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Aaron Swartz Was Targeted by Feds Over His Activism
- t0 14y ago>they offerred Swartz a plea deal that would have sent him to jail for three months Why didn't he take that?
- niggler 14y agoTo take the plea deal, he would have had to admit guilt (Heymann insisted on it) Summary: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/15/aaron-swartz-s-unbending-prosecutors-insisted-on-prison-time.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/15/aaron-swart...
- t0 14y agoWasn't he though? In hindsight this still seems like a better deal as opposed to what actually happened.
- niggler 14y agoNever having been through a similar situation, I cannot say what I would do if I were in his shoes. I believe that he didn't believe that what he did warranted decades of jail time. I believe that the prosecutor believed that his crimes did justify jail time. But your statement reflects two facts: that he did end up committing suicide (not known a priori) and that he chose not to accept guilt when he didn't believe he was guilty (and I fully suspect you've never been in that type of situation at the severity of the Swartz case, so it's hard to definitively state that you would just take the jail time)
- enraged_camel 14y agoAs others have said, he would also be branded a felon, which in the US is enough to ruin most people's professional careers - not to mention a host of other very strict restrictions.
- signed0 14y agoAaron wasn't most people though, and it's not as if his profession was one that would be ruined by a criminal record.
- Helianthus 14y agoHe wasn't most people _because_ he wasn't the sort to submit to such a demeaning choice.
- enraged_camel 14y agoIt's not just about profession. Being labeled a felon is a serious pain in the ass and follows you for the rest of your life. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony#United_States Besides all the restrictions, there's also the stigma attached to it.
- jlgreco 14y agoThat housing rental one is huge. Most people forget about that one. It has the potential to seriously effect your quality of life.
- rdl 14y agoIn practice he would have been fine.
- jlgreco 14y agoI would not be so sure. Stardom fades fast, particularly considering the fandom around him really only kicked it up a notch after he died. Check out the general sentiment of him on HN before he died; most people thought he was whinging. Maybe he could find some people to help him out 5 years from now. Maybe even 10 or 20, but for how long would he be able to rely on that?
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- InclinedPlane 14y agoWas he? He was never tried, and neither a court nor a jury made a finding either way. The evidence that is publicly available doesn't back up some of the charges against him and at best is ambiguous as to whether his actions would result in even a 3 months prison sentence, if anything, if he had had the chance to have his case heard in court. Especially given that with his earlier work with PACER it's quite likely that his goal with JSTOR was to gain access to and release documents which, legally, should have been in the public domain. Besides which, whether or not he violated the law is only partially relevant as the morality of the law is also at issue. How would you feel if your only option was to plead guilty to a law you felt was unjust?
- jacquesm 14y agoIt was that + branding him a felon.
- mtgx 14y agoHe wasn't guilty. Why would a prosecutor give someone an option between 30 years and 3 months - unless they know they have nothing to hold him on, but think they may get lucky and just accept the 3 months period and "admit he was guilty"? Either he's a dangerous criminal who deserves 30 years in jail, or it's nothing, and the only reason they ask him to accept 3 months is because they would look foolish asking him to accept anything less than that (like say weeks or days).
- jacalata 14y agoWhat wasn't he guilty of?
- monsterix 14y agoCan you enlist some of those things you think he was guilty of? Leaving aside the fact that he was actually trying to forcefully give people (you and I) back what they already owned.
- sneak 14y agoThis presupposes that one can own information in the first place.
- Peaker 14y agoThe frivolous charges of wire fraud, damaging computer systems with wrecklessness, etc.
- olefoo 14y agoA FELONY CONVICTION and three months in jail. If you take the law and legal status seriously, you don't just accept being disenfranchised lying down. nb. disenfranchised both literally and figuratively in this case.
- mverwijs 14y agoAs I (a dutchman) understand US law a plea bargain is only that. A bargain that has the prosecution make a plea to the judge. The judge, however, is free to ignore that plea. There is no guarantee whatsoever that a judge will follow the recommendation in the plea. He/She could still have thrown the book at Swartz.
- mpyne 14y agoThe plea bargain can be made conditional on acceptance by the judge though.
- klrr 14y agoSimilar things happen here in Sweden. Peter Sunde, the public face of TPB was a activist fighting for less fucked up copyright laws etc. He got blacklisted as a Neo-nazi by Sweden's feds SÄPO. Very sad, but not very suprising.
- clicks 14y agoIndeed. The absurdity of that was explained by Peter Sunde himself in the documentary AFK (available for viewing here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTOKXCEwo_8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTOKXCEwo_8 -- which I highly recommend as worth watching ).
- mtgx 14y agoHow does something like that even happen? Do they have laws like in US with their "associated forces" thing? Peter Sunder didn't do any infringement himself (neither did TPB, but let's just say that's a grayer area for now).
- gavinlynch 14y agoGotta say... for all the flack the US Government takes around here, this illustrates there are no perfect systems. That is ridiculous.
