8 ms·

How The U.S. Marshals Are Trying To Break My Hunger Strike

76 points by electic 10y ago

bertil 10y ago
I find is bizarrely self-serving to describe yourself as the next Aaron Schwartz. Depression and suicide leveraged as political tools feel a little too callous. What would make more sense is some detail on what the case is about, i.e. a third person report.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- BugsJustFindMe 10y ago
  > Aaron Schwartz Swartz
- int_handler 10y ago
  Where exactly does the author describe himself as "the next Aaron Swartz?" The only comparison I found was that the article draws parallels between Gottesfeld's and Swartz's cases since both are being prosecuted by Carmen Ortiz and the article is claiming similar to Swartz, the prosecutors are again abusing the CFAA and trying to "make an example of" Gottesfeld.
  - danso 10y ago
    It was in the originally submitted title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306320 > “Aaron Swartz Redux -- The Man Carmen Ortiz Is Trying to Kill Next”
    - int_handler 10y ago
      Where is the evidence that this title was written by the author of the article rather than just the poster of the article?
      - grzm 10y ago
        I'm not sure what you're asking. Clicking through to the Huffington Post article, the title is "How The U.S. Marshals And Bureau Of Prisons Are Trying To Break My Hunger Strike", and the last portion of the URI is how-the-us-marshalls-bureau-of-prisons-are-trying_us_586abd7be4b068764965c3af This indicates that the Huffington Post article title hasn't changed, as generally URIs don't change even if article titles do. As for the submission title original submission title "Aaron Swartz Redux -- The Man Carmen Ortiz Is Trying to Kill Next", that was submitted by the poster. See this comment from 'sctb when he updated the title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306320 Is this what you're asking? If not, can you clarify?
        int_handler 10y ago
        Thank you, this is exactly what I am asking and verifies that the _poster_, not the author, came up with the "Aaron Swartz Redux" title and that the author did not describe himself as "the next Aaron Swartz." Excuse my pedantry.
        grzm 10y ago
        The author doesn't, though he does bring Swartz up as part of his story. "I was tired of explaining this whole travesty over and over again: from the troubled teen industry, to Justina Pelletier, Carmen Ortiz, the CFAA, and Aaron Swartz."
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mox1 10y ago
Hmm, to make a very long story short the guy DoS'ed a hospital.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Probably should read this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-successful-hospital-cyber-attack-that-hurt-no-one_us_5825bc49e4b0852d9ec2146b http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-successful-hospital-... A fundraising campaign was inconvenienced. Probably not as bad as torturing a little girl for months, leaving her unable to walk.
  - aaron695 10y ago
    Not true. https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/10/24/anonymous-hacker-charged-with-opjustina-ddos-attacks-on-hospitals/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/10/24/anonymous-hacker... Huffington post is the internet at it's worst. Pretends to be factual but isn't even close. "Imprisoned human rights activist, journalist, and author Martin Gottesfeld " I see no external evidence of this other than people can now just call themselves these and it's true? There's a story here but the mess that's HP destroys that.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      Did you see something at that link that contradicted anything at my link? Everyone seems to agree that BCH got DDoSed. Sophos adds a juvenile "hacks're bad, mm-kay?" gloss to it, apparently because all their readers are in elementary school, but that's all they have to offer. They don't mention any reasons why this hack was as bad as any other hack. If one recognizes, as all thinking people do, that some hacks as justified even though some other hacks are not, Sophos has no retort. This is a basic rhetorical failure; Sophos ought to be embarrassed. One more thing: this was just a DDoS, yet, "The indictment states that BCH had to shut down its access to the internet and email servers to protect patient medical records." Come again? How on earth would a simple DDoS have that effect? Does the DB "fail open"? This is pure bullshit, yet DoJ and Sophos are happy to parrot it, because this is the sort of bullshit that pays their bills. Pathetic. [EDIT:] He writes and he's in prison, so he mostly fits that description; do you have a particular reason to deny that he's concerned about "human rights"?
sctb 10y ago
We've updated the title from “Aaron Swartz Redux -- The Man Carmen Ortiz Is Trying to Kill Next”, which breaks the guidelines by editorializing.
- ternaryoperator 10y ago
  Thank you. I appreciate you de-sensationalizing posts. Your constant work as well as dang's enables me to read these comments, which show a wide range of opinions, and enjoy and learn from the conversations. No insults, no rancor, no superficial arguments -- but rather a useful exchange of POVs. Thanks for making this possible!
boona 10y ago
Considering that one of the top stories on the site is "Fitness Star Proves There's Nothing Wrong With Stomach Rolls", I have a hard time taking this article seriously. Are we not better than HuffPo?
- danso 10y ago
