10 ms·

Steve Heymann Should Be Fired

221 points by aangjie 14y ago

corporalagumbo 14y ago
Why not lynch him? If we're going to do mob rule, we should do it right, no? Pitchforks and torches and all.
- mtrimpe 14y ago
  They're a few thousand responses away from receiving an official response from the government; giving it a little extra push now doesn't seem unwarranted. I'd say it's a tragedy that the response has already died down this much this quickly, but not being an American there's little I can do.
  - corporalagumbo 14y ago
    Yeah? Well I'd say it's a huge stroke of luck that the tendency to mob rule and groupthink on the internet has so far mostly been neutralised by short attention-spans and poor central coordination.
- knowtheory 14y ago
  You can claim that this is all pathos and that this action is not merited on the facts, but your sardoncism about collective action seems misplaced. I'll even agree that Heymann is unlikely to be fired, but to equate either TarenSK's suggestion or petition signing with a lynching is both unfair and unkind.
  - corporalagumbo 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kony_2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kony_2012 Edit: In my opinion, a demand for someone to be fired shares the same social DNA as lynching. Driven by the same forces: an angry crowd demands that a scapegoat be punished to appease it.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      Petitioning to have a government official fired is the same as trying to collect money to hire mercenaries? This idea that people in the government are unfireable is a disease. If you fuck up in the public sector, you get sacked. Expecting the same of the government is not equivalent to torture and murder.
      - corporalagumbo 14y ago
        Demonstrating a precedent for prudent scepticism about collective action on the Internet.
        jlgreco 14y ago
        Is the medium particularly important? Would you feel better if it were all organized with newletters over the postal system? Or are you just afraid of collective action in general?
        corporalagumbo 14y ago
        >Is the medium particularly important? Yes and no. No, the medium is not important, because groupthink can manifest and has manifested many times at every stage of civilization. Groupthink is of course not unique to the internet. But yes, the medium is important, because the medium in this case is the internet, the defining medium of our age, and which most importantly is an emerging medium, which I would argue we still don't really understand. I think that we haven't yet worked out, as they say with the development of cinema, the grammar of the internet. This is after all still very early days for a global connected world culture, and there is always the potential for negative developments in such a period, before mistakes have been made, recognised, and effective counter-measures have been developed and deployed. In my view, this period is always dangerous. >are you just afraid of collective action in general? Not afraid perhaps but definitely wary. Collective action can be good, but it generally takes a lot of time and hard work and thought by a small group of people preparing and working on the rationale for the action, targeting an issue which is as close to bulletproof as possible. The Civil Rights movement, for instance, is an excellent example of this, but it didn't happen overnight. "Good things take time." And I should mention that from my impression the people involved in civil rights behaved with calmness and dignity, and never would have turned shrill at a small setback or upset. Contrast this with modern insta-rage activism, which in my opinion rests almost always on very shaky intellectual foundations. The screefield of issues thrown up in the wake of Aaron's death are anything, I would say, but bulletproof. There is a strong precedent in history for collective action degenerating into groupthink and turning very nasty, and thus I think it is perfectly reasonable to be suspicious of collective action today. Re: your previous post - > If you fuck up in the public sector, you get sacked. See that's part of the problem. Yes, of course, employees public sector should be accountable. I have no argument with that. But the implication here is that these employees of the DOJ did fuck up. But did they really? Many, many people judged them more-or-less on the spot as guilty - and based on what? A blog they read? Their political prejudices? Their sympathies to a story about a nice young kid with lofty ideals? Is this issue really so simple, so cut and dried, that it boils down to some bad cops ganging up on a nice kid? I don't believe so. And furthermore, I think that it never bodes well when lots of people are making up their minds very quickly that someone is an enemy who needs to be punished. That's where normal, democratic mechanisms of accountability are supposed to come into play: to sift slowly through all the ins and outs of issues and avoid quick, heated judgements. Yes, there