56 ms·

Aaron Swartz, Vindicated

336 points by samizdis 5y ago

jacquesm 5y ago
Unfortunately that won't bring Aaron back to life.
- samizdis 5y ago
  Sadly, that is true, but it might go some way to prevent another tragedy of "justice" being inflicted on someone else who might otherwise die from such persecution.
  - xadhominemx 5y ago
    Aaron Swartz did not die because he was persecuted. He died because he suffered from extreme mental illness.
    - capableweb 5y ago
      Let's not jump to any conclusions as neither of us knew the reasoning behind why he decided to take suicide. There was no suicide note (found), and while he might have suffered from mental illnesses, he was also under a lot of pressure. Could be anything really.
    - tpoacher 5y ago
      Borne through persecution. In other news, the victim didn't die from the bullet, he died from cardiovascular collapse following the bullet incident.
      - shadowgovt 5y ago
        Are we discussing philosophy of morality, ethics, and self-determination vs. predetermination; or are we discussing the law? If the law, I can't think of a single case citation I could give that would act as precedent for assigning responsibility to the federal prosecutor for Mr. Swartz taking his own life. I'd be interested to see any such citations people have found. The philosophy of morality, ethics, and determinism is a much wider space where such a thing could be discussed.
        munk-a 5y ago
        I don't think the legal cause of death is particularly relevant here. When suicide is the route there are usually numerous factors and personal mental stability is always going to be one of the big factors. In the past decade we've just started to see more comprehensive laws roll out to address suicide driven by bullying, but it's always going to be a grey zone. That all said - it seems pretty clear that the guilt and fear from legal threats were an extremely strong motivation for suicide. Whether anyone suffers legal consequences for it - it was wrong.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        shadowgovt 5y ago
        So stepping outside the legal question and entering the space of philosophy of morality and ethics (i.e. "What should our laws be")... The US legal system is designed to be adversarial. It isn't the prosecutor's job to worry about the defendant's feelings; that's the defense lawyer's job. The prosecutor's job is to seek legal truth and conviction (and, generally, to err on the side of the latter, on the belief that truth is proved out by the defense working to challenge any hypotheses the prosecutor brings to the table that are countered by evidence). Innocent until proven guilty, but it's the prosecutor's job to prove a defendant guilty, not innocent. This is, obviously, extremely stressful on the defendant. And this is not the only model of law. Adversarial finding of guilt-or-innocence a popular model in countries descended from European colonies, but other nations have different models. And the adversarial model has known weaknesses... In terms of introducing scientific facts to the table, the adversarial model encourages both sides to bring expert witnesses and the jury to decide who's version of facts is true, which is somewhat farcical. Some countries use an inquisitive system, in which the Court is empowered to do its own investigation and analysis (as opposed to acting as an impartial referee to the best cases the plaintiff and defendant can build). There are pros and cons to this system (and it's actually used in some pieces of the US). It's heartbreaking what happened to Aaron, and in general, the American system of governance addresses mental illness extremely poorly. I don't have any good suggestions on how to do better, but that doesn't mean the current design is acceptable.
    - Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
      It is more nuanced than that you think. It is not coming from the extreme mental illness. One of the major factor that led to his death is the federal prosecutor. This POS prosecutor made Aaron to believe that Aaron absolutely have no way out (which not true but this POS don't even care). This prosecutor lead so hard on Aaron and the outcome is Aaron's passing. That prosecutor should be in jail for pushing Aaron to the edge.
      - tzs 5y ago
        > This POS prosecutor made Aaron to believe that Aaron absolutely have no way out (which not true but this POS don't even care). How did the prosecutor make Swartz believe that? Edit: to elaborate, the commentator above is implying that Swartz had a way out that the prosecutor somehow prevented Swartz from finding out about. I would like to know what that way out was, and how the prosecutor prevented Swartz from finding out about it. Swartz had a legal team defending him who I would have expected to inform him of all his options.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - oh_sigh 5y ago
        So Aaron's other suicidal episodes, when no one was prosecuting him, aren't relevant to his final suicidal episode? Surely, the prosecution weighed on him, but no mentally healthy person would choose to commit suicide before the outcome of the charges was even determined. It's not clear to me how one assigns blame for suicide in most cases, or what the options are for prosecutors. If a quasi-suicidal person cuts me off on the highway and I give them the middle finger, and they go home and commit suicide because of it - am I culpable? If, generally, a prosecutor thinks that a person is not mentally stable enough to face trial for their crimes without commiting suicide, are they just allowed to get away with what they want? Or should they be involuntarily committed?
        michaelmrose 5y ago
        I don't think threatening to wield what we now know is a poorly constructed law to put someone in prison for nearly the rest of their natural life is the same as giving someone the finger. He faced up to 35 years in prison for doing what many of us consider an effort to make the world a better place based on his own moral principals.
    - simiones 5y ago
      Suicide is not always the result of (extreme) mental illness. Sometimes it is the rational solution to avoid extreme distress.
      - munk-a 5y ago
        This is an interesting point and one that I disagree almost entirely with. I would make an exception to cases where someone is faced with overwhelming continuous debilitating pain - or the destruction of their mental state (i.e. Sir Terry Pratchett) - but otherwise I think that suicide is pretty much categorically irrational since life is all you've got and while there may be pain involved with it - there is brightness as well. When the road truly seems to be only darkness I'd suggest reaching out to others around you or councilors and talking it out with them because chances are that your observation of there only being negativity is an issue in your perception.
      - xadhominemx 5y ago
        He was offered a 6 month sentence in a low security prison. He could have served that sentence before the trial was even set to begin and resumed his life as programmer and activist - reputation burnished by his conviction, if anything. Suicide is not a rational solution for anyone in that situation.
