9 ms·

The Truth About Aaron Swartz's "Crime"

837 points by secalex 14y ago

ghshephard 14y ago
I wasn't aware the closet was unlocked. And apparently used by a homeless guy to store his stuff. So, even the bare minimum real crime that I thought he was guilty of (Breaking into a closet) which is a crime serviceable by community service in this context - turns out not to have occurred. I've been sad all morning. Reading this article just makes me angry.
- theevocater 14y ago
  Not only that but the actual trespassing charge was dropped. So it wasn't even part of the case!
  - danso 14y ago
    I didn't even realize that. The most salacious and unsympathetic of the allegations is how Swartz got physical access...othherwise, how different is what he did than what people who go to Starbucks and torrent illegally? Just magnitude?
    - erichocean 14y ago
      It's that the U.S. got their asses handed to them in a previous case involving PACER, and were out for blood. Sadly, that's what they got.
      - drzaiusapelord 14y ago
        I'm not seeing any reference to PACER in any obit articles and in a lot of the stuff on reddit and elsewhere. This is a very important point. Essentially, Aaron had already defeated the feds for open access and was trying again. I imagine the petty bureaucrats burned by PACER really were out for blood this time. Apparently, our government's mission is to destroy young people over petty grievances its employees have with American citizens. Christ, there are so many levels of wrong here its unbelievable. I just wish Aaron's case got more attention before he died. There was next to nothing about it, but jerks like Kim Dotcom seem to have articles and public sympathy locked, while real heros like Aaron were margalized because he was working on a level more much complex than "herp derp free moviez" and didn't have the crass marketing and bullshitting skills guys like Dotcom have. We live in a very unfair world. Whatever American exceptionalism I believed in was steadying chipped away by the horrid Bush years and Obama's bizarre assault on medical marijuana, patent violators, and now 20 somethings downloading lots of PDFs. I was just thinking how well a young Bill Gates or a young Bill Joy or whoever would fare in 2013 America? These guys have all admitted to doing stuff like stealing mainframe time, ripping off code, causal hacking, pushing around the old guard, violating all manner of rules, etc. Its just back then you didn't go to jail for it. I imagine most of them would have gotten crushed somehow, just like Aaron. I know I am being dramatic, but this whole thing is very upsetting. The worst is, there is no reform over the horizon. Whatever reformist potential Lessig and the EFF and others had in the late 90s and early 2000s is long dead. If anything, things have somehow gotten worse for those who believe in open information and sensible prosecution of computer crimes since the Bush years. How did we get here? Why is Aaron dead? Why is my side always losing? This is too fucking much.
        hkmurakami 14y ago
        The Internet Archive's obituary makes prominent note of Aaron's volunteer work in creating RECAP, which is what Aaron helped create / used in the PACER incident. http://blog.archive.org/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-hero-of-the-open-world-rip/ http://blog.archive.org/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-hero-of-the-...
        deadairspace 14y ago
        I'm upset as well. It just all seems so absurd and unnecessary, like a cruel game. >We live in a very unfair world. I thought I already understood this. Today puts it in even sharper focus.
        vermontdevil 14y ago
        Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak would have been persecuted for the Blue Box if they did it today. The government has been like this for a long time. But it sure feels like they have accelerated on behalf of their corporate paymasters.
    - burke 14y ago
      The difference in this case is that it could reasonably be argued he had an implied license to all the content he downloaded. The millions of kids downloading music have done more wrong by the letter of the law than Aaron did.
    - MichaelSalib 14y ago
      Starbucks torrenters generally don't cause a community of 20,000 scholars to lose access to a major journal archive for days at a time. And they generally don't require university staff to burn hours trying to hunt down hidden machines that are disrupting their network.
      - danso 14y ago
        That's besides the point. I'm asking if in which way is the crime, as described in the official charges, different than the Starbucks scenario. The denial-of-service to MIT may have helped spur the case, but wire fraud doesn't seem to depend on whether a DoS happened (or at least from what I can tell)
      - zapdrive 14y ago
        Apparently, the MIT and/or JSTOR staff took down the service themselves when they detected the mass downloads. It was not Aaron's "attack" that brought down the access.
        MichaelSalib 14y ago
        So what? Aaron violated MIT's policies and JSTOR's policies and the result was that a large community of scholars lost access. Those scholars would have had access if Aaron hadn't done what he did.
        jlgreco 14y ago
        The only harm was manufactured by the "victims". Were it not for the "victims" manufacturing this harm, they would not be called victims at all. They essentially bootstrapped their own victim-hood. If you don't see why that is relevant in an ethical consideration of his actions, then I cannot help you.
        MichaelSalib 14y ago
        This is taking victim blaming to new heights. Is it now the victim's fault they don't acquiesce to a lawbreakers' demands? Doesn't MIT have the right to decide who is allowed to use their network and in what manner? Can I break into your home and use your internet connection as I see fit without your complaint?
