Did Holder’s Department Drive an Internet Pioneer to His Death?
In January 2011, Reddit co-founder, RSS creator, and Internet-freedom activist Aaron Swartz was arrested for downloading millions of academic articles from JSTOR in protest of the weighty fees charged for accessing articles, and those dollars going to publishers instead of writers.
“We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world,” Swartz wrote in 2008. “We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks.”
JSTOR declined to pursue any civil action against Swartz, and even eventually made millions of its articles accessible to the public free of charge. MIT, whose archive was hacked while Swartz was a fellow at Harvard (which gave him access to JSTOR), was less forgiving.
The Justice Department, though, slapped Swartz with charges including wire fraud and computer fraud, altogether carrying the possibility of 35 years behind bars and up to a $1 million fine. Prosecutors eventually offered Swartz a deal to avoid trial in which he’d have to plead guilty to all 13 charges and spend six months behind bars.
Two days later, on Jan. 11, 2013, Swartz hung himself in his Brooklyn apartment. He was 26 years old.
His grieving father, Bob Swartz, told the Los Angeles Times that people should know “the evidence showed clearly that Aaron did not break the law, that the network was open, that access was not unauthorized by MIT, and that he was not guilty of any crime.”
“He was killed by the government,” he declared at his son’s funeral.
Now allies of Internet freedom on Capitol Hill are going after Attorney General Eric Holder for the prosecution of Swartz.
“I’m not condoning his hacking, but he’s certainly someone who worked very hard,” House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told the Huffington Post. “Had he been a journalist and taken that same material that he gained from MIT, he would have been praised for it. It would have been like the Pentagon Papers.”
Issa said he’s assigned an investigator to the case to gather the facts before proceeding further.
Swartz and Issa were allies in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and Issa praised Swartz’s work toward “open government and free access to the people” — including in the defeat of SOPA, which would have given the government broad powers to block Internet content, in the last Congress.
The GOP Senate whip took the case straight to Holder today.
John Cornyn (R-Texas) said he was “saddened” to learn of Swartz’s death.
“Mr. Swartz was, among other things, a brilliant technologist and a committed activist for the causes in which he believed – including, notably, the freedom of information. His death, at the young age of twenty-six, was tragic,” Cornyn wrote to Holder.
“As you are doubtless aware, Mr. Swartz was facing an aggressive prosecution by the Department of Justice when he took his own life. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts accused him of breaking into the computer networks of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and downloading without authorization thousands of academic articles from a subscription service. While the subscription service did not support a prosecution, in July 2011 the U.S. Attorney’s office indicted him on four counts of fraud and computer crimes, charges that reportedly could have resulted in up to 35 years imprisonment and a $1 million dollar fine. This past September, the U.S. Attorney’s office filed a superseding indictment charging Mr. Swartz with thirteen felony counts and the prospect of even longer imprisonment and greater fines,” he continued.
Cornyn said the case raises critical questions:
First, on what basis did the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts conclude that her office’s conduct was “appropriate?” Did that office, or any office within the Department, conduct a review? If so, please identify that review and supply its contents.
Second, was the prosecution of Mr. Swartz in any way retaliation for his exercise of his rights as a citizen under the Freedom of Information Act? If so, I recommend that you refer the matter immediately to the Inspector General.
Third, what role, if any, did the Department’s prior investigations of Mr. Swartz play in the decision of with which crimes to charge him? Please explain the basis for your answer.
Fourth, why did the U.S. Attorney’s office file the superseding indictment?
Fifth, when the U.S. Attorney’s office drafted the indictment and the superseding indictment, what consideration was given to whether the counts charged and the associated penalties were proportional to Mr. Swartz’s alleged conduct and its impact upon victims?
Sixth, was it the intention of the U.S. Attorney and/or her subordinates to “make an example” of Mr. Swartz? Please explain.
Finally, the U.S. Attorney has blamed the “severe punishments authorized by Congress” for the apparent harshness of the charges Mr. Swartz faced. Does the Department of Justice give U.S. Attorneys discretion to charge defendants (or not charge them) with crimes consistent with their view of the gravity of the wrongdoing in a specific case?
