5 ms·

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 persecut

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.
        munk-a 5y ago
        Most folks on here are developers to some extent - so I'll assume you are but if not let me know and I'll try to come up with a better analogy. In my company code reviews are an adversarial process - as they are everywhere. The primary developer presents something they think is worthy to merge into the mainline branch - the reviewer inspects this and raises questions and highlights facts in the code that they think need to be address. And, throughout this process the aim isn't to prove the other person is an idiot - it's to arrive at a PR that's better than either of you would have produced on your own (ideally). We go through this process and ideally avoid being overly critical or a dick about things. I don't reply to some confusing code with "That's dumb!" I'll point out routes to correct the confusion or just highlight my reasoning to feel it's confusing and let the dev decide on their favorite course to resolution. A trial is certainly going to be more emotionally involved simply by being about the future of someone's life instead of some code that runs a checkout process somewhere - but we can still, as a society, try and minimize how dickish we let people get. In a company someone who is overly combative is going to face problems keeping their job and advancing - you'll generally find financial incentives offered to people that can more reasonably navigate the social aspect of being an employee[1]. Unfortunately in the world of prosecution, while these incentives still exist (people who are dickish overall will be dickish to their coworkers (other lawyers) and likely be held back by that) they tend to be minimized in comparison with performance evaluation based on conviction rates - and that creates a lot of really bad incentives. I think it's a bit of a misstatement to say that both parties in a trial are seeking the truth when one of those parties is being evaluated not on accuracy after the fact - but instead on how many people they manage to line up as guilty. 1. This has some downsides - in particular autism is actually a much bigger impediment in the real world than perhaps it needs to be. I think that's a separate issue though.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- 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.

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.
      - munk-a 5y ago
        Most folks on here are developers to some extent - so I'll assume you are but if not let me know and I'll try to come up with a better analogy. In my company code reviews are an adversarial process - as they are everywhere. The primary developer presents something they think is worthy to merge into the mainline branch - the reviewer inspects this and raises questions and highlights facts in the code that they think need to be address. And, throughout this process the aim isn't to prove the other person is an idiot - it's to arrive at a PR that's better than either of you would have produced on your own (ideally). We go through this process and ideally avoid being overly critical or a dick about things. I don't reply to some confusing code with "That's dumb!" I'll point out routes to correct the confusion or just highlight my reasoning to feel it's confusing and let the dev decide on their favorite course to resolution. A trial is certainly going to be more emotionally involved simply by being about the future of someone's life instead of some code that runs a checkout process somewhere - but we can still, as a society, try and minimize how dickish we let people get. In a company someone who is overly combative is going to face problems keeping their job and advancing - you'll generally find financial incentives offered to people that can more reasonably navigate the social aspect of being an employee[1]. Unfortunately in the world of prosecution, while these incentives still exist (people who are dickish overall will be dickish to their coworkers (other lawyers) and likely be held back by that) they tend to be minimized in comparison with performance evaluation based on conviction rates - and that creates a lot of really bad incentives. I think it's a bit of a misstatement to say that both parties in a trial are seeking the truth when one of those parties is being evaluated not on accuracy after the fact - but instead on how many people they manage to line up as guilty. 1. This has some downsides - in particular autism is actually a much bigger impediment in the real world than perhaps it needs to be. I think that's a separate issue though.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
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.