  - bcn 14y ago
    "...an unlocked closet on an open campus, one which was also used to store personal effects by a homeless man."
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- mayneack 14y ago
  MIT is very open. They just put ID card readers on the student center in the last month or so. I used to see homeless people in the computer labs around campus and the student center all the time.
- hso9791 14y ago
  There is something about this case that makes me feel an injustice has been done. Not by Aaron Swartz, but by the apparatus investigating and prosecuting this case. Sadly, I wonder how frequent these witch hunts are in the USA. The Larsgard story is another, prime example of how misconstrued the narratives of prosecuting attorneys can get - without any risk to their own career. (Edit:) This is just one out of a few, key reasons that I do not want to visit nor work in the USA. The risk that one may get to pay for some a..hole's political aspirations.
antr 14y ago
Of all the great stories and memories on Aaron that have been shared all day today, I believe this story is the one that the general public should really read. Until yesterday, most Aaron vs USA stories had a negative angle on Aaron, and this one really shines a light on the ridiculous witch-hunt lead by the US Attorney.
doe88 14y ago
It's even lower than what I expected. I remember having read one time there was allegedly a copied cookie involved (which already wasn't what I would call a hack), but it seems that's not even the case. I'm astonished how such a small offense could bring such huge charges.
- nateware 14y ago
  Agreed, if that article is accurate those charges are ludicrous. There are plugins for every major browser that basically do the exact same thing, which any average layperson can use. What's next, claiming that AdBlock is inspecting and subverting Internet traffic, and hence a crime under the Wiretap Act?
- CJefferson 14y ago
  The law is not interested in how easy a crime is technically to perform. Lots of crimes are serious and really easy. (This crime should still not have been charged, but do not say easy to commit crimes should have low penalties)
ojbyrne 14y ago
The other stories were sad, but this one is disgusting. I hope that Aaron's death actually changes things.
jzone3 14y ago
Did Aaron release the articles, or just download them? If he released them, using what medium?
- erichocean 14y ago
  He returned all of the articles he downloaded to JSTOR when he was asked to. He did not distribute them. UPDATE: Here's JSTOR's confirmation of the above: http://about.jstor.org/statement-swartz http://about.jstor.org/statement-swartz
  - omarchowdhury 14y ago
    How do you return something that was downloaded?
    - smsm42 14y ago
      You hand over the physical medium it is stored on and keep no copies.
    - kanzure 14y ago
      > How do you return something that was downloaded? There was a public gesture where his attorney physically handed over some hard drives. Then the US Secret Service allowed him to access it once in a while to build his defense.
    - mjn 14y ago
      Since I have slightly trollish inclinations, I emailed JSTOR's customer service after they made that weird announcement about wanting files "returned", expressing my worry over which content was "missing", and when they expected it to be returned and available again. I got a short response claiming the media had misreported the situation: Thank you for your message. Some of the media details about this incident have been a bit misleading. I can confirm that no content is missing from JSTOR as a result of the recent misuse case. Copies of the files were downloaded from the site, no content is unavailable as a result.
  - 14y ago
todayiamme 14y ago
The only conclusion I can draw from his life and the events leading up to his demise is that he must have upset someone deeply entrenched in the circles of power. Otherwise the witch-hunt just doesn't make any sense. After all ask yourself what motive did the prosecutor possess for going after him like that?
- andrewtbham 14y ago
  Yeh I have thought the same thing. So, who could it be?
  - todayiamme 14y ago
    I doubt it if we'll ever know. Where I'm from such influence is exercised discreetly in back rooms over bottles of blue label, and I have a feeling that the US isn't too different. It is not my intention to sound conspiratorial or expound conspiracy theories, I'm simply try to state the underlying truism that this world isn't as neat, fair or rational as we would like it to be. It feels very uncomfortable to admit this, but the harsh truth is that it isn't just about who you are, it's also about who you know. In a just, rational world, Aaron would have been lauded as a hero, but our world isn't that world. Our world is one where influence carries more weight than the power of ideas and even though ideas may win in the long term, the effect of power wielded by certain individuals is more immediate and almost always more corrosive.
- rprasad 14y ago
  No conspiracy, guys. The prosecutor was just doing her job. A simple case like Aaron's probably took up less than 1% of her week. It may have been a big case to Aaron, but compared to their normal cases, it was a relative vacation for the prosecutors working on it. The problem was not that Aaron "upset someone deeply entranched." The problem is that Aaron's activities fall into the definition of a particular form of electronic crime which may be overbroad. Federal prosecutors don't get to decide if laws are overbroad or unconstitutional and choose not to enforce the law (because this discretion was historically used to excuse many white defendants accused of lynching black men in the South). They enforce all of the laws on the books unless someone with legal discretion (i.e. ,the head of the DOJ or the president) issues an order telling them not to enforce a particular (set of) law(s).