Cornyn asked the attorney general to respond. Holder has not publicly commented on Swartz’s death.
At least two House Democrats have joined the GOP outcry over the prosecution, though, with Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.) telling The Hill they thought the DoJ was out of line.
“The charges were ridiculous and trumped-up. It’s absurd that he was made a scapegoat,” Polis said. “I would hope that this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
Swartz’s case has also made it to the White House petition site, where more than 43,000 signatures have triggered a mandatory response to their request that U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz be fired for prosecutorial overreach.
“A prosecutor who does not understand proportionality and who regularly uses the threat of unjust and overreaching charges to extort plea bargains from defendants regardless of their guilt is a danger to the life and liberty of anyone who might cross her path,” the petition states.
Ortiz released a statement Wednesday defending her office’s conduct in the case.
“I know that there is little I can say to abate the anger felt by those who believe that this office’s prosecution of Mr. Swartz was unwarranted and somehow led to the tragic result of him taking his own life,” Ortiz said.
According to documents from her office, Swartz was due in court for a pretrial motion hearing on Jan. 25 and his trial was set to begin April 1.
“The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his acts for personal financial gain, and they recognized that his conduct – while a violation of the law – did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases,” Ortiz said. “That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct – a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting.”
“As federal prosecutors, our mission includes protecting the use of computers and the Internet by enforcing the law as fairly and responsibly as possible. We strive to do our best to fulfill this mission every day.”
OH!
That’s why “Anonymous” got its knickers in such a twist!
Well; hear, hear.
Welcome to the club, stupidheads.
Obama and the Chicago way care not for you, nor anyone else.
You are all mere pond scum, to be disposed of at will, by the President who always votes “present”, so as to keep his hands clean. Remind you of anybody? His name starts with an H, and ends with a itler.
Buy a gun and ammunition.
The Germans were very smart people, and after all the Nazi shit was over, they asked themselves, “How did this happen?”
THIS IS HOW!
EXACTLY HOW!
My understanding was that he was downloading a bunch of scientific articles that you usually have to pay for and he was planning on releasing them for free.
His punishment seems a out of line, though his action might have put a publisher out of business.
But one thing I’m sure of is that if this was done under a Republican administration the consensus on PJ Media would be that he had it coming 100%.
“But one thing I’m sure of is that if this was done under a Republican administration the consensus on PJ Media would be that he had it coming 100%.”
Did your microwave tell you this or was it your hair drier?
I thought he opposed charging for older works that should have been in the public domain. Whatever the case, he understood the threats to the free flow of information on the Internet, clearer than do most.
Um, Conrad Black, Ted Stevens, Curt Weldon, Scooter Libby.
There is a reason why George Bush was tolerated rather than loved by conservatives.
G.W. Bush got a lot of support and latitude from conservatives due to 9/11. His spending and support of big government was not liked, but because of the recent attacks, a wait and see attitude was adopted. We thought it would be bad to undermine the President in time of war.
A question of punishment fitting the crime…how good would his chances of future employment in his area of expertise be, after even the lighter sentence? What’s the unemployment rate for 20+ year olds these days, the ones who haven’t had felony convictions and done jail time?
If you’re going to glorify nonviolent resistance to laws you don’t like, you’re going to get someone nonviolently resisting laws you do like.
And besides “making an example” someone also stood to “make a name” for him/herself, no?
This isn’t the worst the gov’t has done, but it comes home to the “middle class” that makes up to $400K a year in the way that some of the other stuff doesn’t. So welcome them, we need all the help we can get.
He was offered a plea deal of doing 6 months for stealing millions of dollars worth of intellectual property.
How does that punishment not fit the crime?
JSTOR is an archive of OLD papers. Like from 60-ies, 40-ies. The newer ones are on journals webpages.
Oh, sorry, forgot the link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_of_Doom_%28hacking%29
Six months is not out of line for what he did. I served in the Army with a guy who later hacked the Bell Telephone system in Baltimore during the early 80s. Know what he got for a sentence?
Six months.
Look him up here, “Terminus.”
I’d be happy to put you in touch with him, so he can explain to you all about how actions can have consequences.
