5 ms·
If people want to help Aaron, I'd recommend a political strategy as well as a legal one. I'm not a lawyer and certainly no expert on this case, but my sense is
by adastra 14y ago
If people want to help Aaron, I'd recommend a political strategy as well as a legal one. I'm not a lawyer and certainly no expert on this case, but my sense is that there is something political going on or one of the prosecutors sees this as a big career boost. For someone without a criminal background like Aaron it would seem very much out of the norm to continue escalating the charges as they've done, rather than move toward a plea bargain.
These prosecutors work for the Obama Administration, and ultimately the President. The President has certainly courted the tech/internet vote, and I think some internet activism in this case is worth a shot. But it would need to be done basically right now (i.e. before the election). Are the prosecutors going to drop the charges? No. But some political pressure could improve whatever the terms of a plea deal are.
Disclosure: Aaron and I briefly worked at the same non-profit organization many years ago. But we were essentially in different departments, so while we met once or twice I wouldn't say I know him personally.
- tptacek 14y agoGood plan. Because surely a Republican-controlled DoJ would be much more lenient about the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act.
- adastra 14y agoI can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not. My underlying assumption is that Obama is more than likely going to win re-election. FiveThirtyEight has him at 75% likelihood to win, and intrade bettors have him at 66%. But even if he wins, he'll have much less reason to pay attention to the views of the reddit demographic after the election than he will before. So Aaron's supporters should start working this right away. Same goes with Congress by the way, if a member of Congress could be enlisted to help (what's the Congressional districts for Aaron's hometown and current residence?)
- tptacek 14y agoEven in Nate Silver's analysis, Obama is at his apex coming out of the convention. There are 6 weeks to go, the election turns on 3-4 states, and Romney has tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to spend. But the Internet told you that Obama's going to win, so as far as you're concerned, the election is over, and it's time to start playing games with it to make stupid points.
- adastra 14y agoWell that's not very nice.
- protomyth 14y agoCarter was leading Reagan in polling in September 1980. There has been a lot written about the survey methods, but given what some of the 2012 primaries have shown about polling, I think listening to pollsters in this election will be just as off.