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Prosecutor pursuing Aaron Swartz linked to suicide of another hacker

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Re: Prosecutor pursuing Aaron Swartz linked to suicide of another hacker

#81

Post by greghinch »

kule wrote: post #40
greghinch wrote: post #3

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-...

This just feels like mob mentality to me. Someone messed up, albeit badly. I would guess the guy feels bad enough as it is without needing to get 25k people to kick him when he's down. EDIT: I guess what I'd really hope to have seen (not being a US citizen) is some petitions to get the laws/system changed rather than looking for someone to blame.

Just to echo the other responses, the US functions as a representative government, with those representatives (and in this case their appointees) accountable to the people. When one of those in office abuses that power for personal gain, we are absolutely supposed to take action to have that power stripped from them.

Granted it doesn't happen that way often, but this is an opportunity to do so. The laws should be changed as well, but that doesn't absolve an individual who acted irresponsibly for his own gain

Re: Prosecutor pursuing Aaron Swartz linked to suicide of another hacker

#82

Post by jamesaguilar »

regularfry wrote: post #59
jamesaguilar wrote: post #36

I can understand how people might expect different behavior in the Swartz case. But what in the behavior discussed in this article is other than exactly what you would expect? Of course she is going to prosecute a credit card thief who has stolen tens of thousands of cards. How does this stack up as added evidence against her?

If the defendant kills themselves before trial, that's a failure to prosecute. If the prosecutor caused that suicide, that must count against them, no?

Why would it count against you if you are performing your duties both morally and legally, and something outside of your control and responsibility happens? So, no. This does not count against.

Re: Prosecutor pursuing Aaron Swartz linked to suicide of another hacker

#83

Post by jamesaguilar »

monsterix wrote: post #41
jamesaguilar wrote: post #36

I can understand how people might expect different behavior in the Swartz case. But what in the behavior discussed in this article is other than exactly what you would expect? Of course she is going to prosecute a credit card thief who has stolen tens of thousands of cards. How does this stack up as added evidence against her?

Please 'know' before taking sides. It's easy to comment, and opine, than to know. Here are some insights from Wikipedia: US has had the highest incarceration rate in past decade [1]. Why so? Does it mean more percentage of citizens are lately turning into what one would qualify as a criminal, a thief or a murderer? Or otherwise. Quoting from Wikipedia: A. "The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of…

This is totally irrelevant to what I said.

Re: Prosecutor pursuing Aaron Swartz linked to suicide of another hacker

#84

Post by snowwrestler »

Only one person is responsible for a suicide--the person who committed suicide. This realization is a very important part of the healing process for those left behind. Otherwise it's possible to torture oneself thinking "if only I'd done more."

Logically, if it's partially Steve Heymann's fault, it could also partially be the fault of those close to Aaron who did not sufficiently help him. Or at least, there is a danger that those close to Aaron could feel this way--it's very common in suicides. But ultimately, Aaron chose to kill himself, and it was solely his decision to do so.

Re: Prosecutor pursuing Aaron Swartz linked to suicide of another hacker

#85

Post by sk5t »

snowwrestler wrote: post #84

Only one person is responsible for a suicide--the person who committed suicide. This realization is a very important part of the healing process for those left behind. Otherwise it's possible to torture oneself thinking "if only I'd done more." Logically, if it's partially Steve Heymann's fault, it could also partially be the fault of those close to Aaron who did not sufficiently help him. Or at least, there is a dan…

This seems like a dangerous way to understand any harmful act. It may be inconvenient that other views trouble the healing process, but wishing doesn't make it so. Suppose one were to say, "Only one person is responsible for a DUI fatality--the driver. Otherwise it's possible for the bartender to torture himself thinking 'if only I'd cut him off two hours ago.'"

Re: Prosecutor pursuing Aaron Swartz linked to suicide of another hacker

#86

Post by monsterix »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #83
monsterix wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please 'know' before taking sides. It's easy to comment, and opine, than to know. Here are some insights from Wikipedia: US has had the highest incarceration rate in past decade [1]. Why so? Does it mean more percentage of citizens are lately turning into what one would qualify as a criminal, a thief or a murderer? Or otherwise. Quoting from Wikipedia: A. "The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of…

This is totally irrelevant to what I said.