  The Huffington Post not only has a Pulitzer [0] -- which is rare for an online-only outlet -- it regularly does serious journalism [1], even if it runs clickbait to help pay the bills. As I explained in another comment downthread, I'm not strongly convinced by the OP's claims, but I didn't dismiss the OP simply because of where it was originally published. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/apr/22/huffington-post-pulitzer-prize https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/apr/22/huffington-pos... [1] http://data.huffingtonpost.com/2016/jail-deaths http://data.huffingtonpost.com/2016/jail-deaths
  - geezerjay 10y ago
    > The Huffington Post not only has a Pulitzer [0] That's a bit misleading. David Wood was awarded the Pulitzer prize for a story that was published by the Huffington Post. Just because the merit of David Wood's work was recognized by Pulitzer's board members it doesn't automatically mean everything posted by the Huffington Post is a Pulitzer contender. > it regularly does serious journalism [1] I believe you meant that some authors who host their work in Huffington Post do serious journalism. That's not exactly the same thing at all.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - danso 10y ago
      > it doesn't automatically mean everything posted by the Huffington Post is a Pulitzer contender. That's a straw man argument I never made.
      - geezerjay 10y ago
int_handler 10y ago
If anyone wants to read more information about Justina Pelletier, the patient at BCH that the author DoS'ed the hospital donations website over, here are a few articles you might find interesting: * Parents of Justina Pelletier sue Boston Children’s Hospital: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/02/25/parents-justina-pelletier-sue-boston-children-hospital-for-negligence/jCrlgTQBVikJtokEnlFBmN/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/02/25/parents-justina... * The Case of Justina Pelletier Still Requires Nuance: http://www.harpocratesspeaks.com/2016/03/Case-of-Justina-Pelletier-Still-Calls-for-Nuance.html http://www.harpocratesspeaks.com/2016/03/Case-of-Justina-Pel... * The New Child Abuse Panic: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/the-new-child-abuse-panic.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/the-new-chi...
- psyc 10y ago
  That second one, the blog post, raised a dozen red flags for me. The gist of it is "We don't know what happened, therefore I will speculate about every hypothetical way that the Pelletiers might be bad people, and Justina herself might not know what she's talking about. Because, gosh, we just don't know. BTW my primary concern is her welfare."
  - danso 10y ago
    So if that blog post can be dismissed as mere speculation because, well it's just a blog post, right? Then on what basis can we give Martin Gottesfeld the benefit of the doubt? As far as I can tell, the Pelletiers did not release the relevant medical records, either into the public domain or through private channels to Mr. Gottesfeld. Nor does Gottesfeld mention having a medicine-related degree, or even having observed Justina in person. It appears that he made his decision based on reading blog posts sympathetic to the family, and not based on any firsthand or otherwise privileged observations of his own.
danso 10y ago
Aaron Swartz's suicide coincided with one of the worst downtimes of my own life so the tragedy of his death has always had special poignance for me. Even seeing his name now makes me blink back tears at what a goddamned unnecessary tragedy it all was, and I was as disappointed as anyone that the campaign to pressure Ortiz to resign eventually petered out. But it didn't surprise me that the outcry didn't cause her termination. She was just doing her job, and for most of the time for most people, that's just fine. Just 3 weeks ago there was a highly upvoted thread on HN praising the labor of her office: the prosecution of pharma execs accused of racketeering [0]. A few users called her out by name, but I don't think anyone argued that that invalidate what most people agreed was a worthy case. So I have a strong reluctance to assign to her office a vendetta against Swartz-like offenders. I do think the indifferent incompetence that led to the decision to drop the hammer on Swartz justified her resignation, but not because she's malicious. I think framing the machinations of politics as simple good vs evil is not only inaccurate, but harmful in the long run. So seeing the headline of the OP (as originally submitted) -- "Aaron Swartz Redux, The man Carmen Ortiz is trying to kill next" -- reflexively raised red flags for me. Actually reading the content of the OP did not help, as it is an incoherent mess. I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt, as being coherent is probably a difficult task given his circumstances. But when reading an earlier statement by the OP, in which described his actions and motivations in more specific detail, I'm left with even more apprehension: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_57df4995e4b08cb140966cd3 http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_57df4995e4b08cb140966cd3 If I'm reading his statement correctly, the OP learned on the news that a hospital was accused of mistreating a young patient. So the OP unilaterally decided the hospital must be punished by shutting off the hospital's internet during a fundraising drive. Here are his own words: > I also knew from my career experience as a biotech professional that no patients should be harmed if