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Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal
101–110 of 172 posts
Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal
#102Why is there not this type of outpouring of rage and internet hate the last few days for someone who is seriously being railroaded: Bradley Manning. This is a person who has been locked up into solitary for months now and is being treated very inhumanely. Is it because he hasn't written any Python libraries and isn't visible in Silicon Valley?
You are making a logical argument, but change doesn't come from logic. What you should change should come from logic, but the impetus -- the will -- comes from emotion. People need to be stirred up in order to act. That is human nature. And when the cause of that is a tragedy it breaks our hearts, but that is why we must work to make it so that this does not happen again. So argue that we should help Bradley Manning,…
I think this is describing exactly why I feel like a grumpy cynical jerk about this right now. The internet loves it causes. It loves to pontificate on forums and sign petitions to change things, just as long as these changes don't involve anything more than clicking buttons and typing things from laptops while sitting on the couch.
I'd rather people calmly review the facts about the people and things involved with the situation rather than do the standard internet mob thing and call for heads to roll and people to be fired. Wait to learn the details rather than rely on emotions before you get angry.
Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
The prosecutor's husband is attacking people online for stating the government's own position? The 35 year figure came from the prosecutors. If they didn't want it circulated, perhaps they shouldn't have trumpeted it to the media. Right here, in their own press release. http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2011/07/Swartz... "If convicted on these charges, SWARTZ faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed…
Except he wasn't facing 35 years in prison...If he wanted to take the charge he could have, but he was facing 6 months if he wanted to look out for his best interests. The comments here keep making it seem that he was going to realistically do 30+ years in prison which is obviously incorrect.
he wasn't accepting admitting to being a felon so it was very likely he was in fact going to get 35 years in prison for a TOS violation.
Also, the practice of "admit you're guilty, else go to prison for (life|35 years)" is a common practice of totalitarian states used to crush dissenters and activists.
Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
>it's a problem we'll never be able to solve if we're blinded by trying to exact vengeance on a prosecutor The two goals are not mutually exclusive. If she's fired that will help bring attention to prosecutorial abuse.
I'm pretty sure she can only be fired by Obama, but unfortunately I'm not confident "prosecutorial abuse" is a strong enough reason for him to do so.
There's also the issue that classifying Ortiz's handling of this case as "prosecutorial abuse" is a subjective opinion that there is a notable segment of the population that will see it as anything but.
Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was in the midst of changing the tense; I should have written it in emacs and then copied it into the form once I was happy with it. So it goes. I'm actually wondering whether a more considered phrasing would have done worse. As it is the main goal of putting the headline into Barack Obama's eyeballs has been reached, and Ms. Ortiz knows that her boss is making the political calculation of whether she is a liabilit…
Unfortunately this will come no where near close to the President's eyeballs. It will be reviewed and responded to by some low level staff group who has been tasked to wade thru all of the petitions (and nonsense like the Death Star) which get 25k votes.
From all accounts I've heard, he's pretty focused on the details. And the petitions site is one of the few direct feedback channels from the electorate to him. That said he is a busy man who will delegate the research to others. If he does decide that telling her to resign will get him in the good graces of an important constituency; things will probably happen rather quickly.
Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
The worst year for massacres in the US was 1929 and worst occurred in 1927 (45 dead by explosive). Citation needed. 2,996 people died in the September 11 hijacking, including the 19 hijackers. That is the worst massacre that I'm aware of in US history. If you just want domestic violence, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing killed 167 people in 1995. Prohibition era violence may have created more massac…
September 11 and Oklahoma are listed in a different category (terrorism). I guess I should have used the matching terminology better and said "mass shooting". Prohibition era violence had a whole lot of bystanders killed. 1929 had the most in number according to Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has done a lot of research in the area. He also point out that although there was a rise in mass sh…
The Bath School disaster, which you referred to, may have had a gun involved, but was very much not a mass shooting.
There may have been a decline in mass shootings since 2000, but in the last several years there has been a cluster. Whether this is an anomaly or a trend is too early to tell.
I agree that Prohibition era violence had a whole lot of bystanders killed. But compared to the number of gangsters killed, the proportion was much lower than the massacres that I pointed to. For example in 9/11, hijackers and armed military personnel were under 2.5% of the fatalities.
Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal
#107Though I'd like to see Oritz fired, and think she's deserving of it, the effort to get her fired is blinding us to a bigger problem and a proper solution. The system was broken long before Oritz and Swartz, but it wasn't until it affected someone we like that we noticed. But we're in a bubble, and the vast majority of Americans do not care who Aaron Swartz is, will not be affected by this tragedy like we were, and in…
Crowdsourcing the destruction of the career of an out-of-control prosecutor is a repeatable process, and, as Internet forums gain mass, a process that will get easier to apply. In other words, this is the public perception of crime on the move. You can see this in other areas of discourse, like cannabis legalization, getting rid of red light cameras that have been shown to increase collisions, etc.
Crowds are fickle and fatigue easily. We become indifferent to things which previously affronted us. It is a natural coping mechanism to prevent the monopolization of our limited attention spans.
For example, gun violence has been a constant thing in the US. The crowds get tired of hearing about it and the drive for legislation goes no where. However, when something out of the "ordinary" happens, such as the grievous Newtown murders, the attention of the crowd has been once again achieved. Politicians know this and the ones pushing legislation know they need to act fast before fatigue and indifference kick in, and the ones against the legislation know it's a waiting game.
My point is that the process of crowds demanding the removal of an out of control prosecutor isn't going to get easier (aka more likely to happen) just because it happened this time.
We have a limited window to act based on the attention of the crowd that has resulted form Aaron's suicide. I believe when people say something to the effect of "your missing the point" when removing a specific prosecutor, they are trying to get this point across.
In our limited window of action, we can remove someone specific, or find away to address the more general problem of prosecutorial overreach while we still have the mic. Ideally that more general approach would not depend on the continual outrage of the crowds.
Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal
#108Though I'd like to see Oritz fired, and think she's deserving of it, the effort to get her fired is blinding us to a bigger problem and a proper solution. The system was broken long before Oritz and Swartz, but it wasn't until it affected someone we like that we noticed. But we're in a bubble, and the vast majority of Americans do not care who Aaron Swartz is, will not be affected by this tragedy like we were, and in…
Crowdsourcing the destruction of the career of an out-of-control prosecutor is a repeatable process, and, as Internet forums gain mass, a process that will get easier to apply. In other words, this is the public perception of crime on the move. You can see this in other areas of discourse, like cannabis legalization, getting rid of red light cameras that have been shown to increase collisions, etc.
When I read statements like this, I am reminded why it's a good idea that we are a representative democracy, and not a direct one.
Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
September 11 and Oklahoma are listed in a different category (terrorism). I guess I should have used the matching terminology better and said "mass shooting". Prohibition era violence had a whole lot of bystanders killed. 1929 had the most in number according to Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has done a lot of research in the area. He also point out that although there was a rise in mass sh…
The Bath School disaster, which you referred to, may have had a gun involved, but was very much not a mass shooting. There may have been a decline in mass shootings since 2000, but in the last several years there has been a cluster. Whether this is an anomaly or a trend is too early to tell. I agree that Prohibition era violence had a whole lot of bystanders killed. But compared to the number of gangsters killed, the…
Yeah, I got caught in and edit to point out that the highest school killing was not a gun incident. The highest mass shooting at a school was Virginia Tech.
My point, is that gun violence is not increasing, instead it is decreasing despite the media attention. If the media and people would look at actual risk factors in our world, we would be a lot better off. Mental illness is such a thing.
Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are making a logical argument, but change doesn't come from logic. What you should change should come from logic, but the impetus -- the will -- comes from emotion. People need to be stirred up in order to act. That is human nature. And when the cause of that is a tragedy it breaks our hearts, but that is why we must work to make it so that this does not happen again. So argue that we should help Bradley Manning,…
I think this is describing exactly why I feel like a grumpy cynical jerk about this right now. The internet loves it causes. It loves to pontificate on forums and sign petitions to change things, just as long as these changes don't involve anything more than clicking buttons and typing things from laptops while sitting on the couch. I'd rather people calmly review the facts about the people and things involved with t…
I think people pretty well understand the facts here. We have understood them for a long time. Current law makes everyone a criminal. Prosecutors threaten young people with excessive sentences to coerce them into plea bargains. None of this is new information. What we have lacked before is the will to do what is necessary to fix it.
And if you have an idea how to do that, let's hear it. Because "heads will roll" is not wholly without merit in these situations, but neither is it inherently the best possible solution. So if you can suggest something better then let's hear it.