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>Aaron would be alive today if MIT had acted as JSTOR did. This may in fact be true, but this claim is leveled with the implication that MIT is responsible for

• scarmig 13y ago
  For context, Taren was Aaron's partner at the time of his death and was the person who found him hanging.
  • pkfrank 13y ago
    Thanks. I appreciate that context, and I apologize if my original comment was insensitive. It must be terribly painful to have strangers commenting on the loss of a loved one, especially in such a politically charged and public arena.
    • larrys 13y ago
      "I apologize if my original comment was insensitive." It's sad that there is a need to apologize such as you did. This is one of these issues in which ordinary discourse is not possible. You would have to spend so much time padding your thoughts about what you might think to lessen the impact on those that are highly sensitive for one reason or another.
      • schrijver 13y ago
        Well I’m sorry but that’s a pretty basic part of the human experience. While there are some situation in which one can be blunt and straightforward, other situations require all the tact and empathy you can muster… Imagine turning someone down for a job interview. If the person cared for this job, every single word you say will be taken very personal and be mulled over afterwords. That means it is up to you to pick your words very carefully, and find a constructive phrasing.
        • larrys 13y ago
          "Imagine turning someone down for a job interview. If the person cared for this job" I know but this wasn't in response to someone who claimed they were directly connected to this case though.
    • scarmig 13y ago
      I don't think you were insensitive at all. My aim was to contextualize the blog post and the emotions that surely went into it. I'm always loath to say what amounts to "take what they say with a grain of salt, they're heavily emotionally invested." It's fair to say that that's the case here, though. I say that as someone who thinks MIT does have some level of culpability and have had the pleasure of interacting with the wonderful and brilliant person that Taren is.
  • 1337biz 13y ago
    Had to google her too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taren_Stinebrickner-Kauffman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taren_Stinebrickner-Kauffman
  • CaveTech 13y ago
    Yes but ultimately Aaron is responsible for his own death. He has his reasons for doing what he did, but it's not fair to give leniency to someone under threat of self harm. To be clear: I do feel the case against Aaron was unjust, but we can't give extra attention to a case due to suicide.
    • indlebe 13y ago
      He had no choice but he was responsible, right. Or are you implying that the should-be-deprecated-by-now idea of compatibilism has some hold?
  • crb002 13y ago
    Taren is an extremely bright activist in her own right. I had the pleasure of working with her for a summer back in 2000 at the CIIR. http://ciir.cs.umass.edu/REU/2000/REUpres/FinalReport2_files/v3_document.htm http://ciir.cs.umass.edu/REU/2000/REUpres/FinalReport2_files... I wish I could track down her paper on southern states putting urban minority prisoners in rural white area prisons. They are put on the rural census and removed from urban census. Not only do they not get to vote, their representation power goes to the white rural voters.
  • rdl 13y ago
    I'm really amazed she seems to have held up so well in spite of one of the most traumatic experiences imaginable.
  • mpyne 13y ago
    I suspect that either fact alone would be enough to make Taren one of the most biased parties w.r.t. the MIT report though, so it's good to remind us of that context. Certainly it doesn't mean she's wrong, but we should think critically, just as we would if Ms. Ortiz were making a statement.
• mpyne 13y ago
  I think what's more concerning is that the same logic could be used to rebuke Aaron himself. "Aaron would be alive today if he'd only stopped before he decided to put a laptop in that server closet." Certainly the prosecution was overbearing, and MIT could have been more on Aaron's side. But if we're going to reach into the realm of "If X had done Y Aaron would be alive today" then I think it would be distressing to think how many X's there could be.
  • coldtea 13y ago
    >then I think it would be distressing to think how many X's there could be. So how about we take the more obvious Xs and condemn THOSE? It's not like anyone blames Lincoln for going to the theater that day instead of having a quit dinner at home.
    • jmduke 13y ago
      Because those exercises are by definition rabbitholes. If JSTOR had failed their negotiations with the Royal Society of London in '99 and subsequently faded into obscurity, Aaron might still be alive today, etc. The idea that Aaron did something illegal and the idea that Aaron was treated incredibly poorly are not mutually exclusive.
      • erikpukinskis 13y ago
        > Because those exercises are by definition rabbitholes What definition of what term makes that case for you? You seem to basically be denying the concept of causality entirely, which, fine: causality is a brittle concept. But we can still use it to help us reason around things. There are proximate causes and distal causes and all kinds of causes in between and beyond. These are messy, flawed concepts that are useful for trying to analyze systems. You act like you don't understand the distinction between the relationship between MIT and Aaron and the relationship between those negotiations and Aaron, but I am fairly certain you do.
        • saraid216 13y ago
• coldtea 13y ago
  >but this claim seems overreaching and narrow. What's with this fear of reaching a conclusion and assigning blame? Better give the individual that hanged himself the benefit of the doubt, than an organization like MIT that acted against him.
  • mpyne 13y ago
    If all you're worried about is finding someone to point a finger at then your plan may well work. If you want to prevent the next gifted hacker from hanging themselves, however, then it pays to search for the truth so that lessons can be learned from what actually happened, not merely from what scenario received the most benefit of the doubt. Note I'm not saying the MIT Report constitutes the truth if Taren's assertions don't.
    • jessaustin 13y ago
      If you want to prevent the next gifted hacker from hanging themselves... Is that what we're doing here? I thought it was more about MIT administration being absolute shits to important, creative, contributing members of the community, and how they might stop doing that. Swartz's suicide is not the only thing that makes MIT's behavior shameful. Ideally, next time the administration will correct their craven, copsucking behavior before it gets to that point.
