5 ms·

Aaron Swartz v. United States (2011)

228 points by DanielRibeiro 14y ago

SparrowOS 14y ago
Psychologists have pigeonholes. I know a lot of pigeons like you. I understand you better than you could know. You are an atheist. You obsess on game theory and evolution and IQ. You obsess on zero sum. Zero sum captivate you like a moth to light. It's actually like a kid playing with shit. You are sucked into dark thoughts and brought down to hell. prisoner delema get's you charged up? ROFLMAO you're a sad little specimine. The world is just. Relax. Let the peace of Christ let it be. You cannot do better or worse -- it's all half a dozen one way and six the other. Highs and lows balance. If you get tortured, you get rewarded. You sad little thing. I laugh at the painting "the scream", sad little child playing with darkness. ---- God says... mother's name was Azubah the daughter of Shilhi. 22:43 And he walked in all the ways of Asa his father; he turned not aside from it, doing that which was right in the eyes of the LORD: nevertheless the high places were not taken away; for the people offered and burnt incense yet in the high places. 22:44 And Jehoshaphat made peace with the king of Israel. 22:45 Now the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, and his might that he shewed, and how he warred, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? 22:46 And the remnant of the sodomites, which remained in the days of his father Asa, he took out of the land. 22:47 There was then no king in Edom: a deputy was king.
rdl 14y ago
I hope this comes up in Congress. The United States never should have been a party to this -- it should have been a civil issue between JSTOR, MIT, and Aaron. (or criminal misdemeanor trespassing if they really wanted that.) Carmen M. Ortiz, US Attorney, should be called before Congress to account for this.
- shareme 14y ago
  we need to start a whitehouse petition on looking into DOJ abuse..
- tellarin 14y ago
  Agreed. It's absurd that a simple civil matter is turned into a criminal one with a possible penalty of 35 years in jail. And this not even considering the recent tragic event. :(
- rprasad 14y ago
  . The United States never should have been a party to this -- it should have been a civil issue between JSTOR, MIT, and Aaron. Except, you know...the fact that Congress passed a law a while ago that made this a crime. This should come up in Congress because what Aaron did should not be a felonious act. At best, it should be an infraction (i.e., the lowest type of civil misconduct, like jaywalking). But the fault lies with Congress for making this a crime, not Ms. Ortiz for enforcing the laws is ethically and legally bound to enforce.
  - rdl 14y ago
    She went vastly beyond what was required of her in charging him with a whole litany of offenses, several of which Congress most likely didn't intend to apply to situations like this (CFAA to TOS violations). This was because Aaron was a bit of a gadfly, and had gotten out of the PACER situation earlier, so he was already on their enemies list. Congress was also at fault for passing a bunch of stupid laws, but that doesn't excuse Ortiz. It also doesn't excuse Aaron for killing himself and not getting help. There's plenty of blame to go around.
    - rprasad 14y ago
      I don't know how much more simply to state this: As a consequence of prosecutorial "discretion" exercised during the jim crow days of the segregated South, federal prosecutors do not have discretion about which laws to prosecute. Once they have been presented a case, they are required to prosecute if the presentation of evidence is sufficient to suggest that a crime has been committed. Only upper management of the DOJ (i.e., above Ms. Ortiz) or the president can issue orders not to enforce certain laws. Thus, this does excuse Ms. Ortiz. She's just doing her job. If you don't like that, change the scope of her job by getting her superiors to end enforcement of the laws at issue.
      - rdl 14y ago
        You seem to be a lawyer, and I'm not, so thanks for your information. I know a lot more about computer security theory and practice than the US federal laws; there are pretty clear lines way before "crime" which I try to stay within, myself. As far as I can tell, CFAA was not violated, at least under the narrow (i.e. correct) interpretation of the 9th circuit. There is a circuit split right now. 1st hasn't ruled at all, so she could easily have looked to the 9th for guidance on this and not included CFAA charges. There was no "protection" at MIT or at JSTOR, so I don't see how fraud or unauthorized access, etc. applied. He scraped a website. He may have trespassed at MIT. If net-18 restriction is considered "protection", wtf (certainly a server on a secure LAN is protected by being only on the secure LAN, but a server limited to US-only access and accessed via a proxy is not. IMO Net-18 is a lot closer to national restrictions at YouTube than a security policy, since any guest could walk in and have access. I don't see "recklessly damaging a computer" as applying at all. Wire Fraud is essentially free always. Turning these into multiple counts for the same offense is also BS.
mgunes 14y ago
If you are unable to make the link between Swartz's absurd criminal indictment and his suicide in the light of this post, and/or if after reading it, you still view the possibility of his suicide being primarily linked to causes other than the indictment as on par with it being linked to the indictment, you should perhaps hear Jacob Appelbaum's recent C3 talk [1], where he details the state oppression he, his mentally ill mother, and his various acquaintances have been under due to his link with Wikileaks. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4977338 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4977338
- shazow 14y ago
  Perhaps a coincidence, but the choice of date—the anniversary of his arrest—feels rather convincing. "Since his arresting the early morning of January 11, 2011 — two years to the day before Aaron Swartz ended his life..." http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bull...
- rprasad 14y ago
  Aaron appears to have committed suicide as a result of a mental illness (i.e., clinical depression) which was exacerbated by the criminal case against him. It wasn't the criminal case that killed him; it was his mental illness. The fact that he has a mentally ill mother is strong evidence of this, since mental illness has a genetic component (especially depression and schizophrenia).
  - mgunes 14y ago
    > Aaron appears to have committed suicide as a result of a mental illness (i.e., clinical depression) which was exacerbated by the criminal case against him. It wasn't the criminal case that killed him; it was his mental illness. His family and partner, perhaps the people who have been closest to him in recent times, seem to disagree with you [1][2]. > The fact that he has a mentally ill mother is strong evidence of this Is that indeed a fact, or did you just happen to incorrectly infer that from my sentence? I was talking about Appelbaum's mother, not Swartz's. My point in citing Appelbaum was to denote that Swartz is not an isolated case; the US justice system has been systematically acting as an instrument of oppression against dissidents (and increasingly more frequently, against those active in the production and critique of technology) whom it perceives as adversaries of its federal and corporate sponsors. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5049225 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5049225 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5047398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5047398
cbennett 14y ago
the blog links through to this article, which I found quite insightful: http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2011/07/articles/series/special-comment/aaron-swartz-computer-fraud-indictment/ http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2011/07/articles/series/sp...

