MIT President on Aaron Swartz

  This is a fantasy, both in the likelihood of occuring

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-aaron-...

  Hacktivist's suicide intensifies criticism of U.S. attorney, MIT

  But his suicide by hanging Friday has also stoked a 
  politically malignant aftermath for the prosecutors 
  pursuing 13 felony charges against him in a trial that was 
  set to begin in a month. Some said his death could be a 
  watershed moment in the ongoing intellectual property 
  debate over the things people share and create, and how 
  they share and create them. 

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/13/the-brilliant-mind-righteous-...

  You should know his death is a good reason to revisit the 
  1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the law under which he 
  was prosecuted, since it is far too broad, and to take a 
  hard look at Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, 
  whose office prosecuted Aaron with such recklessly 
  disproportionate vigor, and who is reportedly considering a 
  run for governor.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732458150457823...

  To some in the Internet community, it was a Robin Hood-like 
  stunt.Prosecutors disagreed and threatened to put him in 
  prison for more than three decades.

  Mr. Swartz's lawyer, Elliot Peters, first discussed a 
  possible plea bargain with Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen 
  Heymann last fall. In an interview Sunday, he said he was 
  told at the time that Mr. Swartz would need to plead guilty 
  to every count, and the government would insist on prison 
  time. Mr. Peters said he spoke to Mr. Heymann again last 
  Wednesday in another attempt to find a compromise. The 
  prosecutor, he said, didn't budge.

  Mr. Heymann didn't reply to requests for comment Sunday.

  The Massachusetts U.S. attorney's office declined to 
  comment Sunday, saying it wanted to respect the family's 
  privacy. But in a press release from July 2011 when the 
  charges in the case were announced, U.S. Attorney Carmen 
  Ortiz said, "Stealing is stealing, whether you use a 
  computer command or a crowbar."

No comment from Heymann. A "hard look" at Ortiz. Politically malignant aftermath. Doesn't sound good.

This is a CAT-4 shitstorm. Getting phone calls from the Wall Street Journal about why your aggressive prosecution caused the death of a young computer genius is not what Heymann and Ortiz signed up for. They were gunning for Bostonian of the Year, stuff like that. So already there is a deterrent effect. If and when the politicians get involved and call for an investigation into disproportionate sentencing, it will kick up to CAT-5. Moreover, there are 2300 articles like that on Google News now. Go check. The more calls for resignation, the more she becomes a public embarrassment to Obama, the more likely she is to be put on leave.

Now, pretty much everything else you've posted in these threads has been either trivially wrong ("federal prosecutors have no discretion") or a naked argument in favor of unlimited state power. But this is at least a prediction about a future outcome.

So let's make a bet. Prediction: Carmen Ortiz will be at a minimum put on administrative leave and will likely be forced to resign by the end of February. If I win, you never darken Hacker News' doorstep again. If you win, I in turn stop posting and you can push HN towards what appears to be your ideal venue: a space for lawyers rather than hackers, a space for people who sympathize with the federal prosecutor who hounded a hacker to his death.

Deal?

PS:

1) JSTOR is not on the same side as MIT. And MIT by their recent statement is not on the same side as the prosecutor.

2) Aaron never admitted guilt/plead guilty.

3) The charges weren't "dropped", they were rendered moot by his death.

All the organizations (MIT, JSTOR, etc.), specifically the people directly involved in bullying Aaron Swartz may have publicly announced their condolences, but to me they all sound like sugar coated empty jars. I can sense that when they all go home they'll be saying "Regardless of what happened, Aaron Swartz will always be remembered as a thief, a radical, and most of all a criminal". I bet those people are feeding large amounts of coal into their legal department to avoid being blamed for Aaron's death.

> What crimes did Aaron commit? My understanding is that he was alleged to have committed crimes, but this has not been proven in court, so we don't know that he committed crimes, and if he did, we do not know that he did so knowingly

IF he did what is alleged, it is pretty hard to see how it could not be knowingly. He had access to JSTOR as part of his work at Harvard. If he didn't know what he was doing was violating the rules, he would have done it at Harvard. He would not have bought a new computer, went to MIT, used a fake name and email address to access the guest network, used MAC address spoofing and a second computer to evade MIT and JSTOR's attempts to stop him, or trespassed and connected his computer directly to the wired network to bypass the guest wireless network.

Here's the indictment: http://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pd...

I up voted it to cancel your accidental down vote. I have never understood why HN does not let people change a mistaken vote.

I'm speaking to the assumption that promoting an agreeable person will necessarily have a favorable outcome. There's a huge presumption that Abelson's role in this precludes unfairness.