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Aaron Swartz was mentally ill and committed suicide as a direct result of his mental illness. He comtemplated suicide in 2007 long before any of this DOJ stuff

Aaron Swartz was mentally ill and committed suicide as a direct result of his mental illness. He comtemplated suicide in 2007 long before any of this DOJ stuff happened. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dying http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dying Furthermore the "glorification" of his suicide is doing nothing more but encouraging other suicidal "hackers" to go over the edge so they have their "story" and inconsequential blog posts plastered all of Hacker News. The focus should be on figuring out a way to get mental health services to those who need it most. Not a witch hunt for every person who had something to do with Aaron's prosecution for crimes he knowingly committed.

mhartl 14y ago
We can both strive to provide mental health services to those in need and work to prevent overzealous prosecution (which in this case was a major contributory factor to an avoidable tragedy). The two aren't mutually exclusive.
Illychnosis 14y ago
The focus is and should be on fanatical public employees that have an overinflated sense of their importance. Aaron was worth 100 Federal prosecutors.
potatolicious 14y ago
The witch hunt angle has been bothering me a lot, and should be ample evidence that the people of Hacker News are no better than the reactionaries of Reddit or even 4chan. No sooner had the man's death hit the news that people started foaming at the mouth, writing long manifestos and diatribes, and calling for the head of everyone and anyone related to the prosecution. We are better than this. Actually, evidently, no we're not. We will take a single piece of news, and then fly off the handle, careening into supposition after rumor, and proceed to label people whose actions (or inactions) are far from certain, with the most heinous crimes our society knows - up to and including murder. We will take the news of one man's death and twist that into character attacks against people and groups we don't know, and make blanket statements galore: whether it's about the staff of MIT, all lawyers, all prosecutors, all investigators, all Federal employees, etc, ad nauseum. We will write posts filled with hyperbole after hyperbole, followed by insinuations, emotion-appealing analogies, and mindless rhetoric. So no, we are evidently just as knee-jerky reactionary as every other stupid online community. But we should be better than this.
- asdfologist 14y ago
  Say that to Aaron's family, who themselves blamed MIT and the prosecutors.
  - Kylekramer 14y ago
    Families aren't unerring. Taking a person's family reaction as the ideal course of action post tragedy is a hornet's nest of problems.
- kennywinker 14y ago
  Better in what way? Less caring? More apathetic? I think we should have been better than this too... I think we should have been up in arms while Aaron was still alive. It was wrong then too, but easier to dismiss because it was someone else' fight.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    I agree, and it's why I find the witch hunt angle all the more troubling. Half of the people making angry diatribes right now on HN couldn't write a cogent paragraph about the failings of the American prosecutorial system, two days ago. And now they're busy tripping over each other with hyperbole-filled condemnations, and casting all members of the justice system as something subhuman. And in all of this noise we've only heard a few whimpers about the systemic failings that have brought about this tragedy, with vastly more voices calling for specific heads to roll. This is a classic pitchfork-wielding mob - less concerned with the future prevention of the injustice, and much more concerned with blame and vengeance. There is justice, and there is mob justice. HN has seen vastly more of the latter than the former in the past couple of days.
    - hamai 14y ago
      >There is justice, and there is mob justice. Which one is this? http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/black-whitey-how-the-feds-disable-criminal-defense/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/bla... Coincidentally the Whitey's case was by the same Carmen Ortiz, according to news sources.
rdl 14y ago
I agree that Aaron was ultimately responsible for his own suicide. However, the overzealous overprosecution of either minor crimes or non-criminal civil violations wrecked his life. Doing that, even had he not killed himself, was more than bad enough.
jacquesm 14y ago
Yes, and if you looked carefully you'll notice that he didn't actually do anything until he was threatened with spending a life in jail and being bankrupted, without the option to get off without pleading guilty. And all that for trying to do something good. You describe yourself as a 'public interest lawyer'. I suggest you try to live up to that title and have the public interest at heart. The subject of your little rant definitely had the public interest at heart. At least go and read up a bit more about what actually happened, it's not as if there is a shortage of information.
- deleted 14y ago
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  - jacquesm 14y ago
    > I am a state level prosecutor who specializes in domestic violence. I prosecute individuals for crimes and see myself as an advocate for victims, particularly victims of domestic violence. Public interest as it relates to the legal field includes prosecutors, public defenders, ACLU lawyers, and lawyers for causes similar to Aaron's. So, how do you feel about a prosecutor that throws the book at a guy that wants nothing more than to improve the world and does what he can with the skills that he's given? Does 35 years in prison and a ridiculous amount of money to defend yourself against a federal suit of which the aggrieved party wants no part make sense to you? Do you feel that the prosecutor had 'no options' here or do you believe there was an element of discretion involved? It would be really convenient if we could just say 'oh, Aaron killed himself because he was mentally ill', especially for all those in positions similar to yours. But as a person that is a lot more stable than Aaron I have to admit that I have no idea how I would react to being pushed by the system to this extent. What should surprise us is that there are people that the system can waltz over like this that do not start to consider extreme options.