larrys 14y ago
"I know a criminal hack when I see it, and Aaron’s downloading of journal articles from an unlocked closet is not an offense worth 35 years in jail." Prosecutors regularly ask for outrageous sentences which from my observation are rarely granted. Here is the case of Mark Drier. Government asked for 150 years, he got 20 years: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/07/13/breaking-marc-dreier-sentenced-to-20-years-in-prison/ http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/07/13/breaking-marc-dreier-sen... Michael Miliken theoretically could have faced 520 years: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/30/business/junk-bond-leader-is-indicted-by-us-in-criminal-action.html http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/30/business/junk-bond-leader-... This is what happened (he got 10 and that was reduced): http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/06/business/milken-s-sentence-reduced-by-judge-7-months-are-left.html http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/06/business/milken-s-sentence...
- drzaiusapelord 14y ago
  So in a best case scenario, let me repeat that - best case scenario, here we're going to take a delicate genius and put him into jail where there's a 7% chance of being sexually assaulted for about 5-10 years? Look, you can judge him how you please, but don't tell me about about how horribly Turing was oppressed if you won't accept guys like Swartz got the same treatment. Can you imagine working on a startup, clearing a couple mil, spending your life fighting for your ideals to only have EVERYTHING taken away by some overzealous prosecutor? Can you imagine watching your 2 million dollar nest egg go to lawyers who tell you that you probably will need to serve time? Can you imagine waking up and knowing that in 6 months you'll be telling everyone you know that you will be going away for 10 years? That all you've done will be taken from you? Or how utterly demoralizing it must be to realize that Ortiz cannot be stopped because of how powerful the federal government is? The level of defeat here and the stakes involved? That your reputation and the reputation of everyone and everything you touched will be destroyed the day you take the plea bargain? Knowing the coming storm will hit you soon and there's nothing you can do to stop it? If there's any justfiable reason for suicide in this crazy world its being railroaded by a government with infinite resources and knowing that by the time you get out of prison you'll be 10 years older, never allowed to touch a computer, be seen as a horrible felon on par with Charles Manson, and come out deeply in debt and completely dead inside.
VikingCoder 14y ago
I can't remember a specific incident, but I'm fairly certain I've done things more "inconsiderate" than this. Cripes, this reads like something Larry and Sergey would have done in the early days of Backrub (later Google), not something that you get prosecuted for and face the possibility of 35 years in jail for.
d0m 14y ago
Is this the reason why he committed suicide? As far as I understand, there really was no crime at all. Hell, by these standards, Mark Zuckerberg should get 70 years in prison for downloading some pictures. It's hard to believe he was persecuted for years because of that. Still, a part of me believes there had to be a stronger reason to commit suicide. I mean, we're not talking about a random stranger.. it's Aaron. He's fought all his life for things and menaces way bigger than that. This is odd.
- exodust 14y ago
  I thought it was odd too, then I read his 2007 short story post "A Moment Before Dying" where he originally had the character's name as Aaron before changing it to Alex after concerned friends flooded in. It's a bizarre and quite frankly terrible piece where he repeats more than once the line "The day Aaron killed himself...". It won't win any literary awards, but it indicates he could get himself caught in a dark place given circumstances. It's actually one of the more blatant "hey everyone I'm suicidal" messages I've heard of outside of actual self-harm from failed suicide attempts. As always, friends can't be babysitting each other 24/7. He felt he should check out early, ok, well not easy to prevent people doing that if they're set in their ways.
jacoblyles 14y ago
This article misses the main point. Even if he did break locks and crack authentication, what he did would still be morally right.
SoftwareMaven 14y ago
I very seriously considered MIT for my undergrad work, including doing the requisite alumni interview. I eventually decided the nation's 16th ranked computer science program was good enough, especially since they wanted to pay for me. This whole time, I've had a piece of me that wished I'd done it (a very small piece, since 1/2 of my kids were born in that timeframe). Today is the first day when I can honestly say I'm glad I'm in no way associated with MIT.
Yaa101 14y ago
The United States are broken beyond repair, this is just the beginning of the shitstorm of corruption that has been building up since the end of the 19th century.
zaidf 14y ago
To people wondering if prosecutors have a choice, they absolutely do. I was recipient of an NSF check of over $10,000 from a guy with a history of writing bad checks(a criminal offense). It is a clear cut case with ample proof and victims. Yet the DA's office in neither NYC or San Francisco has taken action against him for over a year. Meanwhile the guy continues to scam more and more people, pushing one woman to brink of shutting down her business. I know because I made a site(http://cliffkaplanfraud.com http://cliffkaplanfraud.com) and the stories that trickle in are gut wrenching and infuriating. So yes, the DA's office seems to have a lot of power to pursue someone unlike what some people here suggest.
- rprasad 14y ago