You mean like this guys?
http://paulgraham.com/bluebox.html
I think the article also stated that the publisher was getting the money and not the authors of the works in question. Seems to me that if you are preventing people from seeing something because it’s someone else’s intellectual property, then that person whose property it is ought to be realizing some of the profits, discussions of public domain information aside.
Authors and musicians do this via royalties.
Ortiz needs to be removed as a government prosecutor.
It isn’t just the Dept of Justice and their Offices in Boston, it’s also apparent that the ABAJournal website moderator is also very touchy and defensive. Pasted below is a comment I added at the bottom of the others at the WSJ today:
The title of that WSJ article is:
“Cyber Crime and Punishment
Digital justice after Aaron Swartz’s suicide.”
” 9 hours ago
Charles Griffith Wrote: (your comment)
Beware any mere unwashed layman trying to post anything on the ABAJournal website on the tragic subject of the suicide of Aaron Swartz that may be construed by their moderator to be “racist”. I posted the snarky comment that “with a name like Carmen Ortiz she could expect lifetime employment just about anywhere.”
That was leaped on instantly as “racist”, and that I must adhere to the website’s “rules” of engagement.
Fair enough, it’s their space. I’m the interloper.
But, I had tried to point out also that Ortiz’s “throwing the book” at Swartz in apparent anger/pique at his refusal to accept that plea bargain and have the young prodigy contend with the distinct possibility of thirty five years in jail along with that million dollar fine was a bit rich….especially in light of the fact that that JSTOR organization had subsequently released that same material themselves.
In a subsequent post I said that Aaron Swartz was no Julian Assange or Army Private First Class releasing critical Military Secrets or National Secrets via his vehicle. That particular posting remained “up” for only a matter of minutes.
I’ve been “banned”, unable to post anything since. This ABAJournal website seems to be inordinately sensitive and touchy on this subject of any criticism at all, snarky or not, of the prosecutor Carmen Ortiz. Needless to say, and omitting my snark, Rep Issa seems to think that this may be a case of “book throwing”…my term here….also.
Here’s a paste from the HuffPost which I ran across subsequent to my being banned by that ABAJournal.
“Issa then specifically called out how prosecutors could go too far in pressuring innocent people to plead guilty:
“I’ll make a risky statement here: Overprosecution is a tool often used to get people to plead guilty rather than risk sentencing,” Issa said. “It is a tool of question. If someone is genuinely guilty of something and you bring them up on charges, that’s fine. But throw the book at them and find all kinds of charges and cobble them together so that they’ll plea to a ‘lesser included’ is a technique that I think can sometimes be inappropriately used.”
What’s with the ABAJournal’s “sensitivities” here?
1 Recommendation…”
////end paste
I like Issa, but he’s wrong on this.
Such conduct is not “inappropriate used”. It’s a convenient tool of oppression, and it should be CRIMINAL.
The fact that it is sometimes used to get real bad guys does not justify it.
Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
Keep in mind that everything that Hitler did, leading up to WWII, was legal.
Everything Chavez did in Venezuela was legal…
No knock SWAT raids for non-violent crimes in America are now legal.
It is now legal to detain American citizens indefintely and w/o charges.
It is now illegal for you to own a gun unless the government approves the purchase and places your name on a list.
You are now legally recognised as a threat to government if you are anti-federalist, pro-gun, pro-constituton, state’s rights…
What the Founders did in Americaa wasn’t legal…until after they won the war.
The rule of law is one thing.
The rule of men, quite another.
Swartz knew what the law was. He didn’t like it so he broke it – knowingly and intentionally. He was facing 6 months in prison.
He chose to kill himself.
From jstor site
To that end, Aaron returned the data he had in his possession and JSTOR settled any civil claims we might have had against him in June 2011.
Compare with David Gregory case
You do realize you are defending murder by government toadies, Jim? You’re ok with this?
The government toadies did not murder this kid. He chose to kill himself.
They may, or may not, have prosecuted him wrongly. That’s one thing.
Murder is something else entirely, and that word has no place in a rational discussion of this case.
He killed himself. It was his choice. No government agent told him to, pressured him to, or suggested he do so.
It was HIS stupid choice.
There was no murder.
