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DOJ Admits Aaron's Prosecution Was Political

520 points by rrbrambley 14y ago

mkhalil 14y ago
I hate to say this, but the DOJ didn't kill Aaron Swartz...he took his own life. Selfishley, if I may so. Many activists stand up to the oppressor, raise awareness, fight, he didn't. Not taking anything away from what he was trying to do with JSTOR (semi-noble), but don't blame the DOJ on his death. Do blame them for bringing down the sledge-hammer though.
known 14y ago
"If you wish to keep slaves, you must have all kinds of guards. The cheapest way to have guards is to have the slaves pay taxes to finance their own guards. To fool the slaves, you tell them that they are not slaves and that they have Freedom. You tell them they need Law and Order to protect them against bad slaves. Then you tell them to elect a Government. Give them Freedom to vote and they will vote for their own guards and pay their salary. They will then believe they are Free persons. Then give them money to earn, count and spend and they will be too busy to notice the slavery they are in." -Alexander Warbucks
dccoolgai 14y ago
In light of this, it is clear that Ortiz and Heymann should be in prison. I made this same comment in a thread earlier and got a bunch of snivelly equivocating about "intent" as a reply...that is just invalid here. These people either didn't like or criminally misunderstood something Swartz did and used that and the position given to them by the government to terrorize him. Inexcusable, at least and it should be criminal (if it's not outright already).
- GHFigs 14y ago
  got a bunch of snivelly equivocating about "intent" as a reply As somebody that took time out of his evening to address your prior comment with what I felt was sincerity and (I hoped) clarity, I'm sorry it came across to you as "snivelly equivocating". that is just invalid here It may help you to understand the relevance of intent better if you look at what Taren writes in the footnote: "His lawyers instructed him very strictly that he should never talk about motive with anyone before the trial, as it could play a key role in the defense and they didn’t want the prosecution to get any hint of what line of argument might be used." As I said in my prior comment: In law, intent (if it can be proven) can make an enormous difference in what you get charged with or convicted of. Far from being invalid here, the importance of someone's intentions in a case like this is exactly why prosecutors would look at Swartz's prior writings and why his lawyers would instruct him not to discuss it.
  - dccoolgai 14y ago
    Assuming that what is charged here is true - namely, that the prosecutors brought the case against Swartz because of his philosophical writings on open data - any minutiae of the case is irrelevant. Thank you for your explanation of the importance of establishing intent in the context crminal law, but couched in the bed of prosecutorial misconduct that it apparently is, it just isn't relevant here and even bringing it up is compositional sophistry. If I, as a prosecutor, decide to charge you with felony assualt because I don't like the color of your shirt, it simply does not matter that you either A) Slapped someone in the face last year or B) Wrote on your blog that you intended to do it. My case is prima facie invalid - I am not allowed to charge you with felonies because I don't like the color of your shirt or because I don't like your philosopy on government transparency.
    - GHFigs 14y ago
      Assuming that what is charged here is true - namely, that the prosecutors brought the case against Swartz because of his philosophical writings on open data The whole point is that it's not true! It's just something HuffPo, et al. are spinning out of a much less controversial statement about what evidence they considered to establish intent. The strongly-conclusive headlines do not match the actual story here. Defending the bullshit headlines doesn't make them true--that's not how truth works.
- wisty 14y ago
  Ortiz tried to prosecute a lawyer who was just doing her job. The judge threw it out of court. So fortunately for Ortiz, the kind of miscarriages of justice which she advocated for aren't too likely to happen.
pyre 14y ago
| The same law that says that anyone using a fake | middle name on Facebook is committing a federal | felony. Federal prosecutors tried to get this interpretation through the courts with that mother that drove her daughter's 'rival' to suicide via MySpace. It didn't work. The judge threw it out, rightly stating that interpreting breach of ToS as a Federal crime effectively allows companies to set the bar for what is a Federal crime (e.g. "You must always access this website while standing on one leg or else we revoke your permission to use it! Now you're a 'hacker' with a felony conviction. Have a nice day.").
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  It should be pointed out that unless the case went to the Supreme Court, a different circuit could yet come to a different conclusion, so better to fix it nationwide through Congress than risk some other court siding with prosecutors (and that defendant having to argue it to a different circuit's appellate court even if the court comes to the same conclusion). Also: >interpreting breach of ToS as a Federal crime effectively allows companies to set the bar for what is a Federal crime Reminds me of something Larry Lessig said during his speech last Tuesday: The alternative interpretation is that it's a violation when someone violates code-based restrictions, right? So you're still allowing companies to set the bar for what is a Federal crime, they just have to do it in code instead of in contract. Write some nominal piece of code whose stated purpose is to prevent the thing you want to prohibit, even if it's facile and trivially bypassed, and now bypassing it is apparently back to being a federal crime again. Is this really something we want to allow? Shouldn't the law require prosecutors to prove there was some actual harm before we go throwing people in federal prison?
  - rhizome 14y ago
    It should be pointed out that unless the case went to the Supreme Court, a different circuit could yet come to a different conclusion Sorry to pedant, but a case will typically not get to the Supreme Court at all unless two circuits come to different conclusions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_split http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_split
LAMike 14y ago
Is the governments recent announcement that they would make all tax-funded research papers free to access a big enough silver lining for people to forget about Ortiz and Heymann?
thejsjunky 14y ago
