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Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death

bostonmagazine.com

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Re: Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death

#101

Post by sneak »

suprgeek wrote: post #35

MIT Played a key role in Aaron's Death: http://gothamist.com/2013/01/15/aaron_swartzs_lawyer_mit_ref... They refused to sign-off on any deal that did not involve Jail time. This was THE one point that weighed more on his mind than any else per the recorded statements of his partner. MIT's pig-headedness in this aspect really destroyed any respect I had for that institution. JSTOR made a much more reasoned statement h…

> They refused to sign-off on any deal that did not involve Jail time.

It's not up to the victim how the perp gets prosecuted. It has absolutely nothing to do with them - it is up to the prosecutor alone.

Re: Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death

#102

Post by DanBC »

Karunamon wrote: post #76
res0nat0r wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the US should stop prosecuting crimes if there is a worry that person might be mentally unstable?

We already factor mental stability into both sentencing and convictions.

I find that hard to believe. Many prison systems are now the largest providers of mental health services in their various states because so many people with mental illness are imprisoned.

Re: Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death

#103

Post by ajays »

pdonis wrote: post #67
rscale wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also find the sentence Aaron faced to be excessive. For additional context, David Headley received a 35 year sentence for his active participation in the Mumbai bombings which killed 160 people.[1] The median sentence for murder and non-negligent manslaughter in the US (effective 2000) is 24 years, 3 months.[2] I can't help but find Aaron's prospective punishment to be far more abhorrent than his crimes. It continu…

It continues to sadden me that MIT used their influence in such a hurtful manner. I don't think this is a fair description; it would be fairer to say that MIT failed to use its influence in a helpful manner. (Even then I'm not sure it would have made a difference; it seems to me that the prosecutors were intent on "getting" Swartz and weren't listening to reasonable arguments for backing off.)

"Evil triumphs when good people do nothing"

Re: Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death

#104

Post by bumbledraven »

[U.S. Attorney Stephen] Heymann subpoenaed Aaron’s girlfriend, Quinn Norton, to give grand jury testimony. That was bad enough, but even before the jury convened, Norton agreed to meet with Heymann—against Aaron’s pleas. Norton would say later that she thought she could talk Heymann into dropping the prosecution. Instead, he grilled her until he had what he needed: Norton mentioned that Aaron had coauthored the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto (remarkably, the prosecution had failed to read through the blog posts of the Internet activist they had intended to charge). For Heymann, this was a key piece of evidence: It established a motive.

I never realized Norton agreed to talk with the prosecution against Aaron's wishes.

Re: Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death

#105

Post by thaumaturgy »

vex wrote: post #2

Suicide is completely a personal choice. MIT had no reason to try and defend an outsider who hijacked part of their network, and trying to make them seem like they caused him to hang himself smacks of tunnel vision. It's a natural response to a suicide; we try and search for something to blame. But unless you argue that MIT should have known Aaron was mentally unstable, saying MIT "caused" him to kill himself is illo…

I think I can speak a little bit on the subject of suicide, since both of my parents have made suicide attempts recently, and since I also struggle with depression and, although I'm currently too stubborn to seriously consider something like suicide, I can tell you it does seem to be an attractive option some days.

Suicide is not completely a personal choice. Part of it is a problem with mental wiring, yes, but a significant part of it is also environmental. Suicide is far more prevalent among people who view themselves to be in hopeless situations, whether financial or otherwise.

I hate to resort to analogy, since everyone always then argues the analogy instead of the subject it's trying to describe, but if you have an engine that redlines at 5,000 rpm and you redline it for a while and it self-destructs, you don't turn around then and say, "well, that wasn't the driver's fault, that was completely the engine's fault."

Aaron made the sad decision to take his own life. Ultimately, yes, he made that decision and nobody else did. But that doesn't mean that there isn't some responsibility to go 'round. He made that decision because of the future he believed he was facing, because of the situation he believed he was in.

Also, the entire point of this article was that MIT did have at least one good reason to defend Aaron: self-interest. He was as much a symbol of what people believed was a hacker ethos at MIT as anyone else of his generation. The message now is clear: hackers are not safe at MIT.

"Just following the rules" has never been a socially acceptable defense for bad behavior. Sometimes the rules are wrong, and the wonderful thing about humans -- when they choose to be human -- is that we have the ability to judge a situation and decide when to bend or even break the rules.

