Laying fewer charges does not mean there will be fewer felons. In fact there may be even more crime as people will know there is a good likelihood that they will not be prosecuted. The state may save money but we, as individuals, will not as we will pay higher insurance, if we can even get it, or have to pay for things destroyed or stolen by criminals.
This would decrease the burden on our prison system, and allow those people to contribute positively to the economy.
I don't consider stealing everything not guarded by private security as contributing to the economy. That will happen as there will be little deterrent due to the few charges being laid.
It also goes as far as saying that federal influence in legal matters of circumstances like this have no place unless in matters of national security and laws at a state level were fine in managing what was best described as a form of civil disobedience.
Federal jurisdiction also handles areas of interstate trade. Wire fraud is an interstate trade issue.
So to answer your question, nothing, no punishment.
So anyone should be able to break into a server closet at a university and use their network in any way desired? I disagree.
The resumption of innocence is upheld when the defendant walks in and pleads guilty. It is a protection from being punished for a crime before a verdict is entered. For example one can still vote if charged but not convicted.
Plea bargaining is just a corrupt, unjust hammer used because the prosecutors and police simply want to get someone fro a crime and they don't even seem to care if it is the actual perpetrator.
Excellent broad generalization about a system that is used all over the world for centuries and has worked quite well. I agree there may be some instances where you are correct but there are many more instances where just sentences have been bargained for.
Why not threaten defendents with death to coerce a guilty plea? Would you be ok with that?
No it would not be and that is irrelevant, as all slippery slope arguments are, as it is not happening. If it does then I am with you. Until then I am not.
The "innocent until proven guilty" works just as well if the accused walks into court and pleads guilty. Notice that it is not "innocent until proven guilty by someone else".
The day in court is when the accuses stands up for what he did and accepts the sentence handed down by the court. All charges do not need to be litigated. If you are going to court an pleading not guilty when you did the crime then you are lying. The innocent until proven guilty works just as well if the accused walks into court and tells the truth and pleads guilty.
He was not convicted yet. He was truly facing 6 months in jail and could not handle that. How do we know he would not have committed suicide if he was sentenced to one day in jail. As for not knowing the system, that is why he had a lawyer. If the defense lawyer could not explain the real possibilities then it is not the prosecutor's fault. The fact that Swatrz acted on a "could" and didn't wait for the sentence says a lot about his particular mental state.
A day in court may be a constitutional right but it is not a moral right when everyone knows the defendant has committed the crimes. No one has a right to waste tax payer money and time just because they can.
An offence that bores 30 years shouldn't be allowed to have a 6 month plea bargain attached to it
Here is where the problem with this whole discussion comes up. Most laws are written as " a maximum of X years" while some are written as "between W and X years". The "X years" is the maximum allowed for the most egregious forms of the crime. For example, the least form of breaking and entering in Florida has a maximum sentence of 5 years. So if I walked into someone else's house without permission and ate a piece of pie I could go to jail for 5 years. Does that usually happen? No. Always pointing at the maximums gives a skewed idea of the outcomes. Another tactic they used was calculating the sentences consecutively when they are usually server concurrently.
The issue is not the regulating prosecutors but writing better defined laws with more degrees of severity. That way an exact charge with an exact sentence can be pressed. These charges that are 0 to 30 years do have a wide margin for discretion. But wait, that would mean we would have ten times more laws and the only people to gain would be the lawyers.
What do you think he should have been charged with?
Court time are extremely variable. How long do you think it would take to explain to non technical people all the technical aspects of a case like Swartz's? Definately more than an hour.
Costs are not the issue it is court capacity. There are only so many courts and judges. Sure one could build and hire more but then everyone's taxes would rise significantly. It all sounds good till someone has to pay for it. By the way, court costs are awarded in civil not criminal cases. Fines are levied in criminal cases where applicable.
The "better we let 10 guilty men walk than punish 1 innocent" has morphed over the years from "better we let 10 guilty men walk than kill 1 innocent". Where is the line drawn? Ten guilty for one innocent is reasonable. Is 100 guilty for one innocent also reasonable? Is 1000 guilty for one innocent reasonable? If the reason people are going free is that the wait time for a court date is 5 years then there is a problem.
It seems that almost everyone who calls for "reform" either does not have an alternative or comes up with a simple solution that fails under any scrutiny. It is very easy to point out flaws and much harder to come up with a complete solution. This is a challenge for all the "Reformers" out there: What is your alternative?
I guess the videos of him entering the closet and changing hard drives ins not enough evidence for you. This is another reason why this is not a representative case as we will never know what would have happened if Swarts had lived.
