is awful. It drops all of these vague names, without explaining who any of these people are, what they've done, and why they're relevant. I'm not going to google all of these names. The summary should tell us who they are.

Re:Who the hell are these people?

[schnell]

Here would be a good few places for a Slashdot "editor" to start:

• What is "Aaron Swartz Day?" I have heard of Aaron Swartz but I've never heard of his "day" before. What is it? I even clicked through to the website and still can't figure out what it is.
• What is a "Chelsea Manning Archivist?"
• Why do they have a vote on who is included in "Aaron Swartz Day?"
• I see who indicted him and that they are clearly "controversial" and "notorious," but why? What got him in trouble? Did he do the same thing as Chelsea Manning? Does it benefit the general public in the same way?
• Is this a big deal? Is somebody being excluded from a major event that has wide-ranging impacts or is this someone just wanting to glom onto an event celebrating someone else? Or is it even an event that anyone cares about?
• Can someone explain the "torture of an innocent child" thing? Did he actually use a computer to stop a child from being tortured? There's no context given here.
• "Mean Girls?" Why? What?
• Also, WHAAAAAAAAAT?

Re:Who the hell are these people?

[stephanruby]

Aaron Swartz was a guy who made digital scientific journals accessible to the public by routing the requests through his University. Aaron Swartz was then arrested and told by a prosecutor that he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison thanks to a new crazy hacking law that had been recently enacted. So then Aaron Swartz killed himself a few days afterward.

Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradly Manning, hopefully, you know who that is) was pardoned by President Obama as one of his last act in office. Chelsea and some other person decided to create a day to celebrate the sacrifice and the injustice that occurred to Aaron Swartz. To my knowledge, there is no trademark on Aaron Swartz. "Aaron Swartz Day" is just a construct. Anybody is free to create their own day and call it whatever they want. But Chelsea Manning may have an easier time promoting that day because she's already pretty famous (or infamous) with the community that thinks that Aaron Swartz was treated unfairly.

Then there is this guy, Gottesfeld, who organized and led a Denial Of Service attack with 4chan against the external network of a Boston hospital during one of its major fundraising drive. His reasoning was that the critical infrastructure would be on an internal network and wouldn't be affected by a Denial of Service attack, but that the fundraising efforts of the hospital would get stalled because of that and that perhaps, the Boston hospital would bow to his pressure, stop the psychological treatment of a child and return her to her parents.

The reason he hated the hospital in question is because with the help of a judge, the hospital forcefully removed a sick child, Justina Pelletier, from her parents and the hospital thought that the parents were (the mother especially was) inducing the symptoms in the child. For a more neutral opinion on that original case, please see this: http://www.harpocratesspeaks.c...

She's evil . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Let's be frank. Carmen Ortiz is evil. I mean, like, Uzbek Evil.

She is a frightening Clintonista who should have no contact with any government agencies.

The Democratic Party will re-emerge . . . after they purge the Clintonistas who are still ruling.

It will be a pleasant experience to see the Democrats return to being a party for the common people, and rethink their base values.

Bernie Sanders gave them a kick, but it is up to them to follow through.

Re:You Misspelled "Bradley"

[slashrio]

Bradley Manning was a hero, exposing the war crimes of the war criminals in Washington DC.
So yes, it matters what Chelsea thinks.
And your opinion is totally irrelevant.

wha?

[cascadingstylesheet]

The headline is utter word salad.

I guess Slashdot has finally gone with the AI story generation for real.

Background: Justina Pelletier medical dispute

[spth]

Apparently, there is a sick girl (Justina Pelletier, J). She got differnet diagnoyses from Tufts University School of Medicine (T), and Boston Children's Hospital (B).
Parents wanted to have her treated according to diagnosis from T, but Massachusetts Department of Children and Families requested removing her from her parents custody and have her treated according to diagnosis from B. The case went to court, first ruling agreed with the request, second ruling a year later didn't. So J got separated from her parentes and trated according to diagnosis from B for a year, then was with her parents again (and, I assume treated according to diagnosis from T).
A lot of people apparently had strong opinions on this matter, including Martin Gottesfeld.

Martin Gottesfeld did a DDOS attack on the website of B during an online donation drive. He was initally prosecuted for it by Carmen Ortiz' office, which also prosecuted Aaron Swartz. Carmen Ortiz stepped down from office in January 2017, the Martin Gottesfeld case will probably go on trial in January 2018.

Some more details, and lots and lots of opinions can be found on the web.

Philipp