should be mechanisms for accountability in society. But those mechanisms must be objective, critical - and slow. What modern internet activism threatens is a short-circuiting of whatever mechanisms we have with the worst mechanism of all: mob rule. Regardless of the quality of current mechanisms, that would be a loss. Why? Because mobs move too quickly to reflect on their motives. Because mobs lack the social delineation which allow dissenting voices to challenge the developing orthodoxy. Because mobs lack an organisational structure which would allow the issue to be effectively and calmly analysed. Because mobs demand quick justice. Because mobs intimidate others to get what they want. Because mobs demand assent. Now, I'm not saying that the current situation is all this. It's much milder than the worst case scenario - but it has the potential to develop that way. Or at least that's what I think. I also think that at any point in time, the people crying the loudest about oppression and freedom are most likely the real oppressors. But that's just a pet theory.
  - newbie12 14y ago
    Her call to action is really misguided. She's making it personal and obviously (and understandably) is out for blood. However, restrain is called for. Instead, she should be focused ONLY on getting public access to the materials under protective order. Once those docs are revealed, the process will take care of the rest if there really was misconduct.
    - scarmig 14y ago
      A lot of faith in the process, there. For some reason, whenever there's a lot of public anger, the process just so happens to disproportionately end up going the way of public anger. Not all the time, but a lot of the time. Cf. healthcare law and its route through the judicial process.
  - vor_ 14y ago
    This might be a risky comment, but the way Hacker News has become an activist dumping ground for Aaron Swartz links is, in my opinion, slightly disturbing and exploitative.
- ryguytilidie 14y ago
  Mocking other people being unreasonable usually works a bit better when you don't need to use such ridiculous hyperbole...
  - corporalagumbo 14y ago
    Tell this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
driverdan 14y ago
I'm so sick of these useless White House petitions. Yes, they can bring a small amount of attention to issues but otherwise they accomplish nothing other than making people feel good for "signing" a petition. Has there been a single White House petition that resulted in anything other than an official comment?
- danso 14y ago
  The point of the petition system is to raise awareness and to create another line of feedback. Currently, the Constitution does not provide for action based on activity on petitions.whitehouse.gov. In the history of legislative and executive actions that have ever taken place, though, it's worth noting that many of them were spurred because of public awareness and outcry that preceded them. Does anyone here really think that SOPA was indefinitely tabled because Congressmembers suddenly read the bill and had a change of mind? Or was it because their offices received more calls and emails in than they likely did in the run-up to the Iraq and Afghan wars combined?
  - chimeracoder 14y ago
    > Does anyone here really think that SOPA was indefinitely tabled because Congressmembers suddenly read the bill and had a change of mind? Or was it because their offices received more calls and emails in than they likely did in the run-up to the Iraq and Afghan wars combined? Or, alternatively, because the executive branch believed it already had the authority the bill would have provided (since they shut down MegaUpload the very next day). I'm very cynical about things like 'awareness', because it's all too easy for politicians and lobbyists, who think about these issues every day, to slip something else by eventually. Most of the policy changes that we deride today as regressive were themselves not a 'first attempt'.
    - danso 14y ago
      > I'm very cynical about things like 'awareness', because it's all too easy for politicians and lobbyists, who think about these issues every day, to slip something else by eventually. Most of the policy changes that we deride today as regressive were themselves not a 'first attempt'. Ironically, I'm even more cynical than you. I don't think that politicians think about these issues every day...I think they think about the "big" hot-button issues (health care, taxes) and otherwise spend most of their time campaigning to stay in office... and that is why the SOPA protest worked...SOPA would've sailed through considering it's extremely wide bipartisan support...but it's not because the politicians were in a backroom scheming about it. All it takes is a few politicians who agree with the lobbyists; the rest will go along with a given issue as long as there's no political fallout...because there is always political fallout in voting against an ally. Once people started e-mobbing the offices en masse, then the just-go-with-it majority realized there was political fallout. And for better or worse, that legislation and virtually any similar legislation in the future, will not be seen as benign. That is a huge hurdle for lobbyists to overcome.
