18 ms·

Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death

366 points by cjbprime 13y ago

vex 13y ago
Suicide is completely a personal choice. MIT had no reason to try and defend an outsider who hijacked part of their network, and trying to make them seem like they caused him to hang himself smacks of tunnel vision. It's a natural response to a suicide; we try and search for something to blame. But unless you argue that MIT should have known Aaron was mentally unstable, saying MIT "caused" him to kill himself is illogical. People who commit suicide may desire to because of what they feel about their lives, but the final decision is one's own. It's sad that it takes a death to bring attention to the IP issues that Aaron's trial had raised.
- mentalhealth 13y ago
  A desire to kill oneself is a diagnosis of mental instability.
  - bradleydwyer 13y ago
    I'm genuinely curious, is that a widely accepted position on suicide and mental stability? I can think of a number of situations where suicide might be preferable to continued existence.
    - cjbprime 13y ago
      I think it may be widely accepted, but I also think it's nonsense. As you allude to, someone with a terminal and painful disease could have an entirely rational desire to commit suicide based on a sensible projection of the future as containing a persistent unacceptable level of suffering. I think we should only invoke "mental instability" when someone's projection of their future level of suffering is clearly mistaken.
      - mentalhealth 13y ago
        I think it's theoretically possible for someone to arrive at the decision to end their own life via careful evaluation, but it's quite unlikely (and at this point, the only real acknowledgement of it in the psychiatric field is in the case of terminally ill patients, when the calculus is pretty clear). Regardless, the vast majority of suicides are the result of a combination of depression and loss of inhibition, both of which are psychiatric symptoms that can be brought on or exacerbated by severe stress. The assumption can and should be that this is the case, not that an individual who was self-admittedly under huge amounts of personal stress performed a rational evaluation of their own future prospects in life and determined that it wasn't worth living.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      Suicidal thinking is almost always a mental health problem or the result of a mental health problem. You say that there are some situations where suicide is a rational choice. But even in these cases it's not that clear. While I respect the right to chose death, and support changing of law to allow people to seek medically assisted suicide, I am worried that people with undiagnosed depression who would respond to treatment are allowed to die.
  - PhasmaFelis 13y ago
    user: mentalhealth created: 17 minutes ago You're really not a very good troll.
    - mentalhealth 13y ago
      I learned quite a long time ago that realistic discussion of mental health as it actually affects real people generally results in a lot of negative votes here on HN. But please, continue to dismiss my argument by attacking me and not the statement I made. More par for the course hereabouts.
      - crag 13y ago
        "...it actually affects real people generally results in a lot of negative votes here on HN." Then don't comment if you're so afraid of your rep. I mean, what's the point of this site? To me, it's to exchange various thoughts/ideas related to tech and otherwise. Creating a new account to comment cause your afraid of being down-voted is cowardly. And insulting, frankly.
        mentalhealth 13y ago
        It's not about the rep score, it's about people looking through my post history, determining where I work, and trolling me via my employer (this happened). Let's get back on topic, shall we?
      - Moocat87 13y ago
        I think you'll find that almost everywhere on the Internet, and most places in meatspace too... :(
      - BlackDeath3 13y ago
        I think the problem here is that you didn't really make an argument. You made an unsubstantiated claim (and misused "diagnosis" while at it) and just sort of left it there.
        13y ago
  - chmike 13y ago
    This is a blunt claim I can't agree with. You totally ignore the context. I know a man who suicide himeself because he was about to lose a trial and it would mean he would have lost his house to pay the huge fine. He was old and to save his wife and child of this misery he commited suicide. From his perspective it was a rational decision because he didn't see any better one. There is absolutely not mental instability in play here. My feeling is that most people who commit suicide do it because they decided it on a rational basis. Some people commit suicide because they want to stop a pain they feel and in their view will apparently last forever or will get worse. I.e cancer, someone has to spend the rest of his life in a bed after an accident ... People can also commit suicide as a sacrifice to save others. But I guess you were not talking of these types of suicide. Suicide due to mental instability is probably just a small fraction of all suicide. Your claim is typical from someone who didn't took the time and made the effort to understand what can lead someone fully rational to suicide. A rational thinking compares the cost and benefit of dying or living. According to some context a perfectly sain person may rationnaly conclude that commiting suicide is the best choice. The rational thinking they had from their perspective and knowledge may have been wrong, but this is not to be confused with mental instability.
    - Moocat87 13y ago
      >My feeling is that most people who commit suicide do it because they decided it on a rational basis. Some people commit suicide because they want to stop a pain they feel and in their view will apparently last forever or will get worse. I.e cancer, someone has to spend the rest of his life in a bed after an accident ... People can also commit suicide as a sacrifice to save others. But I guess you were not talking of these types of suicide. You think that more people commit suicide for others than for themselves? Care to explain why or cite anything? >Suicide due to mental instability is probably just a small fraction of all suicide. Cite?
      - chmike 13y ago
        No. I don't think that and I didn't said that. Cite? Just found this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide. From the graphic shown on the page, not all suicide are caused by mental illness. That was my main point. I have some doubts about the mental illness importance shown in this graph. Anyway, the mental illness could be the source of pain leading to the rational decision to end it by suicide.
  - andreasvc 13y ago
    You may want to look up the difference between a symptom and a diagnosis. I am also curious about the argument you want to make, because your comment is just a proposition without motivation.
- herbig 13y ago
  I think it's much more complicated than that. I wouldn't say it "caused" him to commit suicide, so much as greatly contributed. If the punishment vastly outweighs the crime, to the extent that one's mental health is impacted, can he be completely to blame for that?