    - knuthsat 5y ago
      Investigative tactics are pretty brutal. They talk with you so that you incriminate yourself but are very affirmative during most of the conversation but then start confronting you. The mental fatigue makes a lot of people just admit the crime they committed.
      - hutzlibu 5y ago
        "The mental fatigue makes a lot of people just admit the crime they committed." Or just anything, after a certain point.
    - thaumaturgy 5y ago
      This is such a bad take. It's embarrassing to (still) see this on HN after all these years. It has any of several face-palmingly obvious flaws: * Extremely aggressive federal prosecution is not known for its mental health benefits; * It desperately tries to avoid a conversation about how unjust the prosecution was and what their motives were in the case by loading all of the fault for the tragic outcome at Aaron's feet now that he's not around to defend himself; * It is indistinguishable from arguments that people with severe health problems who become ill with covid-19, and die, didn't die of covid-19 but of their health problems; * It is ignorant of modern understandings or sensitivities towards mental health; * It argues from the least nuanced and informed view of his situation possible -- it's a knee-jerk reaction from people with a particular moral framework. It's such a seriously dull-witted argument, it should be confined to screenshots of Facebook.
      - 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
        Your counter-points aren't exactly award-worthy either. Aggressive federal prosecution does not usually result in suicide. The argument doesn't "desperately" do anything, much less avoid a conversation. It is distinguishable from arguments about COVID-19 deaths as they are completely different subjects. Sure, you could say it's not a nuanced argument at all, but that doesn't make it face-palmingly bad, it just makes it plain. I've seen better retorts on Facebook, frankly.
      - dang 5y ago
        Please review the site guidelines and omit name-calling from your arguments here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - macksd 5y ago
      Everyone may suffer from some kind of mental illness or depression at some point in their lives. We should probably care deeply about the kinds of things that might push those people over the edge.
  - BearOso 5y ago
    Yeah, I’d like to see Snowden exonerated, but the government hasn’t changed. They’re still vindictive about being embarrassed, even though it was clearly whistleblowing and, nearly everyone agrees, ethical.
    - nerpderp82 5y ago
      He also exposed crimes against the constitution that afaik no one has answered for, yet he himself is effectively banished to a dictatorship.
- s_dev 5y ago
  Poor Aaron -- he was in a difficult place. I'm sure in hindsight he absolutely make a different choice.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    > I'm sure in hindsight he absolutely make a different choice This strikes me as disrespectful, unless you have some inside knowledge about the whole event. Respect a persons choice to end their life, as that was their final action.
    - s_dev 5y ago
      I think most suicides are very preventable. Most people want to end their pain not their lives.
      - hutzlibu 5y ago
        "I think most suicides are very preventable." In the same way, we can solve hunger and war. Theroretically yes, practically very hard.
      - capableweb 5y ago
        > Most people want to end their pain not their lives That might be true. But again, we don't know exactly how he felt, so why assume something? Many people end their lives with purpose as well, not every suicide is about ending pain.
zackees 5y ago
Aaron Swartz didn’t kill himself.
ddingus 5y ago
We lost a good one. I think, at times, back to Aaron and his grasp of both code and politics. That ability to empower people, cultivate discussion, and I would argue, solidarity on human basics, is rare. Safe Travels Aaron, you are missed.
- hangonhn 5y ago
  There are a lot of grave injustices in this world and this was probably not even remotely close to the worst but I am still really bitter about what happened to Aaron after all these years. I remember how upset I was to hear of his suicide and the things that lead up to them. Maybe it was because he was one of "us" or maybe because his works have improved the lives of so many of us. People like him who make that kind of impact usually ends up becoming rich, etc. Instead he was persecuted until he committed suicide for wanting to make knowledge more accessible. The new SCOTUS ruling helps but I'm still quite sad over what happened.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    I am bitter too, and for similar reasons.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    I'm reminded of "The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine." Sometimes this is a feature; we probably don't want frequent, sweeping changes in the legal landscape, or snap decisions based on emotion. But it also means that injustices are righted slowly, and sometimes too late, after people's lives have been destroyed. "Justice delayed is justice denied." While this SCOTUS decision may vindicate Swartz, he never got the justice he deserved. Now it's too late for that.
    - dorfsmay 5y ago
      Exactly. My exact thought when I read the title was "Whatever the article says, he's still dead and that, is not going to change.
narrator 5y ago
There's been a movement on to privatize law to limit rights. One of the sneaky ways they were doing this was taking the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and making contract law violations into criminal law violations. You breach the contract, we can send you to jail, when it would normally would only be money damages or injunctive relief after the court had weighed in on the matter.
the_optimist 5y ago
Will Assange be vindicated before or after he dies?
- pseingatl 5y ago
  If the NY Times and the rest of the Western MSM got behind Assange, that would be the end of it. They haven't, forgetting that Assange's fate is theirs.
  - simiones 5y ago
    They mostly want to make sure exactly that Assange's fate is not theirs: they need to tell the stories that power wants them to tell, and no more.
  - duxup 5y ago
    I think most folks who work in the news aren't entirely sure of Assange's motives. Wikileak's and Assange's approach and motivations =/ most news orgs.
- dleslie 5y ago
  Unlikely. He has been too strongly associated with polarized politics and numerous conspiracy theories about his motives and behaviour.
  - AnotherGoodName 5y ago
    One way out is a change in leadership in Australia. Assange is an Australian citizen and there's some pressure in Australia to support him. Murdoch is opposed unfortunately and controls the media but people are starting to wake up.
- Uyuxo 5y ago
  Vindicated for allegedly raping two women?
- duxup 5y ago
  I'm not sure what political value there would be in something like a pardon or such.
no-s 5y ago
