"Sign the Petition for Better Oversight for Federal Attorney Misconduct" http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy#takeaction
Can you please explain why the Swartz case is a particularly good example of federal attorney misconduct?
Aaron Swartz died three years ago today
121–130 of 213 posts
Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Carmen Ortiz as the prosecutor was the law at that moment No, she was a prosecutor attempting to apply the law; rather than have his day in court, Aaron chose suicide. It is the judge and jury that are the law and Aaron never saw them. > so it is a circular reasoning and sophistry to say that killing Aaron Swartz was not unlawful It is nothing of the sort. > And it was Carmen Ortiz' choice to bring Aaron into a pos…
It's not unreasonable to choose death over living under an unjust and corrupt regime, whose laws you don't agree with. In fact, there are many people in the world today who make that very choice. I'm assuming you've never had a helpless moment where you truly felt powerless. In that moment, even death seems preferable to a life where you are helpless. Personally, I would rush head on into the barrels of guns pointed…
> It's not unreasonable to choose death over living under an unjust and corrupt regime
You presumably live under the same regime, yet here you are, breathing and posting. Not at all rushing into gun barrels?
What gives, man?
> I'm assuming you've never had a helpless moment where you truly felt powerless. In that moment, even death seems preferable to a life where you are helpless.
Don't extrapolate yourself to others. I have been in that situation, more than once, and it only ever imbued me with a ferocious will to live.
Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Carmen Ortiz as the prosecutor was the law at that moment No, she was a prosecutor attempting to apply the law; rather than have his day in court, Aaron chose suicide. It is the judge and jury that are the law and Aaron never saw them. > so it is a circular reasoning and sophistry to say that killing Aaron Swartz was not unlawful It is nothing of the sort. > And it was Carmen Ortiz' choice to bring Aaron into a pos…
It's not unreasonable to choose death over living under an unjust and corrupt regime, whose laws you don't agree with. In fact, there are many people in the world today who make that very choice. I'm assuming you've never had a helpless moment where you truly felt powerless. In that moment, even death seems preferable to a life where you are helpless. Personally, I would rush head on into the barrels of guns pointed…
>It's not unreasonable to choose death over living under an unjust and corrupt regime, whose laws you don't agree with. In fact, there are many people in the world today who make that very choice.
You know we have this thing called planes right? In no way was Aaron forced to stay in the US.
Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today
#124He is such a inspiring legend, shining beside Edward and the other fighting friends, for freedom and a better world. I love Aaron for his spirit and the mission he lived. For anyone, who hasn't seen the documentary [1], I can recommend it! Good to be remembered to some of his goals: „We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networ…
I independently came up with the same thing about journals but instinctively knew better. I looked at the financial reports for a major one to confirm or reject the instinct. All I can say is "Holy shit. We're not buying that any time soon."
Thanks for the documentary link, though. I'll check it out.
Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today
#125I often remember his essay 'Lean into the pain' : http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dalio
+1. His series on Raw Nerve is still one of the best things that I've found on the internet - http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rawnerve
While it's a decent read, objectively it means that his way of life failed and he accepted failure by taking his own life.
P. S. I'm in no means condoning what happened to him, it's a great injustice but ultimately Aaron didn't persevere as he himself has written.
Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today
#126I'm still disgusted by the behavior of the MIT officials in all of this. Whenever I see or hear 'MIT' the first thing that comes to mind is: "that's the school that was responsible for the death of Aaron".
And why would that come to mind when none of it is true? Firstly, Aaron is responsible for his own death, it was suicide. Secondly, it's the zealous prosecutor you should be mad at, MIT is not to blame here; Aaron broke many laws and they were well within their rights to have him arrested. Good intentions aside, what Aaron did was illegal and he deserved to be arrested for it; what he didn't deserve was more than pro…
While you certainly have a point, MITs actions in this case, and in the case of Star Simpson show what looks to me (as an outsider who really wants to go to an elite college) like MIT doesn't stand behind their students the way that I would expect an elite college to stand behind their students.
I mean, maybe that's just the way it is; maybe being a student at an elite institution just doesn't come with the level of privilege than I think it comes with; Maybe Stanford would have done the same thing (though my impression is that they would not.) like I said, I'm an outsider here, but the actions of MIT faculty in these two cases have significantly diminished how much I want to become a student there.
Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today
#127He was a pretty argumentative guy, but he was right about so much. He genuinely put his heart into what he believed in. Without him (and Lessig), SOPA easily could have gone the other way. He didn't deserve what the justice system did to him. Let's be honest. Almost no one does. Aaron is definitely missed.
>Almost no one does. That's not even remotely true. Our justice system may be severely fucked in many ways, but it's not completely nonfunctional. But we hear about the problems whenever something goes wrong. The other 99.9 percent of the time when things go smoothly we don't even notice...
Just to incorporate both of yours' points, I hope we all can agree that the CFAA is rank garbage.
Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It amazes me what our justice system can do to people and not be held responsible. Just to play devil's advocate here (and I understand this goes against prevailing opinion), but he did break the law. That much isn't in dispute, they had a video of him entering the MIT network closet. And he didn't commit misdemeanors, he committed a half dozen felonies (actually more, but the prosecution dropped a few of them). Th…
>Just to play devil's advocate here (and I understand this goes against prevailing opinion), but he did break the law. He absolutely did break the law. I, personally don't dispute that, nor do I think that that's a controversial fact here. The trouble that I and many other commenters here have with what happened to Aaron Swartz is the gross disproportionality of the punishment he was facing. For downloading academic…
> For downloading academic papers, he was facing a punishment that could have gone to literally millions of dollars in fines and up to 35 years in prison
He wasn't realistically facing 35 years. He could not get anywhere near that under the federal sentencing guidelines. See this prior discussion for details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7996807
In particular, be sure to read this article linked to in the first comment, which explains exactly how the numbers given in DOJ press releases have very little connection to reality: https://popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-el...
Also see these two article if you want details specifically on how sentencing works on the specific charges Swartz faced:
http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/
http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains...
Prosecutors in the Swartz case were actually asking for about 7 years, which was still much higher than they were likely to get. Swartz's own lawyer thought that he'd probably just get probation if convicted.
The DOJ really needs to stop using this stupid method of writing press releases. They wrote the indictment and so they sure as hell better know exactly what they are charging and what facts they are alleging, so they should be able to figure out the guideline sentence that would result if they won on all counts. That's what should be in the press release.
Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today
#129One of the first movies I watched on Netflix (we just got it) was "The Internet's own boy".
He was the typical overachiever, successful in almost anything he touched but finally he decided to hack justice. And broke a bunch of laws and went against a few institutions. JSTOR wasn't responsible, MIT might've been but he broke through enough barriers set up by them that Aaron did deserve a slight tap on his knuckles (the plea deal). And rather than take it he decided to end his life cause it meant the end of his political career. If he had been so volatile I wonder how he would've reacted had his earlier efforts elsewhere had failed.
Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today
#130MIT Failed him - spectacularly so. If they had declared that they had no wish to see him in prison and used their (considerable) influence he would be alive.
Instead, this political, vindictive creature http://wgbhnews.org/post/carmen-ortiz-spotlight-under-fire and her nasty acolytes in search of a high profile "Scalp" pushed him over the edge.
A terrible waste and a horrible use (misuse) of prosecutorial discretion.