  1) A bad check is a state level offense, not a federal offense, and the discretion afforded to state and local prosecutors is far greater than the discretion afforded federal prosecutors (though federal prosecutors have broader powers). 2) They may have prioritized murders and rapes over crimes, such as bad-check-passing, that can be remedied in a civil courtroom. That's generally what happens when state and local budgets get cut. For example, in 2009 and 2010, San Bernardino and Riverside counties simply did not enforce drug possession charges for meth or marijuana for quantities below the dealer amount because they didn't have the prosecutorial resources to handle those cases after prioritizing violent crimes. 3) HIRE A LAWYER. Winning a case against him in civil court for passing a bad check is pretty much guaranteed to spawn a criminal case because you'll have handed the prosecutors their case; they won't have to redirect many resources away from serious crimes.
  - zaidf 14y ago
    3) HIRE A LAWYER. Winning a case against him in civil court for passing a bad check is pretty much guaranteed to spawn a criminal case because you'll have handed the prosecutors their case; they won't have to redirect many resources away from serious crimes. 1. Guaranteed? Man already has multiple suits and judgements against him in civil court in past few years in addition to having servdd time years ago for a similar crime. He even has a warrant out in another state AFAIK. No criminal charges in NY(where I am based) or California(where he and many of his victims are). 2. It's very hard collecting money from him even after you win the judgement, from my conversations with those who have. In the end, I risk taking an even bigger hit especially if he countersues(even the odd lawyer willing to work on contingency warns me that he will almost certainly countersue for which I will need to pay out of pocket) My best option in light of these realizations was to build this site which seems to have at least made a dent in his ability to scam. For example, the guy has been playing with the spelling of his name, at least partially I'm guessing so my site does not pull up when his next victim googles.
tomdtpink 14y ago
Once there lived a king, he had em' ministers and whole lot of them entertaining fucks. One day, the Elvis of 17th Cent., comes to impress the king. He goes, >A little less conversation, a little more action please >All this aggravation aint satisfactioning me >A little more bite and a little less bark >A little less fight and a little more spark >Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me >Satisfy me baby But then, he JUST STOPS. "My Dear King you are fucking NAKED." The story ends abruptly and Elvis headless. xxxxx Now what Aron did was, he didn't even sing the intro. He went all lulz on the King. The story should have ended, with Aron going all Jesus. But being philosophically considerate, I guess he went all Loki. O' Aron I do wish you hadn't played this. It is rather peevy of me, but I will take a look at your HardDisk if that Sean chap disseminates it online.
cowsandmilk 14y ago
Many people have wondered who to point the finger at within MIT. I find it incredibly enlightening that he chooses to point a finger by linking to MIT's Office of the General Counsel.
mburshteyn 14y ago
The 9th circuit, followed by the 4th, has been limiting the CFAA's scope precisely due to the concern about prosecutorial abuse and criminalizing simple unauthorized system access. I wonder if this case would have moved forward if the alleged events happened in San Francisco. From US v. Nosal, 676 F. 3d 854 (9th Cir.): "The government assures us that, whatever the scope of the CFAA, it won't prosecute minor violations. But we shouldn't have to live at the mercy of our local prosecutor. Cf. United States v. Stevens, ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 1577, 1591, 176 L.Ed.2d 435 (2010) ("We would not uphold an unconstitutional statute merely because the Government promised to use it responsibly."). And it's not clear we can trust the government when a tempting target comes along. Take the case of the mom who posed as a 17-year-old boy and cyber-bullied her daughter's classmate. The Justice Department prosecuted her under 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(C) for violating MySpace's terms of service, which prohibited lying about identifying information, including age. See United States v. Drew, 259 F.R.D. 449 (C.D.Cal.2009). Lying on social media websites is common: People shave years off their age, add inches to their height and drop pounds from their weight. The difference between puffery and prosecution may depend on whether you happen to be someone an AUSA has reason to go after. In United States v. Kozminski, 487 U.S. 931, 108 S.Ct. 2751, 101 L.Ed.2d 788 (1988), the Supreme Court refused to adopt the government's broad interpretation of a statute because it would "criminalize a broad range of day-to-day activity." Id. at 949, 108 S.Ct. 2751. Applying the rule of lenity, the Court warned that the broader statutory interpretation would "delegate to prosecutors and juries the inherently legislative task of determining what type of ... activities are so morally reprehensible that they should be punished as crimes" and would "subject individuals to the risk of arbitrary or discriminatory prosecution and conviction." Id. By giving that much power to prosecutors, we're inviting discriminatory and arbitrary enforcement." *disclaimer: I am not a lawyer
watmough 14y ago
I remember reading about this 'hack' at the time. I just can't believe that it ended in Aaron taking his own life. I'm sure anyone paying attention to this will be very angry and sad.
jebblue 14y ago
>> The JSTOR application lacked even the most basic controls to prevent what they might consider abusive behavior Was he allowed to download the documents? It doesn't matter what controls were in place. The question is basic, did he get something he was not authorized to take?

