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Was curious what that prosecutor had gotten up to. https://theintercept.com/2021/02/15/marty-walsh-aaron-swartz-carmen-ortiz/ https://theintercept.com/2021/02/1

Was curious what that prosecutor had gotten up to. https://theintercept.com/2021/02/15/marty-walsh-aaron-swartz-carmen-ortiz/ https://theintercept.com/2021/02/15/marty-walsh-aaron-swartz... Live by the sword…

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Her fatal mistake was not knowing that rubbing shoulders with people who operate on the national stage and having ambitions to be one of them herself meant she had to care about optics at that level. And driving a college kid to suicide over what's basically alleged petty theft is rather tactless in that context. Driving a college kid to suicide over allegations of what basically amounts giving "the system" the bird with a side of petty theft would have gone over just fine at the state level.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  Aaron was not a "college kid." He killed himself about seven years after he dropped out of Stanford, at 26 years old. She spent a considerable amount of time negotiating a plea deal that Swartz ultimately rejected against the advice of every friend he asked for advice, and his attorney - probably one of the most prominent, knowledgeable, respected attorneys one could have working for them on such a case. It was a slam-dunk case for her on a number of points, starting with the fact that the feds had let him walk away from the PACER stunt with nothing more than "don't do something like this again" but also a preponderance of physical and digital evidence of him going out of his way to avoid efforts to stop him and to increase the rate of his downloads despite knowing how much he was impacting the service. Despite that solid case, the prosecutor did what prosecutors do for rich, privileged, white men: she gave him a softball plea - a few months jail time. Fairly reasonable punishment for the expense he caused JSTOR, and the number of academic careers and researchers he disrupted through his purposefully seeking to pull down as much JSTOR content, as fast as possible. I don't think the tech community understands how much of an impact the JSTOR outages Swartz caused; they were too busy circlejerking over his efforts for a "free and open" internet. His attorney saw the told him it was a great deal. But Aaron was too proud to spend a single day in jail and said as much. He declined the plea deal. Again, against the entirety of advice he'd been given. You know what a federal prosecutor does when they have a really solid case but despite that spend ages negotiating over a plea deal anyway, only to have it tossed back in their face? They do their jobs. People act like she was the big bad wolf for going after him for so many crimes that would have resulted in decades of jail time. But the thing is - even if he was convicted, he likely would have received a very light sentence in minimum security. But instead, he killed himself. Not because of the mountain of crimes he'd been charged with, but because he was so dead set on not spending a day behind bars. Aaron was happy to do the crime, happy to impact others...but couldn't do the time. And probably thought that because of his wealth and fame (and probably his own idea of his intelligence) he wouldn't possibly lose and actually go to jail. Go read what his girlfriend wrote about him. She thought he was an idiot, and says as much. She's right. He was a brilliant computer programmer but a principled, immature, egotistical idiot. Oh, and lastly: Swartz had expressed suicidal thoughts and ideation for years. Maybe if you have mental health problems that serious, don't purposefully go cruising for trouble and pick fights with the federal government?

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

Her fatal mistake was not knowing that rubbing shoulders with people who operate on the national stage and having ambitions to be one of them herself meant she had to care about optics at that level. And driving a college kid to suicide over what's basically alleged petty theft is rather tactless in that context. Driving a college kid to suicide over allegations of what basically amounts giving "the system" the bird with a side of petty theft would have gone over just fine at the state level.

KennyBlanken 5y ago
Aaron was not a "college kid." He killed himself about seven years after he dropped out of Stanford, at 26 years old. She spent a considerable amount of time negotiating a plea deal that Swartz ultimately rejected against the advice of every friend he asked for advice, and his attorney - probably one of the most prominent, knowledgeable, respected attorneys one could have working for them on such a case. It was a slam-dunk case for her on a number of points, starting with the fact that the feds had let him walk away from the PACER stunt with nothing more than "don't do something like this again" but also a preponderance of physical and digital evidence of him going out of his way to avoid efforts to stop him and to increase the rate of his downloads despite knowing how much he was impacting the service. Despite that solid case, the prosecutor did what prosecutors do for rich, privileged, white men: she gave him a softball plea - a few months jail time. Fairly reasonable punishment for the expense he caused JSTOR, and the number of academic careers and researchers he disrupted through his purposefully seeking to pull down as much JSTOR content, as fast as possible. I don't think the tech community understands how much of an impact the JSTOR outages Swartz caused; they were too busy circlejerking over his efforts for a "free and open" internet. His attorney saw the told him it was a great deal. But Aaron was too proud to spend a single day in jail and said as much. He declined the plea deal. Again, against the entirety of advice he'd been given. You know what a federal prosecutor does when they have a really solid case but despite that spend ages negotiating over a plea deal anyway, only to have it tossed back in their face? They do their jobs. People act like she was the big bad wolf for going after him for so many crimes that would have resulted in decades of jail time. But the thing is - even if he was convicted, he likely would have received a very light sentence in minimum security. But instead, he killed himself. Not because of the mountain of crimes he'd been charged with, but because he was so dead set on not spending a day behind bars. Aaron was happy to do the crime, happy to impact others...but couldn't do the time. And probably thought that because of his wealth and fame (and probably his own idea of his intelligence) he wouldn't possibly lose and actually go to jail. Go read what his girlfriend wrote about him. She thought he was an idiot, and says as much. She's right. He was a brilliant computer programmer but a principled, immature, egotistical idiot. Oh, and lastly: Swartz had expressed suicidal thoughts and ideation for years. Maybe if you have mental health problems that serious, don't purposefully go cruising for trouble and pick fights with the federal government?