gyardley 14y ago
The comments on this post are depressing. Whatever your attitude about the White House's goofy petition site, the efficacy of 'online activism', or what-have-you, Aaron Swartz's grieving partner thinks signing this petition will help shed a little light into the circumstances that led to his death. Maybe she's right, maybe she's wrong, but either way, it only takes a second to do - so just go sign the damn thing.
- ScottBurson 14y ago
  I signed it, not because I expect Heymann to get fired or even care whether he gets fired, but because there needs to be some public pressure to counterbalance the existing pressures on prosecutors to send as many people as possible to prison for as long as possible.
  - arbuge 14y ago
    I'm willing to bet he would care if he got fired.
    - ScottBurson 14y ago
      Perhaps. He might make more money in private practice. But let's suppose you're right. I don't actually think firing would be an disproportioniate rebuke under the circumstances. To use language that Heymann might have used of Swartz, I think it would be great to make an example of him. All that said, I don't expect it to happen.
      - rayiner 14y ago
        > He might make more money in private practice. He would, without a doubt, make much more money in private practice. That's one thing I think HN folks overlook. Senior DOJ people could lateral out to high six figure into seven figure salaries as partners in law firms. The folks that stay at DOJ as lifers are generally "true believers." That doesn't mean they don't have their internal motivations, but rather those motivations are shaped by an extremely deep belief in the rule of law. They view people who don't follow rules as at best anti-social, and more likely dangerous. Figuring out why they don't understand hackers doesn't require resorting to any elaborate theories about trying to make career-defining prosecutions. They're simply people who have a very different world view than the one hacker culture embraces.
twoodfin 14y ago
Heymann saw Aaron as a scalp he could take. He thought he could lock Aaron up, get high-profile press coverage, and win high-fives from his fellow prosecutors in the lunchroom. Aaron was a way of reviving Heymann’s fading career. Heymann had no interest in an honest assessment of whether Aaron deserved any of the hell he was being put through. Is there any evidence for any of this seeming mind reading?
- ScottBurson 14y ago
  Oh come on. That's like asking "is there any evidence this particular bear shat in these particular woods?" The path to success for prosecutors is successful high-profile prosecutions. Everybody knows that. I don't actually know that Heymann's career had been fading, but the rest of this quote seems pretty reasonable based on what we know.
  - corporalagumbo 14y ago
    Ah, so the reason why we know this assertion is true is because everyone knows that such assertions are always true?
    - ScottBurson 14y ago
      We, the citizens, have set up a system that rewards this kind of behavior. It would be odd if Heymann didn't respond to the incentives we have placed before him. Taren's quote portrays him as ruthless. I concede that we don't know exactly what went through his mind, but based on the facts in evidence, I think that that appears to be an accurate characterization. I, at least, cannot imagine how anyone with any compassion or principles could have looked at what Swartz did and concluded that it deserved to be treated as a felony worth years in federal prison. Anyway, as I said upthread, the point is not so much what happens to Heymann as it is publicly making the point that Federal prosecutors in general have too much power and inappropriate incentives.
      - twoodfin 14y ago
geoka9 14y ago
Do I have to be a constituent to sign?
qschneier 14y ago
FYI the petition link is here https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney-steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-... To me signing the petition is simply to let others know my attitude, and to let those who hold the same stand know that they are not alone.
- rada 14y ago
  When you are signing a petition titled "Fire Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann", it is not to "simply let others know my attitude". You are, quite literally, petitioning to get the guy fired.
sylvinus 14y ago
she mentions 11k signatures but the current count is 2,737. What happened? Did they remove duplicates? https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney-steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-...
- gyardley 14y ago
  That's signatures needed - the amount remaining before in theory it gets a response from the White House. It means people have been signing the petition like gangbusters. Probably thanks to BoingBoing.
idm 14y ago