“Then Reagan got spooked by the movie Wargames – yes, the one with Matthew Broderick – and urged the dimbulbs in the Congress and Senate to send the CFAA to his desk. They obliged, he signed it, and CFAA became law in 1986.” You mean corporate lobbyists wanting federal enforcement of contract terms and corporate interests had nothing to do with it?
- duxup 5y ago
  Is that the case? Have we seen mass prosecutions under the CFAA at the behest of corporate interests? I don't think that's the case, tons of people are violating various policies all the time and they're not being prosecuted. SCOTUS was right in narrowing the focus, but I'm not sure the CCFA really was some corporate conspiracy, if it was ... they didn't make much use of it outside of some terrible, but still isolated incidents. Even things like the abuse of arbitration agreements I think more likely stem from creative lawyers using existing laws to their advantage, not as much direct legislating as is often claimed.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    As a general rule, I think it's unwise to attribute to conspiracy that which can be sufficiently explained by incentive structures and existing rule frameworks. It's nice to pretend someone's in charge of all the bad things that happen, but as They Might Be Giants reminds us, most of the world is described by individual actors doing what they can get away with in individual circumstances.
    - wwweston 5y ago
      > as They Might Be Giants reminds us Remind me where they remind us? This is the crucial content I'm here for.
      - shadowgovt 5y ago
        TMBG's "The Shadow Government" tells the story of a man going through life extremely paranoid that powerful forces are conspiring personally against him. In the end, he is (likely) murdered and disappeared by the mayor of his small town for challenging the mayor's right to steal his property, because in reality there is no higher power checking his local government's authority. It's the lack of any massive conspiracy controlling events that kills him.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
The Wargames bit intrigued me, so if others are curious there's way more available about it than I figured. https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/wargames-ronald-reagan-cybersecurity https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/wargames-ronald-reagan-c...
- samizdis 5y ago
  Fantastic article, thanks for sharing. Also, this little bit, "... I really wanted to talk about WarGames because it’s the one movie I can think of that’s had the most direct influence on any technology policy issue." made me think of another film, which I would argue had a great effect on technology policy. The film was Disney's "Victory Through Air Power" [1]. (See, specifically, the "impact" section [2] of the Wikipedia article.) The film is an astonishing piece of animation (which in places resembles an almost manga style), education and propaganda. I cannot recommend it highly enough and it is available at the Internet Archive [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Through_Air_Power_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Through_Air_Power_(fil... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Through_Air_Power_(film)#Impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Through_Air_Power_(fil... [3] https://archive.org/details/VictoryThroughAirPower https://archive.org/details/VictoryThroughAirPower
  - ozymandias12 5y ago
    Awesome movie, tysm, really eye opener.
anonymousiam 5y ago
Saw this law blog post this morning with the same conclusion (mentioned in passing): https://blog.simplejustice.us/2021/06/04/scotus-limits-reach-of-cfaa/ https://blog.simplejustice.us/2021/06/04/scotus-limits-reach...
Threeve303 5y ago
Just wait until you all start hearing about the punitive psychology being actively used by law enforcement against U.S. Citizens. Methods and procedures trained against Guantanamo detainees. Awful stuff to do to any human.
- t-writescode 5y ago
  Yes, indeed. And hopefully those actions stop, too.
ImpressiveWebs 5y ago
> Prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz didn't dispute that Aaron was allowed to access the articles he retrieved. Rather, they said that the WAY he accessed them (using a script instead of clicking on links) was a terms-of-service violation and hence a crime. I'm sorry, but isn't that a major oversimplification of what he did?
- hosteur 5y ago
  Short answer: no it is not.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  Why would a terms-of-service violation be a crime, exactly? Since when is it the job of state attorneys to enforce ToS?
  - cdot2 5y ago
    That's what the article is about. Basically the federal hacking law defines computer crime as "exceeding your authorization" on a computer that didn't belong to you. Hence violating terms of service would be computer crime.
  - jedimastert 5y ago
    Essentially, the Computer Fraud and Abuse act was being interprated waaaaaaaaaay too broadly, because it could be. Here's the discussion on the supreme court win https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27382752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27382752
  - gamblor956 5y ago
    Under Van Buren, merely saying in the ToS that [X] part of website is restricted access would not be enough to make it a crime under the CFAA. In the Van Buren case, SCOTUS was very concerned with the potential for innocent actors to unwittingly run afoul of the CFAA. The website would likely have to take further steps to make the restrictions on access known to the user (such as a warning when trying to access [X], and probably also take actual steps to limit access to [X], such that one would only be able to access [X] deliberately knowing that they don't have authorized access to it.
RosanaAnaDana 5y ago
The world would be a better place with Aaron Swartz still in it. Unfortunately I don't think we've lived up to the mantle he placed on us with his passing.
- ddingus 5y ago
  "Demand Progress" --Aaron [Looks around] I must agree with you.
invokestatic 5y ago
Federal criminal law is an absolute travesty. Not only are the sentences typically very harsh (10+ years in prison is typical) but also many of the statutes are incredibly broad. The book “ Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent” by Harvey Silverglate was a real eye opener for me. There are so many criminal statutes that prosecutors could lock away virtually any American, even if they’ve not really done anything that a reasonable person would think is wrong.
- dhimes 5y ago
  Juries are supposed to protect against some of that, fortunately.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    Except they are often intimidated from invoking things like jury nullification. Selection of juries is highly political and then the court decides whether information is relevant to be given to the jury. I don't see juries really providing much protection.
  - invokestatic 5y ago
    Yet the federal conviction rate is well above 99%. The book provides actual examples where people have gone to prison over nothing.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- mcguire 5y ago
  74% of sentences are < 5 years. (https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-publications/2021/FY20_Overview_Federal_Criminal_Cases.pdf https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...)