11. Between September 24, 2010, and January 6, 2011, Swartz contrived to: a. break into a restricted computer wiring closet at MIT; b. access MIT’s network without authorization from a switch within that closet; c. connect to JSTOR’s archive of digitized journal articles through MIT’s computer network; d. use this access to download a major portion of JSTOR’s archive onto his computers and computer hard drives; e. avoid MIT’s and JSTOR’s efforts to prevent this massive copying, measures which were directed at users generally and at Swartz’s illicit conduct specifically; and f. elude detection and identification; all with the purpose of distributing a significant proportion of JSTOR’s archive through one or more file-sharing sites.
Irrelevant because JSTOR is not the one pressing the charges the Federal Attorney is.
One has to be stupid to take "you could get 50 years for that" seriously. His defense lawyer would also have to be incompetent to let him. Many offenses have high maximum penalties but few defendants get the maximums. Publicizing those maximums is just playing to the sympathies of the public and has nothing to do with what would actually happen.
And if you thing that 50 years is reasonable for trespass, then there is no hope.
Had Swartz only entered the room, looked around and left then 50 years would have been way too much. That is not what happened. Swartz dd many other things while in the closet and would never have gotten 50 years as that was the maximum sentences.
Isimply cannot believe the level of obtuseness displayed by your post. If you believe that threatening a man with 50 years in gaol so that he capitulates to a 6 month sentance without trial is not broken then I simply do not know how to even beginning to explain the basic concepts of justice and fairness to you.
Excellent cop out. You can not explain it because you have no basis for your explanation. I think it is completely reasonable to tell a defendant" Look, you can plead out to charges we all know you are guilty of or we can go to court on the off chance that we make a mistake. If we go to court we will charge you with what ever we can under the law and you may be up for a lot more time. Your choice, plea to what you did or role the dice." The reason it is not broken is that no system in the world could survive if every single charge went to court.
Do we stop regulating speeding, theft under $500, trespassing, etc? The issue is not how minor the offense is but how often they are committed and that the offenses clog the courts with needless procedures on the off chance that something will go wrong and the defendant will get off. It is no longer a quest for justice but a crap shoot.
That implies that Swartz was innocent which he obviously was not. He broke into a server closet and installed his own hardware into MIT's network without authorization to obtain documents he was not authorized to have. He broke a number of laws. The only valid discussion is which ones.
Doesnt matter who we vote for, the real power is in being in an unelected position where you can step outside the normal bounds of power.
The interesting thing is that one votes for the person appointing the United States Attorney, the President, and the people confirming the appointment, the Senate. One of the reasons for this is so that federal law is not applied differently in different parts of the country. If Federal attorneys were elected locally they would be unduly influenced by local considerations leading to a patchwork of enforcement. One does not have to vote for everything for a system to be democratic. That is why we vote for representatives who work on our behalf.
18 USC 1343 - Fraud by wire, radio, or television Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
When Swartz attempted to access the MIT network after being kicked off he used a fictitious name which is considered a "false or fraudulent pretense". His purpose was to obtain copyright material which is also considered "writings". So according to this law, pretending to be someone else on the internet to obtain documents you are not authorized to have is "Fraud by wire, radio or television" and the maximum penalty is 20 years in prison. Copyright infringement was only one of the crimes Swartz committed. He also committed wire fraud.
The issue with not prosecuting is that it sets a precedence. If a good defense lawyer can point to a few cases that were not prosecuted they can get their client off as a case of "selective prosecution". The prosecutor is in a bind because if they do not prosecute the current case they may not be able to prosecute a similar but much more serious case in the future.
When there is no doubt that a defendant has broken a law there is no incentive to that defendant to plead guilty. In the best case there could be a procedural error and the defendant will walk free. In the worst case the defendant will get what was offered in the plea deal. Do you really want every minor infraction that would put someone away for less than a year to have to go to court? Do you realize how clogged the courts already are and what a mess they would be if that happened? The reason the prosecutors threaten more jail time is to give the defendant incentive to admit to what was actually done. By the way, as part of a plea deal counts can be dropped by the prosecutor so the judge is limited in what sentence can be imposed.
The one thing missed is that if the defendant is really innocent it does not matter what sentence he is threatened with as it will never be imposed. In the Swartz case he was filmed entering the closet to replace hard drives. There was no doubt about his wrongdoing. All that needed to me done was decide the sentence. Swartz insisted on no consequences for something he knew was against the law.