I finally created an account so I could sign this. I didn't sign for Ortiz because I thought she may have had a distant relationship to the case. However, as Heymann's direct supervisor, I thought she erred in that role. Heymann, on the other hand, really does sound like he has a history of throw-the-book-at-them antics, and I think there's a strong need for greater scrutiny of his career and trajectory.
jmodp 14y ago
The death of Aaron Swartz is a loss to his family, his friends, and to society. The focus on the prosecutors, however, makes me uneasy. I can support a review of the conduct of the prosecutors but I can't call for their firing. From what I have read, the conduct of the prosecutors was close to standard procedure. If it was wrong of the prosecutors to make an example out of Aaron, it is equally wrong to make an example of the prosecutors. This should not be about revenge although such feelings are understandable. However, it is the whole judicial system that needs review (and reform). The focus on the prosecutors takes the focus away from other discussion we should be having such as the following. Why should these cases linger for so long? Why is our justice system so dependent on plea bargaining? Why can't we create have a hacker legal defense fund that would keep cases like this from bankrupting defendants? Why should expert legal advice be only available to those who can afford it? What should we tell a friend who is planning to commit a crime on behalf of a cause? Was Aaron's cause worth anyone's life? This should be a question for everyone, not just prosecutors. Is any middle ground possible in the conflict between rights holders and advocates of free information?
- analog 14y ago
  "the conduct of the prosecutors was close to standard procedure" This is part of the problem. It is standard procedure and it needs to be changed. Firing those who've acted too aggresively will help to change the way prosecutors operate. "If it was wrong of the prosecutors to make an example out of Aaron, it is equally wrong to make an example of the prosecutors" No it is not equally wrong because we're not suggesting anything like the same punishment. Losing your job versus facing decades in prison are orders of magnitude apart.
  - tzs 14y ago
    > Losing your job versus facing decades in prison are orders of magnitude apart Swartz was not facing decades in prison. He faced charges whose maximum sentences added together reached several decades, but it was all but impossible to actually receive that kind of sentence. First, the Federal sentencing guidelines scale the sentence based on the severity of the particular instance of the crime. Swartz's was low on the scale for the various crimes he was charged with. Second, some crimes are grouped. You can be charged with several crimes from a group, but you are only sentenced for the one in the group with the longest sentence. I believe this was the case with the Swartz charges. PS: if PG ever decides to monetize HN, and interesting approach would be a "show me who down voted" button that costs $1 to use. I'd pay $1 to see who down voted this.
gattis 14y ago
This sounds like an excellent way to prevent another suicide... oh wait...
user911302966 14y ago
Can't or won't do to the time? Don't do the crime. Committing a crime in a civil society is not bravery if the perp offs himself before standing trial. Whether or not one sympathizes with the man's motivation for committing those crimes should not influence their respect nor breed contempt for the law.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
wisty 14y ago
I've been spamming this opinion on just about every AS thread: Plea bargaining should go. It's a SCOTUS issue, but I can't see how it's even constitutional to punish a person for demanding their constitutional right to a trial. And yes - it's a punishment, as the expected outcome of a jury trial tends to be much harsher than a plea bargain. I really doubt under 10% of defendants would demand a trial if there weren't effectively a penalty for doing so. (Aaron never would have gotten 10 years, but even 12 months would still be much harsher than the 6 months they offered). The only reason to plead guilty should be to save time, costs, and establish contrition (sorry judge, I did it, and I feel bad ... can you give me a slightly lower penalty?) I understand that public prosecutors and judges are underpaid and overworked, but if they can't do their jobs there's no shortage of law grads out there. It would cost a little more, but if you're locking someone up for 6 months and can't afford give them a day in court (Aaron's case may have been a bit more than a day, but I doubt the average court case would take much time at all) then you shouldn't be prosecuting them at all. I guess there's not as much scope for corruption though. Privatised prisons are a massive money maker. Public prosecutors and judges probably don't bribe (sorry ... support) their representatives nearly as much as prisons.
gavinlynch 14y ago
I hate to be so flippant but: Petitions are one of the most useless forms of expression I've come across.