> "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto" played a role in the prosecution, The fact that something Aaron wrote "played a role" in the prosecution does not mean it was politically motivated. It's a fundamental principal in our legal system that intent matters. Of course if you are charged with a crime the prosecutors will use whatever evidence they can to try and back their claims of what your intent was. The HuffPo article explicitly states that this is what is being discussed: > The "Manifesto," Justice Department representatives told congressional staffers, demonstrated Swartz's malicious intent in downloading documents on a massive scale. So we're not talking about anything "political" here, they planned to use it as evidence. One can make a strong argument that it's lousy as evidence...but the fact that they planned to use it as evidence does not suggest any sort of political motivations (on it's own)...only that they are bad at selecting evidence for their case. My comment should absolutely NOT be construed to say it wasn't politically motivated or that it was handled well....I'm strictly speaking about that one little line...you can't use that one line to support an assertion that it was politically motivated, because it's just not valid. Use other information to bolster the case instead.
- droithomme 14y ago
  > It's a fundamental principal in our legal system that intent matters. Context error. If Bob dies by falling off a bridge while I am grabbing at him, my intent matters a lot. Was it completely an accident, Bob slipped and fell and I tried to pull him back? Or did I hate Bob and plot for months to kill him and was pushing him? From a distance the two things may look the same - it's important to figure out what I was thinking. But let's say I dislike Bob and even once wrote a blog post about him and his annoying toenail clipping habits several years ago. Some people might even speculate I would not be unhappy if annoying old "Toenail Bob" was dead. I haven't actually done anything to Bob though. Charging me with murder at this point because it is speculated I am thinking about killing Bob and might do so in the future on account of my having complained years ago about his toenail clipping habits would be prosecuting a thought crime. Even if I happen to have bought an axe and rope recently. Or maybe I even stole the axe. What about that? So I could be prosecuted for stealing the axe, that's fair. But prosecute me for killing Toenail Bob because I once disliked his clipping protocols? Claiming that is reasonable to charge people with things they may or may not be thinking of doing but have not actually done because "It's a fundamental principal in our legal system that intent matters." just doesn't make sense. Especially when there's plenty of evidence the axe and rope were for some other purpose, such as I buy a new axe every winter, I need the rope for my spelunking hobby, or I have an established and documented history of downloading large datasets as a professional academic researcher in order to do statistical analysis on them.
mschuster91 14y ago
I believe that this behavior is just the same as effectively murdering him. Ortiz and Heymann should be convicted of whatever the US equivalent of "Murder with intent" is. Let them rot in hell forever.
- corin_ 14y ago
  At best you could make a case (and I'm talking you making a case here, not talking from a legal point of view) for involuntary manslaughter, not murder with intent, unless you can show that they knew prosecuting would lead to his death.
  - kamaal 14y ago
    >>unless you can show that they knew prosecuting would lead to his death. Which it very clearly has, or more precisely in this case it can be described as "Abetment to suicide"
  - oleganza 14y ago
    So it is okay for some people to threaten other people with jail when some files get copied? Do you know what the "jail" means? Humiliation every day, statistically guaranteed rape and possible murder.
    - mpyne 14y ago
      As far as I can tell he was never charged with any variant of copying files. He was charged with unauthorized access to a computer network and wire fraud. Given your idea of what jail means for rich white kids like Aaron though, I'd just like to recommend that you actually look into the U.S. prison system (at worst you'll find out what's actually wrong with it and not have to make stuff up).
      - oleganza 14y ago
        If he declines to go to a nice little jail, he'll be shot down when trying to defend himself. So the threat of jail is an ultimate threat of murder, right? Do you think it is appropriate measure for unauthorised access to a computer network? Especially after the fact, not while he's busy doing that. When some guy comes to your porch and does not go away, what would you do? Would you try to push him out on the street, or you will chase him with a gun in attempt to put him in a cell? What would you do if the same guy already stepped on your porch and broke your chair? Will you threaten him with death? Or you will ask policemen and court to do that dirty job for you?
andreyf 14y ago
Many people speculated throughout the whole ordeal that this was a political prosecution [...] but Aaron actually didn't believe it was Aaron was an idealist that had some idealistic misconceptions about reality. Being an intelligent and nationally famous activist, which he was well on his way to becoming, is not something you can do without ruffling the feathers of some very powerful people. He knew it [1], but his idealism stopped him from understanding what it meant for him, personally. I'll admit I don't know much about "how Washington really works", but I wouldn't be surprised if those with such power over senators have some sway with prosecutors, as well. 1. "You don't just introduce a bill on Monday and pass it unanimously a couple of days later [...] but this time, it was going to happene [...] somehow, and the kind of thing you never see in Washington, the senators had all managed to put their personal differences aside, and come together to support one bill they were persuaded they could all live with, a bill that would censor the internet, and when I saw this, I realized, whoever behind this was good [i.e. powerful]". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgh2dFngFsg#t=411s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgh2dFngFsg#t=411s
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  That video is heartbreaking to watch.
SagelyGuru 14y ago
Surely 'intent' only becomes material after some crime was actually committed? Otherwise prosecuting just for intent alone makes it into a thought crime? Specifically, in this case, I do not understand how the shills are hoping to keep justifying the use of the manifesto as proof of intent to distribute the articles, when he has NOT actually distributed them? How can that be possibly relevant? Or is it the case that we are not only not allowed to read research that we paid for but now are potentially all guilty of thought crimes as well?
- twoodfin 14y ago
  Please refrain from referring to hn posters who disagree with you about the scope of "thought crime" as "shills". It's unbecoming. Yes, intent only matters if you've committed a crime, but it's not at all difficult to argue that Swartz probably did commit a felony under the CFAA. If you can't see that, imagine he had downloaded loosely protected private emails or credit card account lists.
  - analog 14y ago
    "imagine he had downloaded loosely protected private emails or credit card account lists" Respectfully I don't think that's a great argument. That what he did is in the public interest (imo) is central to the issue. You can't just ignore that.