    - sampo 14y ago
      > I have to admit that I have no idea how I would react to being pushed by the system to this extent. What about trying to apply for a political asylum in some other country?
gokhan 14y ago
So you think 20-30 years in prison for downloading digital content is a just punishment?
kennywinker 14y ago
While it's clearly true that he suffered from depression of some sort, you can't separate that from the fact that he was actively being persecuted. What the DOJ and MIT did was wrong, and it would be wrong even if Aaron was still alive today.
- rhizome 14y ago
  I think a useful way to look at it is, "well, it certainly didn't help."
kenko 14y ago
"Aaron Swartz was mentally ill and committed suicide as a direct result of his mental illness. He comtemplated suicide in 2007 long before any of this DOJ stuff happened." But he didn't do it then, did he? It's absurd to think that these things are completely unconnected. (Look at the timing, for one thing.) A severely depressed person is perhaps more likely to commit suicide than a person who is not severely depressed, but that's no reason to think that the actions of a severely depressed person (in relation to suicide or, for that matter, anything else) are independent of what else is going on in his or her life. It's furthermore frankly insulting to think that (a) anyone is glorifying his suicide (or did you miss the many suicide hotline links, links to posts saying "don't do what Aaron did", etc., on the front page yesterday?), or that (b) someone who is already depressed/suicidal hasn't already engaged in some suicidal ideation. (Who would commit suicide in order to get attention? You can't get attention when you're dead.)
- saraid216 14y ago
  > (Who would commit suicide in order to get attention? You can't get attention when you're dead.) As someone who has contemplated suicide, I've had significant moments when I'd (1) recognize that my ideation was a direct reaction to someone else's actions or inactions, (2) remind myself that this was a bad reason to commit, (3) stop myself. It was not "getting attention" so much as a willful desire to punish. It was not sane. But it was also real. Not saying that this is what Aaron went through, but if you're going to generalize, that's not the right question to ask.
- vidarh 14y ago
  > It's furthermore frankly insulting to think that (a) anyone is glorifying his suicide (or did you miss the many suicide hotline links, links to posts saying "don't do what Aaron did", etc., on the front page yesterday?), or that (b) someone who is already depressed/suicidal hasn't already engaged in some suicidal ideation. While I fully agree with you that this is not glorifying suicide, it does normalize suicide and create social proof that may make it easier for others to carry out theirs. The specific application of this to suicide is sometimes called the Werther effect (after Goethe's character), after an alleged "wave" of suicides across Europe after the publication of The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774. For a more modern take, according to Cialdini's book "Influence" (I have read the book but not chased down the refenced paper), Phillips, D.P.'s "Airplane Accidents, Murder and the Mass Media: Towards a Theory of Imitation and Suggestion" estimates almost 50 excess deaths due to airplane and car crashes alone in the US in the few months following a highly publicized suicide. Of course it is hard to prove a direct causal link here, but a particularly chilling part of this research that makes the causation likely showed that there was a strong correlation between the type of "accidents" and the type of suicide: If the publicized suicide was "just" a suicide, the largest increase in car accidents was lone drivers driving into obstacles etc. If it was a murder-suicide, the largest increase in "accidents" were drivers with passengers and/or drivers hitting other cars. The "Werther effect" is well known enough that in many places, journalists self-censor reporting of them. E.g. in Norway it was until very recently considered ethically dubious for newspapers to report a suicide (the death would be reported, but the cause would be left out or obscured), and while that's loosened up somewhat, media is still generally very cautious about it. I'm not saying people should not discuss this suicide. But on the other hand, downplaying the effect it is likely to have on other people who may be on the cusp of making the decision, is not great either.
lazyGeneral 14y ago
Nature VS Nurture. Both play a part. Aaron's high expectations for himself sure made it hard for him to live up to them and be satisfied with whatever he was doing but.... Nurture plays a role in suicide. In this case, the Feds were definitely trying to stop this beautiful flower from growing. It was having trouble on his own. What they should have done, the "appropriate" thing to do, as Larry put it was to cut the weeds nearby and any sick branches he may have had. JSTOR apparently death with it pretty well and tied to cut off the sick branches that Aaron had on him. No one has gloried the suicide either. He will just truly be missed. AND it is especially sad that he was put in a situation that was blown out of proportion and tried to crush him. It could happen to you. Say you're in Cancun and some people find you having sex in public and then throw some cocaine at you, trying to accuse you of drug smuggling but it just so happens you don't have the money or the connections to ward them off. (This is everyday life in Latin America)
RockyMcNuts 14y ago
nope. the outpouring is motivating places like MIT to look into their actions, and others to look into the actions of the US Attorney. that's not 'nothing.' looking the other way in order not to encourage copycats doesn't sound right. a Chinese official would say media attention just encourages people to set themselves on fire in Tienanmen Square, so we should pay no heed to them or to root causes. fair warning to would-be suicides, if you're not an Internet / tech leader HN isn't going to front-page you. the media circus surrounding mass killers is more problematic.
doe88 14y ago