221 points by aangjie 14y ago

corporalagumbo 14y ago

Why not lynch him? If we're going to do mob rule, we should do it right, no? Pitchforks and torches and all.

mtrimpe 14y ago
They're a few thousand responses away from receiving an official response from the government; giving it a little extra push now doesn't seem unwarranted. I'd say it's a tragedy that the response has already died down this much this quickly, but not being an American there's little I can do.
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
  Yeah? Well I'd say it's a huge stroke of luck that the tendency to mob rule and groupthink on the internet has so far mostly been neutralised by short attention-spans and poor central coordination.
knowtheory 14y ago
You can claim that this is all pathos and that this action is not merited on the facts, but your sardoncism about collective action seems misplaced. I'll even agree that Heymann is unlikely to be fired, but to equate either TarenSK's suggestion or petition signing with a lynching is both unfair and unkind.
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kony_2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kony_2012 Edit: In my opinion, a demand for someone to be fired shares the same social DNA as lynching. Driven by the same forces: an angry crowd demands that a scapegoat be punished to appease it.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Petitioning to have a government official fired is the same as trying to collect money to hire mercenaries? This idea that people in the government are unfireable is a disease. If you fuck up in the public sector, you get sacked. Expecting the same of the government is not equivalent to torture and murder.
    - corporalagumbo 14y ago
      Demonstrating a precedent for prudent scepticism about collective action on the Internet.
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        Is the medium particularly important? Would you feel better if it were all organized with newletters over the postal system? Or are you just afraid of collective action in general?
        corporalagumbo 14y ago
        >Is the medium particularly important? Yes and no. No, the medium is not important, because groupthink can manifest and has manifested many times at every stage of civilization. Groupthink is of course not unique to the internet. But yes, the medium is important, because the medium in this case is the internet, the defining medium of our age, and which most importantly is an emerging medium, which I would argue we still don't really understand. I think that we haven't yet worked out, as they say with the development of cinema, the grammar of the internet. This is after all still very early days for a global connected world culture, and there is always the potential for negative developments in such a period, before mistakes have been made, recognised, and effective counter-measures have been developed and deployed. In my view, this period is always dangerous. >are you just afraid of collective action in general? Not afraid perhaps but definitely wary. Collective action can be good, but it generally takes a lot of time and hard work and thought by a small group of people preparing and working on the rationale for the action, targeting an issue which is as close to bulletproof as possible. The Civil Rights movement, for instance, is an excellent example of this, but it didn't happen overnight. "Good things take time." And I should mention that from my impression the people involved in civil rights behaved with calmness and dignity, and never would have turned shrill at a small setback or upset. Contrast this with modern insta-rage activism, which in my opinion rests almost always on very shaky intellectual foundations. The screefield of issues thrown up in the wake of Aaron's death are anything, I would say, but bulletproof. There is a strong precedent in history for collective action degenerating into groupthink and turning very nasty, and thus I think it is perfectly reasonable to be suspicious of collective action today. Re: your previous post - > If you fuck up in the public sector, you get sacked. See that's part of the problem. Yes, of course, employees public sector should be accountable. I have no argument with that. But the implication here is that these employees of the DOJ did fuck up. But did they really? Many, many people judged them more-or-less on the spot as guilty - and based on what? A blog they read? Their political prejudices? Their sympathies to a story about a nice young kid with lofty ideals? Is this issue really so simple, so cut and dried, that it boils down to some bad cops ganging up on a nice kid? I don't believe so. And furthermore, I think that it never bodes well when lots of people are making up their minds very quickly that someone is an enemy who needs to be punished. That's where normal, democratic mechanisms of accountability are supposed to come into play: to sift slowly through all the ins and outs of issues and avoid quick, heated judgements. Yes, there should be mechanisms for accountability in society. But those mechanisms must be objective, critical - and slow. What modern internet activism threatens is a short-circuiting of whatever mechanisms we have with the worst mechanism of all: mob rule. Regardless of the quality of current mechanisms, that would be a loss. Why? Because mobs move too quickly to reflect on their motives. Because mobs lack the social delineation which allow dissenting voices to challenge the developing orthodoxy. Because mobs lack an organisational structure which would allow the issue to be effectively and calmly analysed. Because mobs demand quick justice. Because mobs intimidate others to get what they want. Because mobs demand assent. Now, I'm not saying that the current situation is all this. It's much milder than the worst case scenario - but it has the potential to develop that way. Or at least that's what I think. I also think that at any point in time, the people crying the loudest about oppression and freedom are most likely the real oppressors. But that's just a pet theory.
- newbie12 14y ago
  Her call to action is really misguided. She's making it personal and obviously (and understandably) is out for blood. However, restrain is called for. Instead, she should be focused ONLY on getting public access to the materials under protective order. Once those docs are revealed, the process will take care of the rest if there really was misconduct.
  - scarmig 14y ago
    A lot of faith in the process, there. For some reason, whenever there's a lot of public anger, the process just so happens to disproportionately end up going the way of public anger. Not all the time, but a lot of the time. Cf. healthcare law and its route through the judicial process.
- vor_ 14y ago
  This might be a risky comment, but the way Hacker News has become an activist dumping ground for Aaron Swartz links is, in my opinion, slightly disturbing and exploitative.
ryguytilidie 14y ago
Mocking other people being unreasonable usually works a bit better when you don't need to use such ridiculous hyperbole...
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
  Tell this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