Lets get off the "he was innocent" kick. Swartz broke into a server closet, installed his own hardware behind MIT's firewall so he could download files he was told he was not authorized. I guess I can come into your home and use your bandwidth to do anything I want. He broke the law. It is as simple as that and he wanted to go to court. He put himself in the way of justice and then he ran. If he was not prepared to go to jail he shouldn't have knowingly broken the law. Many civil rights activists willingly went to jail to stand up for what they believed. Swartz on the other hand took the easy way out. Painting an entire system due the the actions of on obviously disturbed individual is ludicrous.
Instead of pointing the finger at the prosecutor how about the incompetent defense lawyer who insisted on zero jail time. Couple that with reporting that Swatrz was suicidal then doing nothing else. Perhaps protecting his client might have been in order.
The Swarts case was not an example of how the system is broken because the process was cut short. A six month jail term was reasonable for the crimes committed. That he was threatened with a lot more is irrelevant until he is sentenced to that term. For all we know the judge may have given him a suspended sentence, 50 years or something in between. We will never know because Swartz ended the process prematurely.
Yes the judge could be harsher but Swartz chose that risk when he broke into the server closet and added his hardware to the network. Notice how they talk about risk and not certainty? If someone's response to risk is suicide there is something definitely wrong with that person. Had he been sentenced to 50 years and then committed suicide it would be a different story. We will never know if he would have been sentenced to 6 months at "Club Fed" or 50 years in Folsum as Swartz didn't let it play out. Acting on a "might be" is premature at best.
It does not matter if he did not agree with the laws, they were on the books and he broke them. He chose to break laws that he did not believe in and then decided not to stand up to the consequences of his actions. He chose a self imposed death sentence. There is no one else to blame for his choices.In the end the old saying applies; "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time". Many civil rights activists were willing to spend years in prison for their principles; Swartz was not.
He was offered a plea deal that would have seen him sentenced to six months in prison. He was told that the maximums could add up to 50 years but it is up to his lawyer to tell him what he realistically could have been sentenced to. The 50 year sentence would occur if each count got the max and were run consecutively. That rarely happens as it is against standard sentencing guidelines. I think it is ironic that Anonymous is hacking the site the would gave caused Swartz to get a shorter sentence.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, he couldn't know what he was truly facing.
"Ignorance of the law is no excuse".
Of do you think committing suicide in jail is easy?
The national suicide rate is about 12 in 100,000. The suicide rate in prisons was 47 in 100,000 in 2002. So yes suicide is possible in prisons.
No system is perfect. Do you have a better solution or are you content with pointing fingers and saying "bad"?
Laying fewer charges does not mean there will be fewer felons. In fact there may be even more crime as people will know there is a good likelihood that they will not be prosecuted. The state may save money but we, as individuals, will not as we will pay higher insurance, if we can even get it, or have to pay for things destroyed or stolen by criminals.
This would decrease the burden on our prison system, and allow those people to contribute positively to the economy.
I don't consider stealing everything not guarded by private security as contributing to the economy. That will happen as there will be little deterrent due to the few charges being laid.
It also goes as far as saying that federal influence in legal matters of circumstances like this have no place unless in matters of national security and laws at a state level were fine in managing what was best described as a form of civil disobedience.
Federal jurisdiction also handles areas of interstate trade. Wire fraud is an interstate trade issue.
So to answer your question, nothing, no punishment.
So anyone should be able to break into a server closet at a university and use their network in any way desired? I disagree.
The resumption of innocence is upheld when the defendant walks in and pleads guilty. It is a protection from being punished for a crime before a verdict is entered. For example one can still vote if charged but not convicted.
Plea bargaining is just a corrupt, unjust hammer used because the prosecutors and police simply want to get someone fro a crime and they don't even seem to care if it is the actual perpetrator.
Excellent broad generalization about a system that is used all over the world for centuries and has worked quite well. I agree there may be some instances where you are correct but there are many more instances where just sentences have been bargained for.
Why not threaten defendents with death to coerce a guilty plea? Would you be ok with that?
No it would not be and that is irrelevant, as all slippery slope arguments are, as it is not happening. If it does then I am with you. Until then I am not.
Do you want to pay a couple hundred dollars a year more in taxes so every charge can be litigated? I doubt it.
The "innocent until proven guilty" works just as well if the accused walks into court and pleads guilty. Notice that it is not "innocent until proven guilty by someone else".
The day in court is when the accuses stands up for what he did and accepts the sentence handed down by the court. All charges do not need to be litigated. If you are going to court an pleading not guilty when you did the crime then you are lying. The innocent until proven guilty works just as well if the accused walks into court and tells the truth and pleads guilty.
He was not convicted yet. He was truly facing 6 months in jail and could not handle that. How do we know he would not have committed suicide if he was sentenced to one day in jail. As for not knowing the system, that is why he had a lawyer. If the defense lawyer could not explain the real possibilities then it is not the prosecutor's fault. The fact that Swatrz acted on a "could" and didn't wait for the sentence says a lot about his particular mental state.