- betterunix 13y ago
  MIT did not on its own "cause" Aaron to commit suicide, but MIT certainly did play a role in the events that led up to the suicide. Perhaps MIT had no reason to defend Aaron, but what reason did they have to help the prosecution -- why did MIT turn over information without being subpoenaed for it? MIT deserves its share of the blame.
  - ericcumbee 13y ago
    if someone broke into my Network Closet, I would not need a subpoena.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      OK, then you would receive your share of the blame if that person killed themselves after being hounded by the prosecutors you aided.
      - res0nat0r 13y ago
        So the US should stop prosecuting crimes if there is a worry that person might be mentally unstable?
        dllthomas 13y ago
        If you are the aggrieved party, and the punishment the law is meting out is ridiculously out of proportion to the harm done to you, you have some responsibility to speak up.
        betterunix 13y ago
        No, but the US absolutely should stop using plea-bargaining as a way to bully people into not going to trial, and then retaliating against people who dare to exercise their right to a trial by adding additional charges against them after plea bargaining. While we are at it, we should reign in the cost of actually exercising the right to a trial -- Aaron lost his fortune defending himself from the government, which is more than most Americans could hope to do. See, the problem here is that we are talking about giving aid to overly aggressive prosecutors, whose entire careers are devoted to undermining civil rights and destroying their targets. If that is the sort of prosecution you are aiding, yes, you should share in the blame for what happens to the prosecutor's victims.
- afatc 13y ago
  Well, they certainly did not help to prevent the ridiculous prosecution being made
  - git-pull 13y ago
    I am curious, what was wrong with the criminal charges against Swartz? Can someone clarify how the prosecutor handled things wrong?
    - dreamdu5t 13y ago
      Nothing. It's exactly how the US works and our legal system is constructed. Until pleas and plea bargaining are (rightfully) considered duress/forced confessions, piling on charges to force a plea is commonplace, and will continue to be commonplace.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      The prosecutor had to dig around to even find a crime with which to charge Aaron. JSTOR, the so-called victim, did not even want to see the prosecution move forward and had to be subpoenaed for evidence against Aaron, with whom they had already settled matters. The prosecutor's case was based on an extremely expansive interpretation of the law, and additional charges were added in retaliation for Aaron's decision to actually exercise his right to a trial. Basically, this case embodied almost everything that is wrong with the criminal justice system in America.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      The charges themselves are based on law that is rather too harsh in many people's opinion, given the scope and effect of the "crime" itself. E.g. there's no reason that this should have been a felony, but the option of pleading to something that was a misdemeanor wasn't even available to Aaron here because of the way the law is constructed. However given the law and the way the legal system works the prosecutor was certainly treating this just like any other CFAA case.
- PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  Oh, poor MIT, all they did was actively help the guy who wanted Aaron thrown in prison for three and half decades* while pretending to be neutral. Any of us might have done the same, right? Totally innocent! Like "a rape victim," to use Heymann's own words. If you punch a stranger in the face, you probably don't expect him to fall, crack his head on the corner of a table, and die; but you don't get to claim you're blameless if that happens, either. * This is the bit where someone says that Heymann didn't really want to lock Aaron up 'til 2045, he just said that to scare him. Where I come from, "but I was lying" isn't considered much of a defense either.
  - tomphoolery 13y ago
    It was Aaron's choice to kill himself. He wasn't a victim of anything but his own mind.
    - marincounty 13y ago
      I can guarantee by your quip; you have never dealt with our legal system.
      - benologist 13y ago
        If it wasn't the legal system it would have been literally any other reason, big or small, that Aaron felt was terminally wrong with his life.
        icelancer 13y ago
        This is incredibly insulting. How could you possibly know this?
        benologist 13y ago
        Because depressed, suicidal people kill themselves, usually when they're not facing prison? In 2007 Schwartz posted what was believed to be a suicide note after being fired from reddit: http://digitaljournal.com/article/341150 http://digitaljournal.com/article/341150
- Zigurd 13y ago
  MIT leadership had a duty to act reasonably, and they didn't. MIT's position should have been that, at most, this amounted to trespassing and matter for the Cambridge PD. Aaron Swartz was no threat to MIT's network. They might not have prevented subsequent events, but they failed, horribly, by not speaking up for a reasonable outcome. MIT's IS&T office had a knee jerk security-oriented reaction, and was over impressed with interacting with Steven Heymann, who is a fixture at the sort of conferences where Swartz's "crime" is inflated out of proportion. It's not OK that Heymann, Ortiz, and MIT's personnel who overcooked this case contributed to the death of Aaron Swartz. And it's not OK they got away with it so far.
  - arabellatv 13y ago
    Yes. I agree. What were MIT's and Heymann's true motivations for blowing it up to a security issue? Did they act out of fear or out of ego? Regardless, they exacerbated the issue (just as media sensationalizes stories). It's upsetting that such intelligent people would fail to think through the situation. Or even worse...they did think it through and planned to blow this up as big as possible to prove a point or make an example out of Swartz?
    - danielweber 13y ago
      It was a security issue because some guy kept on breaking into their network and had escalated to physical intrusion to achieve his goals. They didn't know the guy was Aaron Swartz and that they ought to have been privileged to have him on their network, invited or not.
      - sigzero 13y ago
        I am taking the second sentence as sarcasm.
        walid 13y ago
        Why are you taking it as sarcasm? MIT didn't know it was him until they installed a camera and guest logins are the norm and apparently/reportedly have high privileges.
- nilved 13y ago
  MIT killed Aaron. I don't even use their public key database anymore.