Woww this is strong. As many this week-end I have thought about it a lot. I don't know what factor his problems with the DOJ weighed in his decision to commit suicide. But I know few things, when he committed his actions he was very young, moreover what he did is certainly not criminal. The system must be fair must be proportional and balanced. This is a remainder that there is a difference between a citizen taking an action and a system, you can not compare both. The system has an history, has some experience and knows that the decisions it take may affect life of human beings. This is life and deaths decisions. When you represent the justice you can not decide on your own that you want to make an example or that you will seek the harshest penalties possible, you must be fair you must think about the consequences of your decisions, your are responsible, you have duties. I think the persons in charge of this case failed in this regard.
codygman 14y ago
What crimes do you actually believe he committed? He downloaded a ton of academic articles, and then he did as JSTOR asked him to, and returned the Intellectual property. The focus should be on getting mental health services to those that need it most AS WELL AS ceasing to judge prosecutors based on their prosecution rate. This sets the stage for over-prosecution and can blind the prosecutor into not just trying to prove everyone guilty, but force them into submitting that they are guilty whether they are or not. Police officer's used to be judged on arrest rate, we figured out that wasn't actually doing any good, and changed the criteria to lower crime rates. The prosecutor who grossly over-charged Aaron (and is obviously technically illiterate) should be forced to resign. If you think that sending someone to jail for 30 years (or even the minimum of 5) for downloading academic articles is fair, then you should do the right thing and resign from your position as a state level prosecutor too.
rokhayakebe 14y ago
I do not remember intentionally downvoting anyone on the internet, your comment made me want to break that pattern.
hamai 14y ago
His "crimes"[1] were not worthy being intimidated with a 35 year old sentence. In any sane society this young man could've done community work(if guilty). A sane society would like to use his skills to teach at schools or something, not throw him in a hell-on-earth prison system were humans are disposable. The justice system can be a game[2], strong players have it their way, and the seminal work by Aaron's "Demand Progress" was a direct affront to very strong players. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, "the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs", and tragic events like these are what move people in one direction and make things change. His mental state is secondary to the injustice he suffered. [1] http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/ http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartz... [2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/black-whitey-how-the-feds-disable-criminal-defense/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/bla...
ak217 14y ago
I don't think anyone is glorifying his suicide. I think people are outraged about the fact that overzealous prosecution based on an unjust law may have contributed to the death of an extremely talented person. People were unhappy with the law before, but it didn't have direct, concrete consequences for them to point to. Now it does.
tptacek 14y ago
Do you know much about how prosecutions like this work? What do you think the logic might have been behind "doubling down" on the felony charges last September?
lawnchair_larry 14y ago
Do you post such absurdities because you are guilty of similar bullying in your role as a state prosecutor, and this is what you convince yourself of in order to sleep at night? On behalf of the public, I'll say that you don't serve our interests.
rprasad 14y ago
Kristen, please ignore jacquesm, he is a known troll. Public interest lawyers are far more valuable contributors to HN, and especially to this discussion, then the histrionics and hyperbole of him and his ilk.
- todayiamme 14y ago
  I don't usually engage with people in this manner, but may I ask why you feel that jacquesm is a troll? Especially a "known troll?" He seems to be a rather passionate person who is willing to stand up for his views.
- nitrogen 14y ago
  jacquesm is a long-standing member of the community and one of HN's greatest contributors (#4 by karma on http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders). Not a troll.
caf 14y ago
How does your contention that Aaron's suicide was a "direct result of his mental illness", discounting any external factors as relevant, square with your assertion that the discussion of this event might encourage others to take their life? Either external factors are relevant in a suicide or they are not. P.S. Putting scare-quotes around the word hacker isn't likely to endear you to many in this place.
hsmyers 14y ago
Washing your hands are you? Good company with Lady Macbeth and Pontius Pilate...
raganwald 14y ago
You're asking readers to grant you an awful lot of your assumptions. For example: "committed suicide as a direct result of his mental illness." Neither you nor I know that. Suicide is often precipitated by stressful incidents. Is the mental illness the direct cause? What if the stress is the direct cause and the mental illness simply prevents the depressed person from handling it, much as AIDS damaging the immune system so that the victim is killed by some other illness? AIDS is the indirect cause. The next thing that strikes my eye is "glorification of his suicide." Really? What have you read that suggests his suicide was glorious? I haven't read everything, but what I've seen glorifies his attempts to free information and laments his suicide and the years of his life that have been lost forever. I'll pick once last thing. "Witch hunt" is an inappropriate metaphor. Witch hunts are McCarthy-esque persecutions of people for something that isn't actually wrong or illegal. For being "un-mutual." The arguments I've seen are that people have been doing something very wrong. If you don't think it's wrong, that's your business. But you can hardly argue that this is a persecution of people for doing little more than being different. What crimes did Aaron commit? My understanding is that he was alleged to have committed crimes, but this has not been proven in court, so we don't know that he committed crimes, and if he did, we do not know that he did so knowingly. The innuendo carefully stage-managed by those who stand to gain from a conviction seems persuasive, but people have seemed guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt in the past and have in time been discovered to be innocent. And in this case, I am reminded of Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who knowingly broke Canada's anti-abortion laws of the day but was declared innocent by juries, leading to changes in the laws. Who knows what might have happened? I don't know what might have happened. Do you?