- dannyphantom 5y ago
  A Crime a Day on Twitter is fun to casually scroll through. https://twitter.com/CrimeADay https://twitter.com/CrimeADay
andyxor 5y ago
you can continue what Aaron started. there is archiving effort to save scihub, google it
unanswered 5y ago
While in theory a ruling 'fixing' CFAA is exactly what we've been waiting for I have two problems with it: The first is a principled objection (and thus in some ways less important): the rulings below were probably correct applications of a terribly drafted law. The way to fix the law in a functioning government would be legislative. But anyways I really want to share the second objection which is entirely pragmatic: if the only time we ever limit the scope of laws which are badly drafted like this is when we're trying to find some excuse to let bad cops get away with their behavior, then this will have two outcomes: first, bad cops will get away with their bad behavior more often; second, we will find that these precedents don't actually stick when it comes to protecting actual innocents. These are related problems because judges can always find some way to distinguish bad cop cases from innocent private citizen cases to ensure that precedents need not apply. People talk about the first and second and fourth (... and fifth, sixth, tenth, etc.) Amendments to the US Constitution as being under attack, and the interstate commerce clause as being long dead. But like all stillbirths, no one likes to talk about the equal protection clause.
once-in-a-while 5y ago
Just like Epstein didn't kill himself, Aaron wasn't suicidal. He simply found out about the vast swamp of pedophile professors -- THAT was the REAL story he wanted to go public. Of course [they] couldn't allow this to happen... When Trump will Be Back (later this Summer), you might want to ask yourself some serious question about how the world is REALLY going... Happy Great Awakening to everybody (iff you decide to want to like to try it, that is).
mcguire 5y ago
My opinion here is going to be unpopular, and honestly, I don't care for the way the legal (and political) system has handled any of these issues either. I also haven't thought enough about the Supreme Court decision to decide what I think about it. But I think this particular article is garbage. To begin, here's a small point that many engineering types fail to internalize: the legal system is built to deal with intentions. A piece of code or a device doesn't care what your intentions were when you built it, or what the user's intentions are when they use it. It just does what it does. On the contrary, intentions matter in the legal system. Hitting someone with your car is not automatically murder. It may not even be a crime. And stealing bread if you are starving is almost universally recognized as not a crime. "Prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz didn't dispute that Aaron was allowed to access the articles he retrieved. Rather, they said that the WAY he accessed them (using a script instead of clicking on links) was a terms-of-service violation and hence a crime." I'm a bit ambivalent about this part of Swartz's case, but it is certainly not mustache-twirling evil on the part of the prosecutors. I'm sure Doctrow, like the prosecutors, isn't going to dispute some of the facts in the case: Swartz intended to make those articles free. He was going to take those articles from the system that allowed him to access them and re-publish them in violation of their owner's wishes. Now, I don't like the information property system we have any more than anyone else, but it is the system we have and we get to live with it until we can change it. Swartz was not using a script to download the articles so he could read them later, he was using a script to make copies so he could redistribute them. And the prosecutors weren't saying, "oh, ho, using a script is bad, you just can't do that." They were arguing that using the script was evidence of Swartz's intentions regarding the copies he was making. Doctrow is here violating one of Hacker News' guidelines, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." "Security researchers who audit systems and warn their users about defects in them are silenced with CFAA threats, giving companies a veto over who can criticize them and how." Yes, "security researchers" who have not bothered to clear their activities with their targets beforehand have faced legal problems. Some who have have also faced those, but the legal system is supposed to tell the difference and generally does a fair job. What would you prefer as the alternative? "Nevertheless, prosecutors charged him under the CFAA, saying that while he was allowed to access the database, doing so for an improper purpose was a hacking crime, because he "exceeded his authorization." "This may sound sensible – or just expedient – to you. But if the prosecutors were right – if accessing a computer you were authorized to use, but in an unauthorized way – is a felony, then almost everyone is a felon." Yes, I would argue, that is a hacking crime. (Insider threats are one of the biggest problems with computer systems because they're impossible to secure against---can anyone explain to me the authorization logic that would allow Van Buren to do his job, which apparently includes looking up "personal information", while preventing him from doing anything illegal with that information?) What else do you think you can charge him with, illegally accepting a gift in the process of doing his job? But mostly, this article is almost entirely scare mongering. "This correct interpretation (far narrower than the DoJ's) safeguards security researchers, competitors, and other researchers doing things like gathering data from a housing site to investigate racial bias in rental ads"---which would be protected, right? Remember, intentions matter. I get it: Information wants to be free. Cops bad. Lawyers bad. Politicians and judges bad. Anarchy good. Unfortunately, I seem to live in a world where humans are gonna keep humaning so that doesn't work.
boublepop 5y ago
Law or not, it seems completely absurd that I should be able to go through any database I have a license to view and just scrape all the content, especially if my purpose is to release their content to vitally damage their business. At the same time, I don’t see why we should consider it a crime if I ssh into an insecure server and steal a persons credit card information, but if someone at the bank has an old password and go into the same server to get the same information then suddenly it’s ok? I mean the crime in a breaking and entering isn’t that you manage to break the lock, it’s the entering that’s the problem.
- hamandcheese 5y ago
  Everything you are describing essentially amounts to "crime, but with a computer." Crime is still crime, we don't need the CFAA to fight it.
readonthegoapp 5y ago
Whenever I see his name I think of our collective failure to change the rules around research publishing. ...adding, its not just that we failed. It seems like we didn't even try. At least, nowhere near the level that would seem commensurate with outrage years ago.

