111–120 of 300 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These two links will clear up a lot of misconceptions you seem to have about this case. http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains...
EDIT: found the second article, comment redundant.
> I must, however, make clear that this office’s conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. That's why you assign investigations to independent entities, and that's why butchers aren't allowed to do their own health inspection. Whether it was appropriate or not is not for Carmen Ortiz to say. "The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his ac…
Two. People use leverage. They may or may not use it rightly but they do use it. Anyone who cannot set their opinion of the justice of that to one side, and get on to the business of the contest at hand, is not cut out for politics. Such people enter these contests at a great disadvantage and risk getting hurt.
If you cannot fight with your head then you really should not fight at all. You will very likely lose. You might get hurt, and you might get hurt badly. Politics ain't beanbag.
Three. If you think an attorney able to rise to the position US Attorney will be caught in a "falsifiable claim" on a matter of this prominence then you simply do not understand what you are talking about.
> I must, however, make clear that this office’s conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. That's why you assign investigations to independent entities, and that's why butchers aren't allowed to do their own health inspection. Whether it was appropriate or not is not for Carmen Ortiz to say. "The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his ac…
"...did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases." Scapegoating Congress now, she is truly shameless in invoking the Nuremberg Defense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This 35 year (or 50 year) thing mentioned in many blogs might be questionable. It's not just in blogs, it is also in DOJ press releases attributed to Carmen Ortiz, linked elsewhere in this thread.
I wonder where Ars Technica gets their information from... "If convicted on all charges, he could have spent more than 50 years in prison." http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/internet-pioneer-...
Prosecutors (and lawyers in general) are all about drama and story. Everything is amplified. Reality is distorted. It's worse than cable television. Ortiz framed a brilliant, selfless young man as a criminal who should be locked up behind bars. She and others inflicted mental torture on him until he couldn't bear to live any longer. She is no doubt a wordsmith, but she is not a nice person, no matter what the gullibl…
>Ortiz framed a brilliant, selfless young man as a criminal who should be locked up behind bars. Law is about drama? There's plenty of drama and hyperbole in your post. He broke the law. Which means he is a criminal. If you think the laws are retarded, then how you protest that is your prerogative. If you choose to protest by blatantly and purposely breaking the law, unless you are 99.999% certain that an obvious int…
He allegedly broke the law. According to network security expert Alex Stamos, an expert witness in the case, the worst thing you can say about Aaron's actions is that they were "inconsiderate", not criminal.
http://io9.com/5975592/aaron-swartz-died-innocent-++-here-is...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not appropriate because Ortiz is not accused of war crimes.
It is actually, because unlikely though the name may seem to you the Nuremberg defense is actually a lot older than WorldWar II and was historically invoked for lots of other things besides war crimes. The fact that during the Nuremberg trials it was used so frequently that it got named because of them does not detract from this. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can we please not Godwin this?
He's not Godwinning this at all. Claiming superior orders is exactly what the Nuremberg defense was all about, it is simply an accurate association. Just because something happened in relation to WWII does not automatically mean that any reference to it invokes Godwin's law, that's for inappropriate comparisons. This one is entirely appropriate as far as I can see.
Before this statement was issued, I didn't think we should be chasing them down to make an example of them[1]. Now that she is dishonest and trying to brush everything aside as 'business as usual', I am changing my stance. She needs to go. Not to make an example of her, but because we should not tolerate such dishonesty and smugness in our federal court system. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5053980
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If Aaron had distributed them he might have damaged around a thousand different institutions involved in an important segment of the knowledge and innovation industry" I know there is his manifesto from a couple of years ago but we can't be sure what he was going to do with them.
Do you have a link to that?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ortiz today: and they recognized that his conduct – while a violation of the law – did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases. Ortiz on 9/2012, adding 9 counts to the conduct that we learn "did not warrant...severe punishment": http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/aaron-swartz-felony... Federal prosectors added nine new felony cou…
> outright termination. Can we change that to 'being fired'.
There are hundreds of prosecutors in the US who routinely - even though against predominantly non-white and non-prominent defendants - seek much harsher sentences for much lesser "crimes", often with much more dubious evidence, and much lower chances for defendants to ever have their personal situation considered in a public forum like this one.
The need to "start somewhere" doesn't exempt you from seeing things in proportion. ("Proportion" with regards to Ortiz. Aaron's death must not enter equations or comparisons. It's absolutely out of proportion.)