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US Attorney Chided Swartz On Day of Suicide

315 points by Pr0 14y ago

flipper28 14y ago
I think it's kind of ridiculous that everyone is pointing fingers at "everyone else" other than the man responsible for the suicide, Aaron Swartz himself. Sure, he was in a tough situation, and I'll admit I don't know the entire backstory of what led up to this man's suicide(although there is no shortage of information on the HN front page as of late), but there is nobody that can be held responsible for his suicide other than himself. It is self-evident that this man was well-respected in the online community. He killed himself. Nobody else is responsible for that extraordinary action. We can only speculate on his exact reasoning for doing it, but I would suspect a man in that state of mind may not be acting completely rationally and just wanted to escape but sadly could not find a way out other than ending his own life. Let's celebrate his life and accomplishments and stop trying to find people to blame.
- fatbird 14y ago
  One can view Swartz as completely responsible for his own suicide, while still observing that the overzealous prosecution was a factor that shouldn't have happened regardless of Swartz committing suicide. In other words, the suicide serves to highlight what was already an absurd injustice, and that injustice alone is sufficient to act on. Doing so doesn't make Ortiz or Heymann responsible for the death; only for their own manifestly unjust prosecution.
  - paulgb 14y ago
    Well put, but in the context of this post, I think the parent comment is valid. The title, "US Attorney Chided Swartz On Day of Suicide", seems to imply blame rather than shedding light on an injustice.
- duairc 14y ago
  Totally ridiculous, victim-blaming comment. “If you add up everyone's responsibility for something, it doesn't equal 100% — it equals a billion percent if it has to, because any number of entities can be fully responsible for the same thing.” — Ran Prieur, The Mathematics of Responsibility (http://ranprieur.com/essays/mathres.html http://ranprieur.com/essays/mathres.html)
  - watty 14y ago
    There's nothing ridiculous about claiming Aaron caused his situation and killed himself. There is a prosecutor, defendant and a judge. Prosecutors typically exaggerate their case, defendants typically downplay their side, and the judge is responsible for determining the outcome. Wasn't she just doing her job? She was brought a high profile case. It involved a notorious internet prodigy who stashed a laptop and wrote a program to download 4M+ articles that otherwise would have cost a ton of money. A quick search revealed prices around $30. $30 * 4M = 120M. What am I missing?
    - mindslight 14y ago
      Critical thinking skills. Instead, you're repeating a tired emotional appeal to top-down prescribed "morals". Here is a program to download "4M+" articles: i=1;while true;do wget http://foo/$i;i=1$i;done I'll license my Unary Downloader Pro to you for $120MM. Oh wait, you just copied it into your brain and then reverse engineered it even!? You just did $120MM+ worth of damages!
      - milesokeefe 14y ago
        What he used doesn't matter as much as the fact that he did it. If you kill someone with a knife, it does not matter how difficult it was to obtain or create that knife.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
        14y ago
- danso 14y ago
  > We can only speculate on his exact reasoning for doing it, but I would suspect a man in that state of mind may not be acting completely rationally and just wanted to escape but sadly could not find a way out other than ending his own life. Very few people are saying that the prosecution alone caused his death, as if an attorney broke into his apartment and killed Aaron. People are unhappy because they think the prosecution went too far, and to a man whose depression may leave him acting irrationally,mad you say, that could have been the major trigger
  - hamai 14y ago
    this "they killed him" discussion makes people argue about another matter, when the main question to discuss is the absurd of the sentence...
  - FireBeyond 14y ago
    Actually, at least to read comments here - many are saying or implying that. Over the last few days, I've read many comments that ignore and/or gloss over any underlying depression and state, almost as unequivocal fact, that the actions of the US Attorney and her Assistant Attorney are precisely and solely to blame for driving him to suicide. I've seen calls to sue them personally, consider what it would get to have them charged with manslaughter, calls to remove them, to sue MIT, to sue JSTOR, to sue law enforcement officials for following valid warrants, etc, issued by the court and US Attorneys.
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  Take the suicide out of it and you still have an overzealous prosecutor who carried on long after the people who kicked the case off by reporting the incident dropped the charges. Whether or not A led to B is not important relative to that fact.
  - learn 14y ago
    Well, the suicide is there. He did it, plain and simple. Making a bunch of petitions to FIRE people is not going to stop suicides and it won't redeem the injustices that everyone is talking about. Absolutely ridiculous how some people are handling this situation IMO.
- _delirium 14y ago
  I think I have a reasonable amount of distance, not being in the same situation, but I would probably do the same thing (albeit with different timing), and I would consider it: 1) the rational decision; and 2) the fault of the U.S. federal government, and indirectly the American public for its fetish for jailing people. I don't have any interest in spending decades in prison, and I would commit suicide to avoid it, if I did not think there was another way of avoiding it. And I think that would be a rational decision, at least for my own personal utility function. So I wasn't at all surprised when I saw this news, though I was saddened: I would've given it about 1/3 each odds if you asked me in 2011, whether somehow charges would be dismissed/reduced, whether he'd commit suicide, or whether he'd end up as a hacker cause célèbre in prison. I do agree that we don't know with any degree of certainty what Swartz's own reasons were. I think it's tricky to appeal to the irrational pessimism of depression without actual evidence that, in a given case, it was irrational. Depression can trick you into incorrectly thinking that a situation has no way out, but that's only relevant if, viewed rationally by someone not suffering from depression, there actually is a way out. In that case, treatment can solve the problem. But treatment can only dispel pseudo-dead-ends where the "depression was speaking", so to speak, which weren't really dead ends; it can't manufacture a way out of actual dead ends, like impending lengthy imprisonment.
  - flipper28 14y ago
