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Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

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Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#81

Post by jivatmanx »

res0nat0r wrote: post #74
throwit1979 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can either hand me your wallet, or I shoot you in the face with this gun. This happens every single day for all types of people in the US. Man, mugging and extortion sounds so much better now that I realize how often it happens. Thanks, res0nat0r!

I'm not sure how 6 months of jail time for repeatedly breaking the law is anywhere near "extortion".

I think you've misunderstood the extortion analogy. The six months is the "Give me your wallet" portion of the analogy.

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#82

Post by mediacrisis »

res0nat0r wrote: post #73

Why 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?

Not that I agree with Bradley Mannings punishment, but I think a key difference is that he was not a civilian.

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#83

Post by philh »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #39
agwa wrote: post #19

Though 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…

Even though getting officials fired is not your preferred method to help jumpstart reform there are no reasons for you to discourage others of doing so. If you think you have a better axis of attack on this problem, I beg you, please lead an effort on that axis. If we waited for a consensus on the best manner to proceed before doing anything, noting would ever get done. To make a comparison relevant to this community…

> Even though getting officials fired is not your preferred method to help jumpstart reform there are no reasons for you to discourage others of doing so.

Yes there are, if you think that it's not going to work and that the attempt is discouraging people from looking for solutions that will.

You could make the same comment if someone attempted to prove P!=NP, and someone else said "your proof has a mistake here, and by the way, people have been trying your general approach for decades and it's never yielded anything".

(I do, however, agree that attempts to get officials fired are more likely to succeed than attempts to prove P!=NP.)

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#84

Post by btilly »

jerf wrote: post #77
numbsafari wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full stop? How many mass murders has it taken to get to this point? How is that "drastic" or "very fast"? Oh, wait, there's a commission that might "recommend" we re-enact legislation that expired a few years ago? How is that "drastic"? How is that "very fast"? As the GGP said, what's gonna happen first is an investigation and a review. Why the need to jump to "vigilante justice"? The end result of "vigilante justice…

Mass murders may be flashy, but they are not a large problem. They only feel large. Immediate fast response here is a political tool to push policies that have little to do with stopping school shootings, not a governance tool. (Evidence: almost no proposed policies show any evidence that they could have prevented this shooting, even if they were magically 100% effective; for instance, "more background checks" doesn'…

Absolutely.

Regulations mandating safer showers and bathtubs would save more lives, and far more hospital visits, than getting rid of all of the assault weapons in the USA.

As for prosecutorial overreach, I believe that it is part of the reason why the USA has a higher portion of its population in prison than ANY other country in the world. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat... if you don't believe me. And our "justice" system is not race neutral. South Africa under apartheid did not imprison as high a portion of its black population as the US does now. In major cities about 80% of black males have a criminal record. This contributes to their difficulty in getting jobs. Which in turn contributes to the economic circumstances that perpetuate these shocking statistics.

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#85

Post by res0nat0r »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #80
res0nat0r wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://betabeat.com/2013/01/tom-dolan-defends-carmen-ortiz-a...

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.

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#86

Post by tedunangst »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #79
numbsafari wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not referring to her losing her job. I'm referring to the threats of vigilante justice that seem to be going around, as mentioned by the linked article.

Vigilante justice is what happens when actual justice is not available. If you don't like vigilante justice, ensure actual justice.

Fortunately everybody agrees as to what constitutes actual justice.

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#87

Post by phaemon »

numbsafari wrote: post #16
gesman wrote: post #8

We need another one: "To return all taxpayer's money wasted on prolonged witch hunt fueled by personal egoic ambitions"

Only if it's followed up with a petition to "return all taxpayer money wasted on egoic pranks". There was always a way forward to achieving Aaron's goals that didn't involve sneaking around. Whether he was right or wrong, he knew on some level that what he was doing was, at the very least, inappropriate and potentially harmful. If not, then why attempt to hide his face? If not, why even do it at all? It's a sad and u…

> Only if it's followed up with a petition to "return all taxpayer money wasted on egoic pranks".

If someone keys your car, and you spend $5,000,000 tracking them down to punish them, it doesn't mean they've wasted $5,000,000 of your money. It means you're a moron.

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#88

Post by btilly »

protomyth wrote: post #45
numbsafari wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 25 dead children who were completely innocent of any crime. It's an incident in a long line of incidents over many decades in which many innocent people were killed. I think you need to calibrate your moral barometer a bit better.

It was a tragedy, but..... Violence as a cause of death has continued to drop in the US. It is no longer in the top 15 ways people die in the US[1]. The worst year for massacres in the US was 1929 and worst occurred in 1927 (45 dead by explosive). Yet suicide is in the top 10 and mental illness is under funded. Risk factors are what the President should concentrate on, not the incident of the moment. A President comi…

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 massacres, but they were much smaller. And the people killed were much less likely to be innocent bystanders.

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#89

Post by SoftwareMaven »

This petition could be a ticket and an opportunity for the administration to begin such a change...

Yeah, because we all know how well Obama's "change" went. How's gitmo going? What about those executive orders? Seen any drones in the Middle East or northern Africa lately? Surely there is no more cronyism in the White House or Justice Department. I realize not every promise can be kept, but I've never regretted a vote like I did the vote for him (not that I ever would have voted for McCain).

The point is this administration has shown it could care less about change. Don't expect anything, much less anything positive, to come of this.

Re: Petition To Fire Aaron Swartz’ Prosecutor Reaches Goal

#90

Post by rhizome »

mcantelon wrote: post #48
agwa wrote: post #19

Though 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…

>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.
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