driverdan 14y ago

I'm so sick of these useless White House petitions. Yes, they can bring a small amount of attention to issues but otherwise they accomplish nothing other than making people feel good for "signing" a petition. Has there been a single White House petition that resulted in anything other than an official comment?

danso 14y ago
The point of the petition system is to raise awareness and to create another line of feedback. Currently, the Constitution does not provide for action based on activity on petitions.whitehouse.gov. In the history of legislative and executive actions that have ever taken place, though, it's worth noting that many of them were spurred because of public awareness and outcry that preceded them. Does anyone here really think that SOPA was indefinitely tabled because Congressmembers suddenly read the bill and had a change of mind? Or was it because their offices received more calls and emails in than they likely did in the run-up to the Iraq and Afghan wars combined?
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  > Does anyone here really think that SOPA was indefinitely tabled because Congressmembers suddenly read the bill and had a change of mind? Or was it because their offices received more calls and emails in than they likely did in the run-up to the Iraq and Afghan wars combined? Or, alternatively, because the executive branch believed it already had the authority the bill would have provided (since they shut down MegaUpload the very next day). I'm very cynical about things like 'awareness', because it's all too easy for politicians and lobbyists, who think about these issues every day, to slip something else by eventually. Most of the policy changes that we deride today as regressive were themselves not a 'first attempt'.
  - danso 14y ago
    > I'm very cynical about things like 'awareness', because it's all too easy for politicians and lobbyists, who think about these issues every day, to slip something else by eventually. Most of the policy changes that we deride today as regressive were themselves not a 'first attempt'. Ironically, I'm even more cynical than you. I don't think that politicians think about these issues every day...I think they think about the "big" hot-button issues (health care, taxes) and otherwise spend most of their time campaigning to stay in office... and that is why the SOPA protest worked...SOPA would've sailed through considering it's extremely wide bipartisan support...but it's not because the politicians were in a backroom scheming about it. All it takes is a few politicians who agree with the lobbyists; the rest will go along with a given issue as long as there's no political fallout...because there is always political fallout in voting against an ally. Once people started e-mobbing the offices en masse, then the just-go-with-it majority realized there was political fallout. And for better or worse, that legislation and virtually any similar legislation in the future, will not be seen as benign. That is a huge hurdle for lobbyists to overcome.

gyardley 14y ago

The comments on this post are depressing. Whatever your attitude about the White House's goofy petition site, the efficacy of 'online activism', or what-have-you, Aaron Swartz's grieving partner thinks signing this petition will help shed a little light into the circumstances that led to his death. Maybe she's right, maybe she's wrong, but either way, it only takes a second to do - so just go sign the damn thing.