- deleted 14y ago
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- tzs 14y ago
  > What crimes did Aaron commit? My understanding is that he was alleged to have committed crimes, but this has not been proven in court, so we don't know that he committed crimes, and if he did, we do not know that he did so knowingly IF he did what is alleged, it is pretty hard to see how it could not be knowingly. He had access to JSTOR as part of his work at Harvard. If he didn't know what he was doing was violating the rules, he would have done it at Harvard. He would not have bought a new computer, went to MIT, used a fake name and email address to access the guest network, used MAC address spoofing and a second computer to evade MIT and JSTOR's attempts to stop him, or trespassed and connected his computer directly to the wired network to bypass the guest wireless network. Here's the indictment: http://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pdf http://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pd...
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buzaga2 14y ago
I fucking hate this, put the "mental illness" stamp on someone and you can disregard everything else because the person "is sick", these abstract unscientific terms only serves to dehumanize people.
smegel 14y ago
I don't really understand this "mental illness" obsession on Hackers News. Yes, there is probably such a thing as "mental illness", but it is not directly comparable in most cases to physical illness, and what we refer to as "mental illness" is really a very complex interrelation of a range of factors including an individuals life circumstances, stress factors, history of abuse and trauma, drug usage, relationship issues, and possibly actual brain disorders that are purely physical/genetic in origin. Historically, accusations of "mental illness" has been one of the most common ways of denying and shielding abuse, and then provided as an explanation when victims commit suicide. Its downright scary that this same term is being bandied about without any sensitivity to its historical context. People who commit suicide may be mentally ill, or they may be trying to escape intolerable and unbearable events in their life - but simply defining suicide as a symptom of mental illness ignores the underlying complexities of why someone might reach this decision. Imagine the case of a young girl being sexually abused over many years by a close family member whom she fears. Her behaviour becomes more erratic over time, and is diagnosed as being mentally ill and forced to take medication. In a state of unrelenting emotional anguish, and unable to share her pain with a world that is motivated to explain everything as mental illness and unwilling to look at a dark reality they would rather avoid than confront, she takes her own life. Was she mentally ill? Well obviously something wasn't right, but to describe her as suffering a "disorder" when clearly the problem was something external being imposed seems almost inhuman. What if she hadn't committed suicide, and eventually escaped her abusers and went on to live life, but continued to suffer depression and anxiety decades later. Would you describe her as mentally ill then? A doctor today almost certainly would. Who knows why Aaron committed suicide. Clearly he was faced with extraordinary life stress - can anyone here really imagine what it must be like to face 35 years in jail for doing something he though was right? It would be reasonable to assume this played a part, probably a large part, is his decision. However, the actual reasons for his suicide, or the nature of his "crimes", does not excuse the prosecution for it's excessive and overblown nature. It would have been just as wrong had Aaron not taken this decision, and instead received a lengthy jail term for a fairly benign crime, as the present tragic outcome.
- Evbn 14y ago
  You are mostly right here, but abuse can absolutely cause a legitimate mental illness, just like it can break bones.
nikster 14y ago
I agree with you in spirit even though I would not call it mental illness. I would call it a deep unconsciousness, a complete entrapment in ones mind, a belief that one is in fact ones thoughts. He was liberated only at the time of his death. Many are stuck in this belief - I certainly was, and certainly at his age. I think therefore I am - nothing could be further from the truth. That said there are many things being confused and mixed up here - I and probably most on HN feel a sense of incredible loss; I did not know him personally but I wish I had, I admired Aarons hacking skills, his guts, his convictions, and his sheer brilliant intellect. He made the world a better place. I was looking forward to his next big thing. - The loss to his actual friends and family; all we can do is express out heartfelt condolences. - His work and your opinion of it - its unrelated to the above and seems insignificant in comparison. - The governments actions; surely, the man has struck back, those actions were unreasonable, and despicable. But insignificant in comparison with our sense of loss. The government did not kill him - don't give them that victory. We can continue to push back and support open leaks, hacktivists, bradley manning, and so on. This is a fight about power, and its fought between the people and the corporations - even if not everybody is aware of it.
noonespecial 14y ago
I'm not going to try to wade into the fearful fog of correlation vs causation. I know very little about Aaron, or the case. Instead, I'd just like to try an analogy on for size. Two people are blindfolded and beaten equally during a robbery. One, a 20 year old, suffered only minor injuries, the second, a 70 year old woman with a heart condition, died from a stress induced heart attack during the beating. Was she murdered or did she die naturally of a heart condition? Its possible the prosecution knew all about Aaron's depression and history. That might actually make what they did worse and not better. He clearly needed the help you speak of... his "crimes" may even have been a symptom. Did anyone consider this or try to help him?