Re: Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death

#106

Post by codecrusade »

Whats disturbing is that law turned a blind eye to one of America's most promising young men- And No One- No One cared to do a thing about this. History will remember this as a shameful moment when the deprived world lost a messiah when the rich and influential were busy playing poker

Re: Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death

#107

Post by acjohnson55 »

sneak wrote: post #101
suprgeek wrote: post #35

MIT Played a key role in Aaron's Death: http://gothamist.com/2013/01/15/aaron_swartzs_lawyer_mit_ref... They refused to sign-off on any deal that did not involve Jail time. This was THE one point that weighed more on his mind than any else per the recorded statements of his partner. MIT's pig-headedness in this aspect really destroyed any respect I had for that institution. JSTOR made a much more reasoned statement h…

> They refused to sign-off on any deal that did not involve Jail time. It's not up to the victim how the perp gets prosecuted. It has absolutely nothing to do with them - it is up to the prosecutor alone.

That's not necessarily true. The victim quite often has a strong say in whether the prosecution presses forward with charges or not. I can't say whether that prerogative would have applied in this case or not though.

Re: Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death

#108

Post by chmike »

mentalhealth wrote: post #3
vex wrote: post #2

Suicide is completely a personal choice. MIT had no reason to try and defend an outsider who hijacked part of their network, and trying to make them seem like they caused him to hang himself smacks of tunnel vision. It's a natural response to a suicide; we try and search for something to blame. But unless you argue that MIT should have known Aaron was mentally unstable, saying MIT "caused" him to kill himself is illo…

A desire to kill oneself is a diagnosis of mental instability.

This is a blunt claim I can't agree with. You totally ignore the context. I know a man who suicide himeself because he was about to lose a trial and it would mean he would have lost his house to pay the huge fine. He was old and to save his wife and child of this misery he commited suicide.

From his perspective it was a rational decision because he didn't see any better one. There is absolutely not mental instability in play here.

My feeling is that most people who commit suicide do it because they decided it on a rational basis. Some people commit suicide because they want to stop a pain they feel and in their view will apparently last forever or will get worse. I.e cancer, someone has to spend the rest of his life in a bed after an accident ... People can also commit suicide as a sacrifice to save others. But I guess you were not talking of these types of suicide.

Suicide due to mental instability is probably just a small fraction of all suicide.

Your claim is typical from someone who didn't took the time and made the effort to understand what can lead someone fully rational to suicide. A rational thinking compares the cost and benefit of dying or living. According to some context a perfectly sain person may rationnaly conclude that commiting suicide is the best choice.

The rational thinking they had from their perspective and knowledge may have been wrong, but this is not to be confused with mental instability.

Re: Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death

#109

Post by simpleigh »

atmosx wrote: post #93
pdonis wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but that's failing to use its influence helpfully; it's not the same as using influence hurtfully.

No, in this case it's the same. MIT is not average Joe, it's one of the top Universities in the world. I believe people on the board understand repercussions of taking and not taking action and the responsibility that comes along and if they don't they are not suited for the position.

I've always thought it a nice feature of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (bear with me here...) that the general confession covers "those things which we ought to have done" before mentioning "those things which we ought not to have done".

All that is required for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.

Re: Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death

#110

Post by tzs »

Several comments have talked about 35 year or longer potential sentences.

Those big numbers come from simply taking the maximum possible sentence that can ever be given out for each charge, and adding them all up.

There are two things that make that unrealistic in most cases. First, the defendant is almost always charged with several similar or related crimes that have mostly the same elements. If convicted on more than one charge from such a group, they are only sentenced for one of the convictions.

Second, the sentence takes into account the severity of the particular acts that constitute the crime, and the prior criminal record of the defendant. To get the maximum possible sentence you'd need to have gone way beyond what ordinary violators of that particular law usually do, and you'd have to have a serious criminal history.

What Swartz was actually facing if he want to trial and was convicted was something ranging from probation to a few years, depending on just how much damage the court decided he caused.

If he took the plea the prosecutor was offering, he was facing up to 6 months.

Details with citations on the above are available at [1] and [2].

In the dozens of discussions of the Swartz case we've had in the last year here, the 35 year or 50 year myth has been repeatedly busted. Yet it keeps coming up in each new discussion--often from people who were in some of the previous discussions! Why is it so persistent?

[1] http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/

[2] http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains...

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