A day in court may be a constitutional right but it is not a moral right when everyone knows the defendant has committed the crimes. No one has a right to waste tax payer money and time just because they can.
An offence that bores 30 years shouldn't be allowed to have a 6 month plea bargain attached to it
Here is where the problem with this whole discussion comes up. Most laws are written as " a maximum of X years" while some are written as "between W and X years". The "X years" is the maximum allowed for the most egregious forms of the crime. For example, the least form of breaking and entering in Florida has a maximum sentence of 5 years. So if I walked into someone else's house without permission and ate a piece of pie I could go to jail for 5 years. Does that usually happen? No. Always pointing at the maximums gives a skewed idea of the outcomes. Another tactic they used was calculating the sentences consecutively when they are usually server concurrently.
The issue is not the regulating prosecutors but writing better defined laws with more degrees of severity. That way an exact charge with an exact sentence can be pressed. These charges that are 0 to 30 years do have a wide margin for discretion. But wait, that would mean we would have ten times more laws and the only people to gain would be the lawyers.
What do you think he should have been charged with?
Court time are extremely variable. How long do you think it would take to explain to non technical people all the technical aspects of a case like Swartz's? Definately more than an hour.
Costs are not the issue it is court capacity. There are only so many courts and judges. Sure one could build and hire more but then everyone's taxes would rise significantly. It all sounds good till someone has to pay for it. By the way, court costs are awarded in civil not criminal cases. Fines are levied in criminal cases where applicable.
The "better we let 10 guilty men walk than punish 1 innocent" has morphed over the years from "better we let 10 guilty men walk than kill 1 innocent". Where is the line drawn? Ten guilty for one innocent is reasonable. Is 100 guilty for one innocent also reasonable? Is 1000 guilty for one innocent reasonable? If the reason people are going free is that the wait time for a court date is 5 years then there is a problem.
It seems that almost everyone who calls for "reform" either does not have an alternative or comes up with a simple solution that fails under any scrutiny. It is very easy to point out flaws and much harder to come up with a complete solution. This is a challenge for all the "Reformers" out there: What is your alternative?
I guess the videos of him entering the closet and changing hard drives ins not enough evidence for you. This is another reason why this is not a representative case as we will never know what would have happened if Swarts had lived.
From one of the indictments:
11. Between September 24, 2010, and January 6, 2011, Swartz contrived to:
a. break into a restricted computer wiring closet at MIT;
b. access MIT’s network without authorization from a switch within that
closet;
c. connect to JSTOR’s archive of digitized journal articles through MIT’s
computer network;
d. use this access to download a major portion of JSTOR’s archive onto his
computers and computer hard drives;
e. avoid MIT’s and JSTOR’s efforts to prevent this massive copying,
measures which were directed at users generally and at Swartz’s illicit conduct
specifically; and
f. elude detection and identification;
all with the purpose of distributing a significant proportion of JSTOR’s archive through one or
more file-sharing sites.
Where are your references?
Irrelevant. JSTOR dropped charges.
Irrelevant because JSTOR is not the one pressing the charges the Federal Attorney is.
One has to be stupid to take "you could get 50 years for that" seriously. His defense lawyer would also have to be incompetent to let him. Many offenses have high maximum penalties but few defendants get the maximums. Publicizing those maximums is just playing to the sympathies of the public and has nothing to do with what would actually happen.
And if you thing that 50 years is reasonable for trespass, then there is no hope.
Had Swartz only entered the room, looked around and left then 50 years would have been way too much. That is not what happened. Swartz dd many other things while in the closet and would never have gotten 50 years as that was the maximum sentences.
Isimply cannot believe the level of obtuseness displayed by your post. If you believe that threatening a man with 50 years in gaol so that he capitulates to a 6 month sentance without trial is not broken then I simply do not know how to even beginning to explain the basic concepts of justice and fairness to you.
Excellent cop out. You can not explain it because you have no basis for your explanation. I think it is completely reasonable to tell a defendant" Look, you can plead out to charges we all know you are guilty of or we can go to court on the off chance that we make a mistake. If we go to court we will charge you with what ever we can under the law and you may be up for a lot more time. Your choice, plea to what you did or role the dice." The reason it is not broken is that no system in the world could survive if every single charge went to court.
Do we stop regulating speeding, theft under $500, trespassing, etc? The issue is not how minor the offense is but how often they are committed and that the offenses clog the courts with needless procedures on the off chance that something will go wrong and the defendant will get off. It is no longer a quest for justice but a crap shoot.