228 points by DanielRibeiro 14y ago

Psychologists have pigeonholes. I know a lot of pigeons like you. I understand you better than you could know. You are an atheist. You obsess on game theory and evolution and IQ. You obsess on zero sum. Zero sum captivate you like a moth to light. It's actually like a kid playing with shit. You are sucked into dark thoughts and brought down to hell. prisoner delema get's you charged up? ROFLMAO you're a sad little specimine. The world is just. Relax. Let the peace of Christ let it be. You cannot do better or worse -- it's all half a dozen one way and six the other. Highs and lows balance. If you get tortured, you get rewarded. You sad little thing. I laugh at the painting "the scream", sad little child playing with darkness. ---- God says... mother's name was Azubah the daughter of Shilhi. 22:43 And he walked in all the ways of Asa his father; he turned not aside from it, doing that which was right in the eyes of the LORD: nevertheless the high places were not taken away; for the people offered and burnt incense yet in the high places. 22:44 And Jehoshaphat made peace with the king of Israel. 22:45 Now the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat, and his might that he shewed, and how he warred, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? 22:46 And the remnant of the sodomites, which remained in the days of his father Asa, he took out of the land. 22:47 There was then no king in Edom: a deputy was king.

rdl 14y ago

I hope this comes up in Congress. The United States never should have been a party to this -- it should have been a civil issue between JSTOR, MIT, and Aaron. (or criminal misdemeanor trespassing if they really wanted that.) Carmen M. Ortiz, US Attorney, should be called before Congress to account for this.