837 points by secalex 14y ago

I wasn't aware the closet was unlocked. And apparently used by a homeless guy to store his stuff. So, even the bare minimum real crime that I thought he was guilty of (Breaking into a closet) which is a crime serviceable by community service in this context - turns out not to have occurred. I've been sad all morning. Reading this article just makes me angry.

theevocater 14y ago
Not only that but the actual trespassing charge was dropped. So it wasn't even part of the case!
- danso 14y ago
  I didn't even realize that. The most salacious and unsympathetic of the allegations is how Swartz got physical access...othherwise, how different is what he did than what people who go to Starbucks and torrent illegally? Just magnitude?
  - erichocean 14y ago
    It's that the U.S. got their asses handed to them in a previous case involving PACER, and were out for blood. Sadly, that's what they got.
    - drzaiusapelord 14y ago
      I'm not seeing any reference to PACER in any obit articles and in a lot of the stuff on reddit and elsewhere. This is a very important point. Essentially, Aaron had already defeated the feds for open access and was trying again. I imagine the petty bureaucrats burned by PACER really were out for blood this time. Apparently, our government's mission is to destroy young people over petty grievances its employees have with American citizens. Christ, there are so many levels of wrong here its unbelievable. I just wish Aaron's case got more attention before he died. There was next to nothing about it, but jerks like Kim Dotcom seem to have articles and public sympathy locked, while real heros like Aaron were margalized because he was working on a level more much complex than "herp derp free moviez" and didn't have the crass marketing and bullshitting skills guys like Dotcom have. We live in a very unfair world. Whatever American exceptionalism I believed in was steadying chipped away by the horrid Bush years and Obama's bizarre assault on medical marijuana, patent violators, and now 20 somethings downloading lots of PDFs. I was just thinking how well a young Bill Gates or a young Bill Joy or whoever would fare in 2013 America? These guys have all admitted to doing stuff like stealing mainframe time, ripping off code, causal hacking, pushing around the old guard, violating all manner of rules, etc. Its just back then you didn't go to jail for it. I imagine most of them would have gotten crushed somehow, just like Aaron. I know I am being dramatic, but this whole thing is very upsetting. The worst is, there is no reform over the horizon. Whatever reformist potential Lessig and the EFF and others had in the late 90s and early 2000s is long dead. If anything, things have somehow gotten worse for those who believe in open information and sensible prosecution of computer crimes since the Bush years. How did we get here? Why is Aaron dead? Why is my side always losing? This is too fucking much.
      - hkmurakami 14y ago
        The Internet Archive's obituary makes prominent note of Aaron's volunteer work in creating RECAP, which is what Aaron helped create / used in the PACER incident. http://blog.archive.org/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-hero-of-the-open-world-rip/ http://blog.archive.org/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-hero-of-the-...
      - deadairspace 14y ago
        I'm upset as well. It just all seems so absurd and unnecessary, like a cruel game. >We live in a very unfair world. I thought I already understood this. Today puts it in even sharper focus.
      - vermontdevil 14y ago
        Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak would have been persecuted for the Blue Box if they did it today. The government has been like this for a long time. But it sure feels like they have accelerated on behalf of their corporate paymasters.
  - burke 14y ago
    The difference in this case is that it could reasonably be argued he had an implied license to all the content he downloaded. The millions of kids downloading music have done more wrong by the letter of the law than Aaron did.
  - MichaelSalib 14y ago
    Starbucks torrenters generally don't cause a community of 20,000 scholars to lose access to a major journal archive for days at a time. And they generally don't require university staff to burn hours trying to hunt down hidden machines that are disrupting their network.
    - danso 14y ago
      That's besides the point. I'm asking if in which way is the crime, as described in the official charges, different than the Starbucks scenario. The denial-of-service to MIT may have helped spur the case, but wire fraud doesn't seem to depend on whether a DoS happened (or at least from what I can tell)
    - zapdrive 14y ago
      Apparently, the MIT and/or JSTOR staff took down the service themselves when they detected the mass downloads. It was not Aaron's "attack" that brought down the access.
      - MichaelSalib 14y ago
        So what? Aaron violated MIT's policies and JSTOR's policies and the result was that a large community of scholars lost access. Those scholars would have had access if Aaron hadn't done what he did.
        jlgreco 14y ago
        The only harm was manufactured by the "victims". Were it not for the "victims" manufacturing this harm, they would not be called victims at all. They essentially bootstrapped their own victim-hood. If you don't see why that is relevant in an ethical consideration of his actions, then I cannot help you.
        MichaelSalib 14y ago
        This is taking victim blaming to new heights. Is it now the victim's fault they don't acquiesce to a lawbreakers' demands? Doesn't MIT have the right to decide who is allowed to use their network and in what manner? Can I break into your home and use your internet connection as I see fit without your complaint?
- bcn 14y ago
  "...an unlocked closet on an open campus, one which was also used to store personal effects by a homeless man."
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
mayneack 14y ago
MIT is very open. They just put ID card readers on the student center in the last month or so. I used to see homeless people in the computer labs around campus and the student center all the time.
hso9791 14y ago
There is something about this case that makes me feel an injustice has been done. Not by Aaron Swartz, but by the apparatus investigating and prosecuting this case. Sadly, I wonder how frequent these witch hunts are in the USA. The Larsgard story is another, prime example of how misconstrued the narratives of prosecuting attorneys can get - without any risk to their own career. (Edit:) This is just one out of a few, key reasons that I do not want to visit nor work in the USA. The risk that one may get to pay for some a..hole's political aspirations.

