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Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

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181–190 of 251 posts

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#181
Carmen Ortiz has set back this country's ability to compete in the global marketplace by relentless pursuing one of the great innovator and job creators to the point that he took his own life.

She has not served her country, she has harmed it, and you have a duty to remove her from office so that she does not ruin more lives.

Her pursuit of this case shows that she has no understanding of the the roll technology and information play in the transformation of our economy, and it also shows that she lacks compassion.

The world will feel the loss of Aaron Swartz for many years as his talent was not easily replaced. If you fire Carmen Ortiz tomorrow, I can assure you, she will not be missed.

Someone who is this abusive as a prosecutor is probably equally abusive as a supervisor. From now until her term as prosecutor ends, I will get up every morning and ask myself: "What have I done to help get Carmen Ortiz removed from office today?"

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#182
post #85
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.

She should be disbarred.

My guess is she is just as vituperative and mean to people who work in in her office. She has done far more harm to this country in her mistreatment of Aaron Swartz than she can ever atone for.

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#184
I only new Aaron from what I occasionally read online, however his death saddens me and the reason of his death makes my blood boil. This is a wake up call for us all to act, this is the least we can do. I am a member of a few secluded communities and I will personally see to bringing as many signatures as I can to this petition and the one to Posthumously Pardon Aaron Swartz.

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many software engineers or their professional peers have been nudged, pushed or shoved into committing suicide because of a broken build? It wasn't my shitty analogy to begin with. You're missing the point: getting one prosecutor fired won't change anything, because everyone above and below that prosecutor will continue operating the exact same way.

getting one prosecutor fired won't change anything, changing the system will. However, firing the prosecutor will be a start in changing the system.

one at a time....

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very entirely possible. However I have a hard time believing that someone smart enought to make it through law school and pass the bar is not be able to learn enough about technology and motivations behind the actions in this case. As a tax payer I don't want a prosecutor who doesn't know who to go after or how far to go. From reading the thread(s) here and loosely following the case in the news I am not convinced th…

"However I have a hard time believing that someone smart enought to make it through law school and pass the bar is not be able to learn enough about technology and motivations behind the actions in this case." Much of law is a very technologically backwards field. Up until recently, some law schools (and not backwater ones, but major top-tier ones) only accepted hard-copy, type-written (as in, on a physical typewrite…

Which schools and how recently?

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#190
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't make a difference. If engineers started getting sacked for breaking the build, you can be damned sure people would get very scrupulous about only committing working code, whether they're fresh out of school or greybeards. No, it's not a perfect analogy, but I don't think it needs to be.

If you did it every time, sure. That's called changing the system. Sacking one engineer for breaking one build and then going back to encouraging all the other engineers for making as many commits as possible, and giving raises and promotions to engineers who make the most commits, while sweeping all the other broken builds under the rug, would just be scapegoating. Just like this is, actually.

Sacking one won't do it, no. But getting one sacked is a necessary step to getting them all sacked. You do it this time. Then you do it again. And again. Until they get the message.
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