      • mpyne 13y ago
        As far as I can tell the only thing MIT did that was disagreeable was not pushing harder against the felony variant of the CFAA charges. "creating, contributing" member or not, Aaron didn't deserve extra privileges (or warrant worse punishment) compared to anyone else who had DDoS'ed MIT's network and repeatedly gained unauthorized access to their internal subnet. MIT should not have allowed themselves to be used in throwing the book, but I would hardly call them a bunch of absolute shits over this.
    • coldtea 13y ago
      >If you want to prevent the next gifted hacker from hanging themselves No, I don't want to do that (not that I could). What I want to do is to prevent the next gifted hacker from being prosecuted for BS and under overblown terms.
• CatMtKing 13y ago
  I guess the point is that "doing nothing" is not "being neutral," especially when in a position of power.
• danso 13y ago
  I think the distinction you make here is important...that it's possible to criticize MIT's actions and policies without going the extra step and laying Aaron's death at their feet...in fact, I think it's ultimately more productive to treat the two things as orthogonal, because the MIT people who may be at fault may resist/stonewall heavily if admission of fault is tied to complicity in Aaron's death. Taren's eulogy for Aaron was one of the best eulogies/call-to-actions I've watched (http://www.livestream.com/democracynow/video?clipId=pla_f83c80fe-0fc0-474c-9936-efe8659466f6 http://www.livestream.com/democracynow/video?clipId=pla_f83c...) and it sheds some more light on the difficulties Aaron was facing in this case. However, when looking at additional facts, including those provided by Taren and others close to Aaron, it kind of rubs me the wrong way to treat the prosecution's causality of Aaron's suicide as fact. via Taren: http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/42260548767/why-aaron-died http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/42260548767/why-aaron-died > I don’t know exactly why Aaron killed himself. I don’t know exactly what was going through his mind. If I had known those things on January 11, if I had even known the right questions to ask, maybe I could have stopped him. Since January 11, I think about it every hour of every day. > The Aaron I knew was active. He worked out most days until he got the flu two weeks before he died. It's hard to second-guess someone who lived with Aaron and say, "Well, us armchair psychologists know better than you"...but the fact is, Taren was the closest person to Aaron and yet can't identify any particular warning signs that Aaron was going to kill himself. She provides compelling evidence that the trial was a huge burden on Aaron...but the question here is: why suicide on that day? There was a procedural deadline, but it didn't seem much more of a conclusive event than anything so far. It's not as if Aaron had been convicted, was on house arrest, and had just heard his appeal had been denied. But as Taren said, Aaron was unusually sick up until the day of his suicide...at least sick enough to stop exercising, which, pedantic as it sounds, is a huge factor in mood swings. Enough to cause someone to commit suicide?... Who knows? I guess why this all bothers me is that, by arguing that Aaron's death was conclusively caused by malicious actors perpetuates the misunderstanding that suicide and depression are, in general, caused by life circumstances....but it seems that some depression is due to physiological factors that aren't related to the "bigger picture". People who face horrific tragedy don't often kill themselves; people who seem to live in enviable circumstances sometimes do. The world would make more sense if everyone committed suicide out of fear, hopelessness, or even weakness (as those who accused Aaron of "rage-quitting" seemed to do)...but this isn't the case, and this belief is unhelpful for those who suffer depression because of physiological, treatable factors...but who may avoid treatment because they think, "Well, I'm not being persecuted, so I must not really be depressed and thus have no reason to seek help" I know I'm being naively idealistic here...because if Aaron hadn't died, if he had only suffered a drawn out trial and even a conviction, the call to reform the U.S attorney's office and the MIT administration would have much more diffuse support without the catalyst of his death. But I do think it's worth being mindful that the issue of treating depression isn't obfuscated. Either way, what a tragedy. Reading Taren's words again really underscores how much of a loss Aaron's death was for civic reform.
• gregcohn 13y ago
  This comment and the thread nested under it misrepresent the point Taren makes in her statement, which is not that MIT caused his death, but that MIT is making a claim of neutrality that is not true. It is clearly true that Shwartz's prosecution was a major factor in his suicide, and, according to Taren, it is equally clear that MIT was a non-neutral party in assisting this prosecution. If these statements are true; it is perfectly reasonable to call misrepresentations by MIT about its participation a "whitewash" and a serious matter.
• silentmars 13y ago
  There is a bit of legal knowledge that may be relevant here, at least in terms of framing this question of who is responsible. In many jurisdictions (in the US) the legal standard of 'negligence' has two requirements. First, proximate cause. That's the "but for" part, that op mentions here. "But for MIT's actions, Aaron would be alive today." The other part is foreknowledge. Someone must have known, or reasonably should have known, that their actions would result in the bad consequence to meet this second standard. I don't think it would be fair to say that MIT could reasonably have foreseen Swartz's suicide. It's interesting to note that Heymann, the federal prosecutor, arguably does meet both of these standards. But for his overzealous -- and I would add abusive -- prosecution, Swartz would still be alive. Further, Swartz's lawyers warned Heymann the day before that Swartz was an imminent risk of suicide, so it seems pretty safe to say that he also meets the foreknowledge standard. I want both Heymann and Ortiz to be fired, and my sense of vengeance wants it to be both public and messy. Wishful thinking. IANAL, blah blah blah and all that.