- sitkack 13y ago
  You say so many words Hiding behind that fact that you are a
- meritt 13y ago
  He was facing 35+ years of prison. Suicide -- while I agree is a personal choice -- it's not exactly an unreasonable decision given the outlandish sentence.
  - fastball 13y ago
    Suicide is always an unreasonable decision, unless you face something which is literally worse than death. A lifetime in prison is not worse than death. At least you can still talk to your family. You can acquire new skills. There is the chance you get paroled early. Etc, etc.
    - meritt 13y ago
      I disagree. That's your opinion. Why is it that people can come to the conclusion of "I'd rather see him rot to death in a jail cell than the benefit of a quick death". This line of thinking views death as a lighter punishment when contrasted against a lifetime in prison. Yet when the tables are turned suddenly suicide is viewed with such disdain? I'm not advocating suicide or anything, I'm just arguing that when faced with an immensely harsh sentence, it's not a surprising decision to reach.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - PhasmaFelis 13y ago
      > A lifetime in prison is not worse than death. The fuck it isn't. Or, more civilly, that is definitely a statement on which reasonable people may disagree. I'm not particularly depressed, but if I were actually sentenced to life in prison, I would check out in a hot second. There's no point. My opportunities to create joy in the world and to experience unalloyed happiness are done. The rest of my life would be nothing but marking the days and the years until death. It's a waste of good consciousness. I'm opposed to capital punishment because it's irreversible, but I do believe that death is more merciful than life in prison.
      - fastball 13y ago
- thaumaturgy 13y ago
  I think I can speak a little bit on the subject of suicide, since both of my parents have made suicide attempts recently, and since I also struggle with depression and, although I'm currently too stubborn to seriously consider something like suicide, I can tell you it does seem to be an attractive option some days. Suicide is not completely a personal choice. Part of it is a problem with mental wiring, yes, but a significant part of it is also environmental. Suicide is far more prevalent among people who view themselves to be in hopeless situations, whether financial or otherwise. I hate to resort to analogy, since everyone always then argues the analogy instead of the subject it's trying to describe, but if you have an engine that redlines at 5,000 rpm and you redline it for a while and it self-destructs, you don't turn around then and say, "well, that wasn't the driver's fault, that was completely the engine's fault." Aaron made the sad decision to take his own life. Ultimately, yes, he made that decision and nobody else did. But that doesn't mean that there isn't some responsibility to go 'round. He made that decision because of the future he believed he was facing, because of the situation he believed he was in. Also, the entire point of this article was that MIT did have at least one good reason to defend Aaron: self-interest. He was as much a symbol of what people believed was a hacker ethos at MIT as anyone else of his generation. The message now is clear: hackers are not safe at MIT. "Just following the rules" has never been a socially acceptable defense for bad behavior. Sometimes the rules are wrong, and the wonderful thing about humans -- when they choose to be human -- is that we have the ability to judge a situation and decide when to bend or even break the rules.
  - watty 13y ago
    The "MIT defenders" in this thread aren't trying to say MIT played no part, because they did. So did the justice system, so did the computer cabinet owner, the person responsible for locking it, his close friends to urged him to continue, etc. The problem is that people are placing BLAME on MIT. MIT is not to blame for his suicide. Aaron took a risk and got caught. Aaron is the only person to blame.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >Suicide is completely a personal choice. There's no such thing as a "completely personal choice". In fact the whole notion of a "completely personal choice" is ludicrous, bordering on the metaphysical. There is an outside world, a reality, and things that happen there influce our actions, including any decision to commit suicide.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- jezfromfuture 13y ago
  Agreed , finally a post not blaming others for the individual choice of one man.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
puppetmaster3 13y ago
What would be a less strict university in USA, more libertarian, less police state if you would?
- rayiner 13y ago
  What's more libertarian than calling the police when someone misuses and infringes on your property?
  - dreamdu5t 13y ago
    Libertarians (at least consistent ones) call out intellectual property for what it is: government monopoly. In libertopia... Aaron would only face life in prison if he entered into a contract with MIT agreeing to life in prison for accessing the systems in the way he did. In libertopia... you cannot consent to terms you cannot negotiate (IE accessing a website does not magically enter you into some agreement).
    - rayiner 13y ago
      First, all property is a government monopoly, unless you're one of those religious libertarians that believe God created rights in real and chattel property. But I meet lots of libertarians that reject the idea that adultery should be illegal, so maybe there's some other holy book they follow. Second, the root of the CFAA charge wasn't intellectual property, but physical property: MIT's network. Libertarians certainly do recognize non-contractual violations of property rights, i.e. various incarnations of trespass.
      - betterunix 13y ago
        The CFAA charges were dubious at best, and were only pursued because the copyright charges were looking pretty shaky. The prosecutor also tacked additional charges on when Aaron decided to exercise his civil rights. I do not know many libertarians who support that kind of abuse of prosecutor power.
Smerity 13y ago
I'm still more disturbed by the laws in play. Aaron was facing a cumulative maximum penalty of 35 years in prison. The roommates of one of the Boston bombers was only facing 25 years in prison[1] if found guilty of helping Dzhokhar Tsarnaev dispose of a laptop, fireworks, and a backpack in the aftermath of the bombings. I understand it's not a straight comparison, but no matter how I try to re-arrange those numbers in my head, I can't reconcile the impact to punishment. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombings#Dias_Kadyrbayev.2C_Azamat_Tazhayakov_and_Robel_Phillipos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombings#Dias_K...