    - mpyne 14y ago
      That's more of a factor for the sentencing phase of a trial (a "mitigating" factor to be considered when adjudging a proper sentence). What you propose is vigilante justice (though without the violence we normally ascribe to it) and though I too am often sympathetic to that, the legal system is not (and we as a society have chosen that on purpose).
      - analog 14y ago
        I don't think I am proposing vigilante justice, are you confusing comments here perhaps? The intent is absolutely a factor at the decision to prosecute stage. You're trying to equate an act in the public interest (freeing academic information), with an act with clear criminal intent (credit card fraud). They simply aren't treated the same way and nor should they be.
rdl 14y ago
I don't know her, but I wonder if Taren S-K is going to define the rest of her life w.r.t. being Aaron's "widow". That can't be healthy, either.
- intended 14y ago
  No it wont. After a decade, it will be a far fainter association, current trajectories of life being held equal. Beyond that...say after 3 decades? There will be a new generation of whipper snappers saying all sorts of stuff that barely intersect with today's actors. (They will intersect with the issues and choices we make today) She will not be defined by it unless she chooses to pursue that path.
- beagle3 14y ago
  It hasn't been two months yet. Many cultures settled on one year as the reasonable mourning time, after which people are expected to get on with their life. Some people need less, some people need more. Your comment might be warranted in five to ten years if she does indeed define herself that way.
- unreal37 14y ago
  I was thinking this too. More so along the lines that she will learn to master karate and katana sword skills over the next 10 years, and exact her vengeance upon the US Prosecutors office.
jheriko 14y ago
Can we stop giving a shit about this already please? There are a million and one worse things perpetrated and supported by this government that they actually do happily admit to and which are actually /really bad/ - i.e. resulting in the murder of tens of thousands innocent children. I refuse to pity self entitled pricks who should have known what they were doing and taken some responsibility for the relatively tiny consequences of their actions instead of topping themselves. Disrespectful tone fully intended.
- beedogs 14y ago
  Authoritarian prick detected. "He deserves bogus prosecution because he had it coming for acting like a douche." Yep, that's all it takes to justify ruining someone.
  - jheriko 14y ago
    I'm not saying its right - just that the amount of fuss is massively disproportionate. Bogus prosecution is basically nothing compared to having your life threatened with bona fide aggression. First world problems, in the extreme.
    - dllthomas 14y ago
      Bogus prosecution is bona fide aggression, much like any other attempt to hold you long term against your will and threaten you with guns if you don't comply. FWIW, I weakly agree with your basic point that this gets a disproportionate amount of play compared to other injustices, but you're not presenting it well.
      - jheriko 14y ago
        Thanks. I am certainly a little too far on the offensive side... but I take offense to the level of attention this receives.
    - betterunix 14y ago
      We are talking about a criminal case, in the United States, in which the defendant was a US citizen. The USA is a first world country, and this is purely domestic matter for us; yes, it is a first world problem. If Americans stop paying attention to these things, our problems will rapidly change from "first world" to "tyranny."
grandalf 14y ago
The government is chosen through a political process and so everything it does is political. The DOJ's actions were heavy-handed in a way that has freaked out a lot of people who evidently never realized that the government was like this. Anyone who has ever gotten a letter from the IRS or has been pulled over by a surly police officer knows well that even though there are laws which apply to everyone fairly, the way those laws are enforced is mostly left up to the discretion of whoever is enforcing them. Try being an immigrant and dealing with INS officers or a traveler dealing with TSA. Our government has created all kinds of thugs whose job it is to put on a big show of force to intimidate people. Why are government buildings so big and grand? To create a show of force and make our government seem formidable. Why are there so many ceremonies involving soldiers, government officials, marching, etc. Simply to put on a show and create the impression of solemnity, gravity, and importance. Governments must continually act to keep the power they have achieved. They do this mostly through propaganda and PR efforts. Every white gloved soldier in a ceremony is a PR stunt. Every wood paneled room, dramatic monument, motorcade, marble building, podium, flag and seal are part of the PR show. The world is full of greedy people who seek power over others. Whether it's an ambitious Carmen Ortiz or an up-and-coming young congressman or a mild mannered traffic cop. Each seeks to control others as a very significant portion of his/her motivation and life's goal. Most people who do startups just want to build something and work with interesting technology and so we often forget just what government is. We must wake up and realize that it's about control and force, and now and then the victim of this control and excess is a fellow hacker and we start to take it seriously for a few minutes before we forget about it again. Don't assume that you won't be the target, don't adopt that conservative worldview.
- kristenlee 14y ago
  I find it overreaching to conclude that every individual who is employed by the government in a law enforcement capacity chose their job out of a need to control other people. The world is not black and white and there are shades of gray. The police officers you despise hunt down the murderers, rapists, and child molesters that harm society, the soldiers fight against genocidal sociopaths like Adolf Hitler & Sadaam Hussein, and the congressmen you despise fight for things like universal healthcare. With regards to startups the primary motivation for most entrepreneurs, but not all, is to make money, not some noble goal of making the world a better place. Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and the like do little or nothing to solve the world's most serious problems, they're just toys for upper middle class people with money and time to burn. Finally no reputable news source has reported on this story because everything is based on hearsay on what a "DOJ representative" allegedly said which fails to pass the credibility test for reputable news outfits such as the NY Times, Reuters, Washington Post, CNN, with reporting standards. Before you act on the word, consider the source.
tptacek 14y ago