Except that he didn’t commit any crime, except pissing off Obama administration with his support of Wikileaks.
I believe this was revenge for the amount of opposition he was able to garner against SOPA. You do not embarrass senators and anger the media conglomerates without consequences. I’ll tell you exactly what they wanted, and why he was right to refuse the plea. When future SOPA-like legislation is proposed, and I can assure you that it is only a matter of time, supporters would be able to marginalize his protests because he would be nothing but a convicted criminal. This is what they wanted. They wanted him neutered.
That sounds plausible too.
He committed multiple property crimes. We may or may not agree that what he did should NOT have been a crime, but it was, in fact, a crime.
The problem is not the prosecutor (although she is certainly not innocent), the problem is that the prosecutor had the power to do this in the first place.
Bad law will always be abused. Any government whose decency relies upon having decent people in power will become tyranny. There are no exceptions.
Bingo. THIS is what needs to be learned from this.
See my comment re: prosecutors piling on charges to force plea bargains, above.
Swartz stated, quite clearly, that he thought the copyright laws under which JSTOR and its contributors controlled their work were wrong, because “information should be free”.
Since he couldn’t change those laws by wishing, and was too impatient to consider working to change those laws by democratic means, he decided to break them.
He downloaded many gigabytes of JSTOR documents through MIT’s network. When he was detected, and MIT blocked him, he circumvented the blocks – ultimately entering an equipment closet to plug into MIT’s network backbone.
When someone – anyone – deliberately and consciously breaks the law on the grounds that “I’m right and the law is wrong”, that person should be prosecuted.
Swartz was brilliant. He was also unstable and self-righteous, and thought (like a lot of young fools) that “idealism” and “civil disobedience” are a get-out-of-jail-free card. He needed to be shown otherwise. The prosecutors offered him a plea with minimal punishment. He couldn’t accept even that limited puncturing of his balloon of self-righteousness, apparently.
“Since he couldn’t change those laws by wishing… he decided to break them” – he didn’t break any laws.
“When he was detected, and MIT blocked him, he circumvented the blocks – ultimately entering an equipment closet to plug into MIT’s network backbone” – which is not a crime.
Wire fraud, trespassing, breaking and entering and theft aren’t crimes, eh?
You’re misnamed. There’s some incorrect descriptive attached to your moniker. Here, let me help:
AntiStupidian.There, that’s better.
OFA troll
He did not commit any wire fraud – he wasn’t pretending to be somebody he wasn’t – prosecution stretched the definition of “wire fraud” to the point that it would apply to half of internet users. Charges of “trespassing, breaking and entering” were dropped even by the prosecution, yet you bring them up as if it was proven fact. What does it tell about you?
Incorrect. JSTOR decided to not pursue charges; MIT *did*.
Wire Fraud does not, per se, require you to use a false name. It’s the act of using one of the covered telecommunications methods to commit a fraudulent act, to wit, breaking through MIT’s firewall and illegally downloading over 4 million pieces of intellectual property that were not his.
The POV you also stated that breaking intro a closet with router racks and physically hard-linking to their system – bypassing their firewall and security – is somehow not illegal. Particularly when it was done so for the specific purposes of committing illegal acts.
You have no actual legal training, do you?
Seriously. You’re raising wrong legalities and specious points to excuse away his actions. I’m terribly sorry he committed suicide, that’s a shame. But that’s on him. If you commit crimes – whatever your “pure” justification is – then you had best expect a world of hurt to follow.
I have story here for you, about these kind of crimes. I served in the Army, decades ago, who just a few years later became (for a time) one of America’s most famous phone-hackers (“Phreakers”). He got much proprietary data illegally from the Bell computer system in Baltimore and shared it around (I recollect the estimated dollar amount of $2 mil).
Well, he got caught and at first, same deal, the DA was going to really rock his day. But as it all panned out, you know what he did for time?
Twelve months and one day. And he did it too. And went on to start his own fairly successful ‘net security co.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Rose_%28hacker%29
What is “Incorrect. JSTOR decided to not pursue charges; MIT *did*.”? What does it have to do with anything? I repeat: “Charges of “trespassing, breaking and entering” were dropped even by the prosecution”.