- betterunix 13y ago
  Well now, the Boston bombers only killed three people -- bad, but you know, not that bad. Aaron was going to freely distribute knowledge to people, threatening a centuries-old business model and potentially allowing undeserving people to learn something. Worse, Aaron had already freely shared legal documents on the Internet, and had the nerve to stand up for himself and not be thrown in jail for it. Obviously Aaron was doing something far more dangerous and destructive to our country than aiding a terrorist.
  - herbig 13y ago
    It's money, power, and ego over individual humans lives. Yesterday's top post on HN was "Burn the Fucking System to the Ground."
  - bananacurve 13y ago
    >Well now, the Boston bombers only killed three people -- bad, but you know, not that bad. That is cruel to the hundreds injured. Try harder to not be a jackass.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      I think you might have missed the sarcasm in that sentence, and maybe in the rest of my post. Try harder to understand the things you read before commenting on them.
rodrodrod 13y ago
What were MIT's obligations to Aaron? While there is a whole lot that MIT could've done to help Aaron (even if only just taking the JSTOR route and stating they were backing off entirely) and that would've been commendable, I don't really see why MIT had an obligation to help Aaron, so I have a hard time holding MIT morally culpable. If anything, I'd think screwed up laws and an overzealous prosecution are the real issue here, and I'm not sure what pointing fingers at MIT accomplishes.
- pdonis 13y ago
  I don't really see why MIT had an obligation to help Aaron The Abelson report's take on this (with which I basically agree) is that, while MIT perhaps had no "obligation", it certainly missed an opportunity to use its position to educate the US government about a technical area in which the government is, to put it bluntly, clueless.
- shawn-butler 13y ago
  http://web.mit.edu/mission.html http://web.mit.edu/mission.html Now consider that someone using your open network in order to access a corpus of public-funded scientific literature with the intent to analyze and publish findings about any fraud that lexical analysis revealed. Does that fit the mission statement or not? I am deeply saddened by the whole affair and the extent it reveals about how much the institute has changed from a place of learning, innovation, and challenging yourself and others into basically a government-funded R&D lab run by administrators and lawyers. Determining whether this is the kind of place the faculty, staff and students of MIT actually wants it to be is what "pointing fingers" accomplishes. It seems to me after reading the report that it was seen as a potential attack on the government's interest in the IP on MIT's network and that was the cause of the ham-fisted response.
suprgeek 13y ago
MIT Played a key role in Aaron's Death: http://gothamist.com/2013/01/15/aaron_swartzs_lawyer_mit_refused_pl.php http://gothamist.com/2013/01/15/aaron_swartzs_lawyer_mit_ref... They refused to sign-off on any deal that did not involve Jail time. This was THE one point that weighed more on his mind than any else per the recorded statements of his partner. MIT's pig-headedness in this aspect really destroyed any respect I had for that institution. JSTOR made a much more reasoned statement http://docs.jstor.org/summary.html http://docs.jstor.org/summary.html - Clearly indicating that they had NO INTEREST in any further prosecution (since they were the primary wronged party).
- inspectahdeck 13y ago
  "MIT was never involved in any plea negotiation, and was never asked by either the prosecution or the defense to approve or disapprove any plea agreement" http://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pdf http://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pd... II.B.3, last sentence. Read the whole section for a summary of that event.
  - ScottBurson 13y ago
    Here's more detail, from III.A.2 (top of p. 52): During the June 21 conversation, the lead prosecutor also told OGC [the MIT Office of General Counsel] that, essentially, his work was done, that the final decision about the prosecution was now in the hands of his supervisors, and that a decision would be made soon. The OGC attorney took the opportunity to suggest that some people at MIT would be likely to view the prosecution negatively. The lead prosecutor replied that he understood the complex dynamics at MIT. He said that he had also been in touch with JSTOR and understood their perspective, and had taken both into account in moving forward with the prosecution and he would let MIT know when the indictment came down. From this, OGC inferred that further presentations of MIT’s opinions were unlikely to have an effect on the prosecution: the views of both potential victims had already been taken into account. JSTOR (at that point) was regarded as the primary victim, and if JSTOR’s view didn’t have an impact, then neither would MIT’s view.
    - 13y ago
xacaxulu 13y ago
Bostonian of the Year!! This makes me profoundly sick. "United States Attorney Carmen Ortiz, in the midst of a prosecutorial tear that would lead the Globe to name her 2011’s Bostonian of the Year, held up Aaron’s indictment as a warning to hackers everywhere."
- shawn-butler 13y ago
  "Section 11H. Whenever any person or persons, whether or not acting under color of law, interfere by threats, intimidation or coercion, or attempt to interfere by threats, intimidation or coercion, with the exercise or enjoyment by any other person or persons of rights secured by the constitution or laws of the United States, or of rights secured by the constitution or laws of the commonwealth, the attorney general may bring a civil action for injunctive or other appropriate equitable relief in order to protect the peaceable exercise or enjoyment of the right or rights secured. Said civil action shall be brought in the name of the commonwealth and shall be instituted either in the superior court for the county in which the conduct complained of occurred or in the superior court for the county in which the person whose conduct complained of resides or has his principal place of business." https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleII/Chapter12/Section11H https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleII/Cha...
freejack 13y ago
What makes me absolutely, terribly sick is the extent to which the USG waves its hands to dismiss the seriousness of the extent and reach of the NSA's domestic data gathering activities and at the same time deciding that Swartz's data gathering was worth going to the mat over.
- mpyne 13y ago
  The USG also claims it's wrong for people to shoot each other all while maintaining an army of hundreds of thousands of people empowered to do exactly that, and worse, in the right situations.