mhartl 14y ago

We can both strive to provide mental health services to those in need and work to prevent overzealous prosecution (which in this case was a major contributory factor to an avoidable tragedy). The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Illychnosis 14y ago

The focus is and should be on fanatical public employees that have an overinflated sense of their importance. Aaron was worth 100 Federal prosecutors.

potatolicious 14y ago

The witch hunt angle has been bothering me a lot, and should be ample evidence that the people of Hacker News are no better than the reactionaries of Reddit or even 4chan. No sooner had the man's death hit the news that people started foaming at the mouth, writing long manifestos and diatribes, and calling for the head of everyone and anyone related to the prosecution. We are better than this. Actually, evidently, no we're not. We will take a single piece of news, and then fly off the handle, careening into supposition after rumor, and proceed to label people whose actions (or inactions) are far from certain, with the most heinous crimes our society knows - up to and including murder. We will take the news of one man's death and twist that into character attacks against people and groups we don't know, and make blanket statements galore: whether it's about the staff of MIT, all lawyers, all prosecutors, all investigators, all Federal employees, etc, ad nauseum. We will write posts filled with hyperbole after hyperbole, followed by insinuations, emotion-appealing analogies, and mindless rhetoric. So no, we are evidently just as knee-jerky reactionary as every other stupid online community. But we should be better than this.

asdfologist 14y ago
Say that to Aaron's family, who themselves blamed MIT and the prosecutors.
- Kylekramer 14y ago
  Families aren't unerring. Taking a person's family reaction as the ideal course of action post tragedy is a hornet's nest of problems.
kennywinker 14y ago
Better in what way? Less caring? More apathetic? I think we should have been better than this too... I think we should have been up in arms while Aaron was still alive. It was wrong then too, but easier to dismiss because it was someone else' fight.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  I agree, and it's why I find the witch hunt angle all the more troubling. Half of the people making angry diatribes right now on HN couldn't write a cogent paragraph about the failings of the American prosecutorial system, two days ago. And now they're busy tripping over each other with hyperbole-filled condemnations, and casting all members of the justice system as something subhuman. And in all of this noise we've only heard a few whimpers about the systemic failings that have brought about this tragedy, with vastly more voices calling for specific heads to roll. This is a classic pitchfork-wielding mob - less concerned with the future prevention of the injustice, and much more concerned with blame and vengeance. There is justice, and there is mob justice. HN has seen vastly more of the latter than the former in the past couple of days.
  - hamai 14y ago
    >There is justice, and there is mob justice. Which one is this? http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/black-whitey-how-the-feds-disable-criminal-defense/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/bla... Coincidentally the Whitey's case was by the same Carmen Ortiz, according to news sources.

rdl 14y ago

I agree that Aaron was ultimately responsible for his own suicide. However, the overzealous overprosecution of either minor crimes or non-criminal civil violations wrecked his life. Doing that, even had he not killed himself, was more than bad enough.

jacquesm 14y ago

Yes, and if you looked carefully you'll notice that he didn't actually do anything until he was threatened with spending a life in jail and being bankrupted, without the option to get off without pleading guilty. And all that for trying to do something good. You describe yourself as a 'public interest lawyer'. I suggest you try to live up to that title and have the public interest at heart. The subject of your little rant definitely had the public interest at heart. At least go and read up a bit more about what actually happened, it's not as if there is a shortage of information.

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- jacquesm 14y ago
  > I am a state level prosecutor who specializes in domestic violence. I prosecute individuals for crimes and see myself as an advocate for victims, particularly victims of domestic violence. Public interest as it relates to the legal field includes prosecutors, public defenders, ACLU lawyers, and lawyers for causes similar to Aaron's. So, how do you feel about a prosecutor that throws the book at a guy that wants nothing more than to improve the world and does what he can with the skills that he's given? Does 35 years in prison and a ridiculous amount of money to defend yourself against a federal suit of which the aggrieved party wants no part make sense to you? Do you feel that the prosecutor had 'no options' here or do you believe there was an element of discretion involved? It would be really convenient if we could just say 'oh, Aaron killed himself because he was mentally ill', especially for all those in positions similar to yours. But as a person that is a lot more stable than Aaron I have to admit that I have no idea how I would react to being pushed by the system to this extent. What should surprise us is that there are people that the system can waltz over like this that do not start to consider extreme options.
  - sampo 14y ago
    > I have to admit that I have no idea how I would react to being pushed by the system to this extent. What about trying to apply for a political asylum in some other country?

gokhan 14y ago

So you think 20-30 years in prison for downloading digital content is a just punishment?

