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Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

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Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#91

Post by dantheman »

lutze wrote: post #85
jordanb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I don't care if she spends her nights and weekends caring for orphans and war widows. She's a politician who treated Aaron Swartz as a pawn in the political game she is playing. No doubt she intended for her campaign for governor to describe her as a "staunch defender of intellectual property rights" who, as prosecutor, put a "dangerous hacker behind bars" for "breaking into MIT and stealing millions of doll…

I think you're missing the point vis a vis "fix the machine, not the person". The tactics described in the petition are ingrained in the US justice system. Getting rid of a single prosecutor isn't going to change a damn thing because the injustices are systemic, not the product of a vindictive individual. Like Aaron said, shouting at the gears isn't going to fix the machine.

I have to disagree, when people realize the risk is personal they'll take care to make sure what they're doing is right. Just following orders is never a valid excuse. Of course we should stop with the prosecutor we should continue on to try and fix the machine, but at the very least if prosecutors know they're responsible for their actions it'll add an additional check to the system.

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#93

Post by drzaiusapelord »

monochromatic wrote: post #71
jordanb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I don't care if she spends her nights and weekends caring for orphans and war widows. She's a politician who treated Aaron Swartz as a pawn in the political game she is playing. No doubt she intended for her campaign for governor to describe her as a "staunch defender of intellectual property rights" who, as prosecutor, put a "dangerous hacker behind bars" for "breaking into MIT and stealing millions of doll…

treated Aaron Swartz as a pawn in the political game she is playing Well, maybe. It's also entirely possible that she was just doing her job, and didn't totally understand the technical aspects of what Swartz was accused of doing.

> and didn't totally understand the technical aspects of what Swartz was accused of doing.

She had the resources to hire the types of experts who are what I call "executive whisperers." She doesn't need to know what a perl script is to understand what happened at JSTOR.

On top of it, when the "victim" JSTOR is saying "what the hell, why are you prosecuting this guy?" Then its pretty obvious we're looking at political motivations here. Sorry, but you have way too much faith in people if you think what just happened was one big 'honest mistake.'

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#94

Post by alexqgb »

rprasad wrote: post #77

Zero percent chance of this happening: - She did her job, which is to enforce the laws as they are written. - She is very good at doing that job. - You will not get her fired on the basis of enforcing a law on the books where the law has not been found unconstitutional nor even had its constitutionality seriously questioned. You want a petition that might have some value? Petition the white house to change the laws o…

None of this has any bearing on the pre-trial tactics that are being used with increasing abandon by the DOJ. Specifically, they seek to prevent defendants from having their day in court by making any defence ruinously expensive. An even nastier version of this tactic involves freezing a defendent's assets, making the retention of competent representation a fiscal impossibility. Having effectivly stripped a target of their Constitutionally guaranteed right to a fair and open trial, they credibly threaten their victims with insanely onerous penalties that can be avoided only by accepting plea bargains that involve consent to charges that may well be baseless. In other words, they've successfully undermined one of the nation's key checks on abuse of government power.

From what's emerged today, it's clear that the case against Aaron was weak at best, and highly unlikely to lead to conviction in open court against capable defenders. "Bullying" is an understatement. What's going on is an outright assault on the very core of restrained government. Whether this power is being used for good or ill is besides the point. Like extrajudicial killings, the power itself has been placed outside prosecutor's reach for a reason. They have taken it anyway, and they've done so because no impedement has been there to stop them. At the same time, they've depended in security through obscurity. A general lack of awareness as to how abusive and out of control they've become has enabled the rot we're seeing now.

In this case, we see the importance of open access to jury trials in that they prevent the government from harming its own legitimacy. Given how unrestrained the DOJ has become, it was only a matter of time before they suffered a high-profile screwup. And while Ortiz may simply have been the one unlucky enough to own it, she is very much a part of the problem. Unlike Aaron, she is not an unfortunate innocent caught in the wrong time at the wrong place. To the contrary, she is the fox sneaking into the henhouse on the night that a new watchdog is sleeping beneath it.

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#95

Post by drzaiusapelord »

temphn wrote: post #82
danso wrote: post #10

Some more context about the prosecutor: She was named "Bostonian of the Year" for her successful cases against mob bosses and drug companies: http://www.mainjustice.com/2012/01/03/massachusetts-u-s-atto... Out of the 94 U.S. DA offices, her office alone collected ~67% of the total criminal and civil fines in 2012, mostly owing to the successful prosecution of drug companies. Her success led to speculation that she wo…

A young man is dead because Carmen M. Ortiz unambiguously railroaded him. Frankly the ignorance and tenor of her prosecution in this area makes me much less likely to believe that all those other people she fined and jailed were bad guys. That is: in the one area we do know - computer science - we can see that she pursued trumped up charges. So maybe a forensic accountant would be able to explain that in her past ris…

>The RIAA/MPAA would love to have her.