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    When "we" decided to grant the government a monopoly on violence, there was nothing in the contract about letting them hack and sabotage American computer systems or commit other crimes at will.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      Has NSA sabotaged American computer systems? Most IP 'pirates' seem quite willing to claim that copying data is not at all destructive, and the NSA can make similar claims. But either way, "we" also didn't put anything in our "contract" that let them make nuclear weapons, air forces, computer inter-networks, or social security/welfare programs.
      - idle_processor 13y ago
        Do you not consider this[0] evidence of them sabotaging cryptography systems? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6944118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6944118
        mpyne 13y ago
        In the context of NSA specifically, not really; the algorithm is meant to be secure for all uses except against NSA. I've noted before that I disagree with NSA's actions here but this isn't a case of them shipping crypto with a backdoor that anyone could target (contrary to the claim of the top comment from your link, only NSA could break the crypto in Dual EC DRBG).
1stop 13y ago
MIT clearly did something wrong here... The Secret Service seemed to get involved by accident, due to the fact MIT do a lot of "Super secret stuff, that China want". MIT should have immediately moved to limit how seriously this was taken, when they understood who was perpetrating it (and why). Kind of like if a kid accidentally (because he didn't know it was one) spray pants the side of nuclear missile silo, we would treat them differently to someone trying to sabotage a nuclear missile silo (I hope!) The article hinted at the fact MIT ran an "Open network" which ran counter to the charge of "unauthorised access". MIT should have commented on that in their report. MIT worked with the prosecution to help build there case, that's fine, but talk about "neutrality" as that clearly isn't. Anyone arguing that MIT didn't do anything wrong, I would say, just isn't rational. But we still haven't gotten causation (Are they to blame for Aaron's death?). There is always some people who say that suicide is only the victims fault, no one else. But do you apply that to people being tortured? Or people with no hope to live out their life as they thought they would. Was it the jews fault for committing suicide rather than face the camps? Now applying that extreme analogy to the US legal system, and in particular, the plea bargain system... isn't it the same dynamic? They want to make the proposed outcome so bad that you take an easy way out. In the process they destroyed parts of your life (in Aaron's case it was his friendships, girlfriend, family, wealth). Thus, aiding this system (the prosecutor) (as MIT did) certainly deserves some of the blame, no?
- pdonis 13y ago
  MIT should have commented on that in their report. Do you mean the Abelson report? That was published after the fact. (And it does address the issue you mention.)
marincounty 13y ago
It's just a sad story. I do know one thing, don't tell your significant other, or anyone else Anything-- "Instead, he grilled her until he had what he needed: Norton mentioned that Aaron had coauthored the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto " I am on the end of a civil suit. It's nothing big, but I have never felt so helpless. I can't imagine what Aaron was feeling. I don't know if MIT was complicit, but a few things suprised me--50k charge to public libraries.
inspectahdeck 13y ago
MIT's report on their involvement in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz: http://swartz-report.mit.edu/ http://swartz-report.mit.edu/
abvdasker 13y ago
What's clear is that the prosecution only got out of control once it got into the hands of the federal government, at which point Ortiz and Heymann threw the book at Swartz when he wouldn't take a plea deal. Swartz's death was the result of institutional failure. The criminal justice system and more broadly the US government are very sick institutions if their standard operating procedures can result in a tragedy like this.
noonespecial 13y ago
I wouldn't call MIT "responsible" as that would open the door to a world of "look what you made me do" thinking. It is sad that MIT had a chance to be differnet than the paranoid schizophrenic mess that the US security apparatus has become and reaffirm themselves as champions of free thought and somewhat rebellious free thinking. They chose to do the opposite. That is very sad indeed.
sjg007 13y ago
Universities are supposed to protect our youth and foster freedom and free academic exchange. Shame on MIT.
bumbledraven 13y ago
[U.S. Attorney Stephen] Heymann subpoenaed Aaron’s girlfriend, Quinn Norton, to give grand jury testimony. That was bad enough, but even before the jury convened, Norton agreed to meet with Heymann—against Aaron’s pleas. Norton would say later that she thought she could talk Heymann into dropping the prosecution. Instead, he grilled her until he had what he needed: Norton mentioned that Aaron had coauthored the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto (remarkably, the prosecution had failed to read through the blog posts of the Internet activist they had intended to charge). For Heymann, this was a key piece of evidence: It established a motive. I never realized Norton agreed to talk with the prosecution against Aaron's wishes.
codecrusade 13y ago
Whats disturbing is that law turned a blind eye to one of America's most promising young men- And No One- No One cared to do a thing about this. History will remember this as a shameful moment when the deprived world lost a messiah when the rich and influential were busy playing poker
tzs 13y ago
Several comments have talked about 35 year or longer potential sentences. Those big numbers come from simply taking the maximum possible sentence that can ever be given out for each charge, and adding them all up. There are two things that make that unrealistic in most cases. First, the defendant is almost always charged with several similar or related crimes that have mostly the same elements. If convicted on more than one charge from such a group, they are only sentenced for one of the convictions. Second, the sentence takes into account the severity of the particular acts that constitute the crime, and the prior criminal record of the defendant. To get the maximum possible sentence you'd need to have gone way beyond what ordinary violators of that particular law usually do, and you'd have to have a serious criminal history. What Swartz was actually facing if he want to trial and was convicted was something ranging from probation to a few years, depending on just how much damage the court decided he caused. If he took the plea the prosecutor was offering, he was facing up to 6 months. Details with citations on the above are available at [1] and [2]. In the dozens of discussions of the Swartz case we've had in the last year here, the 35 year or 50 year myth has been repeatedly busted. Yet it keeps coming up in each new discussion--often from people who were in some of the previous discussions! Why is it so persistent? [1] http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ [2] http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aaron-swartz-part-2-prosecutorial-discretion/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains...