kennywinker 14y ago

While it's clearly true that he suffered from depression of some sort, you can't separate that from the fact that he was actively being persecuted. What the DOJ and MIT did was wrong, and it would be wrong even if Aaron was still alive today.

rhizome 14y ago
I think a useful way to look at it is, "well, it certainly didn't help."

kenko 14y ago

"Aaron Swartz was mentally ill and committed suicide as a direct result of his mental illness. He comtemplated suicide in 2007 long before any of this DOJ stuff happened." But he didn't do it then, did he? It's absurd to think that these things are completely unconnected. (Look at the timing, for one thing.) A severely depressed person is perhaps more likely to commit suicide than a person who is not severely depressed, but that's no reason to think that the actions of a severely depressed person (in relation to suicide or, for that matter, anything else) are independent of what else is going on in his or her life. It's furthermore frankly insulting to think that (a) anyone is glorifying his suicide (or did you miss the many suicide hotline links, links to posts saying "don't do what Aaron did", etc., on the front page yesterday?), or that (b) someone who is already depressed/suicidal hasn't already engaged in some suicidal ideation. (Who would commit suicide in order to get attention? You can't get attention when you're dead.)

saraid216 14y ago
> (Who would commit suicide in order to get attention? You can't get attention when you're dead.) As someone who has contemplated suicide, I've had significant moments when I'd (1) recognize that my ideation was a direct reaction to someone else's actions or inactions, (2) remind myself that this was a bad reason to commit, (3) stop myself. It was not "getting attention" so much as a willful desire to punish. It was not sane. But it was also real. Not saying that this is what Aaron went through, but if you're going to generalize, that's not the right question to ask.
vidarh 14y ago
> It's furthermore frankly insulting to think that (a) anyone is glorifying his suicide (or did you miss the many suicide hotline links, links to posts saying "don't do what Aaron did", etc., on the front page yesterday?), or that (b) someone who is already depressed/suicidal hasn't already engaged in some suicidal ideation. While I fully agree with you that this is not glorifying suicide, it does normalize suicide and create social proof that may make it easier for others to carry out theirs. The specific application of this to suicide is sometimes called the Werther effect (after Goethe's character), after an alleged "wave" of suicides across Europe after the publication of The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774. For a more modern take, according to Cialdini's book "Influence" (I have read the book but not chased down the refenced paper), Phillips, D.P.'s "Airplane Accidents, Murder and the Mass Media: Towards a Theory of Imitation and Suggestion" estimates almost 50 excess deaths due to airplane and car crashes alone in the US in the few months following a highly publicized suicide. Of course it is hard to prove a direct causal link here, but a particularly chilling part of this research that makes the causation likely showed that there was a strong correlation between the type of "accidents" and the type of suicide: If the publicized suicide was "just" a suicide, the largest increase in car accidents was lone drivers driving into obstacles etc. If it was a murder-suicide, the largest increase in "accidents" were drivers with passengers and/or drivers hitting other cars. The "Werther effect" is well known enough that in many places, journalists self-censor reporting of them. E.g. in Norway it was until very recently considered ethically dubious for newspapers to report a suicide (the death would be reported, but the cause would be left out or obscured), and while that's loosened up somewhat, media is still generally very cautious about it. I'm not saying people should not discuss this suicide. But on the other hand, downplaying the effect it is likely to have on other people who may be on the cusp of making the decision, is not great either.

lazyGeneral 14y ago

Nature VS Nurture. Both play a part. Aaron's high expectations for himself sure made it hard for him to live up to them and be satisfied with whatever he was doing but.... Nurture plays a role in suicide. In this case, the Feds were definitely trying to stop this beautiful flower from growing. It was having trouble on his own. What they should have done, the "appropriate" thing to do, as Larry put it was to cut the weeds nearby and any sick branches he may have had. JSTOR apparently death with it pretty well and tied to cut off the sick branches that Aaron had on him. No one has gloried the suicide either. He will just truly be missed. AND it is especially sad that he was put in a situation that was blown out of proportion and tried to crush him. It could happen to you. Say you're in Cancun and some people find you having sex in public and then throw some cocaine at you, trying to accuse you of drug smuggling but it just so happens you don't have the money or the connections to ward them off. (This is everyday life in Latin America)

RockyMcNuts 14y ago

nope. the outpouring is motivating places like MIT to look into their actions, and others to look into the actions of the US Attorney. that's not 'nothing.' looking the other way in order not to encourage copycats doesn't sound right. a Chinese official would say media attention just encourages people to set themselves on fire in Tienanmen Square, so we should pay no heed to them or to root causes. fair warning to would-be suicides, if you're not an Internet / tech leader HN isn't going to front-page you. the media circus surrounding mass killers is more problematic.