antr 14y ago

Of all the great stories and memories on Aaron that have been shared all day today, I believe this story is the one that the general public should really read. Until yesterday, most Aaron vs USA stories had a negative angle on Aaron, and this one really shines a light on the ridiculous witch-hunt lead by the US Attorney.

doe88 14y ago

It's even lower than what I expected. I remember having read one time there was allegedly a copied cookie involved (which already wasn't what I would call a hack), but it seems that's not even the case. I'm astonished how such a small offense could bring such huge charges.

nateware 14y ago
Agreed, if that article is accurate those charges are ludicrous. There are plugins for every major browser that basically do the exact same thing, which any average layperson can use. What's next, claiming that AdBlock is inspecting and subverting Internet traffic, and hence a crime under the Wiretap Act?
CJefferson 14y ago
The law is not interested in how easy a crime is technically to perform. Lots of crimes are serious and really easy. (This crime should still not have been charged, but do not say easy to commit crimes should have low penalties)

ojbyrne 14y ago

The other stories were sad, but this one is disgusting. I hope that Aaron's death actually changes things.

jzone3 14y ago

Did Aaron release the articles, or just download them? If he released them, using what medium?

erichocean 14y ago
He returned all of the articles he downloaded to JSTOR when he was asked to. He did not distribute them. UPDATE: Here's JSTOR's confirmation of the above: http://about.jstor.org/statement-swartz http://about.jstor.org/statement-swartz
- omarchowdhury 14y ago
  How do you return something that was downloaded?
  - smsm42 14y ago
    You hand over the physical medium it is stored on and keep no copies.
  - kanzure 14y ago
    > How do you return something that was downloaded? There was a public gesture where his attorney physically handed over some hard drives. Then the US Secret Service allowed him to access it once in a while to build his defense.
  - mjn 14y ago
    Since I have slightly trollish inclinations, I emailed JSTOR's customer service after they made that weird announcement about wanting files "returned", expressing my worry over which content was "missing", and when they expected it to be returned and available again. I got a short response claiming the media had misreported the situation: Thank you for your message. Some of the media details about this incident have been a bit misleading. I can confirm that no content is missing from JSTOR as a result of the recent misuse case. Copies of the files were downloaded from the site, no content is unavailable as a result.
- 14y ago

todayiamme 14y ago

The only conclusion I can draw from his life and the events leading up to his demise is that he must have upset someone deeply entrenched in the circles of power. Otherwise the witch-hunt just doesn't make any sense. After all ask yourself what motive did the prosecutor possess for going after him like that?

andrewtbham 14y ago
Yeh I have thought the same thing. So, who could it be?
- todayiamme 14y ago
  I doubt it if we'll ever know. Where I'm from such influence is exercised discreetly in back rooms over bottles of blue label, and I have a feeling that the US isn't too different. It is not my intention to sound conspiratorial or expound conspiracy theories, I'm simply try to state the underlying truism that this world isn't as neat, fair or rational as we would like it to be. It feels very uncomfortable to admit this, but the harsh truth is that it isn't just about who you are, it's also about who you know. In a just, rational world, Aaron would have been lauded as a hero, but our world isn't that world. Our world is one where influence carries more weight than the power of ideas and even though ideas may win in the long term, the effect of power wielded by certain individuals is more immediate and almost always more corrosive.
rprasad 14y ago
No conspiracy, guys. The prosecutor was just doing her job. A simple case like Aaron's probably took up less than 1% of her week. It may have been a big case to Aaron, but compared to their normal cases, it was a relative vacation for the prosecutors working on it. The problem was not that Aaron "upset someone deeply entranched." The problem is that Aaron's activities fall into the definition of a particular form of electronic crime which may be overbroad. Federal prosecutors don't get to decide if laws are overbroad or unconstitutional and choose not to enforce the law (because this discretion was historically used to excuse many white defendants accused of lynching black men in the South). They enforce all of the laws on the books unless someone with legal discretion (i.e. ,the head of the DOJ or the president) issues an order telling them not to enforce a particular (set of) law(s).

