> 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-...
That's if he was found guilty and given the maximum sentence for all charges, which a lot of people seem to be missing.
> "At no time did this office ever seek – or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek – maximum penalties under the law." http://watchdogblog.dallasnews.com/2013/01/read-the-full-cou... page 344 > Nothing in the wire fraud statute or the cases construing it provides constitutionally adequate notice that manipulating IP addresses, spoofing MAC addresses, and gaining access to a free electronic communi…
The statement says as much: "Ultimately, any sentence imposed would have been up to the judge". However, it's a little bit of a stretch to say that the prosecutors were seeking 30 years from the statement (there may be other statements that give information to the contrary).
The prosecutors piled charge upon charge. If they didn't want 30 years, why pile on so much? If they wanted 6 months, they could have stuck with a charge whose sentencing wasn't so extreme.
While it is nice that she is passing blame to Congress, if it were only a "6 month low security setting" being discussed, why wouldn't Aaron have been told of this? Why the additional and ultimately 13 felony charges when he was MOST concerned with not being labled a felon. Why hold that 50 year sentence above his head with no HOPE in his own mind because he was left in the dark. "As a parent and sister", would you w…
"If it were only a '6 month low security setting' being discussed, why wouldn't Aaron have been told of this?"
He was told. If you can even imagine that he wasn't, you need better news sources. This kind of anti-reality nonsense sounds an awful lot like Tea Party conspiracy crap. To effectively critique the law, everyone needs to learn how it works.
> That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct – a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. While at the same time, his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation. That is terrible writing. Ms. Ortiz should be doubly ashamed.
Remarkable, isn't it? That doesn't even qualify as convoluted legalese; that's simply atrocious style.
2% of American men are currently in jail. Among black men 30 to 34, 7% are currently in jail. We just don't notice the vast injustice of our justice system until we think it might affect us. Attacking a single prosecutor who was doing her job and obeying the law won't change anything. Attacking the laws she enforced will.
"Doing her job and obeying the law" is not an excuse. "Doing her job" would have been to tell MIT (or whoever was responsible for this affair to end up on her desk) to go away. Even though I am aware that's not how becoming a "career prosecutor" in the US justice system works. Remains the fact that none of the bright minds that congregate under news.ycombinator.com seems to have the slightest idea how "attacking the…
It's essentially a problem of corruption. If you want to 'beat the system from within', for instance by joining the political stage or by becoming insanely wealthy through some corporate scheme so you can use your power to lobby you will end up being such an integrated part of the system that arguing against it will argue to a large extent against your own interest. That's why the situation persists. If you could convince large numbers of voters to vote their own interests instead of being tricked into voting based on inconsequential talking points you'd end up with Ralph Nader for president instead of a democrat or a republican. Fix that and you can fix everything else with relative ease. But that's a very hard problem to fix, if it is even possible. So you get individual fighting windmills at a level that they can relate to instead.
Who were his enemies? I'm interested. Do you think the US justice dept was acting as an organ of these would-be tamers?
Aaron was founder of Demand Progress, organization that actually fought laws like PIPA/SOPA, and many other things, and the laws didn't pass. This is a list of campaigns by Demand Progress: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_Progress#Campaigns
If you think US Attys prosecute people because they organize peacefully against copyright laws, you're living in a different world from the real one.
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…
At no time did this office ever seek – or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek – maximum penalties under the law. The absolute dishonesty of this statement has only further convinced me that firing this political appointee to prevent her from further harming citizens is the only appropriate action for our government to take.
You have any proof for your statement? This 35 year (or 50 year) thing mentioned in many blogs might be questionable. To be frank I feel myself a bit fooled by this information, reading yesterday that 6 month have been proposed to Swartz. When talking about things as serious as death, we seem to assume that every information is depicted really carefully, but this is far from being true.
The additional charges added later (after this press release) are the source of the 50 year estimate.
6 months was offered IF he agreed to plead guilty. If he went to trial, the prosecutors claim in the above press release that he faced 35 years; in private communications they have claimed they intended to press for 7 years.
There are exceptions, but most of the blog articles I have read on the subject have been extremely well sourced and well researched.
http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.... Downloading four million files, apparently. And if by breaking terms and services you mean illegally distributing protected content and threatening the business model of JSTOR then yes, I suppose that is true.
One, two, a million, four million, what difference does it actually make? The crime was violating the terms, it isn't relevant where the EOF bit was transmitted. If you made the same files half as big he would have "stolen" twice as many files, or twice as big then he would have done half the crime by your logic. He never distributed anything. No clue where you got that from? Additionally "threatening a business mode…
The alleged crime WAS NOT merely violating the terms of service of a website. People really need to study the law before critiquing it.