Aaron Swartz died three years ago today • Hacker News Board

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#111

Post by id » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 3:58 AM UTC

mahranch wrote: post #32

jason_slack wrote: post #15

I just watched "The Internets Own Boy" again last night. It amazes me what our justice system can do to people and not be held responsible. Had I done the same thing to Aaron, I'd have been given lethal injection by now.

> It amazes me what our justice system can do to people and not be held responsible. Just to play devil's advocate here (and I understand this goes against prevailing opinion), but he did break the law. That much isn't in dispute, they had a video of him entering the MIT network closet. And he didn't commit misdemeanors, he committed a half dozen felonies (actually more, but the prosecution dropped a few of them). Th…

Yes, he did commit crimes.

> a meager 6 months in a low-security prison

> They were going to go extremely light on him

6 months in any prison and having a criminal record for the rest of your life is extremely harsh and cruel - and unnecessarily so.

Going light on him would have meant dropping all charges.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#112

Post by gnaritas » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 4:10 AM UTC

qaq wrote: post #108

gnaritas wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a prosecutor's job to worry about the mental state of a defendant. It's their job to prosecute the case if the evidence is there, and it was. The defense can worry about the defendants state of mind, that's part of their job. This prosecutor was overzealous in the charges being made, but there's no doubt they had a strong case against him and he was guilty of a felony.

I think it's just in sharp contrast of how say top officers of major banks that laundered 378.4bn USD in drug money were treated (Wachovia, Wells Fargo ...).

I agree, but going after wealthy people is much harder than going after a college kid; that's a whole issue all its own.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#113

Post by gnaritas » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 4:17 AM UTC

igravious wrote: post #98

gnaritas wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't say that it was wilful civil disobedience and then say that he went about it the wrong way, you contradict yourself as that's kind of the definition of civil disobedience. I didn't mean "morally" wrong, I mean wrong approach. That's not contradictory at all; civil disobedience is not always the correct way to go about change. Sometimes it is, like when its done en-masse; going it alone, wrong approach. >…

> Sometimes it is, like when its done en-masse; going it alone, wrong approach. Perhaps, perhaps not. There's certainly safety in numbers. But this issue is not a huge social issue like, say, nationalist causes or other political issues. This is a kind of geeky issue that only a small fraction of the population gets but that everybody should care about. Also the law-breaking is doing no-one any physical harm. Nobody…

Hey, I agree with Aaron's position that the data should be freely accessible, so no need to sell me on that or the fact it was non-violent, that's not in contention.

> Stealing/theft sounds worse than infringement.

It's not relevant because this conversation isn't about how it sounds, it's about who's to blame for his death. None of which has anything to do with what the particular charges were.

> I just think that Aaron was justified in what he did and I admire him for what he did. There are times for emailing and times for plugging in a network cable, Aaron chose the cable and I don't think that was the wrong approach even though it ended tragically.

And that's your right, personally I admire the principles, but his approach was naive and imho not worth admiration; his suicide tragic and also not worth admiration. It was the wrong approach because a bad outcome for Aaron was predictable from the onset that led to a needless suicide of a very talented individual. You can't flagrantly commit federal crimes and think jail isn't an option, regardless of the merits of those laws.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#114

Post by raldi » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 4:19 AM UTC

id wrote: post #109

raldi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For downloading academic papers, he was facing [...] You left out the part where he snuck into a server closet and tampered with the network equipment. Among other things, that's burglary.

> that's burglary No, it's not.

"Burglary is typically defined as the unlawful entry into almost any structure (not just a home or business) with the intent to commit any crime inside (not just theft/larceny). No physical breaking and entering is required; the offender may simply trespass through an open door."

http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/burglary-overvi...

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#115

Post by warfangle » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 4:24 AM UTC

harryh wrote: post #81

quanticle wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core principle of the US system of government (and of the British system that precedes it) is that no single person should have absolute power in a criminal trial. Power should be subject to checks and balances, even if those checks and balances are cursory in 95% of cases. Put another way, the US criminal justice system is the equivalent of a software development process where the vast majority of changes go in…

That's wrong. The defendant and their lawyer are doing a code review.

Most people arrested have to use a public defender.

Public defenders have something like less than five minutes to even review the case file before going in front of the judge.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#116

Post by raldi » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 4:29 AM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #72

raldi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For downloading academic papers, he was facing [...] You left out the part where he snuck into a server closet and tampered with the network equipment. Among other things, that's burglary.

> Among other things, that's burglary. And locking away scientific papers of research that was funded with public money behind paywalls is burglary of the public.