Boston Children’s was knocked offline. There’s no such thing as an outage-proof network, so hospitals have to be able to function without the Internet. It’s required by federal law, and for accreditation. The only effects would be financial and on BCH’s reputation. > The network was strong, well funded, but especially vulnerable to a specific attack. Apparently BCH was unwilling to architect around the problem. I see such laziness often in my work, and it leaves our nation vulnerable. > I had spent my career building cyber-defenses. For the first time, I was on the offensive. I coded around the clock for two weeks to perfect the attack. Small test runs were made. BCH bragged to the media that they were withstanding the onslaught and hadn’t been taken down. They had no idea what was to come. > I finished the code just in time. It ran. BCH’s donation page went down. As they were down, I was nervous. I left it running for a few hours. > Then, with some donation time still let, I issued the command to stop the attacks—the point had been made. Justina wasn’t defenseless. Under the banner of Anonymous, she and other institutionalized children could and would be protected. There have been no such egregious parentectomies published at BCH since. That is a seriously fucked up rationalization, based on my experience of the massive dissonance between IT and non-IT people about technical issues and downtime and what constitutes a disruption. It's like a small-scale Mr. Robot in real life, except lacking the calm rationality of f-society. This doesn't invalidate the OP's claims of mistreatment. I'm just expressing the roots of my ambivalence on this, even as a huge sympathizer of Mr: Swartz. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13164826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13164826 edit: added more excerpts from his statement about the why and how of his alleged DDOS attack.
strainer 10y ago
Much of the discussion in this thread is worryingly callous and dismissive. This is a first person account of an activist starving themselves to death in the service of a selfless and unviolent cause.
- zzalpha 10y ago
  "This is a first person account of a confessed, unrepentant criminal starving themselves to death because they don't feel they should be punished for their crimes." Amazing how framing makes a difference, isn't it?
  - forumSzliding 10y ago
    Slippery slopes all around. Hopefully he won't die though, or be tortured with force feeding, because the shit his did is pretty tame, pretty boring, and pretty inconsequential. It's, like, on the level of shop lifting bubble gum, regardless of whatever intellectual psychobabble anyone wants to heap on top of it. I've probably endangered more lives with multiple counts of reckless driving, been arrested for it, AND released in under thirty hours with a ~$500 fine, kept my licence and no misdemeanors on my record. Think about it.
    - zzalpha 10y ago
      Hopefully he won't die though, or be tortured with force feeding While I disagree what he did was as minor as you claim, I agree with that, and would agree with that no matter what he did. It begs an interesting question, though: suppose a confessed murderer went on a hunger strike, refusing to eat until they were acquitted (err, and to be clear, I'm not saying this case is equivalent to murder... just using it as an example). What do you do? I honestly am unsure of the ethics. Forced feeding sounds awful, but anything else is effectively enabling suicide... The alternative is to bend to their wishes, but that sets a very dangerous precedent that threatening suicide is an effective means of manipulating the criminal justice system.
      - 10y ago
synicalx 10y ago
To sum this up, dude DoS'ed a hospital, got in trouble for it, feels that getting in trouble for breaking the law is something that doesn't apply to him and thus refuses to eat food for a while, and tries to make the lives of everyone else around him difficult (except for his special little African friend). He also tries to leverage someone else's suicide to his advantage which is always a classy look.
marcoperaza 10y ago
We don't let people kill themselves in prison. The state has a duty to protect the health of people in its custody, even against themselves.
- derrickdirge 10y ago
  "While in custody, you will be subjected to whatever torture is necessary to protect you from yourself."
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    Frame it however you want. The government should not let people starve themselves to death in prisons. Facing justice is not an easy thing, enough to drive people to psychological extremes. But life goes on even for prisoners.
    - derrickdirge 10y ago
      I'd be interested to know how a starving individual being kept in solitary confinement in a cold cell in standing water, regularly subjected to treatment intended to apply physical and psychological pressure, could be framed as anything other than torture. I would also argue that if the government focused more on not torturing people and instead treating them with basic human dignity, it wouldn't have to deal with quite so many hunger strikes.
      - marcoperaza 10y ago
        That's a separate issue than keeping people alive. But yes, I agree that torture is a bad thing. But I also have a healthy skepticism for potentially self-serving claims made by people facing criminal charges.
- WalterSear 10y ago
  > The state has a duty to protect the health of people in its custody Few duties are observed as selectively.