336 points by samizdis 5y ago

jacquesm 5y ago

Unfortunately that won't bring Aaron back to life.

samizdis 5y ago
Sadly, that is true, but it might go some way to prevent another tragedy of "justice" being inflicted on someone else who might otherwise die from such persecution.
- xadhominemx 5y ago
  Aaron Swartz did not die because he was persecuted. He died because he suffered from extreme mental illness.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Let's not jump to any conclusions as neither of us knew the reasoning behind why he decided to take suicide. There was no suicide note (found), and while he might have suffered from mental illnesses, he was also under a lot of pressure. Could be anything really.
  - tpoacher 5y ago
    Borne through persecution. In other news, the victim didn't die from the bullet, he died from cardiovascular collapse following the bullet incident.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      Are we discussing philosophy of morality, ethics, and self-determination vs. predetermination; or are we discussing the law? If the law, I can't think of a single case citation I could give that would act as precedent for assigning responsibility to the federal prosecutor for Mr. Swartz taking his own life. I'd be interested to see any such citations people have found. The philosophy of morality, ethics, and determinism is a much wider space where such a thing could be discussed.
      - munk-a 5y ago
        I don't think the legal cause of death is particularly relevant here. When suicide is the route there are usually numerous factors and personal mental stability is always going to be one of the big factors. In the past decade we've just started to see more comprehensive laws roll out to address suicide driven by bullying, but it's always going to be a grey zone. That all said - it seems pretty clear that the guilt and fear from legal threats were an extremely strong motivation for suicide. Whether anyone suffers legal consequences for it - it was wrong.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        shadowgovt 5y ago
        So stepping outside the legal question and entering the space of philosophy of morality and ethics (i.e. "What should our laws be")... The US legal system is designed to be adversarial. It isn't the prosecutor's job to worry about the defendant's feelings; that's the defense lawyer's job. The prosecutor's job is to seek legal truth and conviction (and, generally, to err on the side of the latter, on the belief that truth is proved out by the defense working to challenge any hypotheses the prosecutor brings to the table that are countered by evidence). Innocent until proven guilty, but it's the prosecutor's job to prove a defendant guilty, not innocent. This is, obviously, extremely stressful on the defendant. And this is not the only model of law. Adversarial finding of guilt-or-innocence a popular model in countries descended from European colonies, but other nations have different models. And the adversarial model has known weaknesses... In terms of introducing scientific facts to the table, the adversarial model encourages both sides to bring expert witnesses and the jury to decide who's version of facts is true, which is somewhat farcical. Some countries use an inquisitive system, in which the Court is empowered to do its own investigation and analysis (as opposed to acting as an impartial referee to the best cases the plaintiff and defendant can build). There are pros and cons to this system (and it's actually used in some pieces of the US). It's heartbreaking what happened to Aaron, and in general, the American system of governance addresses mental illness extremely poorly. I don't have any good suggestions on how to do better, but that doesn't mean the current design is acceptable.
  - Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
    It is more nuanced than that you think. It is not coming from the extreme mental illness. One of the major factor that led to his death is the federal prosecutor. This POS prosecutor made Aaron to believe that Aaron absolutely have no way out (which not true but this POS don't even care). This prosecutor lead so hard on Aaron and the outcome is Aaron's passing. That prosecutor should be in jail for pushing Aaron to the edge.
    - tzs 5y ago
      > This POS prosecutor made Aaron to believe that Aaron absolutely have no way out (which not true but this POS don't even care). How did the prosecutor make Swartz believe that? Edit: to elaborate, the commentator above is implying that Swartz had a way out that the prosecutor somehow prevented Swartz from finding out about. I would like to know what that way out was, and how the prosecutor prevented Swartz from finding out about it. Swartz had a legal team defending him who I would have expected to inform him of all his options.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - oh_sigh 5y ago
      So Aaron's other suicidal episodes, when no one was prosecuting him, aren't relevant to his final suicidal episode? Surely, the prosecution weighed on him, but no mentally healthy person would choose to commit suicide before the outcome of the charges was even determined. It's not clear to me how one assigns blame for suicide in most cases, or what the options are for prosecutors. If a quasi-suicidal person cuts me off on the highway and I give them the middle finger, and they go home and commit suicide because of it - am I culpable? If, generally, a prosecutor thinks that a person is not mentally stable enough to face trial for their crimes without commiting suicide, are they just allowed to get away with what they want? Or should they be involuntarily committed?
      - michaelmrose 5y ago
        I don't think threatening to wield what we now know is a poorly constructed law to put someone in prison for nearly the rest of their natural life is the same as giving someone the finger. He faced up to 35 years in prison for doing what many of us consider an effort to make the world a better place based on his own moral principals.
  - simiones 5y ago
    Suicide is not always the result of (extreme) mental illness. Sometimes it is the rational solution to avoid extreme distress.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      This is an interesting point and one that I disagree almost entirely with. I would make an exception to cases where someone is faced with overwhelming continuous debilitating pain - or the destruction of their mental state (i.e. Sir Terry Pratchett) - but otherwise I think that suicide is pretty much categorically irrational since life is all you've got and while there may be pain involved with it - there is brightness as well. When the road truly seems to be only darkness I'd suggest reaching out to others around you or councilors and talking it out with them because chances are that your observation of there only being negativity is an issue in your perception.
    - xadhominemx 5y ago
      He was offered a 6 month sentence in a low security prison. He could have served that sentence before the trial was even set to begin and resumed his life as programmer and activist - reputation burnished by his conviction, if anything. Suicide is not a rational solution for anyone in that situation.
  - knuthsat 5y ago
    Investigative tactics are pretty brutal. They talk with you so that you incriminate yourself but are very affirmative during most of the conversation but then start confronting you. The mental fatigue makes a lot of people just admit the crime they committed.
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      "The mental fatigue makes a lot of people just admit the crime they committed." Or just anything, after a certain point.
  - thaumaturgy 5y ago
    This is such a bad take. It's embarrassing to (still) see this on HN after all these years. It has any of several face-palmingly obvious flaws: * Extremely aggressive federal prosecution is not known for its mental health benefits; * It desperately tries to avoid a conversation about how unjust the prosecution was and what their motives were in the case by loading all of the fault for the tragic outcome at Aaron's feet now that he's not around to defend himself; * It is indistinguishable from arguments that people with severe health problems who become ill with covid-19, and die, didn't die of covid-19 but of their health problems; * It is ignorant of modern understandings or sensitivities towards mental health; * It argues from the least nuanced and informed view of his situation possible -- it's a knee-jerk reaction from people with a particular moral framework. It's such a seriously dull-witted argument, it should be confined to screenshots of Facebook.
    - 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
      Your counter-points aren't exactly award-worthy either. Aggressive federal prosecution does not usually result in suicide. The argument doesn't "desperately" do anything, much less avoid a conversation. It is distinguishable from arguments about COVID-19 deaths as they are completely different subjects. Sure, you could say it's not a nuanced argument at all, but that doesn't make it face-palmingly bad, it just makes it plain. I've seen better retorts on Facebook, frankly.
    - dang 5y ago
      Please review the site guidelines and omit name-calling from your arguments here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - macksd 5y ago
    Everyone may suffer from some kind of mental illness or depression at some point in their lives. We should probably care deeply about the kinds of things that might push those people over the edge.
- BearOso 5y ago
  Yeah, I’d like to see Snowden exonerated, but the government hasn’t changed. They’re still vindictive about being embarrassed, even though it was clearly whistleblowing and, nearly everyone agrees, ethical.
  - nerpderp82 5y ago
    He also exposed crimes against the constitution that afaik no one has answered for, yet he himself is effectively banished to a dictatorship.
s_dev 5y ago
Poor Aaron -- he was in a difficult place. I'm sure in hindsight he absolutely make a different choice.
- capableweb 5y ago
  > I'm sure in hindsight he absolutely make a different choice This strikes me as disrespectful, unless you have some inside knowledge about the whole event. Respect a persons choice to end their life, as that was their final action.
  - s_dev 5y ago
    I think most suicides are very preventable. Most people want to end their pain not their lives.
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      "I think most suicides are very preventable." In the same way, we can solve hunger and war. Theroretically yes, practically very hard.
    - capableweb 5y ago
      > Most people want to end their pain not their lives That might be true. But again, we don't know exactly how he felt, so why assume something? Many people end their lives with purpose as well, not every suicide is about ending pain.