What in the world does “breaking through MIT’s firewall” even mean? He didn’t break through any firewall, he was inside MIT’s network – quite legally, as anyone who is on MIT premises allowed to, per MIT ToS.
How was he “illegally downloading intellectual property” when anyone who is on MIT network – as he legally was – is entitled to downloading these articles, per agreement between MIT and JSTOR?
Why are you repeating the canard about “breaking intro a closet with router racks” when even prosecution didn’t charge him with illegally breaking into anything? Can you specifically state what about him entering into that closet was “illegal”?
In other words, are there ANY facts in this case that you DIDN’T get wrong? Sheesh.
What is “Incorrect. JSTOR decided to not pursue charges; MIT *did*.”? What does it have to do with anything? I repeat: “Charges of “trespassing, breaking and entering” were dropped even by the prosecution”.
“Two years before Swartz ended his life, he was arrested by police from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the City of Cambridge, Mass., police for breaking and entering into an MIT storage closet.”
“JSTOR settled its complaint against him, though MIT did not.”
What in the world does “breaking through MIT’s firewall” even mean? He didn’t break through any firewall, he was inside MIT’s network – quite legally, as anyone who is on MIT premises allowed to, per MIT ToS.
How was he “illegally downloading intellectual property” when anyone who is on MIT network – as he legally was – is entitled to downloading these articles, per agreement between MIT and JSTOR?
“Swartz had stashed an Acer laptop he had programmed to download in bulk millions of scholarly articles from JSTOR, a non-profit database that provides access to the articles for academic libraries. At the time, articles on JSTOR were locked behind a paywall for non-academics who wished to access them through their own computers.”
In other words, are there ANY facts in this case that you DIDN’T get wrong? Sheesh.
You’ll note the above? Clearly, it is you who have no clue what you’re talking about. Were you raining these facile excuses and non-truths in a court of law, they’d cite you and probably put you up for disbarrment.
Oh, link, sorry. http://www.alternet.org/activism/prosecution-aaron-swartz-paints-obamas-justice-department-needlessly-cruel-and-capricious
Not that you couldn’t have found the same information at any number of news sites.
Allston,
1. “I cannot speak as to the criminal implications of accessing an unlocked closet on an open campus, one which was also used to store personal effects by a homeless man. I would note that trespassing charges were dropped against Aaron and were not part of the Federal case.”
2. “At the time of Aaron’s actions, the JSTOR website allowed an unlimited number of downloads by anybody on MIT’s 18.x Class-A network. The JSTOR application lacked even the most basic controls to prevent what they might consider abusive behavior, such as CAPTCHAs triggered on multiple downloads, requiring accounts for bulk downloads, or even the ability to pop a box and warn a repeat downloader – http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/
Please concentrate and try to understand what it is we’re talking about.
Just to keep things light, a side story to the side-story. Have you seen the various “Angie’s List” commercials? One of the satisfied customers who appears is Dan Mullendore – who was also in the same unit with em and old Lenny. Small world, eh?
Bedamned, I am multi-tasking heavily tonight…of course I’d already posted about “Terminus.” Apologies for the redundancy.
Did you know that two Steves who founded Apple famously hacked into Bell network using a bluebox, and called Pope? And sold enough of those hacker boxes to fund Apple?
Yes, yes, a pro-forma trick you guys use. Instead of anwering a question or actually considering a point of view, instead it’s always some manner of “well, HE did it TOO.” Complete lack of understanding of personal responsibility.
Just nonsense. You’re an apologist for illegal behavior because, “well, he’s one of us and so cool,” or some equally dipshit reason such as that.
I wrote my reply in plain English, yet you didn’t understand a single word of it. Amazing, really. Are you dictating your replies to your grandkid who is typing them on internets?
So next he decides to hack into this website and release all the information without the ad platforms, and you can’t get paid? That’s OK? How about stealing a soon to be released book or movie, and the people who invested in it lose money instead of making it?
I don’t understand the hysteria. And suicide is on his hands. Nobody killed him: he lashed out in a way designed to primarily harm his family. So whatever that’s about, it’s on him.
I understand his family is pissed with the government. Very pissed.