- 3327 14y agoMashable links in HN, what has the world come to!
- CrankyPants 14y agoIt's HN's favorite topic.
- andreyf 14y agoI wonder how his crime would have been reported/perceived in the US if he were a citizen prosecuted by his government in China or Russia... I image it would've involve a little swap of s/ro/er/
- InclinedPlane 14y agoIf true everyone involved should be out on their ass, this is banana republic shit, it should not be tolerated.
- fennecfoxen 14y agoReally? I would have said it's more Soviet or something (going after someone for ideology) and would save the 'banana republic' designator for when the NLRB "respectfully" declines to pay attention to the district court because they disagree. :P But I digress.
- sageikosa 14y agoSoviet-style would indicate social control through the designation of locally delegated secret police (political officers). The mode of operation here is less secret and more open, more akin to totalitarianism, with a Federal twist.
- GHFigs 14y agoThis is bullshit. Establishing intent is not "targeting" someone. Of all the things to get upset about in this case, this has got to be the least worthy. It is the wrongest of wrong trees to be barking up. He was caught doing 'A'. He had previously written a manifesto that describes it as a moral imperative[1] to do 'A then B'. The prosecution believed that this established his intent[2] to do 'B'. This is not an unreasonable conclusion. You don't have to respect or agree with any part of the prosecution to understand this. You don't have to believe that it was his actual intent to understand that it's not out of line to draw that conclusion from those facts. Please, if you care about this case, don't waste energy on linkbait and bent truth. [1] http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamju... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_(criminal_law) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_(criminal_law) (I link to this because some people seem to be unaware that intent has a legal meaning.)
- mycroftiv 14y agoI believe your answer, while correct as to matters of law, is actually missing the essential point. The fundamental issue is the morality of the prosecution of Aaron Swartz, not whether the legal team conducting the prosecution was following the rules of law. It is undoubtedly true that they were. The reason people care so much about this issue is that many of us feel it shows that the current method of applying the rule of law produces bad and immoral consequences. Yes, it is true that Mr. Swartz's previous writings may establish intent in a way that is relevant to criminal prosecution. It is also true - and I believe an ultimately more significant matter - that this case demonstrates that "writing about what you believe" may indeed place you in greater criminal jeopardy, and that consequence of the "rule of law" as it was enforced in this case may cause more harm to society than the "evils" the laws were intended to prevent. In other words, the significance of this case is that it shows our current methods of applying the laws may have negative consequences. Saying "the prosecution was applying the law correctly" is not relevant to the question: does this case show that we should change the laws, and how they are applied?
- rayiner 14y ago
- coldtea 14y ago>This is bullshit. Establishing intent is not "targeting" someone. Legally speaking maybe. In right life, fuck no. And it's not just for the trial. What were the FBI files for Aaron like even before that?
- tptacek 14y agoOne sentence in one Huffington Post article. An endless stream of wild extrapolations by publications trying to gin up rageviews.
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoWhat is surprising here? Folks who publicly flout the rules are asking to be censured, and it happened.
- metaphorm 14y agowow. thats an astonishing thing to say. you sure have a high regard for "rules". some rules don't deserve to be respected. they're not automatically right just because they are codified. there's also a difference between a censure (a formal reprimand) and criminal prosecution. you ought to think more about the implications of what you've said.
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoI'm just weary of all the gesticulating. The conversation isn't even about the right thing. This guy presumably had friends - where were they? They failed him. But all the talk is about projecting it onto someone else. Why do they do this? Because after years of cheering on this manic-depressive guy, laughing at his antics and ignoring his crashes, his cohort hopefully feel shame at their part in egging him on to ultimately irresponsible acts.
- wglb 14y agoWhile I have enormous sympathy for Taren, Aaron's family, and all who knew him, there isn't very hard evidence for this particular assertion. I do recall that his lawyer didn't feel that it was a politically motivated prosecution. An agressive prosecution will naturally research what the target has done in the past as a way of establishing intent. Not that I don't feel that the prosecution Aaron wasn't egregious.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- nwzpaperman 14y agoThe spirit of the United States Constitution and subordinate laws has been wholesale abandoned and legalism has been adopted. The law has been usurped by corporate interests, both for-profit and unprofit, to consolidate power in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals. Equalitarianism has over-taken liberalism. Democracy, as H.L. Mencken projected, has been leveraged to undermine the Republican government. The noble lie of the nation state is fighting to preserve its perceived legitimacy. Regardless of the specifics, Swartz has gone down as a martyr in the court of public opinion and "the people" are becoming increasingly untrusting of their governors and government. Once trust is lost, it isn't easily restored. The elephant of tyranny remains until generations to come forget again. RIP Swartz nwzpaper.com/articleView?articleId=133 nwzpaper.com/articleView?articleId=141 nwzpaper.com/socialContract