I can't imagine a way that's even figuratively true. The crime of burglary is about being somewhere that you're not supposed to; perhaps you meant to say it's like larceny of the public. But even then, it's a very tenuous connection you're trying to draw.

These companies were not taking anything away from the public; they made the effort to digitize, process, and catalog documents, which is no small task. And they set up servers to host these documents and make them searchable. If you feel they're asking too much money for these efforts, you're welcome to simply pretend they don't exist, and replicate their work yourself. They did nothing to make that task harder.

Now, if the companies destroyed the original public records or otherwise placed new locks around them that hadn't existed beforehand, then yes, your metaphor, while still hand-wavy, would at least hold water. But of course nothing like that actually happened here.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#117

Post by raldi » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 4:31 AM UTC

quanticle wrote: post #73

raldi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For downloading academic papers, he was facing [...] You left out the part where he snuck into a server closet and tampered with the network equipment. Among other things, that's burglary.

Which just proves my point. The penalty he would have faced for burglary would have been less, by far, than the penalty he faced for violating the CFAA.

The penalty for burglary in Massachusetts is up to 20 years ... a first-time offender might get five years: http://www.burglarylaws.com/massachusetts/

Aaron was offered a plea bargain of six months.

Also, you're still glossing over the part where he tampered with MIT's network infrastructure.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#118

Post by raldi » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 4:37 AM UTC

ericd wrote: post #106

raldi wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For downloading academic papers, he was facing [...] You left out the part where he snuck into a server closet and tampered with the network equipment. Among other things, that's burglary.

I've heard stories from my days at MIT of people doing much worse things in server closets. The MIT community's view on these things is vastly different from the federal government's, and there's a large and shocking disconnect when those laws are applied to what's normally fairly accepted (if not explicitly, then implicitly condoned) behavior in the community.

This wasn't implicitly or explicitly condoned. MIT had detected what Aaron was doing, and deployed countermeasures. Aaron defeated those countermeasures; MIT deployed tougher ones, and Aaron escalated again by breaking into the server closet and patching his laptop directly into the network switch, knowing it was the only way to bypass the considerable efforts MIT was making to protect itself.

This was no, "Oops, I didn't realize you minded!" situation. Aaron was fully aware that MIT didn't approve of what he was doing, and he didn't care, and was actively battling to do what he pleased anyway.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#119

Post by ryanlol » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 4:42 AM UTC

quanticle wrote: post #49

mahranch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It amazes me what our justice system can do to people and not be held responsible. Just to play devil's advocate here (and I understand this goes against prevailing opinion), but he did break the law. That much isn't in dispute, they had a video of him entering the MIT network closet. And he didn't commit misdemeanors, he committed a half dozen felonies (actually more, but the prosecution dropped a few of them). Th…

>Just to play devil's advocate here (and I understand this goes against prevailing opinion), but he did break the law. He absolutely did break the law. I, personally don't dispute that, nor do I think that that's a controversial fact here. The trouble that I and many other commenters here have with what happened to Aaron Swartz is the gross disproportionality of the punishment he was facing. For downloading academic…

> he was facing a punishment that could have gone to literally millions of dollars in fines and up to 35 years in prison.

This is really not how the court system works.

Also, by killing himself before being sentenced he kind of ruined that argument anyway.

Re: Aaron Swartz died three years ago today

#120

Post by nickpsecurity » Tue, Jan 12, 2016, 4:45 AM UTC

mason240 wrote: post #92

mindslight wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly shows the proliferation of ridiculous criminal laws. How many of these "99.9 percent" of "just" cases are simply just persecuting someone for an invented victimless "crime"? If the questionable legality of walking across an empty street doesn't perfectly illustrate how our minds have been warped by a draconian sense of "justice", I don't know what could.

You stepping in front of my car, going through my windshield, and hurting me, is not victimless.

No, jaywalking just means you walked across the road where it wasn't allowed. The road can be empty, with a low speed limit, and enough distance to safely cross without any car getting to you. That's pretty much when I run across the road. I also find intersections are more unpredictable in less-dense, areas than crossing about 20-30 yds away from it. Crash data supports my point about intersections.

So, safety risk is low and I'm a criminal anyway. How to not be a criminal? Stop traffic and reduce others' productivity using the crossing lights. What a choice... So, I just kneel down, keep looking back and forth, wait for traffic to be nonexistent, and then sprint across the road far from intersection. Has benefit of conveying to cops watching that I was playing it careful while saving everyone else a stop. Tested it in front of a few cops with success. :)