    Maybe it's because I love life so much that I don't think I would choose suicide over prison. Even if you get sent to prison, that doesn't mean you will be there your entire life. You can still appeal, work towards getting out faster. You can still educate yourself in prison, stay active. In other words, instead of laying down/giving up/killing myself, I would like to think I would fight my oppressors and protect my rights to be alive and happy by whatever means necessary. Someone mentioned victim-blaming, and perhaps this has transformed into a discussion of suicide "victims" in general rather than Swartzs specific case. I mean no disrespect to the memory of Aaron Swartz, but I do feel compelled to say that given the choice of (a) killing yourself or (b) not killing yourself, one of these choices illuminate your personal fortitude and character.
    - 14y ago
- OGinparadise 14y ago
  Different people react differently to pressure. No one is advocating charging the US Attorney with murder or manslaughter but it's worth looking whether their actions were appropriate or not.
- halviti 14y ago
  Imagine a child who gets bullied in school regularly eventually can't take it anymore and kills themselves. Are you really so callous as to say, "there's nobody to blame here but the child"
  - niggler 14y ago
    I realize the next comment may come off as insensitive, but I don't hear people focusing on the key question: Kids were bullied generations ago, yet it is only recently that bullying and suicide became a national crisis. What changed? Are bullies more aggressive than they were back then, or are more kids deciding that suicide is the answer, or were suicides related to bullying not reported?
    - art3m1s 14y ago
      They have more ways to extend the torment of bullying beyond school grounds, e.g. on the internet. Imagine going home, looking for an escape from the bullying, only to be harassed further on the various social media sites, messaging protocols.
    - cabalamat 14y ago
      Bullying has always existed; we'd just decided it matters more. Suicide has also always existed; we just care more now.
    - DanBC2 14y ago
      Suicide is still a taboo for many people. Reporting a death as a suicide is still problematic for some people. Not that long ago the common practice was to record deaths as accidental or misadventure rather than suicide unless it was unequivocally suicide. Reported rates were lower because of this. Newspapers understood better their responsibility to be careful about reporting suicide; the Werther effect is real and has killed people. Children's rights are a relatively recent phenomenon. Bullying used to be seen as character forming or as an unstoppable part of childhood. The extreme end of bullying is more severe now. And bullies have access to technology which extends the bullying from the school to the bullied person's wider life. tl;dr yes, there is more awareness, and more reporting, and the bullying is worse, and more children choosing suicide.
- zmmz 14y ago
  In the work that pretty much started the discipline of suicidology and one of the most important books in sociology, Émile Durkheim's 1897 "Suicide", it is made clear that the environment you are in does matter. Alghough the text is highly flawed (biases, sexism, logical faults here and there), but the basic idea prevails. Up till that point, it didn't occur to people (as it does not seem to occur to you) that something as intimate as committing suicide might be deeply linked to more social factors. People are right to point fingers, the context that one is in influences the decisions they make, the options that they think they have.
- wilfra 14y ago
  This part does not need to be stated. It is obvious he is the one who made the final decision and who was ultimately responsible for it.
- saraid216 14y ago
  Actually, Lessig's response did call out Swartz personally. I'd honestly recommend reading that and then avoiding the rest unless you want to attend his funeral or something.
- tsycho 14y ago
  >> He killed himself. Nobody else is responsible for that extraordinary action. We can only speculate on his exact reasoning for doing it, but I would suspect a man in that state of mind may not be acting completely rationally and just wanted to escape but sadly could not find a way out other than ending his own life. Okay, I'll bite. Here's a hypothetical situation for you: Say I kidnap you and take you to a remote island or anywhere where you have almost no chance of escape. Now I offer you a deal - You can either commit suicide now, or I am going to torture you slowly over the next 10 years (or 35 yrs to make the parallel with Aaron). You only get one chance to commit suicide, I will take away that option once I start torturing you. Under the above (admittedly hypothetical, but you see the parallels to Aaron's, don't you?), what would be your "rational" choice? Would you consider your _solely_ responsible for the decision if you chose the suicide option?
- naner 14y ago
  Sure, he was in a tough situation, and I'll admit I don't know the entire backstory of what led up to this man's suicide(although there is no shortage of information on the HN front page as of late), but there is nobody that can be held responsible for his suicide other than himself. He was an extremely dedicated political activist. I'm pretty sure that was a big reason for of his decision to end his life, and to end it on the 2nd anniversary of his arrest. His suicide has brought more attention to this case and corruption in the justice system than he probably would have been able to do if he were still alive. Of course he was struggling with depression and who knows what other problems, but his death seems strategically planned.
  - devcpp 14y ago
    Agreed. With him in jail for decades, this was probably the biggest action he could have ever done for the rest of his live. This man had devoted his life to progress and may have very well sacrificed himself for it, given the date of his suicide. If only more of us had a fraction of this courage to stand against the enemies of progress and freedom.
    - gus_massa 14y ago
      He was only 26! Even in the worst case that he unfortunately spent the maximum of 30 year in prison (probably without a computer) he would be out at 56. Some people did important thighs after incarceration or unjust persecution: Nelson Mandela: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela Galileo Galilei: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
- neilk 14y ago
  I think danah boyd has the best take on this. Can we say that prosecution caused Aaron's suicide, in the same sense as one billiard ball sets another in motion? Of course not. But what should disturb us is that the business and government elites of our society are very alarmed at what is going on with the internet. And they're used to crushing people in their path. The War on Drugs has completely normalized these tactics: insane sentences, extrajudicial harassment, you name it. Someone like Aaron, who had no time for the concerns of business or government when believed an issue of justice was at stake, put himself right in their crosshairs. http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2013/01/13/aaron-swartz.html http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2013/01/13/aaron-s...