larrys 14y ago

"I know a criminal hack when I see it, and Aaron’s downloading of journal articles from an unlocked closet is not an offense worth 35 years in jail." Prosecutors regularly ask for outrageous sentences which from my observation are rarely granted. Here is the case of Mark Drier. Government asked for 150 years, he got 20 years: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/07/13/breaking-marc-dreier-sentenced-to-20-years-in-prison/ http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/07/13/breaking-marc-dreier-sen... Michael Miliken theoretically could have faced 520 years: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/30/business/junk-bond-leader-is-indicted-by-us-in-criminal-action.html http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/30/business/junk-bond-leader-... This is what happened (he got 10 and that was reduced): http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/06/business/milken-s-sentence-reduced-by-judge-7-months-are-left.html http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/06/business/milken-s-sentence...

drzaiusapelord 14y ago
So in a best case scenario, let me repeat that - best case scenario, here we're going to take a delicate genius and put him into jail where there's a 7% chance of being sexually assaulted for about 5-10 years? Look, you can judge him how you please, but don't tell me about about how horribly Turing was oppressed if you won't accept guys like Swartz got the same treatment. Can you imagine working on a startup, clearing a couple mil, spending your life fighting for your ideals to only have EVERYTHING taken away by some overzealous prosecutor? Can you imagine watching your 2 million dollar nest egg go to lawyers who tell you that you probably will need to serve time? Can you imagine waking up and knowing that in 6 months you'll be telling everyone you know that you will be going away for 10 years? That all you've done will be taken from you? Or how utterly demoralizing it must be to realize that Ortiz cannot be stopped because of how powerful the federal government is? The level of defeat here and the stakes involved? That your reputation and the reputation of everyone and everything you touched will be destroyed the day you take the plea bargain? Knowing the coming storm will hit you soon and there's nothing you can do to stop it? If there's any justfiable reason for suicide in this crazy world its being railroaded by a government with infinite resources and knowing that by the time you get out of prison you'll be 10 years older, never allowed to touch a computer, be seen as a horrible felon on par with Charles Manson, and come out deeply in debt and completely dead inside.

VikingCoder 14y ago

I can't remember a specific incident, but I'm fairly certain I've done things more "inconsiderate" than this. Cripes, this reads like something Larry and Sergey would have done in the early days of Backrub (later Google), not something that you get prosecuted for and face the possibility of 35 years in jail for.

d0m 14y ago

Is this the reason why he committed suicide? As far as I understand, there really was no crime at all. Hell, by these standards, Mark Zuckerberg should get 70 years in prison for downloading some pictures. It's hard to believe he was persecuted for years because of that. Still, a part of me believes there had to be a stronger reason to commit suicide. I mean, we're not talking about a random stranger.. it's Aaron. He's fought all his life for things and menaces way bigger than that. This is odd.

exodust 14y ago
I thought it was odd too, then I read his 2007 short story post "A Moment Before Dying" where he originally had the character's name as Aaron before changing it to Alex after concerned friends flooded in. It's a bizarre and quite frankly terrible piece where he repeats more than once the line "The day Aaron killed himself...". It won't win any literary awards, but it indicates he could get himself caught in a dark place given circumstances. It's actually one of the more blatant "hey everyone I'm suicidal" messages I've heard of outside of actual self-harm from failed suicide attempts. As always, friends can't be babysitting each other 24/7. He felt he should check out early, ok, well not easy to prevent people doing that if they're set in their ways.

jacoblyles 14y ago

This article misses the main point. Even if he did break locks and crack authentication, what he did would still be morally right.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago

I very seriously considered MIT for my undergrad work, including doing the requisite alumni interview. I eventually decided the nation's 16th ranked computer science program was good enough, especially since they wanted to pay for me. This whole time, I've had a piece of me that wished I'd done it (a very small piece, since 1/2 of my kids were born in that timeframe). Today is the first day when I can honestly say I'm glad I'm in no way associated with MIT.

Yaa101 14y ago

The United States are broken beyond repair, this is just the beginning of the shitstorm of corruption that has been building up since the end of the 19th century.

zaidf 14y ago

To people wondering if prosecutors have a choice, they absolutely do. I was recipient of an NSF check of over $10,000 from a guy with a history of writing bad checks(a criminal offense). It is a clear cut case with ample proof and victims. Yet the DA's office in neither NYC or San Francisco has taken action against him for over a year. Meanwhile the guy continues to scam more and more people, pushing one woman to brink of shutting down her business. I know because I made a site(http://cliffkaplanfraud.com http://cliffkaplanfraud.com) and the stories that trickle in are gut wrenching and infuriating. So yes, the DA's office seems to have a lot of power to pursue someone unlike what some people here suggest.

