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As a tangent, isn't it scary that you can effectively piss off entities such as the DoJ and they can hold a grudge against you? Or from the article: > Attorne

As a tangent, isn't it scary that you can effectively piss off entities such as the DoJ and they can hold a grudge against you? Or from the article: > Attorney Jerry Cohen, a Boston IP lawyer, suggests this aggressive use of criminal charges rather than civil charges is part of a trend in government prosecution of such cases, like taking “a sledgehammer to drive a thumb tack… It’s intended to terrorize the person who’s indicted and others who might be thinking of the same thing.“ Is it even legally okay to publicly make an example of someone like that?

tptacek 15y ago
I guess. What do you expect? They're people just like everyone else. This isn't one of those "1,001 crimes you can commit in the morning while making orange juice" things from Reason magazine. Aaron went way out of his way to expose himself to this situation. It's possible that where you see an Internet folk hero, the DoJ sees someone bent on forcibly publishing every closed database pertaining to the public interest, laws be damned.† Let me add something else that I think some other HN people may be familiar with: My Confirmation sponsor is/was a criminal court judge (friend of the family). Very nice guy. Spectacularly nice guy. I babysat his kids once. I've seen him maybe twice in the past ten years, but I'd be surprised if he didn't remember the names of my kids. When I was younger, we saw him all the time. Every weekend. My dad played in the church folk group with him. I can't remember the particulars, it may have been 4th of July firecrackers (illegal in Chicago) or it may have been shaving cream on Halloween, but either way he caught me and some friends doing something technically illegal. It was NOT. OK. I remember the legality of the incident being taken VERY. SERIOUSLY. Entirely different demeanor. I've seen the same thing with friends' cop dads. I think people on HN don't fully appreciate the extent to which prosecutors and judges take the law seriously. They've dedicated their life to it. Our country is ruled by laws. There are definitely times when the law is wrong, or when its diligent enforcement doesn't ultimately serve the social good. This may very well be one of them. But I think it's a very bad idea to build a worldview around the notion that the criminal justice system is going to casually look past the law. The law is a big deal. † I don't know Aaron Swartz personally and am not asserting any of this to be true. †† To your later edit: there's no statute against "public example making". If you don't want to be an example, avoid felonies. That's going to get me downvoted, so can we assume good faith and accept this new emoticon I just made up: :#> as shorthand for "I don't really think the person we're talking about is culpable for a felony based on the information we currently have"? :#>! :#>! :#>!
- rdouble 15y ago
  I think people on HN don't fully appreciate the extent to which prosecutors and judges take the law seriously. On the other hand, a relative is a DA. She has explained how around the holidays, she collaborates with the prosecutor to ram cases through the system or slap people on the wrist and send them home. This way all the noble guardians of the law can take an extra few weeks off between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    I said they were people, and people who had dedicated their lives to the idea of the law. I did not say they were superhuman. They can be wrong and have faulty judgement. In fact, I feel like I went out of my way not to ascribe moral judgement on their worldview; I simply wanted to point out that their worldview exists and shouldn't be ignored if you plan on operating at the frontier of the law. It's good of you to point out the limitations of that worldview. I don't mean to criticize you. I'm just saying, be careful if you think that a charge of "hypocrisy" is going to help here. The real world is not an Internet message board argument. Lots of prosecutors, all of them riven with human frailties, nonetheless believe passionately in the law. You're not going to talk them out of it. I am for the most part happy about this. Unlike a lot of HN people, I think that the law by and large serves the common good, and protects the weak far more than the powerful. (My uncle was/is? an ADA. I didn't hear any stories like this, but didn't ask. Totally believe it though.)
    - rdouble 15y ago
      My point is not a charge of hypocrisy, I just think the language you are using imparts a phony gravitas. I'm a systems engineer but I would LOL if I read that someone wrote I "dedicated my life to the spirit of the command line." Likewise, many lawyers are just in it because it's something they are good at and it pays the bills. Not every lawyer is Harvey Silverglate.
      - tptacek 15y ago
        I'm really not trying to impute gravitas. I am being completely serious. These people we're talking about at the DoJ are different people when matters of law come up. They are not kidding around about it. That doesn't make them granite monuments to justice. But it might mitigate the concern that they're being petty. There is a reasonable narrative here in which Swartz is purposefully causing harm to the social good. I don't really agree with that narrative (based on what we know now), but I can see it. If it helps, think about pro-life people (I'm pro-choice) and their attitude towards abortion. They are not kidding around about that issue. Do they have a lot of gravitas to you? Maybe not! But they believe human beings are being killed. So I can see where they're coming from, even though I disagree with them.
redrobot5050 15y ago
>Is it even legally okay to publicly make an example of someone like that? Yes, it's entirely up to the prosecuting attorney to prosecute with vigor. Again, if you up-jump the charges you often lower the odds of conviction because the burden of proof is raised, but so is the penalty. This also gives the prosecuting attorney grounds for a settlement (plea to lesser, civil charges, but with stiffer terms). So it could all be posturing that a judge will throw out... what is good to know is that Schwartz can likely attract the best defense attorneys to fight this.