76 points by electic 10y ago

I find is bizarrely self-serving to describe yourself as the next Aaron Schwartz. Depression and suicide leveraged as political tools feel a little too callous. What would make more sense is some detail on what the case is about, i.e. a third person report.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
BugsJustFindMe 10y ago
> Aaron Schwartz Swartz
int_handler 10y ago
Where exactly does the author describe himself as "the next Aaron Swartz?" The only comparison I found was that the article draws parallels between Gottesfeld's and Swartz's cases since both are being prosecuted by Carmen Ortiz and the article is claiming similar to Swartz, the prosecutors are again abusing the CFAA and trying to "make an example of" Gottesfeld.
- danso 10y ago
  It was in the originally submitted title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306320 > “Aaron Swartz Redux -- The Man Carmen Ortiz Is Trying to Kill Next”
  - int_handler 10y ago
    Where is the evidence that this title was written by the author of the article rather than just the poster of the article?
    - grzm 10y ago
      I'm not sure what you're asking. Clicking through to the Huffington Post article, the title is "How The U.S. Marshals And Bureau Of Prisons Are Trying To Break My Hunger Strike", and the last portion of the URI is how-the-us-marshalls-bureau-of-prisons-are-trying_us_586abd7be4b068764965c3af This indicates that the Huffington Post article title hasn't changed, as generally URIs don't change even if article titles do. As for the submission title original submission title "Aaron Swartz Redux -- The Man Carmen Ortiz Is Trying to Kill Next", that was submitted by the poster. See this comment from 'sctb when he updated the title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306320 Is this what you're asking? If not, can you clarify?
      - int_handler 10y ago
        Thank you, this is exactly what I am asking and verifies that the _poster_, not the author, came up with the "Aaron Swartz Redux" title and that the author did not describe himself as "the next Aaron Swartz." Excuse my pedantry.
        grzm 10y ago
        The author doesn't, though he does bring Swartz up as part of his story. "I was tired of explaining this whole travesty over and over again: from the troubled teen industry, to Justina Pelletier, Carmen Ortiz, the CFAA, and Aaron Swartz."

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mox1 10y ago

Hmm, to make a very long story short the guy DoS'ed a hospital.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jessaustin 10y ago
Probably should read this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-successful-hospital-cyber-attack-that-hurt-no-one_us_5825bc49e4b0852d9ec2146b http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-successful-hospital-... A fundraising campaign was inconvenienced. Probably not as bad as torturing a little girl for months, leaving her unable to walk.
- aaron695 10y ago
  Not true. https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/10/24/anonymous-hacker-charged-with-opjustina-ddos-attacks-on-hospitals/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/10/24/anonymous-hacker... Huffington post is the internet at it's worst. Pretends to be factual but isn't even close. "Imprisoned human rights activist, journalist, and author Martin Gottesfeld " I see no external evidence of this other than people can now just call themselves these and it's true? There's a story here but the mess that's HP destroys that.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    Did you see something at that link that contradicted anything at my link? Everyone seems to agree that BCH got DDoSed. Sophos adds a juvenile "hacks're bad, mm-kay?" gloss to it, apparently because all their readers are in elementary school, but that's all they have to offer. They don't mention any reasons why this hack was as bad as any other hack. If one recognizes, as all thinking people do, that some hacks as justified even though some other hacks are not, Sophos has no retort. This is a basic rhetorical failure; Sophos ought to be embarrassed. One more thing: this was just a DDoS, yet, "The indictment states that BCH had to shut down its access to the internet and email servers to protect patient medical records." Come again? How on earth would a simple DDoS have that effect? Does the DB "fail open"? This is pure bullshit, yet DoJ and Sophos are happy to parrot it, because this is the sort of bullshit that pays their bills. Pathetic. [EDIT:] He writes and he's in prison, so he mostly fits that description; do you have a particular reason to deny that he's concerned about "human rights"?

sctb 10y ago

We've updated the title from “Aaron Swartz Redux -- The Man Carmen Ortiz Is Trying to Kill Next”, which breaks the guidelines by editorializing.

ternaryoperator 10y ago
Thank you. I appreciate you de-sensationalizing posts. Your constant work as well as dang's enables me to read these comments, which show a wide range of opinions, and enjoy and learn from the conversations. No insults, no rancor, no superficial arguments -- but rather a useful exchange of POVs. Thanks for making this possible!