zackees 5y ago

Aaron Swartz didn’t kill himself.

ddingus 5y ago

We lost a good one. I think, at times, back to Aaron and his grasp of both code and politics. That ability to empower people, cultivate discussion, and I would argue, solidarity on human basics, is rare. Safe Travels Aaron, you are missed.

hangonhn 5y ago
There are a lot of grave injustices in this world and this was probably not even remotely close to the worst but I am still really bitter about what happened to Aaron after all these years. I remember how upset I was to hear of his suicide and the things that lead up to them. Maybe it was because he was one of "us" or maybe because his works have improved the lives of so many of us. People like him who make that kind of impact usually ends up becoming rich, etc. Instead he was persecuted until he committed suicide for wanting to make knowledge more accessible. The new SCOTUS ruling helps but I'm still quite sad over what happened.
- ddingus 5y ago
  I am bitter too, and for similar reasons.
- kelnos 5y ago
  I'm reminded of "The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine." Sometimes this is a feature; we probably don't want frequent, sweeping changes in the legal landscape, or snap decisions based on emotion. But it also means that injustices are righted slowly, and sometimes too late, after people's lives have been destroyed. "Justice delayed is justice denied." While this SCOTUS decision may vindicate Swartz, he never got the justice he deserved. Now it's too late for that.
  - dorfsmay 5y ago
    Exactly. My exact thought when I read the title was "Whatever the article says, he's still dead and that, is not going to change.

narrator 5y ago

There's been a movement on to privatize law to limit rights. One of the sneaky ways they were doing this was taking the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and making contract law violations into criminal law violations. You breach the contract, we can send you to jail, when it would normally would only be money damages or injunctive relief after the court had weighed in on the matter.

the_optimist 5y ago

Will Assange be vindicated before or after he dies?

pseingatl 5y ago
If the NY Times and the rest of the Western MSM got behind Assange, that would be the end of it. They haven't, forgetting that Assange's fate is theirs.
- simiones 5y ago
  They mostly want to make sure exactly that Assange's fate is not theirs: they need to tell the stories that power wants them to tell, and no more.
- duxup 5y ago
  I think most folks who work in the news aren't entirely sure of Assange's motives. Wikileak's and Assange's approach and motivations =/ most news orgs.
dleslie 5y ago
Unlikely. He has been too strongly associated with polarized politics and numerous conspiracy theories about his motives and behaviour.
- AnotherGoodName 5y ago
  One way out is a change in leadership in Australia. Assange is an Australian citizen and there's some pressure in Australia to support him. Murdoch is opposed unfortunately and controls the media but people are starting to wake up.
Uyuxo 5y ago
Vindicated for allegedly raping two women?
duxup 5y ago
I'm not sure what political value there would be in something like a pardon or such.