- cbs 14y ago
  I think it's kind of ridiculous that everyone is pointing fingers at "everyone else" other than the man responsible for the suicide, Aaron Swartz himself. I know some people are pointing the finger, but not everyone is. While I wouldn't draw the link between the prosecution and suicide as others do, in reflection after a death it is possible to look at the person's work in the last few years and say "Why yes, there does seem to be some bullshit going on here, lets use this opportunity to draw attention to it." Just because some people do assign blame, it doesn't mean the rest of us should let those wrongly blamed off the hook for anything other than that which they were wrongly blamed. While discussing this now, people run the risk of appearing to assign blame even when they're not. But discussing the case a month after now, they'll run the risk of nobody really giving a shit. Next month people will say "He's dead, its over, move on."
- edouard1234567 14y ago
  If you can make the case that there is a clear causality then the prosecutor could be held partially accountable, if not legally at least morally. There is a precedent, somebody committed suicide allegedly as a result of a bullying act and the bullier was hold accountable and got jail sentence. http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/21/justice/new-jersey-rutgers-sentencing/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/21/justice/new-jersey-rutgers-sen... I think partial causality between his suicide and the act of bullying is probable/possible in this case, it should of course be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in the court of law and not in the court of public opinion. What I struggle with though is : should the prosecutor be held accountable or the system she represents, meaning : was she acting very differently than any other prosecutor would have, in the same situation?
  - dinkumthinkum 14y ago
    While I am completely against the prosecution in this case, I think the reality is that there's no way you are going to make the prosecutors legally accountable. Maybe in civil court. I think the difference legally between bullying, as you describe, and what the prosecutors did, is that the prosecutors could argue they were doing a job they swore an oath to perform. Nevertheless, I don't know what the possibilities are but I hope there are civil ramifications for the prosecution and hopefully reforms and positions to be filled.
- hamai 14y ago
  The best way to "celebrate his life" is to fix the insane system that intimidated him with a 35 year sentence for the "felony" of downloading PDFs. The justice system is doing a little more than "pointing fingers": http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/black-whitey-how-the-feds-disable-criminal-defense/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/bla... http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2013/01/i-have-something-to-say-about-aaron-swartzs-suicide-and-the-special-way-the-us-justice-dept-hounds-p.html http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2013/01/...
- frogpelt 14y ago
  Exactly what I was thinking. Suicide these days is treated as if the person who did it had no choice. No amount of bullying or bad life situation merits taking your own life. Mr. Swartz had a choice. He chose wrongly.
btilly 14y ago
Hopefully this drives more people to https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-stat..., which is almost a quarter of the way to the point where the administration has to respond.
- exit 14y ago
  and this one: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney-steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-...
  - bgentry 14y ago
    I gave my support to this one because it's actually well-written (free from obvious grammatical errors in the first sentence) and targets exactly the right person.
    - KC8ZKF 14y ago
      It has some semantic errors. "allegedly minor and non-violent electronic crime", for example.
      - bgentry 14y ago
        Yeah, I did notice that. I thought it was far less egregious than errors in the Carmen Ortiz petition, though.
- ewillbefull 14y ago
  Signed, and I never sign these things.
  - OzzyB 14y ago
    Ditto. > ...to the point where the administration has to respond I think the idea of them having to respond makes this enough of a worthwile endevour. Would love to see what such as reponse would entail.
danso 14y ago
Doesn't the footer suggest that the writer was STEPHEN P. HEYMANN acting on behalf of Ortiz?
- smalter 14y ago
  Yes From here, this looks like an ordinary court filing that happened to have been made on the day of Swartz's death.
  - wnight 14y ago
    I too agree that diffusion of responsibility means we must all drop the issue.
  - FireBeyond 14y ago
    Which also means he most likely never saw it. In any case I've been involved with, it typically takes at least a couple of days after the court filing for a document to filter through the other attorney to the party.
rgrieselhuber 14y ago
I found this interesting: "With MIT President Emeritus Charles M. Vest currently serving as a Trustee of JSTOR parent Ithaka as well as a Trustee of The MIT Corporation, one might have expected MIT to issue a statement similar to the let's-put-this-behind-us one JSTOR made on the Swartz case back in 2011." I had been wondering if JSTOR was really as hands-off as they made themselves out to be. This suggests at least one financial incentive MIT might have had for cooperating on this case.
- jpdoctor 14y ago
  > MIT President Emeritus Charles M. Vest currently serving as a Trustee of JSTOR parent Ithaka I've met him a few times in the past: From what little interaction I've had, I find it hard to believe his attitude was "Teach that meddling kid a lesson!!1!". I'd also wonder if "trustee" borders on an ex-officio designation. (I forget his latest gig... NAS? Something like that.) Of course I could be wrong, but my money would be elsewhere.
- flogic 14y ago
  Those titles seem like the kind of thing were the holder has pretty much nothing to do with day to day operations of the organization.
treme 14y ago
how do people feel about MIT's negligence of making an active decision on the matter; thereby passively contributing to fed's attempt to make the case?
CyberDroiD 14y ago
This is currently the top story on Hacker News. Instead of dealing with the fact that someone's depression caused them to commit suicide, they are casting about for blame. That's not a very healthy way to deal with this situation. But I realize what you are all doing: you are trying to use his horrible death as a political statement to further your causes (something about making academic papers free and accessible, nothing to die over, especially if you have to deal with the cops). If you can't do the time, or deal with the repercussions without killing yourself, don't do the crime. Also I find the reaction on Hacker News disgustingly trying to use this to further their narrow agenda. So to respond to the title of this top thread: who cares if he was chided?? No reason to kill yourself! Give me a break! Show the man some respect.