boona 10y ago

Considering that one of the top stories on the site is "Fitness Star Proves There's Nothing Wrong With Stomach Rolls", I have a hard time taking this article seriously. Are we not better than HuffPo?

danso 10y ago
The Huffington Post not only has a Pulitzer [0] -- which is rare for an online-only outlet -- it regularly does serious journalism [1], even if it runs clickbait to help pay the bills. As I explained in another comment downthread, I'm not strongly convinced by the OP's claims, but I didn't dismiss the OP simply because of where it was originally published. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/apr/22/huffington-post-pulitzer-prize https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/apr/22/huffington-pos... [1] http://data.huffingtonpost.com/2016/jail-deaths http://data.huffingtonpost.com/2016/jail-deaths
- geezerjay 10y ago
  > The Huffington Post not only has a Pulitzer [0] That's a bit misleading. David Wood was awarded the Pulitzer prize for a story that was published by the Huffington Post. Just because the merit of David Wood's work was recognized by Pulitzer's board members it doesn't automatically mean everything posted by the Huffington Post is a Pulitzer contender. > it regularly does serious journalism [1] I believe you meant that some authors who host their work in Huffington Post do serious journalism. That's not exactly the same thing at all.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - danso 10y ago
    > it doesn't automatically mean everything posted by the Huffington Post is a Pulitzer contender. That's a straw man argument I never made.
    - geezerjay 10y ago

int_handler 10y ago

If anyone wants to read more information about Justina Pelletier, the patient at BCH that the author DoS'ed the hospital donations website over, here are a few articles you might find interesting: * Parents of Justina Pelletier sue Boston Children’s Hospital: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/02/25/parents-justina-pelletier-sue-boston-children-hospital-for-negligence/jCrlgTQBVikJtokEnlFBmN/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/02/25/parents-justina... * The Case of Justina Pelletier Still Requires Nuance: http://www.harpocratesspeaks.com/2016/03/Case-of-Justina-Pelletier-Still-Calls-for-Nuance.html http://www.harpocratesspeaks.com/2016/03/Case-of-Justina-Pel... * The New Child Abuse Panic: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/the-new-child-abuse-panic.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/the-new-chi...

psyc 10y ago
That second one, the blog post, raised a dozen red flags for me. The gist of it is "We don't know what happened, therefore I will speculate about every hypothetical way that the Pelletiers might be bad people, and Justina herself might not know what she's talking about. Because, gosh, we just don't know. BTW my primary concern is her welfare."
- danso 10y ago
  So if that blog post can be dismissed as mere speculation because, well it's just a blog post, right? Then on what basis can we give Martin Gottesfeld the benefit of the doubt? As far as I can tell, the Pelletiers did not release the relevant medical records, either into the public domain or through private channels to Mr. Gottesfeld. Nor does Gottesfeld mention having a medicine-related degree, or even having observed Justina in person. It appears that he made his decision based on reading blog posts sympathetic to the family, and not based on any firsthand or otherwise privileged observations of his own.

