6 ms·

"We thought the case was reasonably handled and we would not have done things differently." How can a suicide of a 26 year old man under prosecution by your of

"We thought the case was reasonably handled and we would not have done things differently." How can a suicide of a 26 year old man under prosecution by your office not warrant some sort of change? How can you not reflect and try for a better outcome. To not change suggests that this was an acceptable outcome... which is the point we are trying to make. Prosecution should not be so severe that suicide is a viable alternative.

TylerE 14y ago
The justice department is not in the healthcare business. Let's not shy too far from the facts here. Aaron knew what he was doing was breaking the law. He participated in an act of civil disobedience, that does not grant freedom from consequences.
- olefoo 14y ago
  That's like saying that people who block traffic for ten minutes to make a point about nuclear weapons deserved to be charged under the conspiracy statutes with potential life sentences since it was near a federal facility... There's a certain proportionality that's very definitely lacking in this case.
- darkarmani 14y ago
  > He participated in an act of civil disobedience, that does not grant freedom from consequences. Way to intentionally not understand the situation.
- IheartApplesDix 14y ago
  9/10
- betterunix 14y ago
  "Aaron knew what he was doing was breaking the law. He participated in an act of civil disobedience, that does not grant freedom from consequences." Yes, it is obvious to anyone downloading academic papers that they are committing 13 crimes and could be imprisoned for the rest of their lives. After all, changing your MAC address, hiding a laptop in a closet, and ignoring JSTOR's TOS clearly add up to 13. He should have read the law? Have you read the law? Are you sure you haven't committed any felonies today? I seriously doubt that Aaron really considered the possibility of criminal action for what he did, and certainly not so many charges that he could have been legally imprisoned for the remainder of his adult life. A civil suit by JSTOR would have been a reasonable expectation, and note what Aaron did when faced with a civil suit: he returned a hard drive of files to JSTOR and settled the matter, without any suicidal actions. Your sort of reasoning -- that he allegedly broke the law, therefore no mercy can be considered and the prosecutor was right to harass him -- is one of the most destructive far-right concepts to have been popularized in America. It is the line of reasoning that leads to teams of soldiers attacking civilian homes to serve a basic search-and-arrest warrant. It is the sort of reasoning that opens the door to the crushing tyranny of overly broad laws and abuses of the justice system. Allowing ourselves to fall victim to the logic that the law is perfect and absolute, that prosecutors have a moral duty to enforce all laws, opens us to a system where nobody is safe from the government.
  - TylerE 14y ago
    If he didn't think he was committing a crime why did he attempt to conceal his identity? If he had been accessing student's personal info, would you still be defending him? Unauthorized access is unauthorized access.
    - betterunix 14y ago
      "If he didn't think he was committing a crime why did he attempt to conceal his identity?" I did not say that he thought he was doing something entirely legal, I said that he probably only expected a civil case for his actions, which is entirely reasonable. If I had to guess, I would say that whatever attempt he made to conceal his identity was done to ensure that he would not face a court order to stop until he had finished what he had set out to do. If you are saying that concealing one's identity is evidence that a person is doing something criminal, then you are accusing a good friend of mine of being a criminal. He used proxy servers to download large numbers of patents, as part of his masters thesis project, to avoid bandwidth restrictions imposed by servers. In the end, he developed a system that helps locate patents, and could help people avoid violating patents or find prior art. Should he face a 50 year sentence too? "If he had been accessing student's personal info, would you still be defending him?" He did nothing even remotely similar to that. His actions were as close to accessing private information as posting to HN. "Unauthorized access is unauthorized access." His accessing was not unauthorized. MIT's network is open to the public, and JSTOR's archive is open to anyone on MIT's network. What access was unauthorized in this case?