- andrewtbham 14y ago
  I agree that ultimately Aaron is ultimately responsible for his own suicide. Just as surely as the attorney is responsible for bullying, threatening, and overzealous, selective prosecution.
- benevpayor 14y ago
  Suicide is the catalyst, but it is not the reason for the protest. The reason is that no U.S. citizen should face 30 years in prison, $1,000,000 in fines, and a trial that would lead to financial ruin (no matter the outcome) for making publicly funded documents public. This reads like something that would happen in China, not here.
- dinkumthinkum 14y ago
  Oh stop. 30+ years for downloading and distributing scientific articles that were paid for by public funds is cruel and unusual punishment. With your attitude, if the law on the books was to punish Rosa Parks with the death penalty than that's what she deserved and she shouldn't have "done the crime if she couldn't do the time." Come one, what pedantic gibberish.
damm 14y ago
Wait a minute? your telling me the system built to protect Americans are bullies who just force you to admit your guilty? say it ain't so. It's unfortunate that no one talks about how normal. Speaking as someone who has small dealings with our system I can honestly say they are not your friend. They will lie to your parents, lie to your spouse and lie to your neighbors in hopes of making you sign a guilty plea. They Press will spin it's own story to make a buck or two. Now you ask where's the truth? (I don't have the answer to that) I really doubt that much will change over this, as the (cynical) reason that the US Attorney General went after Swartz is because he wanted to make American's quite clear that he won't tolerate this behavior. Keep in mind that part of our Judicial system does is create fear so you won't commit the same crime. Sadly that's all he was after here, fear. :( Unfortunately it will take thousands more deaths before our leaders start listening. It's too Bad America isn't 'We The People' any longer... :(
edouard1234567 14y ago
Why would the secret service be involved with this? Is it common practice in similar cases?
- damm 14y ago
  Why wouldn't they? They are protecting the assets of America..
  - edouard1234567 14y ago
    It's like James Bond going after Jean Valjean... I find it surprising they get involved with this. I'd assume they get involved in matters of national security, if they suspect him to be part of criminal organization of some sort or to be a spy. Or maybe somebody who is very influential asked them to... I don't like conspiration theories but their involvement with this sounds off to me and deserves at least clarification.
    - chris11 14y ago
      The Secret Service was originally created to fight counterfeiting, not protect government officials. And they are also currently tasked with investigating financial crime and major fraud in addition to protecting high-ranking government officials. I'm guessing the fraud charges brought them in on this case.
    - danso 14y ago
      Dear god, we have an Internet, use it to do some research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secret_Service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secret_Service The Secret Service was established to fight counterfeiting and had been a branch of the Treasury Dept until recently. Fraud and cybercrime are among the things they cover and not all of these crimes are movie worthy
dohertyjf 14y ago
Crazy that they're talking about Swartz's laptop in that email. Is the government so blind as to think that he would actually have all of those documents on his computer? I wonder what the laws are surrounding content kept in the cloud. Is that "possession"?
tptacek 14y ago
The author of this filing is making an argument before the court, not chiding Swartz personally. More importantly: I'm unclear on whether its author is US Attorney Carmen Ortiz or her deputy AUSA Stephen Heymann. I believe the distinction is meaningful; Heymann would have been responsible for the superseding indictment and the overall prosecution strategy; the former is a political appointee who may be supporting her deputies just like anyone else in her position would be doing. Heymann is a nationally recognized authority in the prosecution of computer crimes, and if he's responsible for the overall strategy used by the prosecution, it's him most of all you'd want to see accountable; not just because removing Ortiz (which will for what it's worth never happen) wouldn't remove him, but also because he's the key national influencer in cybercrime prosecution, not Ortiz.
- bstar77 14y ago
  I lived this situation when I was around 14. My father was an executive in a firm that was being investigated for fraud. Most of my father's peers (using the term lightly) went to jail (and rightfully so), but the prosecution could never find anything on my father. Despite that fact, our family had to endure 6 years of constant threats, extortion attempts and harassment for crimes that were never committed- I've had a few heart to heart conversations with my father and am convinced that he never committed a crime. As a result, the situation put my father into a depression and just destroyed his spirit, something I'm still trying to help him restore 20 years later. The (us attorney) prosecution was responsible for the attacks, but it was always at the behest of the share holders. I believe the MIT owns the lion's share of the responsibility in the situation. The burden of these charges can be completely overwhelming. I just wish that Aaron understood the situation he was getting himself into. Some people seemingly handle these situations well (Julian Assange?), but most of us would buckle under the constant pressure. I think he may have felt that MIT would eventually come to their senses and have some compassion for his plight.
  - winter_blue 14y ago
    > Some people seemingly handle these situations well (Julian Assange?) Julian Assange knew that he'd be pursued to the point of death, both legally and illegally (assassination) by various governments around the world. He knew exactly what he was getting into when he started Wikileaks. And so he did so fully aware of the potential consequences, which so far haven't actually been as bad as one would have expected. (By now, one would have expected him to have been "finished off" by one of the many governments he's pissed off.)
teyc 14y ago
Heymann probably thinks he's Javert.
peeters 14y ago
> The e-mail that Defendant Swartz's supplemental memorandum cites as paramount to his fifth motion to suppress [evidence against him] is relevant, but not nearly as important as he tries to make it out to be I'm sorry, "chided"? This is just a legal argument. It's what happens in court proceedings. And it's pretty tame. It's not personal, and while it names "Defendant Swartz", what it really means is his attorneys since they are the ones that submitted the memo. There is no malice in this statement at all. This headline is sensationalist. Yes, Swartz was bullied by the government. This is not an example of it, and it's a shameful attempt at shifting blame for a tragedy.