danso 10y ago

Aaron Swartz's suicide coincided with one of the worst downtimes of my own life so the tragedy of his death has always had special poignance for me. Even seeing his name now makes me blink back tears at what a goddamned unnecessary tragedy it all was, and I was as disappointed as anyone that the campaign to pressure Ortiz to resign eventually petered out. But it didn't surprise me that the outcry didn't cause her termination. She was just doing her job, and for most of the time for most people, that's just fine. Just 3 weeks ago there was a highly upvoted thread on HN praising the labor of her office: the prosecution of pharma execs accused of racketeering [0]. A few users called her out by name, but I don't think anyone argued that that invalidate what most people agreed was a worthy case. So I have a strong reluctance to assign to her office a vendetta against Swartz-like offenders. I do think the indifferent incompetence that led to the decision to drop the hammer on Swartz justified her resignation, but not because she's malicious. I think framing the machinations of politics as simple good vs evil is not only inaccurate, but harmful in the long run. So seeing the headline of the OP (as originally submitted) -- "Aaron Swartz Redux, The man Carmen Ortiz is trying to kill next" -- reflexively raised red flags for me. Actually reading the content of the OP did not help, as it is an incoherent mess. I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt, as being coherent is probably a difficult task given his circumstances. But when reading an earlier statement by the OP, in which described his actions and motivations in more specific detail, I'm left with even more apprehension: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_57df4995e4b08cb140966cd3 http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_57df4995e4b08cb140966cd3 If I'm reading his statement correctly, the OP learned on the news that a hospital was accused of mistreating a young patient. So the OP unilaterally decided the hospital must be punished by shutting off the hospital's internet during a fundraising drive. Here are his own words: > I also knew from my career experience as a biotech professional that no patients should be harmed if Boston Children’s was knocked offline. There’s no such thing as an outage-proof network, so hospitals have to be able to function without the Internet. It’s required by federal law, and for accreditation. The only effects would be financial and on BCH’s reputation. > The network was strong, well funded, but especially vulnerable to a specific attack. Apparently BCH was unwilling to architect around the problem. I see such laziness often in my work, and it leaves our nation vulnerable. > I had spent my career building cyber-defenses. For the first time, I was on the offensive. I coded around the clock for two weeks to perfect the attack. Small test runs were made. BCH bragged to the media that they were withstanding the onslaught and hadn’t been taken down. They had no idea what was to come. > I finished the code just in time. It ran. BCH’s donation page went down. As they were down, I was nervous. I left it running for a few hours. > Then, with some donation time still let, I issued the command to stop the attacks—the point had been made. Justina wasn’t defenseless. Under the banner of Anonymous, she and other institutionalized children could and would be protected. There have been no such egregious parentectomies published at BCH since. That is a seriously fucked up rationalization, based on my experience of the massive dissonance between IT and non-IT people about technical issues and downtime and what constitutes a disruption. It's like a small-scale Mr. Robot in real life, except lacking the calm rationality of f-society. This doesn't invalidate the OP's claims of mistreatment. I'm just expressing the roots of my ambivalence on this, even as a huge sympathizer of Mr: Swartz. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13164826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13164826 edit: added more excerpts from his statement about the why and how of his alleged DDOS attack.

strainer 10y ago

Much of the discussion in this thread is worryingly callous and dismissive. This is a first person account of an activist starving themselves to death in the service of a selfless and unviolent cause.

zzalpha 10y ago
"This is a first person account of a confessed, unrepentant criminal starving themselves to death because they don't feel they should be punished for their crimes." Amazing how framing makes a difference, isn't it?
- forumSzliding 10y ago
  Slippery slopes all around. Hopefully he won't die though, or be tortured with force feeding, because the shit his did is pretty tame, pretty boring, and pretty inconsequential. It's, like, on the level of shop lifting bubble gum, regardless of whatever intellectual psychobabble anyone wants to heap on top of it. I've probably endangered more lives with multiple counts of reckless driving, been arrested for it, AND released in under thirty hours with a ~$500 fine, kept my licence and no misdemeanors on my record. Think about it.
  - zzalpha 10y ago
    Hopefully he won't die though, or be tortured with force feeding While I disagree what he did was as minor as you claim, I agree with that, and would agree with that no matter what he did. It begs an interesting question, though: suppose a confessed murderer went on a hunger strike, refusing to eat until they were acquitted (err, and to be clear, I'm not saying this case is equivalent to murder... just using it as an example). What do you do? I honestly am unsure of the ethics. Forced feeding sounds awful, but anything else is effectively enabling suicide... The alternative is to bend to their wishes, but that sets a very dangerous precedent that threatening suicide is an effective means of manipulating the criminal justice system.
    - 10y ago

synicalx 10y ago

To sum this up, dude DoS'ed a hospital, got in trouble for it, feels that getting in trouble for breaking the law is something that doesn't apply to him and thus refuses to eat food for a while, and tries to make the lives of everyone else around him difficult (except for his special little African friend). He also tries to leverage someone else's suicide to his advantage which is always a classy look.

marcoperaza 10y ago

We don't let people kill themselves in prison. The state has a duty to protect the health of people in its custody, even against themselves.

derrickdirge 10y ago
"While in custody, you will be subjected to whatever torture is necessary to protect you from yourself."
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  Frame it however you want. The government should not let people starve themselves to death in prisons. Facing justice is not an easy thing, enough to drive people to psychological extremes. But life goes on even for prisoners.
  - derrickdirge 10y ago
    I'd be interested to know how a starving individual being kept in solitary confinement in a cold cell in standing water, regularly subjected to treatment intended to apply physical and psychological pressure, could be framed as anything other than torture. I would also argue that if the government focused more on not torturing people and instead treating them with basic human dignity, it wouldn't have to deal with quite so many hunger strikes.
    - marcoperaza 10y ago
      That's a separate issue than keeping people alive. But yes, I agree that torture is a bad thing. But I also have a healthy skepticism for potentially self-serving claims made by people facing criminal charges.
WalterSear 10y ago
> The state has a duty to protect the health of people in its custody Few duties are observed as selectively.