No, they didn't admit that. An anonymous staffer told the Huffington Post they felt that the prosecution was overcommitted to a token prison sentence and felony convictions to justify the effort they had put into the case, and Swartz' "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto" was used as evidence to establish his intent. 4/5ths of Hacker News believed the day the news about Swartz came out, when we learned about the prison time demand, that this was what was happening. There has been no revelation, unless Taren or one of her peers was at the hearing and learned something different than the Huffington Post.
- ScottBurson 14y ago
  the prosecution was overcommitted to a token prison sentence and felony convictions to justify the effort they had put into the case In short: to keep themselves from looking bad. I wasn't sure, before I read this, that I actually wanted to see Ortiz and Heymann fired. Now I'm starting to think I do. Putting someone in prison just so you don't have to publicly admit that you shouldn't have been prosecuting them in the first place... I can hardly think of a worse reason.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I commented yesterday when these HuffPo rageview pieces started spooling out: you should listen to the WBUR piece on Ortiz's office: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5264200 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5264200 Unlike Mashable or Techdirt, WBUR did actual reporting, talking to multiple defense attorneys that handled Ortiz-managed prosecutions, tracking down judges admonishing Ortiz, even finding people who had recommended Ortiz for the post who have since backed away. The WBUR investigation is packed full of details. They don't paint a pretty picture! There is good reason to be concerned about Ortiz. There are concerns about the way she manages her office, sets up incentives for AUSAs, oversees cases, and handles transparency. The story they build is of a US Attorney appointment that is simply not working out. It's damning enough that I actually started to reconsider whether Heymann was really the root of the problem; if he'd been reporting to a different US Attorney, things might have worked out differently. The most disquieting thing Ortiz says in the WBUR show is an offhand comment. "It's an adversarial system" she says, defending her aggressive handling of prosecutions. But while that's true at one level (prosecutors are technically & mechanically adversaries of defense attorneys), it's deeply untrue at the level she seems to mean it on. She comes off as believing that her job is to present the most aggressive possible case for conviction and let the judge & jury sort out the truth. But that's not the prosecutor's role in the US! Prosecutors have discretion over what cases they bring and are required to use it. It's very worrying when a US Attorney implies that it's not their job to deploy that discretion.
abraininavat 14y ago
This is making me angrier than almost anything I’ve heard since Aaron died. I finally figured out why: Because I worked my ass off to elect the Obama administration in 2008. I helped these people get in power So stop being a chump. Stop voting in the same career politicians from one of two sides of the same political coin. A coin that's entirely beholden to corporate interests and only nominally beholden to the people. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results
- littledot5566 14y ago
  It's as if choosing between a douche and a turd sandwich.
- weareconvo 14y ago
  > Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results I think insanity has to do with how one perceives reality, rather than one's aptitude for inferring future results based on past ones. Wouldn't this more aptly be characterized as naivety?
  - abraininavat 14y ago
    It's a commonly referenced quote. I didn't coin it.
nonamegiven 14y ago
OT: Why doesn't web text flow anymore? I increased the text size of this post because it started uncomfortably small (for me). Curiosity made me keep increasing the text size until it hit both ends of my browser, then I increased it some more and the text disappeared off the ends. The text did reflow as the size increased, within some internal margin set by the site's style, so it's clearly possible to reflow within the bounds of the window. Why doesn't it reflow to stay inside the window, and why is this considered good? I vaguely recall that it used to be normal to reflow and keep everything visible. I checked with FF and Chromium on linux, same behavior.
- lerouxb 14y ago
  Basically: browsers started scaling pixel sizes years ago, so if you set the width of the page as a pixel size it will scale when you zoom the page. If you use sizes relative to the size of the text (ems or rems) to set the widths of containers, then those will scale when you increase the text size. Developers can turn zooming off on mobile devices by specifying a fixed viewport which obviously upsets a large subset of people. (But then you potentially have the pinch gesture to yourself and it isn't intercepted by the system, but I digress..) Alternatively percentage based and max-width css can be used on containers and then you can probably start to get the behaviour you're looking for. I'm not 100% sure if browsers will scale max-width. You can probably set pixel widths on containers and use percentage based sizes for fonts, but then a) you're assuming the default font size is 16px forever and b) the results are still going to depend on whether the browser scales text or zooms the entire page. In this website's case it probably wouldn't be very helpful if the text scaled up without the design going wider, though. Maybe one or two steps but at a point the main column width gets ridiculously narrow. Oh and obviously you can just never give containers widths, but then you probably get that html 1.0 look where text just goes all the way from one edge of the screen to the other. I don't think it really is a solvable problem in a way that will make everyone happy all the time.
nwzpaperman 14y ago
What is the statistical probability of a .920+ batting average over a decade period? If the Feds come after you, forget about how much money or connections you have; it won't be enough! Page 42: http://www.justice.gov/usao/reading_room/reports/asr2011/11statrpt.pdf http://www.justice.gov/usao/reading_room/reports/asr2011/11s...
api 14y ago
"This is making me angrier than almost anything I’ve heard since Aaron died. I finally figured out why: Because I worked my ass off to elect the Obama administration in 2008. I helped these people get in power. And then they drove the man I loved to suicide because they didn’t like something he said once." A lot of people think the Democrats are lot more socially and politically liberal than they really are. Look no further than their repeated reiteration of punitive "War on Drugs" policy. The Democrats play that tune during elections, but it's a scam... as much as the Republicans and their Jesus babble. (Karl Rove is an atheist.) Both parties are absolutely status quo parties. Since the Reagan era, their stances have differed significantly only on hot-button "culture war" issues-- because these issues are really just tools to segment the electorate. On issues that matter to money and power they differ little if at all.