ScottBurson 14y ago
I signed it, not because I expect Heymann to get fired or even care whether he gets fired, but because there needs to be some public pressure to counterbalance the existing pressures on prosecutors to send as many people as possible to prison for as long as possible.
- arbuge 14y ago
  I'm willing to bet he would care if he got fired.
  - ScottBurson 14y ago
    Perhaps. He might make more money in private practice. But let's suppose you're right. I don't actually think firing would be an disproportioniate rebuke under the circumstances. To use language that Heymann might have used of Swartz, I think it would be great to make an example of him. All that said, I don't expect it to happen.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      > He might make more money in private practice. He would, without a doubt, make much more money in private practice. That's one thing I think HN folks overlook. Senior DOJ people could lateral out to high six figure into seven figure salaries as partners in law firms. The folks that stay at DOJ as lifers are generally "true believers." That doesn't mean they don't have their internal motivations, but rather those motivations are shaped by an extremely deep belief in the rule of law. They view people who don't follow rules as at best anti-social, and more likely dangerous. Figuring out why they don't understand hackers doesn't require resorting to any elaborate theories about trying to make career-defining prosecutions. They're simply people who have a very different world view than the one hacker culture embraces.

twoodfin 14y ago

Heymann saw Aaron as a scalp he could take. He thought he could lock Aaron up, get high-profile press coverage, and win high-fives from his fellow prosecutors in the lunchroom. Aaron was a way of reviving Heymann’s fading career. Heymann had no interest in an honest assessment of whether Aaron deserved any of the hell he was being put through. Is there any evidence for any of this seeming mind reading?

ScottBurson 14y ago
Oh come on. That's like asking "is there any evidence this particular bear shat in these particular woods?" The path to success for prosecutors is successful high-profile prosecutions. Everybody knows that. I don't actually know that Heymann's career had been fading, but the rest of this quote seems pretty reasonable based on what we know.
- corporalagumbo 14y ago
  Ah, so the reason why we know this assertion is true is because everyone knows that such assertions are always true?
  - ScottBurson 14y ago
    We, the citizens, have set up a system that rewards this kind of behavior. It would be odd if Heymann didn't respond to the incentives we have placed before him. Taren's quote portrays him as ruthless. I concede that we don't know exactly what went through his mind, but based on the facts in evidence, I think that that appears to be an accurate characterization. I, at least, cannot imagine how anyone with any compassion or principles could have looked at what Swartz did and concluded that it deserved to be treated as a felony worth years in federal prison. Anyway, as I said upthread, the point is not so much what happens to Heymann as it is publicly making the point that Federal prosecutors in general have too much power and inappropriate incentives.
    - twoodfin 14y ago

geoka9 14y ago

Do I have to be a constituent to sign?

qschneier 14y ago

FYI the petition link is here https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney-steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-... To me signing the petition is simply to let others know my attitude, and to let those who hold the same stand know that they are not alone.

rada 14y ago
When you are signing a petition titled "Fire Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann", it is not to "simply let others know my attitude". You are, quite literally, petitioning to get the guy fired.

sylvinus 14y ago

she mentions 11k signatures but the current count is 2,737. What happened? Did they remove duplicates? https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney-steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-...

gyardley 14y ago
That's signatures needed - the amount remaining before in theory it gets a response from the White House. It means people have been signing the petition like gangbusters. Probably thanks to BoingBoing.

idm 14y ago

I finally created an account so I could sign this. I didn't sign for Ortiz because I thought she may have had a distant relationship to the case. However, as Heymann's direct supervisor, I thought she erred in that role. Heymann, on the other hand, really does sound like he has a history of throw-the-book-at-them antics, and I think there's a strong need for greater scrutiny of his career and trajectory.