315 points by Pr0 14y ago

I think it's kind of ridiculous that everyone is pointing fingers at "everyone else" other than the man responsible for the suicide, Aaron Swartz himself. Sure, he was in a tough situation, and I'll admit I don't know the entire backstory of what led up to this man's suicide(although there is no shortage of information on the HN front page as of late), but there is nobody that can be held responsible for his suicide other than himself. It is self-evident that this man was well-respected in the online community. He killed himself. Nobody else is responsible for that extraordinary action. We can only speculate on his exact reasoning for doing it, but I would suspect a man in that state of mind may not be acting completely rationally and just wanted to escape but sadly could not find a way out other than ending his own life. Let's celebrate his life and accomplishments and stop trying to find people to blame.

fatbird 14y ago
One can view Swartz as completely responsible for his own suicide, while still observing that the overzealous prosecution was a factor that shouldn't have happened regardless of Swartz committing suicide. In other words, the suicide serves to highlight what was already an absurd injustice, and that injustice alone is sufficient to act on. Doing so doesn't make Ortiz or Heymann responsible for the death; only for their own manifestly unjust prosecution.
- paulgb 14y ago
  Well put, but in the context of this post, I think the parent comment is valid. The title, "US Attorney Chided Swartz On Day of Suicide", seems to imply blame rather than shedding light on an injustice.
duairc 14y ago
Totally ridiculous, victim-blaming comment. “If you add up everyone's responsibility for something, it doesn't equal 100% — it equals a billion percent if it has to, because any number of entities can be fully responsible for the same thing.” — Ran Prieur, The Mathematics of Responsibility (http://ranprieur.com/essays/mathres.html http://ranprieur.com/essays/mathres.html)
- watty 14y ago
  There's nothing ridiculous about claiming Aaron caused his situation and killed himself. There is a prosecutor, defendant and a judge. Prosecutors typically exaggerate their case, defendants typically downplay their side, and the judge is responsible for determining the outcome. Wasn't she just doing her job? She was brought a high profile case. It involved a notorious internet prodigy who stashed a laptop and wrote a program to download 4M+ articles that otherwise would have cost a ton of money. A quick search revealed prices around $30. $30 * 4M = 120M. What am I missing?
  - mindslight 14y ago
    Critical thinking skills. Instead, you're repeating a tired emotional appeal to top-down prescribed "morals". Here is a program to download "4M+" articles: i=1;while true;do wget http://foo/$i;i=1$i;done I'll license my Unary Downloader Pro to you for $120MM. Oh wait, you just copied it into your brain and then reverse engineered it even!? You just did $120MM+ worth of damages!
    - milesokeefe 14y ago
      What he used doesn't matter as much as the fact that he did it. If you kill someone with a knife, it does not matter how difficult it was to obtain or create that knife.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      - 14y ago
danso 14y ago
> We can only speculate on his exact reasoning for doing it, but I would suspect a man in that state of mind may not be acting completely rationally and just wanted to escape but sadly could not find a way out other than ending his own life. Very few people are saying that the prosecution alone caused his death, as if an attorney broke into his apartment and killed Aaron. People are unhappy because they think the prosecution went too far, and to a man whose depression may leave him acting irrationally,mad you say, that could have been the major trigger
- hamai 14y ago
  this "they killed him" discussion makes people argue about another matter, when the main question to discuss is the absurd of the sentence...
- FireBeyond 14y ago
  Actually, at least to read comments here - many are saying or implying that. Over the last few days, I've read many comments that ignore and/or gloss over any underlying depression and state, almost as unequivocal fact, that the actions of the US Attorney and her Assistant Attorney are precisely and solely to blame for driving him to suicide. I've seen calls to sue them personally, consider what it would get to have them charged with manslaughter, calls to remove them, to sue MIT, to sue JSTOR, to sue law enforcement officials for following valid warrants, etc, issued by the court and US Attorneys.
mkr-hn 14y ago
Take the suicide out of it and you still have an overzealous prosecutor who carried on long after the people who kicked the case off by reporting the incident dropped the charges. Whether or not A led to B is not important relative to that fact.
- learn 14y ago
  Well, the suicide is there. He did it, plain and simple. Making a bunch of petitions to FIRE people is not going to stop suicides and it won't redeem the injustices that everyone is talking about. Absolutely ridiculous how some people are handling this situation IMO.
_delirium 14y ago
I think I have a reasonable amount of distance, not being in the same situation, but I would probably do the same thing (albeit with different timing), and I would consider it: 1) the rational decision; and 2) the fault of the U.S. federal government, and indirectly the American public for its fetish for jailing people. I don't have any interest in spending decades in prison, and I would commit suicide to avoid it, if I did not think there was another way of avoiding it. And I think that would be a rational decision, at least for my own personal utility function. So I wasn't at all surprised when I saw this news, though I was saddened: I would've given it about 1/3 each odds if you asked me in 2011, whether somehow charges would be dismissed/reduced, whether he'd commit suicide, or whether he'd end up as a hacker cause célèbre in prison. I do agree that we don't know with any degree of certainty what Swartz's own reasons were. I think it's tricky to appeal to the irrational pessimism of depression without actual evidence that, in a given case, it was irrational. Depression can trick you into incorrectly thinking that a situation has no way out, but that's only relevant if, viewed rationally by someone not suffering from depression, there actually is a way out. In that case, treatment can solve the problem. But treatment can only dispel pseudo-dead-ends where the "depression was speaking", so to speak, which weren't really dead ends; it can't manufacture a way out of actual dead ends, like impending lengthy imprisonment.
- flipper28 14y ago
  Maybe it's because I love life so much that I don't think I would choose suicide over prison. Even if you get sent to prison, that doesn't mean you will be there your entire life. You can still appeal, work towards getting out faster. You can still educate yourself in prison, stay active. In other words, instead of laying down/giving up/killing myself, I would like to think I would fight my oppressors and protect my rights to be alive and happy by whatever means necessary. Someone mentioned victim-blaming, and perhaps this has transformed into a discussion of suicide "victims" in general rather than Swartzs specific case. I mean no disrespect to the memory of Aaron Swartz, but I do feel compelled to say that given the choice of (a) killing yourself or (b) not killing yourself, one of these choices illuminate your personal fortitude and character.
  - 14y ago
OGinparadise 14y ago
Different people react differently to pressure. No one is advocating charging the US Attorney with murder or manslaughter but it's worth looking whether their actions were appropriate or not.
halviti 14y ago
Imagine a child who gets bullied in school regularly eventually can't take it anymore and kills themselves. Are you really so callous as to say, "there's nobody to blame here but the child"
- niggler 14y ago
  I realize the next comment may come off as insensitive, but I don't hear people focusing on the key question: Kids were bullied generations ago, yet it is only recently that bullying and suicide became a national crisis. What changed? Are bullies more aggressive than they were back then, or are more kids deciding that suicide is the answer, or were suicides related to bullying not reported?
  - art3m1s 14y ago
    They have more ways to extend the torment of bullying beyond school grounds, e.g. on the internet. Imagine going home, looking for an escape from the bullying, only to be harassed further on the various social media sites, messaging protocols.