- onli 13y ago
  Because you are wrong. It doesn't matter whether the chance to get such a high sentence was a realistic one, it is about the fact that there was a time when Aaron was facing such a long time in prison, that he couldn't know for sure it would not happen. From the article: Aaron was charged with wire fraud, computer fraud, and “unlawfully obtaining information from” and “recklessly damaging” a “protected computer.” There would be 13 felony counts in all. At the time of the indictment, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said he could face 35 years in prison.
  - watty 13y ago
    Please stop belittling Aaron's intelligence. I know many people on HN feel like they have to defend Aaron's life and want to find someone to blame but he's not an idiot. He knew as well as anyone that actual jailtime would be very minimal. He had lawyers and a brain (a smart one). So claiming that he killed himself over a number that wasn't even a possibility is damaging to his image. To me it seems like a bright man got caught doing something illegal and couldn't face the music.
epipsychidion 13y ago
Quinn Norton proving one again that you should never talk to the authorities. Especially not without a lawyer.
- justin66 13y ago
  This article she wrote for The Atlantic gives some idea of the sort of legal representation she was getting: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/life-inside-the-aaron-swartz-investigation/273654/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/life-i...
cowmix 13y ago
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-02/hsbc-judge-approves-1-9b-drug-money-laundering-accord.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-02/hsbc-judge-approves... Zero jail time.
DonGateley 13y ago
Frankly, my main takeaway with respect to Aaron Swartz was his willingness to terribly damage the people close to him. Could he have had insufficient self esteem to understand that consequence? Because if the answer to that is no, his behavior becomes sociopathic and all the blame that is being thrown around is misdirected.
esbranson 13y ago
> They watched via video feed as their suspect removed the laptop, this time with a bike helmet obscuring his face. Aaron Swartz did not attempt to obscure his face. The DOJ just chose a screenshot of when the helmet happened to pass over his face, making it falsely appear as though he was. That's malicious on the part of the DOJ, and that's slanderous and sloppy journalism on the part of Janelle Nanos and Boston magazine. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/swartz-video/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/swartz-video/

366 points by cjbprime 13y ago

vex 13y ago

Suicide is completely a personal choice. MIT had no reason to try and defend an outsider who hijacked part of their network, and trying to make them seem like they caused him to hang himself smacks of tunnel vision. It's a natural response to a suicide; we try and search for something to blame. But unless you argue that MIT should have known Aaron was mentally unstable, saying MIT "caused" him to kill himself is illogical. People who commit suicide may desire to because of what they feel about their lives, but the final decision is one's own. It's sad that it takes a death to bring attention to the IP issues that Aaron's trial had raised.

mentalhealth 13y ago
A desire to kill oneself is a diagnosis of mental instability.
- bradleydwyer 13y ago
  I'm genuinely curious, is that a widely accepted position on suicide and mental stability? I can think of a number of situations where suicide might be preferable to continued existence.
  - cjbprime 13y ago
    I think it may be widely accepted, but I also think it's nonsense. As you allude to, someone with a terminal and painful disease could have an entirely rational desire to commit suicide based on a sensible projection of the future as containing a persistent unacceptable level of suffering. I think we should only invoke "mental instability" when someone's projection of their future level of suffering is clearly mistaken.
    - mentalhealth 13y ago
      I think it's theoretically possible for someone to arrive at the decision to end their own life via careful evaluation, but it's quite unlikely (and at this point, the only real acknowledgement of it in the psychiatric field is in the case of terminally ill patients, when the calculus is pretty clear). Regardless, the vast majority of suicides are the result of a combination of depression and loss of inhibition, both of which are psychiatric symptoms that can be brought on or exacerbated by severe stress. The assumption can and should be that this is the case, not that an individual who was self-admittedly under huge amounts of personal stress performed a rational evaluation of their own future prospects in life and determined that it wasn't worth living.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    Suicidal thinking is almost always a mental health problem or the result of a mental health problem. You say that there are some situations where suicide is a rational choice. But even in these cases it's not that clear. While I respect the right to chose death, and support changing of law to allow people to seek medically assisted suicide, I am worried that people with undiagnosed depression who would respond to treatment are allowed to die.
- PhasmaFelis 13y ago
  user: mentalhealth created: 17 minutes ago You're really not a very good troll.
  - mentalhealth 13y ago
    I learned quite a long time ago that realistic discussion of mental health as it actually affects real people generally results in a lot of negative votes here on HN. But please, continue to dismiss my argument by attacking me and not the statement I made. More par for the course hereabouts.
    - crag 13y ago
      "...it actually affects real people generally results in a lot of negative votes here on HN." Then don't comment if you're so afraid of your rep. I mean, what's the point of this site? To me, it's to exchange various thoughts/ideas related to tech and otherwise. Creating a new account to comment cause your afraid of being down-voted is cowardly. And insulting, frankly.
      - mentalhealth 13y ago
        It's not about the rep score, it's about people looking through my post history, determining where I work, and trolling me via my employer (this happened). Let's get back on topic, shall we?
    - Moocat87 13y ago
      I think you'll find that almost everywhere on the Internet, and most places in meatspace too... :(
    - BlackDeath3 13y ago
      I think the problem here is that you didn't really make an argument. You made an unsubstantiated claim (and misused "diagnosis" while at it) and just sort of left it there.