520 points by rrbrambley 14y ago

I hate to say this, but the DOJ didn't kill Aaron Swartz...he took his own life. Selfishley, if I may so. Many activists stand up to the oppressor, raise awareness, fight, he didn't. Not taking anything away from what he was trying to do with JSTOR (semi-noble), but don't blame the DOJ on his death. Do blame them for bringing down the sledge-hammer though.

known 14y ago

"If you wish to keep slaves, you must have all kinds of guards. The cheapest way to have guards is to have the slaves pay taxes to finance their own guards. To fool the slaves, you tell them that they are not slaves and that they have Freedom. You tell them they need Law and Order to protect them against bad slaves. Then you tell them to elect a Government. Give them Freedom to vote and they will vote for their own guards and pay their salary. They will then believe they are Free persons. Then give them money to earn, count and spend and they will be too busy to notice the slavery they are in." -Alexander Warbucks

dccoolgai 14y ago

In light of this, it is clear that Ortiz and Heymann should be in prison. I made this same comment in a thread earlier and got a bunch of snivelly equivocating about "intent" as a reply...that is just invalid here. These people either didn't like or criminally misunderstood something Swartz did and used that and the position given to them by the government to terrorize him. Inexcusable, at least and it should be criminal (if it's not outright already).

GHFigs 14y ago
got a bunch of snivelly equivocating about "intent" as a reply As somebody that took time out of his evening to address your prior comment with what I felt was sincerity and (I hoped) clarity, I'm sorry it came across to you as "snivelly equivocating". that is just invalid here It may help you to understand the relevance of intent better if you look at what Taren writes in the footnote: "His lawyers instructed him very strictly that he should never talk about motive with anyone before the trial, as it could play a key role in the defense and they didn’t want the prosecution to get any hint of what line of argument might be used." As I said in my prior comment: In law, intent (if it can be proven) can make an enormous difference in what you get charged with or convicted of. Far from being invalid here, the importance of someone's intentions in a case like this is exactly why prosecutors would look at Swartz's prior writings and why his lawyers would instruct him not to discuss it.
- dccoolgai 14y ago
  Assuming that what is charged here is true - namely, that the prosecutors brought the case against Swartz because of his philosophical writings on open data - any minutiae of the case is irrelevant. Thank you for your explanation of the importance of establishing intent in the context crminal law, but couched in the bed of prosecutorial misconduct that it apparently is, it just isn't relevant here and even bringing it up is compositional sophistry. If I, as a prosecutor, decide to charge you with felony assualt because I don't like the color of your shirt, it simply does not matter that you either A) Slapped someone in the face last year or B) Wrote on your blog that you intended to do it. My case is prima facie invalid - I am not allowed to charge you with felonies because I don't like the color of your shirt or because I don't like your philosopy on government transparency.
  - GHFigs 14y ago
    Assuming that what is charged here is true - namely, that the prosecutors brought the case against Swartz because of his philosophical writings on open data The whole point is that it's not true! It's just something HuffPo, et al. are spinning out of a much less controversial statement about what evidence they considered to establish intent. The strongly-conclusive headlines do not match the actual story here. Defending the bullshit headlines doesn't make them true--that's not how truth works.
wisty 14y ago
Ortiz tried to prosecute a lawyer who was just doing her job. The judge threw it out of court. So fortunately for Ortiz, the kind of miscarriages of justice which she advocated for aren't too likely to happen.

pyre 14y ago

| The same law that says that anyone using a fake | middle name on Facebook is committing a federal | felony. Federal prosecutors tried to get this interpretation through the courts with that mother that drove her daughter's 'rival' to suicide via MySpace. It didn't work. The judge threw it out, rightly stating that interpreting breach of ToS as a Federal crime effectively allows companies to set the bar for what is a Federal crime (e.g. "You must always access this website while standing on one leg or else we revoke your permission to use it! Now you're a 'hacker' with a felony conviction. Have a nice day.").

AnthonyMouse 14y ago
It should be pointed out that unless the case went to the Supreme Court, a different circuit could yet come to a different conclusion, so better to fix it nationwide through Congress than risk some other court siding with prosecutors (and that defendant having to argue it to a different circuit's appellate court even if the court comes to the same conclusion). Also: >interpreting breach of ToS as a Federal crime effectively allows companies to set the bar for what is a Federal crime Reminds me of something Larry Lessig said during his speech last Tuesday: The alternative interpretation is that it's a violation when someone violates code-based restrictions, right? So you're still allowing companies to set the bar for what is a Federal crime, they just have to do it in code instead of in contract. Write some nominal piece of code whose stated purpose is to prevent the thing you want to prohibit, even if it's facile and trivially bypassed, and now bypassing it is apparently back to being a federal crime again. Is this really something we want to allow? Shouldn't the law require prosecutors to prove there was some actual harm before we go throwing people in federal prison?
- rhizome 14y ago
  It should be pointed out that unless the case went to the Supreme Court, a different circuit could yet come to a different conclusion Sorry to pedant, but a case will typically not get to the Supreme Court at all unless two circuits come to different conclusions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_split http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_split

LAMike 14y ago

Is the governments recent announcement that they would make all tax-funded research papers free to access a big enough silver lining for people to forget about Ortiz and Heymann?

