Steve Heymann Should Be Fired

The death of Aaron Swartz is a loss to his family, his friends, and to society. The focus on the prosecutors, however, makes me uneasy. I can support a review of the conduct of the prosecutors but I can't call for their firing. From what I have read, the conduct of the prosecutors was close to standard procedure. If it was wrong of the prosecutors to make an example out of Aaron, it is equally wrong to make an example of the prosecutors. This should not be about revenge although such feelings are understandable. However, it is the whole judicial system that needs review (and reform).

The focus on the prosecutors takes the focus away from other discussion we should be having such as the following.

Why should these cases linger for so long?

Why is our justice system so dependent on plea bargaining?

Why can't we create have a hacker legal defense fund that would keep cases like this from bankrupting defendants?

Why should expert legal advice be only available to those who can afford it?

What should we tell a friend who is planning to commit a crime on behalf of a cause?

Was Aaron's cause worth anyone's life? This should be a question for everyone, not just prosecutors.

Is any middle ground possible in the conflict between rights holders and advocates of free information?

A very small practical result is that it could get a mention in half a sentence on CNN and Faux News ("... petition with 25,000 signatures ..."), sewing a sliver of doubt in public sub-consciousness.

Okay. First of all, I am not afraid of effective collective action. It's right there in what I wrote: I gave what I consider a shining example of powerful, positive effective collective action: the American Civil Rights Movement. (This documentary is excellent: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/ - I use it as point of reference to reflect on modern political activism.)

Secondly, I am actually not saying that I think that, within a week or two, people will be calling for actual blood/lynching. What I'm trying to do is flesh out my sense of a trend which, though driven by the impatience and quick mouse-fingers of internet-users, is a lot slower than that. I think the Aaron Swartz hullabaloo will peter out. But I have noticed a gradual, albeit strong, trend of increasing pressure being wielded by the great undifferentiated masses of the internet. Anonymous. We The People. KONY. Avaaz. These are all facets, I reckon, of the same trend: slowly, a structure is forming which can link together and focus the emotion of the many against the few. Anonymous' Low Orbit Ion Cannon is not a bad example. Anonymous users can join together to attack prominent, exposed individuals or groups. Governments, celebrities, corporations, whatever. The balance of power is stark: targets have little recourse - isolating one individual or another from the crowd is practically useless.

Now, because LOIC is a pretty dramatic example, I should be clear of something: I am not saying that this trend is categorically a bad thing. But I do think it has the potential for evil - not now, but later. You say that what is happening is of little "real" consequence - I would argue that perhaps now that is true (though should be willingly sacrifice a man's career to the appetites of the crowd if he is innocent?), but what about next year, or the next? I am not stupid. I know that there is a buffer between these petitions and the government. That won't disappear overnight. But people are working hard to develop, all the time, these tools of "direct democracy." SOPA was stopped. Action has been effective, and governments do seem in some ways relatively impotent, lacking the technological know-how, focus, flexibility and downright cunning that can be mustered by engaged citizens.

Again, I should be clear: I'm not imagining some cartoonish image of crowds marching through the streets with pitchforks. However this manifests it will suit the manner and technologies of this time.

Also, I'm not defending the status quo. Really. I haven't considered the flipside to these arguments in depth, but it involves something along the lines of the ability of large organisations to negotiate agreements with other large organisations, to engage the bureaucratic infrastructure of society, and develop and deploy large-scale surveillance technologies. I'm not sure how these forces balance up, or how they will pan out, or who's good and who's bad, or who I think should win. I'm mostly playing with ideas at the moment.

Anyway, in this corner of the web, we spend a lot of time worrying about democracy and the rights of the people, standing on soap boxes and shouting about injustice - but what if we're part of a game, what if we're not as pure as we make ourselves out to be? The concept that our actions might be aggressive, confrontational, threatening, is counter-intuitive - a lot of what I'm saying is counter-intuitive (which is why I think people here are reacting so mixedly to it) - but what if this is our blind spot? What if we are the aggressors here - or what if we are the force growing into the role of aggressor/oppressor? What if governments and corporations turn out to be weak before the anger of the crowd?

Well. I don't know, but I think it's interesting to consider. I'm not afraid of effective collective action. But I am opposed to poorly-thought-through collective action. 1) because it tends to flop (Occupy) 2) because it needs to grasp for easy enemies and 3) because it can be destructive. I see that potential today in modern internet behaviour. Maybe tomorrow I might see another side. Who knows.

Above all: I like to know where the crowd is heading before I join in the rush. It seems difficult to get a coherent answer from a lot of these modern cause célèbres.

I'm willing to bet he would care if he got fired.

> Losing your job versus facing decades in prison are orders of magnitude apart

Swartz was not facing decades in prison. He faced charges whose maximum sentences added together reached several decades, but it was all but impossible to actually receive that kind of sentence.

First, the Federal sentencing guidelines scale the sentence based on the severity of the particular instance of the crime. Swartz's was low on the scale for the various crimes he was charged with.

Second, some crimes are grouped. You can be charged with several crimes from a group, but you are only sentenced for the one in the group with the longest sentence. I believe this was the case with the Swartz charges.

PS: if PG ever decides to monetize HN, and interesting approach would be a "show me who down voted" button that costs $1 to use. I'd pay $1 to see who down voted this.