  - cabalamat 14y ago
    Bullying has always existed; we'd just decided it matters more. Suicide has also always existed; we just care more now.
  - DanBC2 14y ago
    Suicide is still a taboo for many people. Reporting a death as a suicide is still problematic for some people. Not that long ago the common practice was to record deaths as accidental or misadventure rather than suicide unless it was unequivocally suicide. Reported rates were lower because of this. Newspapers understood better their responsibility to be careful about reporting suicide; the Werther effect is real and has killed people. Children's rights are a relatively recent phenomenon. Bullying used to be seen as character forming or as an unstoppable part of childhood. The extreme end of bullying is more severe now. And bullies have access to technology which extends the bullying from the school to the bullied person's wider life. tl;dr yes, there is more awareness, and more reporting, and the bullying is worse, and more children choosing suicide.
zmmz 14y ago
In the work that pretty much started the discipline of suicidology and one of the most important books in sociology, Émile Durkheim's 1897 "Suicide", it is made clear that the environment you are in does matter. Alghough the text is highly flawed (biases, sexism, logical faults here and there), but the basic idea prevails. Up till that point, it didn't occur to people (as it does not seem to occur to you) that something as intimate as committing suicide might be deeply linked to more social factors. People are right to point fingers, the context that one is in influences the decisions they make, the options that they think they have.
wilfra 14y ago
This part does not need to be stated. It is obvious he is the one who made the final decision and who was ultimately responsible for it.
saraid216 14y ago
Actually, Lessig's response did call out Swartz personally. I'd honestly recommend reading that and then avoiding the rest unless you want to attend his funeral or something.
tsycho 14y ago
>> He killed himself. Nobody else is responsible for that extraordinary action. We can only speculate on his exact reasoning for doing it, but I would suspect a man in that state of mind may not be acting completely rationally and just wanted to escape but sadly could not find a way out other than ending his own life. Okay, I'll bite. Here's a hypothetical situation for you: Say I kidnap you and take you to a remote island or anywhere where you have almost no chance of escape. Now I offer you a deal - You can either commit suicide now, or I am going to torture you slowly over the next 10 years (or 35 yrs to make the parallel with Aaron). You only get one chance to commit suicide, I will take away that option once I start torturing you. Under the above (admittedly hypothetical, but you see the parallels to Aaron's, don't you?), what would be your "rational" choice? Would you consider your _solely_ responsible for the decision if you chose the suicide option?
naner 14y ago
Sure, he was in a tough situation, and I'll admit I don't know the entire backstory of what led up to this man's suicide(although there is no shortage of information on the HN front page as of late), but there is nobody that can be held responsible for his suicide other than himself. He was an extremely dedicated political activist. I'm pretty sure that was a big reason for of his decision to end his life, and to end it on the 2nd anniversary of his arrest. His suicide has brought more attention to this case and corruption in the justice system than he probably would have been able to do if he were still alive. Of course he was struggling with depression and who knows what other problems, but his death seems strategically planned.
- devcpp 14y ago
  Agreed. With him in jail for decades, this was probably the biggest action he could have ever done for the rest of his live. This man had devoted his life to progress and may have very well sacrificed himself for it, given the date of his suicide. If only more of us had a fraction of this courage to stand against the enemies of progress and freedom.
  - gus_massa 14y ago
    He was only 26! Even in the worst case that he unfortunately spent the maximum of 30 year in prison (probably without a computer) he would be out at 56. Some people did important thighs after incarceration or unjust persecution: Nelson Mandela: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela Galileo Galilei: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
neilk 14y ago
I think danah boyd has the best take on this. Can we say that prosecution caused Aaron's suicide, in the same sense as one billiard ball sets another in motion? Of course not. But what should disturb us is that the business and government elites of our society are very alarmed at what is going on with the internet. And they're used to crushing people in their path. The War on Drugs has completely normalized these tactics: insane sentences, extrajudicial harassment, you name it. Someone like Aaron, who had no time for the concerns of business or government when believed an issue of justice was at stake, put himself right in their crosshairs. http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2013/01/13/aaron-swartz.html http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2013/01/13/aaron-s...
cbs 14y ago
I think it's kind of ridiculous that everyone is pointing fingers at "everyone else" other than the man responsible for the suicide, Aaron Swartz himself. I know some people are pointing the finger, but not everyone is. While I wouldn't draw the link between the prosecution and suicide as others do, in reflection after a death it is possible to look at the person's work in the last few years and say "Why yes, there does seem to be some bullshit going on here, lets use this opportunity to draw attention to it." Just because some people do assign blame, it doesn't mean the rest of us should let those wrongly blamed off the hook for anything other than that which they were wrongly blamed. While discussing this now, people run the risk of appearing to assign blame even when they're not. But discussing the case a month after now, they'll run the risk of nobody really giving a shit. Next month people will say "He's dead, its over, move on."
edouard1234567 14y ago
If you can make the case that there is a clear causality then the prosecutor could be held partially accountable, if not legally at least morally. There is a precedent, somebody committed suicide allegedly as a result of a bullying act and the bullier was hold accountable and got jail sentence. http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/21/justice/new-jersey-rutgers-sentencing/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/21/justice/new-jersey-rutgers-sen... I think partial causality between his suicide and the act of bullying is probable/possible in this case, it should of course be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in the court of law and not in the court of public opinion. What I struggle with though is : should the prosecutor be held accountable or the system she represents, meaning : was she acting very differently than any other prosecutor would have, in the same situation?
- dinkumthinkum 14y ago
  While I am completely against the prosecution in this case, I think the reality is that there's no way you are going to make the prosecutors legally accountable. Maybe in civil court. I think the difference legally between bullying, as you describe, and what the prosecutors did, is that the prosecutors could argue they were doing a job they swore an oath to perform. Nevertheless, I don't know what the possibilities are but I hope there are civil ramifications for the prosecution and hopefully reforms and positions to be filled.
hamai 14y ago
The best way to "celebrate his life" is to fix the insane system that intimidated him with a 35 year sentence for the "felony" of downloading PDFs. The justice system is doing a little more than "pointing fingers": http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/black-whitey-how-the-feds-disable-criminal-defense/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/bla... http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2013/01/i-have-something-to-say-about-aaron-swartzs-suicide-and-the-special-way-the-us-justice-dept-hounds-p.html http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2013/01/...
frogpelt 14y ago
Exactly what I was thinking. Suicide these days is treated as if the person who did it had no choice. No amount of bullying or bad life situation merits taking your own life. Mr. Swartz had a choice. He chose wrongly.