thejsjunky 14y ago

> "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto" played a role in the prosecution, The fact that something Aaron wrote "played a role" in the prosecution does not mean it was politically motivated. It's a fundamental principal in our legal system that intent matters. Of course if you are charged with a crime the prosecutors will use whatever evidence they can to try and back their claims of what your intent was. The HuffPo article explicitly states that this is what is being discussed: > The "Manifesto," Justice Department representatives told congressional staffers, demonstrated Swartz's malicious intent in downloading documents on a massive scale. So we're not talking about anything "political" here, they planned to use it as evidence. One can make a strong argument that it's lousy as evidence...but the fact that they planned to use it as evidence does not suggest any sort of political motivations (on it's own)...only that they are bad at selecting evidence for their case. My comment should absolutely NOT be construed to say it wasn't politically motivated or that it was handled well....I'm strictly speaking about that one little line...you can't use that one line to support an assertion that it was politically motivated, because it's just not valid. Use other information to bolster the case instead.

droithomme 14y ago
> It's a fundamental principal in our legal system that intent matters. Context error. If Bob dies by falling off a bridge while I am grabbing at him, my intent matters a lot. Was it completely an accident, Bob slipped and fell and I tried to pull him back? Or did I hate Bob and plot for months to kill him and was pushing him? From a distance the two things may look the same - it's important to figure out what I was thinking. But let's say I dislike Bob and even once wrote a blog post about him and his annoying toenail clipping habits several years ago. Some people might even speculate I would not be unhappy if annoying old "Toenail Bob" was dead. I haven't actually done anything to Bob though. Charging me with murder at this point because it is speculated I am thinking about killing Bob and might do so in the future on account of my having complained years ago about his toenail clipping habits would be prosecuting a thought crime. Even if I happen to have bought an axe and rope recently. Or maybe I even stole the axe. What about that? So I could be prosecuted for stealing the axe, that's fair. But prosecute me for killing Toenail Bob because I once disliked his clipping protocols? Claiming that is reasonable to charge people with things they may or may not be thinking of doing but have not actually done because "It's a fundamental principal in our legal system that intent matters." just doesn't make sense. Especially when there's plenty of evidence the axe and rope were for some other purpose, such as I buy a new axe every winter, I need the rope for my spelunking hobby, or I have an established and documented history of downloading large datasets as a professional academic researcher in order to do statistical analysis on them.

mschuster91 14y ago

I believe that this behavior is just the same as effectively murdering him. Ortiz and Heymann should be convicted of whatever the US equivalent of "Murder with intent" is. Let them rot in hell forever.

corin_ 14y ago
At best you could make a case (and I'm talking you making a case here, not talking from a legal point of view) for involuntary manslaughter, not murder with intent, unless you can show that they knew prosecuting would lead to his death.
- kamaal 14y ago
  >>unless you can show that they knew prosecuting would lead to his death. Which it very clearly has, or more precisely in this case it can be described as "Abetment to suicide"
- oleganza 14y ago
  So it is okay for some people to threaten other people with jail when some files get copied? Do you know what the "jail" means? Humiliation every day, statistically guaranteed rape and possible murder.
  - mpyne 14y ago
    As far as I can tell he was never charged with any variant of copying files. He was charged with unauthorized access to a computer network and wire fraud. Given your idea of what jail means for rich white kids like Aaron though, I'd just like to recommend that you actually look into the U.S. prison system (at worst you'll find out what's actually wrong with it and not have to make stuff up).
    - oleganza 14y ago
      If he declines to go to a nice little jail, he'll be shot down when trying to defend himself. So the threat of jail is an ultimate threat of murder, right? Do you think it is appropriate measure for unauthorised access to a computer network? Especially after the fact, not while he's busy doing that. When some guy comes to your porch and does not go away, what would you do? Would you try to push him out on the street, or you will chase him with a gun in attempt to put him in a cell? What would you do if the same guy already stepped on your porch and broke your chair? Will you threaten him with death? Or you will ask policemen and court to do that dirty job for you?

andreyf 14y ago

Many people speculated throughout the whole ordeal that this was a political prosecution [...] but Aaron actually didn't believe it was Aaron was an idealist that had some idealistic misconceptions about reality. Being an intelligent and nationally famous activist, which he was well on his way to becoming, is not something you can do without ruffling the feathers of some very powerful people. He knew it [1], but his idealism stopped him from understanding what it meant for him, personally. I'll admit I don't know much about "how Washington really works", but I wouldn't be surprised if those with such power over senators have some sway with prosecutors, as well. 1. "You don't just introduce a bill on Monday and pass it unanimously a couple of days later [...] but this time, it was going to happene [...] somehow, and the kind of thing you never see in Washington, the senators had all managed to put their personal differences aside, and come together to support one bill they were persuaded they could all live with, a bill that would censor the internet, and when I saw this, I realized, whoever behind this was good [i.e. powerful]". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgh2dFngFsg#t=411s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgh2dFngFsg#t=411s

InclinedPlane 14y ago
That video is heartbreaking to watch.

SagelyGuru 14y ago

Surely 'intent' only becomes material after some crime was actually committed? Otherwise prosecuting just for intent alone makes it into a thought crime? Specifically, in this case, I do not understand how the shills are hoping to keep justifying the use of the manifesto as proof of intent to distribute the articles, when he has NOT actually distributed them? How can that be possibly relevant? Or is it the case that we are not only not allowed to read research that we paid for but now are potentially all guilty of thought crimes as well?