no-s 5y ago

“Then Reagan got spooked by the movie Wargames – yes, the one with Matthew Broderick – and urged the dimbulbs in the Congress and Senate to send the CFAA to his desk. They obliged, he signed it, and CFAA became law in 1986.” You mean corporate lobbyists wanting federal enforcement of contract terms and corporate interests had nothing to do with it?

duxup 5y ago
Is that the case? Have we seen mass prosecutions under the CFAA at the behest of corporate interests? I don't think that's the case, tons of people are violating various policies all the time and they're not being prosecuted. SCOTUS was right in narrowing the focus, but I'm not sure the CCFA really was some corporate conspiracy, if it was ... they didn't make much use of it outside of some terrible, but still isolated incidents. Even things like the abuse of arbitration agreements I think more likely stem from creative lawyers using existing laws to their advantage, not as much direct legislating as is often claimed.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  As a general rule, I think it's unwise to attribute to conspiracy that which can be sufficiently explained by incentive structures and existing rule frameworks. It's nice to pretend someone's in charge of all the bad things that happen, but as They Might Be Giants reminds us, most of the world is described by individual actors doing what they can get away with in individual circumstances.
  - wwweston 5y ago
    > as They Might Be Giants reminds us Remind me where they remind us? This is the crucial content I'm here for.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      TMBG's "The Shadow Government" tells the story of a man going through life extremely paranoid that powerful forces are conspiring personally against him. In the end, he is (likely) murdered and disappeared by the mayor of his small town for challenging the mayor's right to steal his property, because in reality there is no higher power checking his local government's authority. It's the lack of any massive conspiracy controlling events that kills him.

boomboomsubban 5y ago

The Wargames bit intrigued me, so if others are curious there's way more available about it than I figured. https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/wargames-ronald-reagan-cybersecurity https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/wargames-ronald-reagan-c...

samizdis 5y ago
Fantastic article, thanks for sharing. Also, this little bit, "... I really wanted to talk about WarGames because it’s the one movie I can think of that’s had the most direct influence on any technology policy issue." made me think of another film, which I would argue had a great effect on technology policy. The film was Disney's "Victory Through Air Power" [1]. (See, specifically, the "impact" section [2] of the Wikipedia article.) The film is an astonishing piece of animation (which in places resembles an almost manga style), education and propaganda. I cannot recommend it highly enough and it is available at the Internet Archive [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Through_Air_Power_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Through_Air_Power_(fil... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Through_Air_Power_(film)#Impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Through_Air_Power_(fil... [3] https://archive.org/details/VictoryThroughAirPower https://archive.org/details/VictoryThroughAirPower
- ozymandias12 5y ago
  Awesome movie, tysm, really eye opener.

anonymousiam 5y ago

Saw this law blog post this morning with the same conclusion (mentioned in passing): https://blog.simplejustice.us/2021/06/04/scotus-limits-reach-of-cfaa/ https://blog.simplejustice.us/2021/06/04/scotus-limits-reach...

Threeve303 5y ago

Just wait until you all start hearing about the punitive psychology being actively used by law enforcement against U.S. Citizens. Methods and procedures trained against Guantanamo detainees. Awful stuff to do to any human.

t-writescode 5y ago
Yes, indeed. And hopefully those actions stop, too.

ImpressiveWebs 5y ago

> Prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz didn't dispute that Aaron was allowed to access the articles he retrieved. Rather, they said that the WAY he accessed them (using a script instead of clicking on links) was a terms-of-service violation and hence a crime. I'm sorry, but isn't that a major oversimplification of what he did?

hosteur 5y ago
Short answer: no it is not.
formerly_proven 5y ago
Why would a terms-of-service violation be a crime, exactly? Since when is it the job of state attorneys to enforce ToS?
- cdot2 5y ago
  That's what the article is about. Basically the federal hacking law defines computer crime as "exceeding your authorization" on a computer that didn't belong to you. Hence violating terms of service would be computer crime.
- jedimastert 5y ago
  Essentially, the Computer Fraud and Abuse act was being interprated waaaaaaaaaay too broadly, because it could be. Here's the discussion on the supreme court win https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27382752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27382752
- gamblor956 5y ago
  Under Van Buren, merely saying in the ToS that [X] part of website is restricted access would not be enough to make it a crime under the CFAA. In the Van Buren case, SCOTUS was very concerned with the potential for innocent actors to unwittingly run afoul of the CFAA. The website would likely have to take further steps to make the restrictions on access known to the user (such as a warning when trying to access [X], and probably also take actual steps to limit access to [X], such that one would only be able to access [X] deliberately knowing that they don't have authorized access to it.

RosanaAnaDana 5y ago

The world would be a better place with Aaron Swartz still in it. Unfortunately I don't think we've lived up to the mantle he placed on us with his passing.

ddingus 5y ago
"Demand Progress" --Aaron [Looks around] I must agree with you.

invokestatic 5y ago

Federal criminal law is an absolute travesty. Not only are the sentences typically very harsh (10+ years in prison is typical) but also many of the statutes are incredibly broad. The book “ Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent” by Harvey Silverglate was a real eye opener for me. There are so many criminal statutes that prosecutors could lock away virtually any American, even if they’ve not really done anything that a reasonable person would think is wrong.