doe88 14y ago

Woww this is strong. As many this week-end I have thought about it a lot. I don't know what factor his problems with the DOJ weighed in his decision to commit suicide. But I know few things, when he committed his actions he was very young, moreover what he did is certainly not criminal. The system must be fair must be proportional and balanced. This is a remainder that there is a difference between a citizen taking an action and a system, you can not compare both. The system has an history, has some experience and knows that the decisions it take may affect life of human beings. This is life and deaths decisions. When you represent the justice you can not decide on your own that you want to make an example or that you will seek the harshest penalties possible, you must be fair you must think about the consequences of your decisions, your are responsible, you have duties. I think the persons in charge of this case failed in this regard.

codygman 14y ago

What crimes do you actually believe he committed? He downloaded a ton of academic articles, and then he did as JSTOR asked him to, and returned the Intellectual property. The focus should be on getting mental health services to those that need it most AS WELL AS ceasing to judge prosecutors based on their prosecution rate. This sets the stage for over-prosecution and can blind the prosecutor into not just trying to prove everyone guilty, but force them into submitting that they are guilty whether they are or not. Police officer's used to be judged on arrest rate, we figured out that wasn't actually doing any good, and changed the criteria to lower crime rates. The prosecutor who grossly over-charged Aaron (and is obviously technically illiterate) should be forced to resign. If you think that sending someone to jail for 30 years (or even the minimum of 5) for downloading academic articles is fair, then you should do the right thing and resign from your position as a state level prosecutor too.

rokhayakebe 14y ago

I do not remember intentionally downvoting anyone on the internet, your comment made me want to break that pattern.

hamai 14y ago

His "crimes"[1] were not worthy being intimidated with a 35 year old sentence. In any sane society this young man could've done community work(if guilty). A sane society would like to use his skills to teach at schools or something, not throw him in a hell-on-earth prison system were humans are disposable. The justice system can be a game[2], strong players have it their way, and the seminal work by Aaron's "Demand Progress" was a direct affront to very strong players. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, "the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs", and tragic events like these are what move people in one direction and make things change. His mental state is secondary to the injustice he suffered. [1] http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/ http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartz... [2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/black-whitey-how-the-feds-disable-criminal-defense/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/bla...

ak217 14y ago

I don't think anyone is glorifying his suicide. I think people are outraged about the fact that overzealous prosecution based on an unjust law may have contributed to the death of an extremely talented person. People were unhappy with the law before, but it didn't have direct, concrete consequences for them to point to. Now it does.

tptacek 14y ago

Do you know much about how prosecutions like this work? What do you think the logic might have been behind "doubling down" on the felony charges last September?

lawnchair_larry 14y ago

Do you post such absurdities because you are guilty of similar bullying in your role as a state prosecutor, and this is what you convince yourself of in order to sleep at night? On behalf of the public, I'll say that you don't serve our interests.

rprasad 14y ago

Kristen, please ignore jacquesm, he is a known troll. Public interest lawyers are far more valuable contributors to HN, and especially to this discussion, then the histrionics and hyperbole of him and his ilk.

todayiamme 14y ago
I don't usually engage with people in this manner, but may I ask why you feel that jacquesm is a troll? Especially a "known troll?" He seems to be a rather passionate person who is willing to stand up for his views.
nitrogen 14y ago
jacquesm is a long-standing member of the community and one of HN's greatest contributors (#4 by karma on http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders). Not a troll.

caf 14y ago

How does your contention that Aaron's suicide was a "direct result of his mental illness", discounting any external factors as relevant, square with your assertion that the discussion of this event might encourage others to take their life? Either external factors are relevant in a suicide or they are not. P.S. Putting scare-quotes around the word hacker isn't likely to endear you to many in this place.

hsmyers 14y ago

Washing your hands are you? Good company with Lady Macbeth and Pontius Pilate...

raganwald 14y ago

You're asking readers to grant you an awful lot of your assumptions. For example: "committed suicide as a direct result of his mental illness." Neither you nor I know that. Suicide is often precipitated by stressful incidents. Is the mental illness the direct cause? What if the stress is the direct cause and the mental illness simply prevents the depressed person from handling it, much as AIDS damaging the immune system so that the victim is killed by some other illness? AIDS is the indirect cause. The next thing that strikes my eye is "glorification of his suicide." Really? What have you read that suggests his suicide was glorious? I haven't read everything, but what I've seen glorifies his attempts to free information and laments his suicide and the years of his life that have been lost forever. I'll pick once last thing. "Witch hunt" is an inappropriate metaphor. Witch hunts are McCarthy-esque persecutions of people for something that isn't actually wrong or illegal. For being "un-mutual." The arguments I've seen are that people have been doing something very wrong. If you don't think it's wrong, that's your business. But you can hardly argue that this is a persecution of people for doing little more than being different. What crimes did Aaron commit? My understanding is that he was alleged to have committed crimes, but this has not been proven in court, so we don't know that he committed crimes, and if he did, we do not know that he did so knowingly. The innuendo carefully stage-managed by those who stand to gain from a conviction seems persuasive, but people have seemed guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt in the past and have in time been discovered to be innocent. And in this case, I am reminded of Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who knowingly broke Canada's anti-abortion laws of the day but was declared innocent by juries, leading to changes in the laws. Who knows what might have happened? I don't know what might have happened. Do you?

