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Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

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Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#131

Post by nitrogen »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #58
jordanb wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ending her career would set a very clear precedent that other prosecutors would have no difficulty understanding. N'est pas?

Sure, but I don't know if it would move the copyright reform question along. Copyright is very broken in a number of ways but there is broad consensus in people I've talked to that it is especially broken with regards to public records and science research. In the best of all possible worlds Aaron would have been acquitted with a landmark decision that said "this use of copyright in rent seeking behavior on documents…

I think those calling for her resignation want to send a more general message about prosecutorial bullying, not just copyright policy.

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#132

Post by philwelch »

rosser wrote: post #126
philwelch wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ten thousand gears coming out of law school every year. It won't make a difference.

It won't make a difference. If engineers started getting sacked for breaking the build, you can be damned sure people would get very scrupulous about only committing working code, whether they're fresh out of school or greybeards. No, it's not a perfect analogy, but I don't think it needs to be.

If you did it every time, sure. That's called changing the system. Sacking one engineer for breaking one build and then going back to encouraging all the other engineers for making as many commits as possible, and giving raises and promotions to engineers who make the most commits, while sweeping all the other broken builds under the rug, would just be scapegoating.

Just like this is, actually.

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#133

Post by nitrogen »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #106
jowiar wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a useless message to send. People make mistakes. Period. A system which is not robust to people making mistakes is disastrously broken.

And people are expected to pay when they make mistakes. Period.

Better than just paying for mistakes is learning to prevent them the next time. If every major mistake anyone made was accompanied by an impartial failure analysis instead of finger pointing and scapegoating, society would advance much more quickly.

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#134

Post by joslin01 »

I don't understand the apologists' response to this.

"She's just doing her job" "She was only acting in what she believed to be right" "She's just good at her job."

Do I have to remind everyone here that we're actually just humans living amongst one another and the overarching rule of thumb is: Do No Harm?

Seriously. When it's someone in the private sector doing wrong, everyone wants to come out and demonize the person, but as soon as it's a person in the public office, it's as if we immediately start finding excuses for them.

Wake up. Someone's life was demolished because it seemed like a good case to pick up. "Stealing is illegal," she said. Well ok, so is marijuana possession, jay-walking, and smoking inside restaurants. I'm not too sure I can get behind any of these _morally_. Victimless crimes don't need a federal prosecutor coming in and slamming 30+ years at a person. It's just not right.

Like many others here, I want to know why she chose this case. Aaron single-handedly put an end to SOPA by gathering huge amounts of support. Imagine if he could have went on? Imagine the impact he could have made on this world? Does the government fear this? Does silencing him just as they are doing the Wikileaks founder ensure their own sick agenda?

Before we rush to Carmen Ortiz's defense, why don't we ask these questions, yea? Because it's not like we can't find another federal prosecutor -- perhaps one who has more moral integrity than to sentence a 26 yr old GENIUS to a life in prison.

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#135

Post by philwelch »

matthewrobertso wrote: post #129
philwelch wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It serves no one to make a single prosecutor the scapegoat for a whole system and a whole set of bad laws that need to be changed. There are a thousand prosecutors who are no better just waiting to take that job. We're going after Ortiz because we think it will satisfy our outrage and grief. That is exactly what I am worried about. I understand wanting to put a face on a tragedy like this, but we should be smarter th…

>It serves no one to make a single prosecutor the scapegoat for a whole system and a whole set of bad laws that need to be changed. It sends a message that we are not satisfied with the way she ran her office. >There are a thousand prosecutors who are no better just waiting to take that job. Then they better learn from Ortiz's failure or be removed by the same process. Eventually someone will figure out that this kin…

If you're removing anyone, remove Holder. Ortiz is just a fall guy. The entire DOJ is run this way, that's why Ortiz got the job in the first place. If Ortiz gets the sack, it will be as apologetically as possible, and her successor will be instructed to do the same damn things if not worse.