      - TylerE 14y ago
        From the JSTOR TOS: (b) except as set forth in Section 2.1(e) and 5 of the Terms and Conditions for Use for Journals, Plants, GIS Data, Select Other Content Types, and Data for Research below, provide and/or authorize access to the Content available through Individual Access, the Publisher Sales Service, or other programs to persons or entities other than Authorized Users; (d) undertake any activity such as computer programs that automatically download or export Content, commonly known as web robots, spiders, crawlers, wanderers or accelerators that may interfere with, disrupt or otherwise burden the JSTOR server(s) or any third-party server(s) being used or accessed in connection with JSTOR; or (e) make any use, display, performance, reproduction, or distribution that exceeds or violates these Terms and Conditions of Service and the Content-Specific Terms and Conditions of Use.
fusiongyro 14y ago
I have two responses. The first one is that if someone is suicidal and they commit a crime, you can't decide not to prosecute them simply because they may kill themselves. Our community might be certain that his suicide was a result of the prosecution, and there may or may not be evidence of that, but all things being equal, simply being suicidal cannot be a get-out-of-jail-free card. The second response is that these people are lawyers. They're not going to openly admit to having done wrong even if it's obvious because it will only make their punishment that much swifter. Statements like the above are publicly made until it becomes clear that an act of contrition will reduce the penalty. That isn't obvious to Ortiz or her department right now, so there's no reason to expect them to attempt to publicly admit wrongdoing. Note that this would be true even if Ortiz actually were wracked with guilt. These people are lawyers.
- darkarmani 14y ago
  So what you are saying is that she is waiting for the plea bargain?
- DanBC 14y ago
  > The first one is that if someone is suicidal and they commit a crime, you can't decide not to prosecute them simply because they may kill themselves. When a suicidal criminal is caught you do need to prosecute them. That means that you need to keep them alive to be able to prosecute them. Justice is not served when suspects kill themselves. We still don't know whether what he did was a crime or not. When no person is harmed, and there has been no physical damage, (but with some kind of monetary loss due to shutting off a connection) it's absurd to suggest that 35 / 50 years in prison is a suitable punishment. It's absurd to suggest that any time in prison is a suitable punishment. Note that this applies even if the suspect is not suicidal. Using these kind of plea-bargaining tactics when you know the suspect is suicidal is cruel.
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    It's not the prosecutor's job to decide if the law is just or if the punishment is commensurate. The prosecutor's job is to prosecute. Unfortunately, a primary tool in that job seems to be plea-bargaining. I hope that some change in the way plea-bargaining is used comes from this tragedy, but it's disingenuous to get upset when that reform fails to arise from the very people who rely on abusing that tool to do their job and who in principle have no particular say in how the law is written or interpreted.
oh_sigh 14y ago
Ah, so I guess it has been proven that Aaron committed suicide because of the prosecution. He didn't commit suicide because he was, you know, chronically depressed for years. Obviously, people who are chronically depressed for years but are in great life circumstances never kill themselves(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace)
- nemo 14y ago
  For the record, DFW wasn't in great life circumstances when he committed suicide. He'd switched his antidepressants that worked but had horrible side effects to another med which didn't work for depression and he fell in deep. When he switched back to the original meds. they no longer worked which left him feeling utterly hopeless in his depression.
  - oh_sigh 14y ago
    I meant that his external circumstances were positive: He was a critically acclaimed author, he had a loving wife, he was financially secure.