dhimes 5y ago
Juries are supposed to protect against some of that, fortunately.
- giantg2 5y ago
  Except they are often intimidated from invoking things like jury nullification. Selection of juries is highly political and then the court decides whether information is relevant to be given to the jury. I don't see juries really providing much protection.
- invokestatic 5y ago
  Yet the federal conviction rate is well above 99%. The book provides actual examples where people have gone to prison over nothing.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
mcguire 5y ago
74% of sentences are < 5 years. (https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-publications/2021/FY20_Overview_Federal_Criminal_Cases.pdf https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...)
dannyphantom 5y ago
A Crime a Day on Twitter is fun to casually scroll through. https://twitter.com/CrimeADay https://twitter.com/CrimeADay

andyxor 5y ago

you can continue what Aaron started. there is archiving effort to save scihub, google it

unanswered 5y ago

While in theory a ruling 'fixing' CFAA is exactly what we've been waiting for I have two problems with it: The first is a principled objection (and thus in some ways less important): the rulings below were probably correct applications of a terribly drafted law. The way to fix the law in a functioning government would be legislative. But anyways I really want to share the second objection which is entirely pragmatic: if the only time we ever limit the scope of laws which are badly drafted like this is when we're trying to find some excuse to let bad cops get away with their behavior, then this will have two outcomes: first, bad cops will get away with their bad behavior more often; second, we will find that these precedents don't actually stick when it comes to protecting actual innocents. These are related problems because judges can always find some way to distinguish bad cop cases from innocent private citizen cases to ensure that precedents need not apply. People talk about the first and second and fourth (... and fifth, sixth, tenth, etc.) Amendments to the US Constitution as being under attack, and the interstate commerce clause as being long dead. But like all stillbirths, no one likes to talk about the equal protection clause.

once-in-a-while 5y ago

Just like Epstein didn't kill himself, Aaron wasn't suicidal. He simply found out about the vast swamp of pedophile professors -- THAT was the REAL story he wanted to go public. Of course [they] couldn't allow this to happen... When Trump will Be Back (later this Summer), you might want to ask yourself some serious question about how the world is REALLY going... Happy Great Awakening to everybody (iff you decide to want to like to try it, that is).

mcguire 5y ago

My opinion here is going to be unpopular, and honestly, I don't care for the way the legal (and political) system has handled any of these issues either. I also haven't thought enough about the Supreme Court decision to decide what I think about it. But I think this particular article is garbage. To begin, here's a small point that many engineering types fail to internalize: the legal system is built to deal with intentions. A piece of code or a device doesn't care what your intentions were when you built it, or what the user's intentions are when they use it. It just does what it does. On the contrary, intentions matter in the legal system. Hitting someone with your car is not automatically murder. It may not even be a crime. And stealing bread if you are starving is almost universally recognized as not a crime. "Prosecutors Stephen Heymann and Carmen Ortiz didn't dispute that Aaron was allowed to access the articles he retrieved. Rather, they said that the WAY he accessed them (using a script instead of clicking on links) was a terms-of-service violation and hence a crime." I'm a bit ambivalent about this part of Swartz's case, but it is certainly not mustache-twirling evil on the part of the prosecutors. I'm sure Doctrow, like the prosecutors, isn't going to dispute some of the facts in the case: Swartz intended to make those articles free. He was going to take those articles from the system that allowed him to access them and re-publish them in violation of their owner's wishes. Now, I don't like the information property system we have any more than anyone else, but it is the system we have and we get to live with it until we can change it. Swartz was not using a script to download the articles so he could read them later, he was using a script to make copies so he could redistribute them. And the prosecutors weren't saying, "oh, ho, using a script is bad, you just can't do that." They were arguing that using the script was evidence of Swartz's intentions regarding the copies he was making. Doctrow is here violating one of Hacker News' guidelines, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." "Security researchers who audit systems and warn their users about defects in them are silenced with CFAA threats, giving companies a veto over who can criticize them and how." Yes, "security researchers" who have not bothered to clear their activities with their targets beforehand have faced legal problems. Some who have have also faced those, but the legal system is supposed to tell the difference and generally does a fair job. What would you prefer as the alternative? "Nevertheless, prosecutors charged him under the CFAA, saying that while he was allowed to access the database, doing so for an improper purpose was a hacking crime, because he "exceeded his authorization." "This may sound sensible – or just expedient – to you. But if the prosecutors were right – if accessing a computer you were authorized to use, but in an unauthorized way – is a felony, then almost everyone is a felon." Yes, I would argue, that is a hacking crime. (Insider threats are one of the biggest problems with computer systems because they're impossible to secure against---can anyone explain to me the authorization logic that would allow Van Buren to do his job, which apparently includes looking up "personal information", while preventing him from doing anything illegal with that information?) What else do you think you can charge him with, illegally accepting a gift in the process of doing his job? But mostly, this article is almost entirely scare mongering. "This correct interpretation (far narrower than the DoJ's) safeguards security researchers, competitors, and other researchers doing things like gathering data from a housing site to investigate racial bias in rental ads"---which would be protected, right? Remember, intentions matter. I get it: Information wants to be free. Cops bad. Lawyers bad. Politicians and judges bad. Anarchy good. Unfortunately, I seem to live in a world where humans are gonna keep humaning so that doesn't work.

boublepop 5y ago

Law or not, it seems completely absurd that I should be able to go through any database I have a license to view and just scrape all the content, especially if my purpose is to release their content to vitally damage their business. At the same time, I don’t see why we should consider it a crime if I ssh into an insecure server and steal a persons credit card information, but if someone at the bank has an old password and go into the same server to get the same information then suddenly it’s ok? I mean the crime in a breaking and entering isn’t that you manage to break the lock, it’s the entering that’s the problem.

hamandcheese 5y ago
Everything you are describing essentially amounts to "crime, but with a computer." Crime is still crime, we don't need the CFAA to fight it.

readonthegoapp 5y ago

Whenever I see his name I think of our collective failure to change the rules around research publishing. ...adding, its not just that we failed. It seems like we didn't even try. At least, nowhere near the level that would seem commensurate with outrage years ago.