btilly 14y ago

Hopefully this drives more people to https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-stat..., which is almost a quarter of the way to the point where the administration has to respond.

exit 14y ago
and this one: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney-steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-...
- bgentry 14y ago
  I gave my support to this one because it's actually well-written (free from obvious grammatical errors in the first sentence) and targets exactly the right person.
  - KC8ZKF 14y ago
    It has some semantic errors. "allegedly minor and non-violent electronic crime", for example.
    - bgentry 14y ago
      Yeah, I did notice that. I thought it was far less egregious than errors in the Carmen Ortiz petition, though.
ewillbefull 14y ago
Signed, and I never sign these things.
- OzzyB 14y ago
  Ditto. > ...to the point where the administration has to respond I think the idea of them having to respond makes this enough of a worthwile endevour. Would love to see what such as reponse would entail.

danso 14y ago

Doesn't the footer suggest that the writer was STEPHEN P. HEYMANN acting on behalf of Ortiz?

smalter 14y ago
Yes From here, this looks like an ordinary court filing that happened to have been made on the day of Swartz's death.
- wnight 14y ago
  I too agree that diffusion of responsibility means we must all drop the issue.
- FireBeyond 14y ago
  Which also means he most likely never saw it. In any case I've been involved with, it typically takes at least a couple of days after the court filing for a document to filter through the other attorney to the party.

rgrieselhuber 14y ago

I found this interesting: "With MIT President Emeritus Charles M. Vest currently serving as a Trustee of JSTOR parent Ithaka as well as a Trustee of The MIT Corporation, one might have expected MIT to issue a statement similar to the let's-put-this-behind-us one JSTOR made on the Swartz case back in 2011." I had been wondering if JSTOR was really as hands-off as they made themselves out to be. This suggests at least one financial incentive MIT might have had for cooperating on this case.

jpdoctor 14y ago
> MIT President Emeritus Charles M. Vest currently serving as a Trustee of JSTOR parent Ithaka I've met him a few times in the past: From what little interaction I've had, I find it hard to believe his attitude was "Teach that meddling kid a lesson!!1!". I'd also wonder if "trustee" borders on an ex-officio designation. (I forget his latest gig... NAS? Something like that.) Of course I could be wrong, but my money would be elsewhere.
flogic 14y ago
Those titles seem like the kind of thing were the holder has pretty much nothing to do with day to day operations of the organization.

treme 14y ago

how do people feel about MIT's negligence of making an active decision on the matter; thereby passively contributing to fed's attempt to make the case?