If the Feds think our outrage will be satisfied by sacrificing one prosecutor, that's all they will do, and they will do it gladly, and that will be the end of that. They will sacrifice their pawn and checkmate us.

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#136

Post by gnu8 »

lutze wrote: post #85
jordanb wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I don't care if she spends her nights and weekends caring for orphans and war widows. She's a politician who treated Aaron Swartz as a pawn in the political game she is playing. No doubt she intended for her campaign for governor to describe her as a "staunch defender of intellectual property rights" who, as prosecutor, put a "dangerous hacker behind bars" for "breaking into MIT and stealing millions of doll…

I think you're missing the point vis a vis "fix the machine, not the person". The tactics described in the petition are ingrained in the US justice system. Getting rid of a single prosecutor isn't going to change a damn thing because the injustices are systemic, not the product of a vindictive individual. Like Aaron said, shouting at the gears isn't going to fix the machine.

These prosecutors routinely single out individuals for harsh treatment to "send a message". Turnabout is fair play.

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#137

Post by decius »

I signed this petition. It is the first Whitehouse petition I've ever signed.

I think its an oversimplification to rest all of the blame for Swartz's death on his prosecutor.

However, unnecessary, overzealous prosecution is wrong, and it has consequences - things like this are going to happen when you push people to the edge just because you can.

If this petition receives enough signatures it will force the White House to consider the issue. I do not expect them to remove Carmen Ortiz, but I do expect them to address the reality of overzealous prosecution. It is worth taking a few seconds to ask them to do that.

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#138

Post by monochromatic »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #102
monochromatic wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

treated Aaron Swartz as a pawn in the political game she is playing Well, maybe. It's also entirely possible that she was just doing her job, and didn't totally understand the technical aspects of what Swartz was accused of doing.

Prosecuting someone without understanding the crime in question is not "doing your job".

The majority of people are not doing their jobs if your definitions are that strict. Sad but true.

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#139

Post by grogenaut »

rdtsc wrote: post #122
grogenaut wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually a young man is dead because he killed himself.

Actually if they drained his accounts and froze his assets and promised to shove in him a prison with hardened criminals for up to 50 years, where he could face assaults, rape and abuse (more so probably than the average hardened street criminal) killing himself didn't seem like such an irrational choice.

The point remains that the prosecutor did not kill him. He killed himself. Just trying to bring down the hyperbole on this thread... Speaking of which:

In reality he would have gone to a while collar prison and would have gotten the counseling he obviously needed. (edit spelling)

Re: Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office

#140

Post by temphn »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #95
temphn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A young man is dead because Carmen M. Ortiz unambiguously railroaded him. Frankly the ignorance and tenor of her prosecution in this area makes me much less likely to believe that all those other people she fined and jailed were bad guys. That is: in the one area we do know - computer science - we can see that she pursued trumped up charges. So maybe a forensic accountant would be able to explain that in her past ris…

>The RIAA/MPAA would love to have her. She's way too toxic for business. She's got her federal pension and probably a long future in politics. Unless Obama throws her out, she's more or less set for life. Prosecutors don't get burned on stuff like this. Now if she cheated on her husband or said something bad about Jesus. This is also further proof that you can attack leftist political activists with impunity. At his…

drzaiusapelord (great name, made me smile in spite of myself today) I think you have your heart in the right place. I'd ask you to hopefully see that at least some libertarians/Paul supporters are pretty different from your run of the mill corporatist Republicans, in the same way that the true left like Aaron Swartz or Alan Grayson is pretty different from run of the mill drone strike/drug war Democrats like Ortiz/Obama/Holder. I'm not saying there aren't legitimate differences here, but Rand Paul or Alan Grayson is a lot more likely to publicly condemn this travesty of justice than Obama or Boehner is. This is really authoritarians vs. civil libertarians, which is more cross-cutting than one might think.
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