twoodfin 14y ago
Please refrain from referring to hn posters who disagree with you about the scope of "thought crime" as "shills". It's unbecoming. Yes, intent only matters if you've committed a crime, but it's not at all difficult to argue that Swartz probably did commit a felony under the CFAA. If you can't see that, imagine he had downloaded loosely protected private emails or credit card account lists.
- analog 14y ago
  "imagine he had downloaded loosely protected private emails or credit card account lists" Respectfully I don't think that's a great argument. That what he did is in the public interest (imo) is central to the issue. You can't just ignore that.
  - mpyne 14y ago
    That's more of a factor for the sentencing phase of a trial (a "mitigating" factor to be considered when adjudging a proper sentence). What you propose is vigilante justice (though without the violence we normally ascribe to it) and though I too am often sympathetic to that, the legal system is not (and we as a society have chosen that on purpose).
    - analog 14y ago
      I don't think I am proposing vigilante justice, are you confusing comments here perhaps? The intent is absolutely a factor at the decision to prosecute stage. You're trying to equate an act in the public interest (freeing academic information), with an act with clear criminal intent (credit card fraud). They simply aren't treated the same way and nor should they be.

rdl 14y ago

I don't know her, but I wonder if Taren S-K is going to define the rest of her life w.r.t. being Aaron's "widow". That can't be healthy, either.

intended 14y ago
No it wont. After a decade, it will be a far fainter association, current trajectories of life being held equal. Beyond that...say after 3 decades? There will be a new generation of whipper snappers saying all sorts of stuff that barely intersect with today's actors. (They will intersect with the issues and choices we make today) She will not be defined by it unless she chooses to pursue that path.
beagle3 14y ago
It hasn't been two months yet. Many cultures settled on one year as the reasonable mourning time, after which people are expected to get on with their life. Some people need less, some people need more. Your comment might be warranted in five to ten years if she does indeed define herself that way.
unreal37 14y ago
I was thinking this too. More so along the lines that she will learn to master karate and katana sword skills over the next 10 years, and exact her vengeance upon the US Prosecutors office.

jheriko 14y ago

Can we stop giving a shit about this already please? There are a million and one worse things perpetrated and supported by this government that they actually do happily admit to and which are actually /really bad/ - i.e. resulting in the murder of tens of thousands innocent children. I refuse to pity self entitled pricks who should have known what they were doing and taken some responsibility for the relatively tiny consequences of their actions instead of topping themselves. Disrespectful tone fully intended.

beedogs 14y ago
Authoritarian prick detected. "He deserves bogus prosecution because he had it coming for acting like a douche." Yep, that's all it takes to justify ruining someone.
- jheriko 14y ago
  I'm not saying its right - just that the amount of fuss is massively disproportionate. Bogus prosecution is basically nothing compared to having your life threatened with bona fide aggression. First world problems, in the extreme.
  - dllthomas 14y ago
    Bogus prosecution is bona fide aggression, much like any other attempt to hold you long term against your will and threaten you with guns if you don't comply. FWIW, I weakly agree with your basic point that this gets a disproportionate amount of play compared to other injustices, but you're not presenting it well.
    - jheriko 14y ago
      Thanks. I am certainly a little too far on the offensive side... but I take offense to the level of attention this receives.
  - betterunix 14y ago
    We are talking about a criminal case, in the United States, in which the defendant was a US citizen. The USA is a first world country, and this is purely domestic matter for us; yes, it is a first world problem. If Americans stop paying attention to these things, our problems will rapidly change from "first world" to "tyranny."

grandalf 14y ago

The government is chosen through a political process and so everything it does is political. The DOJ's actions were heavy-handed in a way that has freaked out a lot of people who evidently never realized that the government was like this. Anyone who has ever gotten a letter from the IRS or has been pulled over by a surly police officer knows well that even though there are laws which apply to everyone fairly, the way those laws are enforced is mostly left up to the discretion of whoever is enforcing them. Try being an immigrant and dealing with INS officers or a traveler dealing with TSA. Our government has created all kinds of thugs whose job it is to put on a big show of force to intimidate people. Why are government buildings so big and grand? To create a show of force and make our government seem formidable. Why are there so many ceremonies involving soldiers, government officials, marching, etc. Simply to put on a show and create the impression of solemnity, gravity, and importance. Governments must continually act to keep the power they have achieved. They do this mostly through propaganda and PR efforts. Every white gloved soldier in a ceremony is a PR stunt. Every wood paneled room, dramatic monument, motorcade, marble building, podium, flag and seal are part of the PR show. The world is full of greedy people who seek power over others. Whether it's an ambitious Carmen Ortiz or an up-and-coming young congressman or a mild mannered traffic cop. Each seeks to control others as a very significant portion of his/her motivation and life's goal. Most people who do startups just want to build something and work with interesting technology and so we often forget just what government is. We must wake up and realize that it's about control and force, and now and then the victim of this control and excess is a fellow hacker and we start to take it seriously for a few minutes before we forget about it again. Don't assume that you won't be the target, don't adopt that conservative worldview.

kristenlee 14y ago
I find it overreaching to conclude that every individual who is employed by the government in a law enforcement capacity chose their job out of a need to control other people. The world is not black and white and there are shades of gray. The police officers you despise hunt down the murderers, rapists, and child molesters that harm society, the soldiers fight against genocidal sociopaths like Adolf Hitler & Sadaam Hussein, and the congressmen you despise fight for things like universal healthcare. With regards to startups the primary motivation for most entrepreneurs, but not all, is to make money, not some noble goal of making the world a better place. Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and the like do little or nothing to solve the world's most serious problems, they're just toys for upper middle class people with money and time to burn. Finally no reputable news source has reported on this story because everything is based on hearsay on what a "DOJ representative" allegedly said which fails to pass the credibility test for reputable news outfits such as the NY Times, Reuters, Washington Post, CNN, with reporting standards. Before you act on the word, consider the source.

tptacek 14y ago

No, they didn't admit that. An anonymous staffer told the Huffington Post they felt that the prosecution was overcommitted to a token prison sentence and felony convictions to justify the effort they had put into the case, and Swartz' "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto" was used as evidence to establish his intent. 4/5ths of Hacker News believed the day the news about Swartz came out, when we learned about the prison time demand, that this was what was happening. There has been no revelation, unless Taren or one of her peers was at the hearing and learned something different than the Huffington Post.