She's way too toxic for business. She's got her federal pension and probably a long future in politics. Unless Obama throws her out, she's more or less set for life. Prosecutors don't get burned on stuff like this. Now if she cheated on her husband or said something bad about Jesus.

This is also further proof that you can attack leftist political activists with impunity. At his core Aaron was for liberalization of information and open government. If he was a Tea Party guy downloading PDFs from MIT to show "liberal bias" he'd be alive and have his own Fox New show and a book deal.

No one protects the left.

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#96

Post by rowanwernham »

If anyone should go down first its Steve Heymann who also led up the ridiculous 40 year sentence against soupnazi.

from wired:

'The FBI investigated that hack, but in the end no charges were filed. Aaron wasn’t so lucky with the JSTOR matter. The case was picked up by Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann in Boston, the cybercrime prosecutor who won a record 20-year prison stretch for TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez. Heymann indicted Aaron on 13 counts of wire fraud, computer intrusion and reckless damage. The case has been wending through pre-trial motions for 18 months, and was set for jury trial on April 1.'

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/01/aaron-swartz/

And re: soupnazi, throwing a hacker (even a hacker who was actually criminal) in with violent offenders because he pissed off the wrong people is fucked:

"After his sentencing, Gonzalez was transferred from Wyatt to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn (before ultimately ending up in a prison in Michigan). Situated between a loud stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and Gowanus Bay, M.D.C. is brutal, even for a prison. Populated by hardened offenders, it is among the last places a nonviolent government informant would want to be. “The place is terrible,” Agent Michael said. “But you know what? When you burn both ends of the candle, that’s what you get.” Even Gonzalez was impressed by the government’s indifference to his comfort. He says he always knew it would stick it to him somehow, “but I never thought it would be this badly.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/magazine/14Hacker-t.html?p...

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#97

Post by edouard1234567 »

dantheman wrote: post #91
lutze wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point vis a vis "fix the machine, not the person". The tactics described in the petition are ingrained in the US justice system. Getting rid of a single prosecutor isn't going to change a damn thing because the injustices are systemic, not the product of a vindictive individual. Like Aaron said, shouting at the gears isn't going to fix the machine.

I have to disagree, when people realize the risk is personal they'll take care to make sure what they're doing is right. Just following orders is never a valid excuse. Of course we should stop with the prosecutor we should continue on to try and fix the machine, but at the very least if prosecutors know they're responsible for their actions it'll add an additional check to the system.

I think you meant -> "we SHOULDN'T" stop with the prosecutor.

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#98

Post by [deleted] »

Steko wrote: post #89
jordanb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I don't care if she spends her nights and weekends caring for orphans and war widows. She's a politician who treated Aaron Swartz as a pawn in the political game she is playing. No doubt she intended for her campaign for governor to describe her as a "staunch defender of intellectual property rights" who, as prosecutor, put a "dangerous hacker behind bars" for "breaking into MIT and stealing millions of doll…

"We need to add a new rule to the political rulebook that she's playing by. Ending her career is necessary to send a lesson to every other prosecutor who sees a guy like Aaron the way a housecat sees a cornered rat." Yes it's vitally important that there be a completely different and much weaker standard of justice applied to wealthy software developers then those other people .

[deleted]

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#99

Post by bcoates »

alan_cx wrote: post #55

I'm no expert on the US way of things, but wasn't this prosecutor just doing her job according to the law, or as directed by government policy? She not a vigilante, or is that effectively the case in the US? Surely you guys need to got after the law or government in some way, not harass this woman who was doing what she was paid to do. Ok, so you win, she gets fired. Another will simply replace her. You need to get t…

US Federal prosecutors are pretty much Judge Dredd. The law gives them broad discretion and wide political independence; so much so that the broad and vague on-paper criminal law is irrelevant in practice. 95% of cases end in a plea bargain and federal juries have a conviction rate in the 80s.

http://law.wlu.edu/deptimages/Law%20Review/67-4Podgor.pdf

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#100

Post by genwin »

monochromatic wrote: post #71
jordanb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I don't care if she spends her nights and weekends caring for orphans and war widows. She's a politician who treated Aaron Swartz as a pawn in the political game she is playing. No doubt she intended for her campaign for governor to describe her as a "staunch defender of intellectual property rights" who, as prosecutor, put a "dangerous hacker behind bars" for "breaking into MIT and stealing millions of doll…

treated Aaron Swartz as a pawn in the political game she is playing Well, maybe. It's also entirely possible that she was just doing her job, and didn't totally understand the technical aspects of what Swartz was accused of doing.

Whether or not she totally understood the situation, she's just as liable. Either way, she'd be doing a horrible thing. You don't wield such power so haphazardly or harshly and still be a good person.
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