He didn’t hack into anything, he used the freely offered services, albeit in a way the service owners failed to anticipate. That is not a crime.
If tax dollars in any form were used to produce the information in these databases, then WE ALREADY PAID FOR IT. We shouldn’t have to pay again to access it. And that’s that!
Your tax dollars are used to produce Top Secret documents. Should you have access to those?
Bad argument. Top Secret documents aren’t kept for public consumption on subscription service sites. However, if I could just pay a subscription fee and see all the Top Secret documents I wanted … you might have a point.
We paid for it – but the rest of the world did not – in fact 50% of the US citizens did not because they don’t pay any taxes. So there is reason to insist on payment from a huge chunk of the world’s population. Further somebody has to pay to assemble and maintain the database of journals and the underlying equipment; so it’s not unreasonable to obtain reimbursement for those costs.
This young man, given his Reddit platform, could have publicly lobbied to make access free – he could have assembled the political force needed to change the laws and regulations to make all results of federally funded research publicly available. He could have continued that fight legally until victory. Instead he broke the law and then was unwilling to face the consequences. I don’t like how the number of laws and regs make us all criminals and I dislike how prosecutors tend to use an iron fist, but I do not find Swartz much of a victim.
Does JSTOR stand for something? I hate articles that use acronyms and assume you know what they are.
Style aside, if you are going to take a stand against a law by breaking it, you have to be willing to pay the consequences. I don’t know one way or the other if this info should be free, but I have noticed that very few of the folks who demand free access to all information are willing to work for free, themselves.
It is a shame he had to take the deal, but it wasn’t exactly a life sentence to hard labor. I empathize with his family, though; it has to be rough when your kid dies by their own hand. The natural tendency is to look for someone outside of the suicide to blame, but in the end suicide is an internal decision, not something that was done to him.
“I have noticed that very few of the folks who demand free access to all information are willing to work for free, themselves” – have you ever heard of Linux? Open source movement in general?
Linux is open-source because it’s inventor decided that’s what he wanted to do. That was his right. But when an end-user just up and decides it should be open and free, and acts accordingly, that’s theft.
So by all means let’s murder him! Bravo!
You seem to be having severe comprehension problems. Caestal made a claim that “very few of the folks… are willing to work for free, themselves”. I merely pointed that Linux is being developed for years by thousands of folks who work for free. Your and his ignorance has no excuse, because the information is only a click away.
Ah, and another trick: obfuscation.
Most versions of Linux are free to some extent or another. However, support for the various versions is a paid-for service, and so you are again wrong.
And this negates the fact that Linux is being developed for years by thousands of folks who work for free… how exactly?
Someone should re-open an investigation of what happened to the guy that supposedly rifled through Obama’s passport files prior to the first election; he somehow turned up dead. That was a dire warning; as is this treatment of Mr.Swartz. I hope that real justice is done here, so we at least feel safer under the law … we have a rogue government and it’s becoming more and more obvious.
This is VERY scary. JSTOR? I used it heavily as a grad student. I am getting a very bad vibe. It can’t happen here? The hell it can’t. I am not the conspiratorial type, but this is very alarming. Tyranny lurks in OUR time. And it seeks to strip us of our natural rights as free, civil, individuals — rights that our forebears gave the last full measure to defend. We stand not only at the fiscal precipice, but at the cultural precipice as well. We could lose it all. Just as the Greatest Generation of our own time faced a very high possibility of losing the Second World War. Our forefathers gave us a U.S. Constitution to protect us from government over-reach as well as from the fickle passions of transient majorities. The Constitution is our rock. We cling to it in our darkest hours. When the “powers that be” seek to control access to advanced — taxpayer funded — study … we have a serious problem before us. A problem that is completely at odds with the academic notion of “free inquiry” and of the citizens’s notion of ownership of the products that THEIR earned tax dollars have paid for. The tyrant believes that this all belongs to him. It does not. It belongs to We the People. We voted for it (to the extent that we can trust the representatives whom we have placed in office). We PAID for it. And we OWN it.
Life is a precious gift. I will say a prayer for him and his family.