rprasad 14y ago
1) A bad check is a state level offense, not a federal offense, and the discretion afforded to state and local prosecutors is far greater than the discretion afforded federal prosecutors (though federal prosecutors have broader powers). 2) They may have prioritized murders and rapes over crimes, such as bad-check-passing, that can be remedied in a civil courtroom. That's generally what happens when state and local budgets get cut. For example, in 2009 and 2010, San Bernardino and Riverside counties simply did not enforce drug possession charges for meth or marijuana for quantities below the dealer amount because they didn't have the prosecutorial resources to handle those cases after prioritizing violent crimes. 3) HIRE A LAWYER. Winning a case against him in civil court for passing a bad check is pretty much guaranteed to spawn a criminal case because you'll have handed the prosecutors their case; they won't have to redirect many resources away from serious crimes.
- zaidf 14y ago
  3) HIRE A LAWYER. Winning a case against him in civil court for passing a bad check is pretty much guaranteed to spawn a criminal case because you'll have handed the prosecutors their case; they won't have to redirect many resources away from serious crimes. 1. Guaranteed? Man already has multiple suits and judgements against him in civil court in past few years in addition to having servdd time years ago for a similar crime. He even has a warrant out in another state AFAIK. No criminal charges in NY(where I am based) or California(where he and many of his victims are). 2. It's very hard collecting money from him even after you win the judgement, from my conversations with those who have. In the end, I risk taking an even bigger hit especially if he countersues(even the odd lawyer willing to work on contingency warns me that he will almost certainly countersue for which I will need to pay out of pocket) My best option in light of these realizations was to build this site which seems to have at least made a dent in his ability to scam. For example, the guy has been playing with the spelling of his name, at least partially I'm guessing so my site does not pull up when his next victim googles.

tomdtpink 14y ago

Once there lived a king, he had em' ministers and whole lot of them entertaining fucks. One day, the Elvis of 17th Cent., comes to impress the king. He goes, >A little less conversation, a little more action please >All this aggravation aint satisfactioning me >A little more bite and a little less bark >A little less fight and a little more spark >Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me >Satisfy me baby But then, he JUST STOPS. "My Dear King you are fucking NAKED." The story ends abruptly and Elvis headless. xxxxx Now what Aron did was, he didn't even sing the intro. He went all lulz on the King. The story should have ended, with Aron going all Jesus. But being philosophically considerate, I guess he went all Loki. O' Aron I do wish you hadn't played this. It is rather peevy of me, but I will take a look at your HardDisk if that Sean chap disseminates it online.

cowsandmilk 14y ago

Many people have wondered who to point the finger at within MIT. I find it incredibly enlightening that he chooses to point a finger by linking to MIT's Office of the General Counsel.

mburshteyn 14y ago

The 9th circuit, followed by the 4th, has been limiting the CFAA's scope precisely due to the concern about prosecutorial abuse and criminalizing simple unauthorized system access. I wonder if this case would have moved forward if the alleged events happened in San Francisco. From US v. Nosal, 676 F. 3d 854 (9th Cir.): "The government assures us that, whatever the scope of the CFAA, it won't prosecute minor violations. But we shouldn't have to live at the mercy of our local prosecutor. Cf. United States v. Stevens, ___ U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 1577, 1591, 176 L.Ed.2d 435 (2010) ("We would not uphold an unconstitutional statute merely because the Government promised to use it responsibly."). And it's not clear we can trust the government when a tempting target comes along. Take the case of the mom who posed as a 17-year-old boy and cyber-bullied her daughter's classmate. The Justice Department prosecuted her under 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(2)(C) for violating MySpace's terms of service, which prohibited lying about identifying information, including age. See United States v. Drew, 259 F.R.D. 449 (C.D.Cal.2009). Lying on social media websites is common: People shave years off their age, add inches to their height and drop pounds from their weight. The difference between puffery and prosecution may depend on whether you happen to be someone an AUSA has reason to go after. In United States v. Kozminski, 487 U.S. 931, 108 S.Ct. 2751, 101 L.Ed.2d 788 (1988), the Supreme Court refused to adopt the government's broad interpretation of a statute because it would "criminalize a broad range of day-to-day activity." Id. at 949, 108 S.Ct. 2751. Applying the rule of lenity, the Court warned that the broader statutory interpretation would "delegate to prosecutors and juries the inherently legislative task of determining what type of ... activities are so morally reprehensible that they should be punished as crimes" and would "subject individuals to the risk of arbitrary or discriminatory prosecution and conviction." Id. By giving that much power to prosecutors, we're inviting discriminatory and arbitrary enforcement." *disclaimer: I am not a lawyer

watmough 14y ago

I remember reading about this 'hack' at the time. I just can't believe that it ended in Aaron taking his own life. I'm sure anyone paying attention to this will be very angry and sad.

jebblue 14y ago

>> The JSTOR application lacked even the most basic controls to prevent what they might consider abusive behavior Was he allowed to download the documents? It doesn't matter what controls were in place. The question is basic, did he get something he was not authorized to take?