Yeah actually the relevant line got weeded out as I progressed with editing, research and more editing. While suggesting to 'know', I got to know it myself too.

Re: Prosecutor pursuing Aaron Swartz linked to suicide of another hacker

#87

Post by pdonis »

One factoid in the article about Aaron Swartz's case confuses me:

"Though JSTOR decided not to press charges – and even urged the US government to drop the case – MIT went ahead with a civil suit."

First I've heard of a civil suit by MIT against Swartz. Has anyone seen anything corroborating this?

Re: Prosecutor pursuing Aaron Swartz linked to suicide of another hacker

#88

Post by mistercow »

downandout wrote: post #48

The reality is that it is quite rare for a federal defendant to kill themselves. To have 2 of them (that we know about) stemming from prosecutions by one individual, I would have to say, is pretty remarkable. While it could just be a coincidence, the one common denominator in these two statistically rare incidents is Stephen Heymann. We'll just call him "Suicide Steve". On a somewhat related note, the callousness of…

>To have 2 of them (that we know about) stemming from prosecutions by one individual, I would have to say, is pretty remarkable. While it could just be a coincidence, the one common denominator in these two statistically rare incidents is Stephen Heymann.

Careful. You are subtly reusing evidence in an invalid way.

The reason that Heymann's record is under examination in the first place is that Swartz committed suicide while Heymann was prosecuting him. That's the observation that generates the hypothesis "Heymann is more aggressive than the average prosecutor, and this leads to an increase in suicides". So then we test that hypothesis by looking at Heymann's record and seeing if we find more suicides.

So far so good, but what we can't do is then reuse Swartz's suicide to support that hypothesis. Appropriately enough, this is an example of the prosecutor's fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor%27s_fallacy). The key is that we have to keep an eye on the context of the original hypothesis. If someone had looked at Heymann's methods and said "Wow, that's going to lead to people killing themselves", and then looked into his record and said "Willikers! Get a load of this body count!", then they'd be right to count both Swartz' and James' suicides.

But that's not how we got here, so the question has to be "Is the number of suicidal defendants prosecuted by Heymann — other than Swartz — significantly out of line with expectations?"

And that number is one. To answer the question would require some data. I've tried gathering data from different angles, but I'm not sure it's out there. Maybe someone else can take a whack at it.

Re: Prosecutor pursuing Aaron Swartz linked to suicide of another hacker

#89

Post by snowwrestler »

sk5t wrote: post #85
snowwrestler wrote: post #84

Only one person is responsible for a suicide--the person who committed suicide. This realization is a very important part of the healing process for those left behind. Otherwise it's possible to torture oneself thinking "if only I'd done more." Logically, if it's partially Steve Heymann's fault, it could also partially be the fault of those close to Aaron who did not sufficiently help him. Or at least, there is a dan…

This seems like a dangerous way to understand any harmful act. It may be inconvenient that other views trouble the healing process, but wishing doesn't make it so. Suppose one were to say, "Only one person is responsible for a DUI fatality--the driver. Otherwise it's possible for the bartender to torture himself thinking 'if only I'd cut him off two hours ago.'"

The driver is the only person responsible for a DUI, unless they were somehow forced into driving against their will.

Are you seriously proposing that we hold bartenders responsible for the actions of drunk people?

Re: Prosecutor pursuing Aaron Swartz linked to suicide of another hacker

#90

Post by Cushman »

mistercow wrote: post #88
downandout wrote: post #48

The reality is that it is quite rare for a federal defendant to kill themselves. To have 2 of them (that we know about) stemming from prosecutions by one individual, I would have to say, is pretty remarkable. While it could just be a coincidence, the one common denominator in these two statistically rare incidents is Stephen Heymann. We'll just call him "Suicide Steve". On a somewhat related note, the callousness of…

>To have 2 of them (that we know about) stemming from prosecutions by one individual, I would have to say, is pretty remarkable. While it could just be a coincidence, the one common denominator in these two statistically rare incidents is Stephen Heymann. Careful. You are subtly reusing evidence in an invalid way. The reason that Heymann's record is under examination in the first place is that Swartz committed suicid…

The point of the prosecutor's fallacy isn't that you should ignore evidence, it's that you must include all the evidence in calculations of probability. Swartz' suicide is inductive evidence for the hypothesis "Steve Heymann caused Jonathan James' suicide", you can't just ignore it.
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