CyberDroiD 14y ago

This is currently the top story on Hacker News. Instead of dealing with the fact that someone's depression caused them to commit suicide, they are casting about for blame. That's not a very healthy way to deal with this situation. But I realize what you are all doing: you are trying to use his horrible death as a political statement to further your causes (something about making academic papers free and accessible, nothing to die over, especially if you have to deal with the cops). If you can't do the time, or deal with the repercussions without killing yourself, don't do the crime. Also I find the reaction on Hacker News disgustingly trying to use this to further their narrow agenda. So to respond to the title of this top thread: who cares if he was chided?? No reason to kill yourself! Give me a break! Show the man some respect.

andrewtbham 14y ago
I agree that ultimately Aaron is ultimately responsible for his own suicide. Just as surely as the attorney is responsible for bullying, threatening, and overzealous, selective prosecution.
benevpayor 14y ago
Suicide is the catalyst, but it is not the reason for the protest. The reason is that no U.S. citizen should face 30 years in prison, $1,000,000 in fines, and a trial that would lead to financial ruin (no matter the outcome) for making publicly funded documents public. This reads like something that would happen in China, not here.
dinkumthinkum 14y ago
Oh stop. 30+ years for downloading and distributing scientific articles that were paid for by public funds is cruel and unusual punishment. With your attitude, if the law on the books was to punish Rosa Parks with the death penalty than that's what she deserved and she shouldn't have "done the crime if she couldn't do the time." Come one, what pedantic gibberish.

damm 14y ago

Wait a minute? your telling me the system built to protect Americans are bullies who just force you to admit your guilty? say it ain't so. It's unfortunate that no one talks about how normal. Speaking as someone who has small dealings with our system I can honestly say they are not your friend. They will lie to your parents, lie to your spouse and lie to your neighbors in hopes of making you sign a guilty plea. They Press will spin it's own story to make a buck or two. Now you ask where's the truth? (I don't have the answer to that) I really doubt that much will change over this, as the (cynical) reason that the US Attorney General went after Swartz is because he wanted to make American's quite clear that he won't tolerate this behavior. Keep in mind that part of our Judicial system does is create fear so you won't commit the same crime. Sadly that's all he was after here, fear. :( Unfortunately it will take thousands more deaths before our leaders start listening. It's too Bad America isn't 'We The People' any longer... :(

edouard1234567 14y ago

Why would the secret service be involved with this? Is it common practice in similar cases?

damm 14y ago
Why wouldn't they? They are protecting the assets of America..
- edouard1234567 14y ago
  It's like James Bond going after Jean Valjean... I find it surprising they get involved with this. I'd assume they get involved in matters of national security, if they suspect him to be part of criminal organization of some sort or to be a spy. Or maybe somebody who is very influential asked them to... I don't like conspiration theories but their involvement with this sounds off to me and deserves at least clarification.
  - chris11 14y ago
    The Secret Service was originally created to fight counterfeiting, not protect government officials. And they are also currently tasked with investigating financial crime and major fraud in addition to protecting high-ranking government officials. I'm guessing the fraud charges brought them in on this case.
  - danso 14y ago
    Dear god, we have an Internet, use it to do some research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secret_Service http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secret_Service The Secret Service was established to fight counterfeiting and had been a branch of the Treasury Dept until recently. Fraud and cybercrime are among the things they cover and not all of these crimes are movie worthy

dohertyjf 14y ago

Crazy that they're talking about Swartz's laptop in that email. Is the government so blind as to think that he would actually have all of those documents on his computer? I wonder what the laws are surrounding content kept in the cloud. Is that "possession"?

tptacek 14y ago

The author of this filing is making an argument before the court, not chiding Swartz personally. More importantly: I'm unclear on whether its author is US Attorney Carmen Ortiz or her deputy AUSA Stephen Heymann. I believe the distinction is meaningful; Heymann would have been responsible for the superseding indictment and the overall prosecution strategy; the former is a political appointee who may be supporting her deputies just like anyone else in her position would be doing. Heymann is a nationally recognized authority in the prosecution of computer crimes, and if he's responsible for the overall strategy used by the prosecution, it's him most of all you'd want to see accountable; not just because removing Ortiz (which will for what it's worth never happen) wouldn't remove him, but also because he's the key national influencer in cybercrime prosecution, not Ortiz.

bstar77 14y ago
I lived this situation when I was around 14. My father was an executive in a firm that was being investigated for fraud. Most of my father's peers (using the term lightly) went to jail (and rightfully so), but the prosecution could never find anything on my father. Despite that fact, our family had to endure 6 years of constant threats, extortion attempts and harassment for crimes that were never committed- I've had a few heart to heart conversations with my father and am convinced that he never committed a crime. As a result, the situation put my father into a depression and just destroyed his spirit, something I'm still trying to help him restore 20 years later. The (us attorney) prosecution was responsible for the attacks, but it was always at the behest of the share holders. I believe the MIT owns the lion's share of the responsibility in the situation. The burden of these charges can be completely overwhelming. I just wish that Aaron understood the situation he was getting himself into. Some people seemingly handle these situations well (Julian Assange?), but most of us would buckle under the constant pressure. I think he may have felt that MIT would eventually come to their senses and have some compassion for his plight.
- winter_blue 14y ago
  > Some people seemingly handle these situations well (Julian Assange?) Julian Assange knew that he'd be pursued to the point of death, both legally and illegally (assassination) by various governments around the world. He knew exactly what he was getting into when he started Wikileaks. And so he did so fully aware of the potential consequences, which so far haven't actually been as bad as one would have expected. (By now, one would have expected him to have been "finished off" by one of the many governments he's pissed off.)

teyc 14y ago

Heymann probably thinks he's Javert.

peeters 14y ago

> The e-mail that Defendant Swartz's supplemental memorandum cites as paramount to his fifth motion to suppress [evidence against him] is relevant, but not nearly as important as he tries to make it out to be I'm sorry, "chided"? This is just a legal argument. It's what happens in court proceedings. And it's pretty tame. It's not personal, and while it names "Defendant Swartz", what it really means is his attorneys since they are the ones that submitted the memo. There is no malice in this statement at all. This headline is sensationalist. Yes, Swartz was bullied by the government. This is not an example of it, and it's a shameful attempt at shifting blame for a tragedy.