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tzs 14y ago
> What crimes did Aaron commit? My understanding is that he was alleged to have committed crimes, but this has not been proven in court, so we don't know that he committed crimes, and if he did, we do not know that he did so knowingly IF he did what is alleged, it is pretty hard to see how it could not be knowingly. He had access to JSTOR as part of his work at Harvard. If he didn't know what he was doing was violating the rules, he would have done it at Harvard. He would not have bought a new computer, went to MIT, used a fake name and email address to access the guest network, used MAC address spoofing and a second computer to evade MIT and JSTOR's attempts to stop him, or trespassed and connected his computer directly to the wired network to bypass the guest wireless network. Here's the indictment: http://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pdf http://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pd...

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buzaga2 14y ago

I fucking hate this, put the "mental illness" stamp on someone and you can disregard everything else because the person "is sick", these abstract unscientific terms only serves to dehumanize people.

smegel 14y ago

I don't really understand this "mental illness" obsession on Hackers News. Yes, there is probably such a thing as "mental illness", but it is not directly comparable in most cases to physical illness, and what we refer to as "mental illness" is really a very complex interrelation of a range of factors including an individuals life circumstances, stress factors, history of abuse and trauma, drug usage, relationship issues, and possibly actual brain disorders that are purely physical/genetic in origin. Historically, accusations of "mental illness" has been one of the most common ways of denying and shielding abuse, and then provided as an explanation when victims commit suicide. Its downright scary that this same term is being bandied about without any sensitivity to its historical context. People who commit suicide may be mentally ill, or they may be trying to escape intolerable and unbearable events in their life - but simply defining suicide as a symptom of mental illness ignores the underlying complexities of why someone might reach this decision. Imagine the case of a young girl being sexually abused over many years by a close family member whom she fears. Her behaviour becomes more erratic over time, and is diagnosed as being mentally ill and forced to take medication. In a state of unrelenting emotional anguish, and unable to share her pain with a world that is motivated to explain everything as mental illness and unwilling to look at a dark reality they would rather avoid than confront, she takes her own life. Was she mentally ill? Well obviously something wasn't right, but to describe her as suffering a "disorder" when clearly the problem was something external being imposed seems almost inhuman. What if she hadn't committed suicide, and eventually escaped her abusers and went on to live life, but continued to suffer depression and anxiety decades later. Would you describe her as mentally ill then? A doctor today almost certainly would. Who knows why Aaron committed suicide. Clearly he was faced with extraordinary life stress - can anyone here really imagine what it must be like to face 35 years in jail for doing something he though was right? It would be reasonable to assume this played a part, probably a large part, is his decision. However, the actual reasons for his suicide, or the nature of his "crimes", does not excuse the prosecution for it's excessive and overblown nature. It would have been just as wrong had Aaron not taken this decision, and instead received a lengthy jail term for a fairly benign crime, as the present tragic outcome.

Evbn 14y ago
You are mostly right here, but abuse can absolutely cause a legitimate mental illness, just like it can break bones.

nikster 14y ago

I agree with you in spirit even though I would not call it mental illness. I would call it a deep unconsciousness, a complete entrapment in ones mind, a belief that one is in fact ones thoughts. He was liberated only at the time of his death. Many are stuck in this belief - I certainly was, and certainly at his age. I think therefore I am - nothing could be further from the truth. That said there are many things being confused and mixed up here - I and probably most on HN feel a sense of incredible loss; I did not know him personally but I wish I had, I admired Aarons hacking skills, his guts, his convictions, and his sheer brilliant intellect. He made the world a better place. I was looking forward to his next big thing. - The loss to his actual friends and family; all we can do is express out heartfelt condolences. - His work and your opinion of it - its unrelated to the above and seems insignificant in comparison. - The governments actions; surely, the man has struck back, those actions were unreasonable, and despicable. But insignificant in comparison with our sense of loss. The government did not kill him - don't give them that victory. We can continue to push back and support open leaks, hacktivists, bradley manning, and so on. This is a fight about power, and its fought between the people and the corporations - even if not everybody is aware of it.

noonespecial 14y ago

I'm not going to try to wade into the fearful fog of correlation vs causation. I know very little about Aaron, or the case. Instead, I'd just like to try an analogy on for size. Two people are blindfolded and beaten equally during a robbery. One, a 20 year old, suffered only minor injuries, the second, a 70 year old woman with a heart condition, died from a stress induced heart attack during the beating. Was she murdered or did she die naturally of a heart condition? Its possible the prosecution knew all about Aaron's depression and history. That might actually make what they did worse and not better. He clearly needed the help you speak of... his "crimes" may even have been a symptom. Did anyone consider this or try to help him?