tptacek 15y ago

I guess. What do you expect? They're people just like everyone else. This isn't one of those "1,001 crimes you can commit in the morning while making orange juice" things from Reason magazine. Aaron went way out of his way to expose himself to this situation. It's possible that where you see an Internet folk hero, the DoJ sees someone bent on forcibly publishing every closed database pertaining to the public interest, laws be damned.† Let me add something else that I think some other HN people may be familiar with: My Confirmation sponsor is/was a criminal court judge (friend of the family). Very nice guy. Spectacularly nice guy. I babysat his kids once. I've seen him maybe twice in the past ten years, but I'd be surprised if he didn't remember the names of my kids. When I was younger, we saw him all the time. Every weekend. My dad played in the church folk group with him. I can't remember the particulars, it may have been 4th of July firecrackers (illegal in Chicago) or it may have been shaving cream on Halloween, but either way he caught me and some friends doing something technically illegal. It was NOT. OK. I remember the legality of the incident being taken VERY. SERIOUSLY. Entirely different demeanor. I've seen the same thing with friends' cop dads. I think people on HN don't fully appreciate the extent to which prosecutors and judges take the law seriously. They've dedicated their life to it. Our country is ruled by laws. There are definitely times when the law is wrong, or when its diligent enforcement doesn't ultimately serve the social good. This may very well be one of them. But I think it's a very bad idea to build a worldview around the notion that the criminal justice system is going to casually look past the law. The law is a big deal. † I don't know Aaron Swartz personally and am not asserting any of this to be true. †† To your later edit: there's no statute against "public example making". If you don't want to be an example, avoid felonies. That's going to get me downvoted, so can we assume good faith and accept this new emoticon I just made up: :#> as shorthand for "I don't really think the person we're talking about is culpable for a felony based on the information we currently have"? :#>! :#>! :#>!

rdouble 15y ago
I think people on HN don't fully appreciate the extent to which prosecutors and judges take the law seriously. On the other hand, a relative is a DA. She has explained how around the holidays, she collaborates with the prosecutor to ram cases through the system or slap people on the wrist and send them home. This way all the noble guardians of the law can take an extra few weeks off between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
- tptacek 15y ago
  I said they were people, and people who had dedicated their lives to the idea of the law. I did not say they were superhuman. They can be wrong and have faulty judgement. In fact, I feel like I went out of my way not to ascribe moral judgement on their worldview; I simply wanted to point out that their worldview exists and shouldn't be ignored if you plan on operating at the frontier of the law. It's good of you to point out the limitations of that worldview. I don't mean to criticize you. I'm just saying, be careful if you think that a charge of "hypocrisy" is going to help here. The real world is not an Internet message board argument. Lots of prosecutors, all of them riven with human frailties, nonetheless believe passionately in the law. You're not going to talk them out of it. I am for the most part happy about this. Unlike a lot of HN people, I think that the law by and large serves the common good, and protects the weak far more than the powerful. (My uncle was/is? an ADA. I didn't hear any stories like this, but didn't ask. Totally believe it though.)
  - rdouble 15y ago
    My point is not a charge of hypocrisy, I just think the language you are using imparts a phony gravitas. I'm a systems engineer but I would LOL if I read that someone wrote I "dedicated my life to the spirit of the command line." Likewise, many lawyers are just in it because it's something they are good at and it pays the bills. Not every lawyer is Harvey Silverglate.
    - tptacek 15y ago
      I'm really not trying to impute gravitas. I am being completely serious. These people we're talking about at the DoJ are different people when matters of law come up. They are not kidding around about it. That doesn't make them granite monuments to justice. But it might mitigate the concern that they're being petty. There is a reasonable narrative here in which Swartz is purposefully causing harm to the social good. I don't really agree with that narrative (based on what we know now), but I can see it. If it helps, think about pro-life people (I'm pro-choice) and their attitude towards abortion. They are not kidding around about that issue. Do they have a lot of gravitas to you? Maybe not! But they believe human beings are being killed. So I can see where they're coming from, even though I disagree with them.

redrobot5050 15y ago

>Is it even legally okay to publicly make an example of someone like that? Yes, it's entirely up to the prosecuting attorney to prosecute with vigor. Again, if you up-jump the charges you often lower the odds of conviction because the burden of proof is raised, but so is the penalty. This also gives the prosecuting attorney grounds for a settlement (plea to lesser, civil charges, but with stiffer terms). So it could all be posturing that a judge will throw out... what is good to know is that Schwartz can likely attract the best defense attorneys to fight this.