      - 13y ago
- chmike 13y ago
  This is a blunt claim I can't agree with. You totally ignore the context. I know a man who suicide himeself because he was about to lose a trial and it would mean he would have lost his house to pay the huge fine. He was old and to save his wife and child of this misery he commited suicide. From his perspective it was a rational decision because he didn't see any better one. There is absolutely not mental instability in play here. My feeling is that most people who commit suicide do it because they decided it on a rational basis. Some people commit suicide because they want to stop a pain they feel and in their view will apparently last forever or will get worse. I.e cancer, someone has to spend the rest of his life in a bed after an accident ... People can also commit suicide as a sacrifice to save others. But I guess you were not talking of these types of suicide. Suicide due to mental instability is probably just a small fraction of all suicide. Your claim is typical from someone who didn't took the time and made the effort to understand what can lead someone fully rational to suicide. A rational thinking compares the cost and benefit of dying or living. According to some context a perfectly sain person may rationnaly conclude that commiting suicide is the best choice. The rational thinking they had from their perspective and knowledge may have been wrong, but this is not to be confused with mental instability.
  - Moocat87 13y ago
    >My feeling is that most people who commit suicide do it because they decided it on a rational basis. Some people commit suicide because they want to stop a pain they feel and in their view will apparently last forever or will get worse. I.e cancer, someone has to spend the rest of his life in a bed after an accident ... People can also commit suicide as a sacrifice to save others. But I guess you were not talking of these types of suicide. You think that more people commit suicide for others than for themselves? Care to explain why or cite anything? >Suicide due to mental instability is probably just a small fraction of all suicide. Cite?
    - chmike 13y ago
      No. I don't think that and I didn't said that. Cite? Just found this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide. From the graphic shown on the page, not all suicide are caused by mental illness. That was my main point. I have some doubts about the mental illness importance shown in this graph. Anyway, the mental illness could be the source of pain leading to the rational decision to end it by suicide.
- andreasvc 13y ago
  You may want to look up the difference between a symptom and a diagnosis. I am also curious about the argument you want to make, because your comment is just a proposition without motivation.
herbig 13y ago
I think it's much more complicated than that. I wouldn't say it "caused" him to commit suicide, so much as greatly contributed. If the punishment vastly outweighs the crime, to the extent that one's mental health is impacted, can he be completely to blame for that?
betterunix 13y ago
MIT did not on its own "cause" Aaron to commit suicide, but MIT certainly did play a role in the events that led up to the suicide. Perhaps MIT had no reason to defend Aaron, but what reason did they have to help the prosecution -- why did MIT turn over information without being subpoenaed for it? MIT deserves its share of the blame.
- ericcumbee 13y ago
  if someone broke into my Network Closet, I would not need a subpoena.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    OK, then you would receive your share of the blame if that person killed themselves after being hounded by the prosecutors you aided.
    - res0nat0r 13y ago
      So the US should stop prosecuting crimes if there is a worry that person might be mentally unstable?
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        If you are the aggrieved party, and the punishment the law is meting out is ridiculously out of proportion to the harm done to you, you have some responsibility to speak up.
      - betterunix 13y ago
        No, but the US absolutely should stop using plea-bargaining as a way to bully people into not going to trial, and then retaliating against people who dare to exercise their right to a trial by adding additional charges against them after plea bargaining. While we are at it, we should reign in the cost of actually exercising the right to a trial -- Aaron lost his fortune defending himself from the government, which is more than most Americans could hope to do. See, the problem here is that we are talking about giving aid to overly aggressive prosecutors, whose entire careers are devoted to undermining civil rights and destroying their targets. If that is the sort of prosecution you are aiding, yes, you should share in the blame for what happens to the prosecutor's victims.
afatc 13y ago
Well, they certainly did not help to prevent the ridiculous prosecution being made
- git-pull 13y ago
  I am curious, what was wrong with the criminal charges against Swartz? Can someone clarify how the prosecutor handled things wrong?
  - dreamdu5t 13y ago
    Nothing. It's exactly how the US works and our legal system is constructed. Until pleas and plea bargaining are (rightfully) considered duress/forced confessions, piling on charges to force a plea is commonplace, and will continue to be commonplace.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    The prosecutor had to dig around to even find a crime with which to charge Aaron. JSTOR, the so-called victim, did not even want to see the prosecution move forward and had to be subpoenaed for evidence against Aaron, with whom they had already settled matters. The prosecutor's case was based on an extremely expansive interpretation of the law, and additional charges were added in retaliation for Aaron's decision to actually exercise his right to a trial. Basically, this case embodied almost everything that is wrong with the criminal justice system in America.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    The charges themselves are based on law that is rather too harsh in many people's opinion, given the scope and effect of the "crime" itself. E.g. there's no reason that this should have been a felony, but the option of pleading to something that was a misdemeanor wasn't even available to Aaron here because of the way the law is constructed. However given the law and the way the legal system works the prosecutor was certainly treating this just like any other CFAA case.
PhasmaFelis 13y ago
Oh, poor MIT, all they did was actively help the guy who wanted Aaron thrown in prison for three and half decades* while pretending to be neutral. Any of us might have done the same, right? Totally innocent! Like "a rape victim," to use Heymann's own words. If you punch a stranger in the face, you probably don't expect him to fall, crack his head on the corner of a table, and die; but you don't get to claim you're blameless if that happens, either. * This is the bit where someone says that Heymann didn't really want to lock Aaron up 'til 2045, he just said that to scare him. Where I come from, "but I was lying" isn't considered much of a defense either.
- tomphoolery 13y ago
  It was Aaron's choice to kill himself. He wasn't a victim of anything but his own mind.