We never know if the people around us are going through. I will try to be nicer to everybody. As well as live, work, and party hard. We only get one shot.
It would be interesting to learn now many of the articles Mr. Swartz had notices of government research funding. If Mr. Swartz could have accessed the articles via the wireless network, plugging a cable into the back of a server in a wire closet (which probably should have been locked) is just a faster and more efficient way to get the articles.
This whole thing just reeks of the DOJ not being able to prosecute the real cybersecurity risks and trying to buff their resumes by prosecuting a freedom of information, access to knowledge activist.
Well said.
Aaron is our canary in the mine. He represents the free soul of every American. And the elites and intellectuals have nothing but contempt for freedom and want it snuffed out.
I hope no one is holding their breath waiting for Eric “The Red” Holder to lift a finger.
Unless of course that finger is lifted to confiscate civilian firearms.
Well the victim is not one of “my people,” as MyPeeps Holder might say. So yeah, I think it is a safe bet that Holder considers his death another little victory in the road to revenge.
Internet pioneer eh? There are only about 29,000 of those. Who even uses RSS or Reddit? This person is an obnoxious thief who got the revolutionary self justification malware in his head and then got caught. He probably killed himself in a spasm of self-righteousness and self-pity. And you people think this is evidence of incipient fascism? Something happened to my fellow conservatives and small-r republicans around the time of the Libyan war that has rendered you useless as allies against this generation of Leninism. Snap out of it. This kid wasn’t even scared he was facing 100 years in prison and a $1,000,000 fine, or whatever the press release said. He knew from his lawyer he would ever do that much time, as he could easily have discovered with a day or two of reading on free open-source websites. This has nothing to do with the prosecutor: this Swartz person was just a straight-up asshole.
Takes one to know one.
“Who even uses RSS”? Are you serious? Few hundred million people, at very least. Do you even know what RSS is?
Yeah. It aggregates articles if I join a particular RSS feed. As it has always been, my reaction is “wow.” Do you even know that you and the people with whom you apparently believe you share some kind of “culture” are just technologically over-enabled narcissistic emotionally incompetent boring pieces of shit?
I suggest you stop using internet then, it was invented by us. I am sure you invent five internets every day before breakfast.
wouldn’t it have been nice if these people would have shown this level of concern BEFORE he killed himself.
Sorry, the age of internet pioneers is long past. This fellow was a CHILD of the internet. A man-child apparently without friends who cared enough to tell him he needed to go on the couch over his anxiety and paranoia. Of course, that’s not a narrative that fits of 21st century sensibilities, does it? Pity, that. We spiral in because X and Y are taught that the most important human quality is just getting along.
Mr. Swartz was the enemy.
Mr. Ray “choc’late city” Nagin is not the enemy.
Nidal Hassan is not the enemy.
Try to follow along.
Cornyn’s “got questions”? So fuc*ing what. I’ve heard it all before. No questions ever get answered. And no one in the GOP seems to really care. It’s all meaningless theatre. Holder and Obama can do whatever they want. There is no reckoning, and apparently no end to this nightmare. Not through the GOP.
“Swartz hung himself…” Hate to be picayune but people HANG themselves. They are not HUNG. Objects are hung. PEOPLE HANG. The proper use of words is being driven from the public sphere and it is getting downright obnoxious. Books written by well know authors, edited by big shots in the industry are letting the standards slip. And I refuse to do quietly into that dark night.
Some men are hung.
But to keep it in the proper tense, “Schwarz HANGED himself”.
I have seen this in every article written by an American that concerned such matters for several years. You’d think they’d have enough practice, covering the Middle East, wouldn’t you?
Yet, we should trust their judgement on what is news and what isn’t.
We are run by mediocrities. The key to their stupidity is that they judge all by what “it” sounds like, because they couldn’t tell what “it” was, if their useless lives depended upon it.
Just watch any two news anchors try and do simple arithmetic. It’s a hoot!
An innocent man doesn’t kill himself.. Just saying
That has to be the single most ignorant comment that will hit the interwebs today…..
Pains me to say this, but you probably couldn’t be more wrong.
Innocent men who refuse to play the federal game may receive the sentence before the verdict.