jmodp 14y ago

The death of Aaron Swartz is a loss to his family, his friends, and to society. The focus on the prosecutors, however, makes me uneasy. I can support a review of the conduct of the prosecutors but I can't call for their firing. From what I have read, the conduct of the prosecutors was close to standard procedure. If it was wrong of the prosecutors to make an example out of Aaron, it is equally wrong to make an example of the prosecutors. This should not be about revenge although such feelings are understandable. However, it is the whole judicial system that needs review (and reform). The focus on the prosecutors takes the focus away from other discussion we should be having such as the following. Why should these cases linger for so long? Why is our justice system so dependent on plea bargaining? Why can't we create have a hacker legal defense fund that would keep cases like this from bankrupting defendants? Why should expert legal advice be only available to those who can afford it? What should we tell a friend who is planning to commit a crime on behalf of a cause? Was Aaron's cause worth anyone's life? This should be a question for everyone, not just prosecutors. Is any middle ground possible in the conflict between rights holders and advocates of free information?

analog 14y ago
"the conduct of the prosecutors was close to standard procedure" This is part of the problem. It is standard procedure and it needs to be changed. Firing those who've acted too aggresively will help to change the way prosecutors operate. "If it was wrong of the prosecutors to make an example out of Aaron, it is equally wrong to make an example of the prosecutors" No it is not equally wrong because we're not suggesting anything like the same punishment. Losing your job versus facing decades in prison are orders of magnitude apart.
- tzs 14y ago
  > Losing your job versus facing decades in prison are orders of magnitude apart Swartz was not facing decades in prison. He faced charges whose maximum sentences added together reached several decades, but it was all but impossible to actually receive that kind of sentence. First, the Federal sentencing guidelines scale the sentence based on the severity of the particular instance of the crime. Swartz's was low on the scale for the various crimes he was charged with. Second, some crimes are grouped. You can be charged with several crimes from a group, but you are only sentenced for the one in the group with the longest sentence. I believe this was the case with the Swartz charges. PS: if PG ever decides to monetize HN, and interesting approach would be a "show me who down voted" button that costs $1 to use. I'd pay $1 to see who down voted this.

gattis 14y ago

This sounds like an excellent way to prevent another suicide... oh wait...

user911302966 14y ago

Can't or won't do to the time? Don't do the crime. Committing a crime in a civil society is not bravery if the perp offs himself before standing trial. Whether or not one sympathizes with the man's motivation for committing those crimes should not influence their respect nor breed contempt for the law.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

wisty 14y ago

I've been spamming this opinion on just about every AS thread: Plea bargaining should go. It's a SCOTUS issue, but I can't see how it's even constitutional to punish a person for demanding their constitutional right to a trial. And yes - it's a punishment, as the expected outcome of a jury trial tends to be much harsher than a plea bargain. I really doubt under 10% of defendants would demand a trial if there weren't effectively a penalty for doing so. (Aaron never would have gotten 10 years, but even 12 months would still be much harsher than the 6 months they offered). The only reason to plead guilty should be to save time, costs, and establish contrition (sorry judge, I did it, and I feel bad ... can you give me a slightly lower penalty?) I understand that public prosecutors and judges are underpaid and overworked, but if they can't do their jobs there's no shortage of law grads out there. It would cost a little more, but if you're locking someone up for 6 months and can't afford give them a day in court (Aaron's case may have been a bit more than a day, but I doubt the average court case would take much time at all) then you shouldn't be prosecuting them at all. I guess there's not as much scope for corruption though. Privatised prisons are a massive money maker. Public prosecutors and judges probably don't bribe (sorry ... support) their representatives nearly as much as prisons.

gavinlynch 14y ago

I hate to be so flippant but: Petitions are one of the most useless forms of expression I've come across.