shareme 14y ago
we need to start a whitehouse petition on looking into DOJ abuse..
tellarin 14y ago
Agreed. It's absurd that a simple civil matter is turned into a criminal one with a possible penalty of 35 years in jail. And this not even considering the recent tragic event. :(
rprasad 14y ago
. The United States never should have been a party to this -- it should have been a civil issue between JSTOR, MIT, and Aaron. Except, you know...the fact that Congress passed a law a while ago that made this a crime. This should come up in Congress because what Aaron did should not be a felonious act. At best, it should be an infraction (i.e., the lowest type of civil misconduct, like jaywalking). But the fault lies with Congress for making this a crime, not Ms. Ortiz for enforcing the laws is ethically and legally bound to enforce.
- rdl 14y ago
  She went vastly beyond what was required of her in charging him with a whole litany of offenses, several of which Congress most likely didn't intend to apply to situations like this (CFAA to TOS violations). This was because Aaron was a bit of a gadfly, and had gotten out of the PACER situation earlier, so he was already on their enemies list. Congress was also at fault for passing a bunch of stupid laws, but that doesn't excuse Ortiz. It also doesn't excuse Aaron for killing himself and not getting help. There's plenty of blame to go around.
  - rprasad 14y ago
    I don't know how much more simply to state this: As a consequence of prosecutorial "discretion" exercised during the jim crow days of the segregated South, federal prosecutors do not have discretion about which laws to prosecute. Once they have been presented a case, they are required to prosecute if the presentation of evidence is sufficient to suggest that a crime has been committed. Only upper management of the DOJ (i.e., above Ms. Ortiz) or the president can issue orders not to enforce certain laws. Thus, this does excuse Ms. Ortiz. She's just doing her job. If you don't like that, change the scope of her job by getting her superiors to end enforcement of the laws at issue.
    - rdl 14y ago
      You seem to be a lawyer, and I'm not, so thanks for your information. I know a lot more about computer security theory and practice than the US federal laws; there are pretty clear lines way before "crime" which I try to stay within, myself. As far as I can tell, CFAA was not violated, at least under the narrow (i.e. correct) interpretation of the 9th circuit. There is a circuit split right now. 1st hasn't ruled at all, so she could easily have looked to the 9th for guidance on this and not included CFAA charges. There was no "protection" at MIT or at JSTOR, so I don't see how fraud or unauthorized access, etc. applied. He scraped a website. He may have trespassed at MIT. If net-18 restriction is considered "protection", wtf (certainly a server on a secure LAN is protected by being only on the secure LAN, but a server limited to US-only access and accessed via a proxy is not. IMO Net-18 is a lot closer to national restrictions at YouTube than a security policy, since any guest could walk in and have access. I don't see "recklessly damaging a computer" as applying at all. Wire Fraud is essentially free always. Turning these into multiple counts for the same offense is also BS.

mgunes 14y ago

If you are unable to make the link between Swartz's absurd criminal indictment and his suicide in the light of this post, and/or if after reading it, you still view the possibility of his suicide being primarily linked to causes other than the indictment as on par with it being linked to the indictment, you should perhaps hear Jacob Appelbaum's recent C3 talk [1], where he details the state oppression he, his mentally ill mother, and his various acquaintances have been under due to his link with Wikileaks. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4977338 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4977338

shazow 14y ago
Perhaps a coincidence, but the choice of date—the anniversary of his arrest—feels rather convincing. "Since his arresting the early morning of January 11, 2011 — two years to the day before Aaron Swartz ended his life..." http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bull...
rprasad 14y ago
Aaron appears to have committed suicide as a result of a mental illness (i.e., clinical depression) which was exacerbated by the criminal case against him. It wasn't the criminal case that killed him; it was his mental illness. The fact that he has a mentally ill mother is strong evidence of this, since mental illness has a genetic component (especially depression and schizophrenia).
- mgunes 14y ago
  > Aaron appears to have committed suicide as a result of a mental illness (i.e., clinical depression) which was exacerbated by the criminal case against him. It wasn't the criminal case that killed him; it was his mental illness. His family and partner, perhaps the people who have been closest to him in recent times, seem to disagree with you [1][2]. > The fact that he has a mentally ill mother is strong evidence of this Is that indeed a fact, or did you just happen to incorrectly infer that from my sentence? I was talking about Appelbaum's mother, not Swartz's. My point in citing Appelbaum was to denote that Swartz is not an isolated case; the US justice system has been systematically acting as an instrument of oppression against dissidents (and increasingly more frequently, against those active in the production and critique of technology) whom it perceives as adversaries of its federal and corporate sponsors. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5049225 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5049225 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5047398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5047398

cbennett 14y ago

the blog links through to this article, which I found quite insightful: http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2011/07/articles/series/special-comment/aaron-swartz-computer-fraud-indictment/ http://www.litigationandtrial.com/2011/07/articles/series/sp...