To all those who basically stated “he knowingly broke the law, which has consequences” – I am assuming whenever the EO becomes law that allows the government to confiscate your firearms, you won’t “knowingly break the law”?
If I knowingly break the law I won’t whine about paying the consequences.
Is that Merced, Cali? I spent my formative teenage years there from 80 to 87.
My condolences.
Mr. Swartz was, among other things, a brilliant technologist and a committed activist for the causes in which he believed
Obviously not committed enough to spend six months in jail, not prison, jail. I’m very torn. As much as I don’t like the why the government handled the case, hackers share plenty of culpability for why many of these laws are being passed. It’s all well and good to point you finger at MIT and say they are being excessive, but would you want someone breaking into your computer and stealing your stuff and putting it on the internet. Network intrusion prevention is expensive, probably as expensive as physical protection, and you can bet that cost comes out of employees potential salaries, shareholders potential gains, and customer costs.
What happened to the day when a committed activist was willing to do the jail time? Swartz sounds like a quintessential internet tough guy, a big man behind the keyboard, but nothing but a coward behind a curtain. He committed theft. Should we reward him? Should we say we have no right to privacy in the computer world, be it from government intrusion, which we should rightly decry, or from cyberspace Robin Hood wannabes?
Do I think the publishers are saints, absolutely not, and I think they probably do screw over the writers, just like the fight over music was never about the musicians, but about the labels, but if you want to fight that battle, then fight it legally, or be willing to endure the consequences. Aaron could dish it out, but apparently he couldn’t take it.
Some people can’t seem to grasp the idea that just because you support a cause you can do anything you want in support of that cause. OWS is a classic example.
Who are you all ignorant cockroaches and from under what rotten food are your crawling here? “Hackers” share zero “culpability for why many of these laws are being passed” because these laws passed before hackers even existed. Aaron didn’t “break” into any computer, he didn’t “steal” any stuff. “Network intrusion prevention is expensive” and absolutely irrelevant, because he was on the network legally. He was on MIT’s open network, which allows access to anyone on premises; he wasn’t accessing anyone’s private information, he was downloading articles from JSTOR, which allows downloading articles to anyone on MIT network.
All he did was downloading the articles a little faster than the owners anticipated and liked. Get it?
This 6 month thing is something they’re saying NOW
At the time all he knew is that they refused to reduce his charge from 13 counts.
He thought he faced a lot more than 6 months. He faced up to 35 years.
If the prosecutor really wanted a shorter sentence she would have reduced the number of counts. This is after-the fact nonsense!
After the fact? Who was this guys counsel? Didn’t anyone tell him to let it play out for a while, that the sentence would be reduced. Didn’t anyone one with an inkling of knowledge tell him that the Feds are always going to act like this and make threats, and not to worry about it too much. What a waste. This guy was the real deal: smart, motivated, concerned about Federal abuse and actively fighting it. Didn’t anyone tell him the law enforcement is always going to threaten and say, ” you’re looking at a long prison term.” I know this is after the fact but what a frickin waste.
Ok, let’s say he was getting screwed. Still, he’d do 4 months out of the 6 in a minimum security club fed and come out a hero. He’d be more admired and followed because he took his licks and did the time. His name would launch a rallying cry. Now his name is a rallying cry because he killed himself. It’s very sad. What a waste.
He killed himself, and he owns responsibility for that.
This is good legal summary:
In our age, armed with laws passed in the nineteen-eighties and meant for serious criminals, the federal prosecutor Carmen Ortiz approved a felony indictment that originally demanded up to thirty-five years in prison. Worse still, her legal authority to take down Swartz was shaky. Just last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out a similar prosecution. Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, a prominent conservative, refused to read the law in a way that would make a criminal of “everyone who uses a computer in violation of computer use restrictions—which may well include everyone who uses a computer.” Ortiz and her lawyers relied on that reading…
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/01/everyone-interesting-is-a-felon.html#ixzz2IV2Ut9GN
Issa is going to investigate? Gee, that’s got ‘em quaking in their boots, after taking down DOJ on F&F…… Oh wait…. no one went to jail for that. Hey what’s a little more blood on their hands after two federal agents and hundreds of Mexicans.