That implies that Swartz was innocent which he obviously was not. He broke into a server closet and installed his own hardware into MIT's network without authorization to obtain documents he was not authorized to have. He broke a number of laws. The only valid discussion is which ones.
Doesnt matter who we vote for, the real power is in being in an unelected position where you can step outside the normal bounds of power.
The interesting thing is that one votes for the person appointing the United States Attorney, the President, and the people confirming the appointment, the Senate. One of the reasons for this is so that federal law is not applied differently in different parts of the country. If Federal attorneys were elected locally they would be unduly influenced by local considerations leading to a patchwork of enforcement. One does not have to vote for everything for a system to be democratic. That is why we vote for representatives who work on our behalf.
You really need to read what wire fraud is;
18 USC 1343 - Fraud by wire, radio, or television
Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
When Swartz attempted to access the MIT network after being kicked off he used a fictitious name which is considered a "false or fraudulent pretense". His purpose was to obtain copyright material which is also considered "writings". So according to this law, pretending to be someone else on the internet to obtain documents you are not authorized to have is "Fraud by wire, radio or television" and the maximum penalty is 20 years in prison. Copyright infringement was only one of the crimes Swartz committed. He also committed wire fraud.
The issue with not prosecuting is that it sets a precedence. If a good defense lawyer can point to a few cases that were not prosecuted they can get their client off as a case of "selective prosecution". The prosecutor is in a bind because if they do not prosecute the current case they may not be able to prosecute a similar but much more serious case in the future.
When there is no doubt that a defendant has broken a law there is no incentive to that defendant to plead guilty. In the best case there could be a procedural error and the defendant will walk free. In the worst case the defendant will get what was offered in the plea deal. Do you really want every minor infraction that would put someone away for less than a year to have to go to court? Do you realize how clogged the courts already are and what a mess they would be if that happened? The reason the prosecutors threaten more jail time is to give the defendant incentive to admit to what was actually done. By the way, as part of a plea deal counts can be dropped by the prosecutor so the judge is limited in what sentence can be imposed.
The one thing missed is that if the defendant is really innocent it does not matter what sentence he is threatened with as it will never be imposed. In the Swartz case he was filmed entering the closet to replace hard drives. There was no doubt about his wrongdoing. All that needed to me done was decide the sentence. Swartz insisted on no consequences for something he knew was against the law.
Lets get off the "he was innocent" kick. Swartz broke into a server closet, installed his own hardware behind MIT's firewall so he could download files he was told he was not authorized. I guess I can come into your home and use your bandwidth to do anything I want. He broke the law. It is as simple as that and he wanted to go to court. He put himself in the way of justice and then he ran. If he was not prepared to go to jail he shouldn't have knowingly broken the law. Many civil rights activists willingly went to jail to stand up for what they believed. Swartz on the other hand took the easy way out. Painting an entire system due the the actions of on obviously disturbed individual is ludicrous.
Instead of pointing the finger at the prosecutor how about the incompetent defense lawyer who insisted on zero jail time. Couple that with reporting that Swatrz was suicidal then doing nothing else. Perhaps protecting his client might have been in order.
The Swarts case was not an example of how the system is broken because the process was cut short. A six month jail term was reasonable for the crimes committed. That he was threatened with a lot more is irrelevant until he is sentenced to that term. For all we know the judge may have given him a suspended sentence, 50 years or something in between. We will never know because Swartz ended the process prematurely.
Yes the judge could be harsher but Swartz chose that risk when he broke into the server closet and added his hardware to the network. Notice how they talk about risk and not certainty? If someone's response to risk is suicide there is something definitely wrong with that person. Had he been sentenced to 50 years and then committed suicide it would be a different story. We will never know if he would have been sentenced to 6 months at "Club Fed" or 50 years in Folsum as Swartz didn't let it play out. Acting on a "might be" is premature at best.
It does not matter if he did not agree with the laws, they were on the books and he broke them. He chose to break laws that he did not believe in and then decided not to stand up to the consequences of his actions. He chose a self imposed death sentence. There is no one else to blame for his choices .In the end the old saying applies; "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time". Many civil rights activists were willing to spend years in prison for their principles; Swartz was not.
Here is the original indictment. Look at page 3 under "Overview of Offences".
He was offered a plea deal that would have seen him sentenced to six months in prison. He was told that the maximums could add up to 50 years but it is up to his lawyer to tell him what he realistically could have been sentenced to. The 50 year sentence would occur if each count got the max and were run consecutively. That rarely happens as it is against standard sentencing guidelines. I think it is ironic that Anonymous is hacking the site the would gave caused Swartz to get a shorter sentence.