ScottBurson 14y ago
the prosecution was overcommitted to a token prison sentence and felony convictions to justify the effort they had put into the case In short: to keep themselves from looking bad. I wasn't sure, before I read this, that I actually wanted to see Ortiz and Heymann fired. Now I'm starting to think I do. Putting someone in prison just so you don't have to publicly admit that you shouldn't have been prosecuting them in the first place... I can hardly think of a worse reason.
- tptacek 14y ago
  I commented yesterday when these HuffPo rageview pieces started spooling out: you should listen to the WBUR piece on Ortiz's office: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5264200 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5264200 Unlike Mashable or Techdirt, WBUR did actual reporting, talking to multiple defense attorneys that handled Ortiz-managed prosecutions, tracking down judges admonishing Ortiz, even finding people who had recommended Ortiz for the post who have since backed away. The WBUR investigation is packed full of details. They don't paint a pretty picture! There is good reason to be concerned about Ortiz. There are concerns about the way she manages her office, sets up incentives for AUSAs, oversees cases, and handles transparency. The story they build is of a US Attorney appointment that is simply not working out. It's damning enough that I actually started to reconsider whether Heymann was really the root of the problem; if he'd been reporting to a different US Attorney, things might have worked out differently. The most disquieting thing Ortiz says in the WBUR show is an offhand comment. "It's an adversarial system" she says, defending her aggressive handling of prosecutions. But while that's true at one level (prosecutors are technically & mechanically adversaries of defense attorneys), it's deeply untrue at the level she seems to mean it on. She comes off as believing that her job is to present the most aggressive possible case for conviction and let the judge & jury sort out the truth. But that's not the prosecutor's role in the US! Prosecutors have discretion over what cases they bring and are required to use it. It's very worrying when a US Attorney implies that it's not their job to deploy that discretion.

abraininavat 14y ago

This is making me angrier than almost anything I’ve heard since Aaron died. I finally figured out why: Because I worked my ass off to elect the Obama administration in 2008. I helped these people get in power So stop being a chump. Stop voting in the same career politicians from one of two sides of the same political coin. A coin that's entirely beholden to corporate interests and only nominally beholden to the people. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results

littledot5566 14y ago
It's as if choosing between a douche and a turd sandwich.
weareconvo 14y ago
> Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results I think insanity has to do with how one perceives reality, rather than one's aptitude for inferring future results based on past ones. Wouldn't this more aptly be characterized as naivety?
- abraininavat 14y ago
  It's a commonly referenced quote. I didn't coin it.

nonamegiven 14y ago

OT: Why doesn't web text flow anymore? I increased the text size of this post because it started uncomfortably small (for me). Curiosity made me keep increasing the text size until it hit both ends of my browser, then I increased it some more and the text disappeared off the ends. The text did reflow as the size increased, within some internal margin set by the site's style, so it's clearly possible to reflow within the bounds of the window. Why doesn't it reflow to stay inside the window, and why is this considered good? I vaguely recall that it used to be normal to reflow and keep everything visible. I checked with FF and Chromium on linux, same behavior.

lerouxb 14y ago
Basically: browsers started scaling pixel sizes years ago, so if you set the width of the page as a pixel size it will scale when you zoom the page. If you use sizes relative to the size of the text (ems or rems) to set the widths of containers, then those will scale when you increase the text size. Developers can turn zooming off on mobile devices by specifying a fixed viewport which obviously upsets a large subset of people. (But then you potentially have the pinch gesture to yourself and it isn't intercepted by the system, but I digress..) Alternatively percentage based and max-width css can be used on containers and then you can probably start to get the behaviour you're looking for. I'm not 100% sure if browsers will scale max-width. You can probably set pixel widths on containers and use percentage based sizes for fonts, but then a) you're assuming the default font size is 16px forever and b) the results are still going to depend on whether the browser scales text or zooms the entire page. In this website's case it probably wouldn't be very helpful if the text scaled up without the design going wider, though. Maybe one or two steps but at a point the main column width gets ridiculously narrow. Oh and obviously you can just never give containers widths, but then you probably get that html 1.0 look where text just goes all the way from one edge of the screen to the other. I don't think it really is a solvable problem in a way that will make everyone happy all the time.

nwzpaperman 14y ago

What is the statistical probability of a .920+ batting average over a decade period? If the Feds come after you, forget about how much money or connections you have; it won't be enough! Page 42: http://www.justice.gov/usao/reading_room/reports/asr2011/11statrpt.pdf http://www.justice.gov/usao/reading_room/reports/asr2011/11s...

api 14y ago

"This is making me angrier than almost anything I’ve heard since Aaron died. I finally figured out why: Because I worked my ass off to elect the Obama administration in 2008. I helped these people get in power. And then they drove the man I loved to suicide because they didn’t like something he said once." A lot of people think the Democrats are lot more socially and politically liberal than they really are. Look no further than their repeated reiteration of punitive "War on Drugs" policy. The Democrats play that tune during elections, but it's a scam... as much as the Republicans and their Jesus babble. (Karl Rove is an atheist.) Both parties are absolutely status quo parties. Since the Reagan era, their stances have differed significantly only on hot-button "culture war" issues-- because these issues are really just tools to segment the electorate. On issues that matter to money and power they differ little if at all.