TylerE 14y ago

The justice department is not in the healthcare business. Let's not shy too far from the facts here. Aaron knew what he was doing was breaking the law. He participated in an act of civil disobedience, that does not grant freedom from consequences.

olefoo 14y ago
That's like saying that people who block traffic for ten minutes to make a point about nuclear weapons deserved to be charged under the conspiracy statutes with potential life sentences since it was near a federal facility... There's a certain proportionality that's very definitely lacking in this case.
darkarmani 14y ago
> He participated in an act of civil disobedience, that does not grant freedom from consequences. Way to intentionally not understand the situation.
IheartApplesDix 14y ago
9/10
betterunix 14y ago
"Aaron knew what he was doing was breaking the law. He participated in an act of civil disobedience, that does not grant freedom from consequences." Yes, it is obvious to anyone downloading academic papers that they are committing 13 crimes and could be imprisoned for the rest of their lives. After all, changing your MAC address, hiding a laptop in a closet, and ignoring JSTOR's TOS clearly add up to 13. He should have read the law? Have you read the law? Are you sure you haven't committed any felonies today? I seriously doubt that Aaron really considered the possibility of criminal action for what he did, and certainly not so many charges that he could have been legally imprisoned for the remainder of his adult life. A civil suit by JSTOR would have been a reasonable expectation, and note what Aaron did when faced with a civil suit: he returned a hard drive of files to JSTOR and settled the matter, without any suicidal actions. Your sort of reasoning -- that he allegedly broke the law, therefore no mercy can be considered and the prosecutor was right to harass him -- is one of the most destructive far-right concepts to have been popularized in America. It is the line of reasoning that leads to teams of soldiers attacking civilian homes to serve a basic search-and-arrest warrant. It is the sort of reasoning that opens the door to the crushing tyranny of overly broad laws and abuses of the justice system. Allowing ourselves to fall victim to the logic that the law is perfect and absolute, that prosecutors have a moral duty to enforce all laws, opens us to a system where nobody is safe from the government.
- TylerE 14y ago
  If he didn't think he was committing a crime why did he attempt to conceal his identity? If he had been accessing student's personal info, would you still be defending him? Unauthorized access is unauthorized access.
  - betterunix 14y ago
    "If he didn't think he was committing a crime why did he attempt to conceal his identity?" I did not say that he thought he was doing something entirely legal, I said that he probably only expected a civil case for his actions, which is entirely reasonable. If I had to guess, I would say that whatever attempt he made to conceal his identity was done to ensure that he would not face a court order to stop until he had finished what he had set out to do. If you are saying that concealing one's identity is evidence that a person is doing something criminal, then you are accusing a good friend of mine of being a criminal. He used proxy servers to download large numbers of patents, as part of his masters thesis project, to avoid bandwidth restrictions imposed by servers. In the end, he developed a system that helps locate patents, and could help people avoid violating patents or find prior art. Should he face a 50 year sentence too? "If he had been accessing student's personal info, would you still be defending him?" He did nothing even remotely similar to that. His actions were as close to accessing private information as posting to HN. "Unauthorized access is unauthorized access." His accessing was not unauthorized. MIT's network is open to the public, and JSTOR's archive is open to anyone on MIT's network. What access was unauthorized in this case?
    - TylerE 14y ago
      From the JSTOR TOS: (b) except as set forth in Section 2.1(e) and 5 of the Terms and Conditions for Use for Journals, Plants, GIS Data, Select Other Content Types, and Data for Research below, provide and/or authorize access to the Content available through Individual Access, the Publisher Sales Service, or other programs to persons or entities other than Authorized Users; (d) undertake any activity such as computer programs that automatically download or export Content, commonly known as web robots, spiders, crawlers, wanderers or accelerators that may interfere with, disrupt or otherwise burden the JSTOR server(s) or any third-party server(s) being used or accessed in connection with JSTOR; or (e) make any use, display, performance, reproduction, or distribution that exceeds or violates these Terms and Conditions of Service and the Content-Specific Terms and Conditions of Use.

fusiongyro 14y ago

I have two responses. The first one is that if someone is suicidal and they commit a crime, you can't decide not to prosecute them simply because they may kill themselves. Our community might be certain that his suicide was a result of the prosecution, and there may or may not be evidence of that, but all things being equal, simply being suicidal cannot be a get-out-of-jail-free card. The second response is that these people are lawyers. They're not going to openly admit to having done wrong even if it's obvious because it will only make their punishment that much swifter. Statements like the above are publicly made until it becomes clear that an act of contrition will reduce the penalty. That isn't obvious to Ortiz or her department right now, so there's no reason to expect them to attempt to publicly admit wrongdoing. Note that this would be true even if Ortiz actually were wracked with guilt. These people are lawyers.

darkarmani 14y ago
So what you are saying is that she is waiting for the plea bargain?
DanBC 14y ago
> The first one is that if someone is suicidal and they commit a crime, you can't decide not to prosecute them simply because they may kill themselves. When a suicidal criminal is caught you do need to prosecute them. That means that you need to keep them alive to be able to prosecute them. Justice is not served when suspects kill themselves. We still don't know whether what he did was a crime or not. When no person is harmed, and there has been no physical damage, (but with some kind of monetary loss due to shutting off a connection) it's absurd to suggest that 35 / 50 years in prison is a suitable punishment. It's absurd to suggest that any time in prison is a suitable punishment. Note that this applies even if the suspect is not suicidal. Using these kind of plea-bargaining tactics when you know the suspect is suicidal is cruel.
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  It's not the prosecutor's job to decide if the law is just or if the punishment is commensurate. The prosecutor's job is to prosecute. Unfortunately, a primary tool in that job seems to be plea-bargaining. I hope that some change in the way plea-bargaining is used comes from this tragedy, but it's disingenuous to get upset when that reform fails to arise from the very people who rely on abusing that tool to do their job and who in principle have no particular say in how the law is written or interpreted.

oh_sigh 14y ago

Ah, so I guess it has been proven that Aaron committed suicide because of the prosecution. He didn't commit suicide because he was, you know, chronically depressed for years. Obviously, people who are chronically depressed for years but are in great life circumstances never kill themselves(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace)

nemo 14y ago
For the record, DFW wasn't in great life circumstances when he committed suicide. He'd switched his antidepressants that worked but had horrible side effects to another med which didn't work for depression and he fell in deep. When he switched back to the original meds. they no longer worked which left him feeling utterly hopeless in his depression.
- oh_sigh 14y ago
  I meant that his external circumstances were positive: He was a critically acclaimed author, he had a loving wife, he was financially secure.