  - marincounty 13y ago
    I can guarantee by your quip; you have never dealt with our legal system.
    - benologist 13y ago
      If it wasn't the legal system it would have been literally any other reason, big or small, that Aaron felt was terminally wrong with his life.
      - icelancer 13y ago
        This is incredibly insulting. How could you possibly know this?
        benologist 13y ago
        Because depressed, suicidal people kill themselves, usually when they're not facing prison? In 2007 Schwartz posted what was believed to be a suicide note after being fired from reddit: http://digitaljournal.com/article/341150 http://digitaljournal.com/article/341150
Zigurd 13y ago
MIT leadership had a duty to act reasonably, and they didn't. MIT's position should have been that, at most, this amounted to trespassing and matter for the Cambridge PD. Aaron Swartz was no threat to MIT's network. They might not have prevented subsequent events, but they failed, horribly, by not speaking up for a reasonable outcome. MIT's IS&T office had a knee jerk security-oriented reaction, and was over impressed with interacting with Steven Heymann, who is a fixture at the sort of conferences where Swartz's "crime" is inflated out of proportion. It's not OK that Heymann, Ortiz, and MIT's personnel who overcooked this case contributed to the death of Aaron Swartz. And it's not OK they got away with it so far.
- arabellatv 13y ago
  Yes. I agree. What were MIT's and Heymann's true motivations for blowing it up to a security issue? Did they act out of fear or out of ego? Regardless, they exacerbated the issue (just as media sensationalizes stories). It's upsetting that such intelligent people would fail to think through the situation. Or even worse...they did think it through and planned to blow this up as big as possible to prove a point or make an example out of Swartz?
  - danielweber 13y ago
    It was a security issue because some guy kept on breaking into their network and had escalated to physical intrusion to achieve his goals. They didn't know the guy was Aaron Swartz and that they ought to have been privileged to have him on their network, invited or not.
    - sigzero 13y ago
      I am taking the second sentence as sarcasm.
      - walid 13y ago
        Why are you taking it as sarcasm? MIT didn't know it was him until they installed a camera and guest logins are the norm and apparently/reportedly have high privileges.
nilved 13y ago
MIT killed Aaron. I don't even use their public key database anymore.
sitkack 13y ago
You say so many words Hiding behind that fact that you are a
meritt 13y ago
He was facing 35+ years of prison. Suicide -- while I agree is a personal choice -- it's not exactly an unreasonable decision given the outlandish sentence.
- fastball 13y ago
  Suicide is always an unreasonable decision, unless you face something which is literally worse than death. A lifetime in prison is not worse than death. At least you can still talk to your family. You can acquire new skills. There is the chance you get paroled early. Etc, etc.
  - meritt 13y ago
    I disagree. That's your opinion. Why is it that people can come to the conclusion of "I'd rather see him rot to death in a jail cell than the benefit of a quick death". This line of thinking views death as a lighter punishment when contrasted against a lifetime in prison. Yet when the tables are turned suddenly suicide is viewed with such disdain? I'm not advocating suicide or anything, I'm just arguing that when faced with an immensely harsh sentence, it's not a surprising decision to reach.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - PhasmaFelis 13y ago
    > A lifetime in prison is not worse than death. The fuck it isn't. Or, more civilly, that is definitely a statement on which reasonable people may disagree. I'm not particularly depressed, but if I were actually sentenced to life in prison, I would check out in a hot second. There's no point. My opportunities to create joy in the world and to experience unalloyed happiness are done. The rest of my life would be nothing but marking the days and the years until death. It's a waste of good consciousness. I'm opposed to capital punishment because it's irreversible, but I do believe that death is more merciful than life in prison.
    - fastball 13y ago
thaumaturgy 13y ago
I think I can speak a little bit on the subject of suicide, since both of my parents have made suicide attempts recently, and since I also struggle with depression and, although I'm currently too stubborn to seriously consider something like suicide, I can tell you it does seem to be an attractive option some days. Suicide is not completely a personal choice. Part of it is a problem with mental wiring, yes, but a significant part of it is also environmental. Suicide is far more prevalent among people who view themselves to be in hopeless situations, whether financial or otherwise. I hate to resort to analogy, since everyone always then argues the analogy instead of the subject it's trying to describe, but if you have an engine that redlines at 5,000 rpm and you redline it for a while and it self-destructs, you don't turn around then and say, "well, that wasn't the driver's fault, that was completely the engine's fault." Aaron made the sad decision to take his own life. Ultimately, yes, he made that decision and nobody else did. But that doesn't mean that there isn't some responsibility to go 'round. He made that decision because of the future he believed he was facing, because of the situation he believed he was in. Also, the entire point of this article was that MIT did have at least one good reason to defend Aaron: self-interest. He was as much a symbol of what people believed was a hacker ethos at MIT as anyone else of his generation. The message now is clear: hackers are not safe at MIT. "Just following the rules" has never been a socially acceptable defense for bad behavior. Sometimes the rules are wrong, and the wonderful thing about humans -- when they choose to be human -- is that we have the ability to judge a situation and decide when to bend or even break the rules.
- watty 13y ago
  The "MIT defenders" in this thread aren't trying to say MIT played no part, because they did. So did the justice system, so did the computer cabinet owner, the person responsible for locking it, his close friends to urged him to continue, etc. The problem is that people are placing BLAME on MIT. MIT is not to blame for his suicide. Aaron took a risk and got caught. Aaron is the only person to blame.
coldtea 13y ago
>Suicide is completely a personal choice. There's no such thing as a "completely personal choice". In fact the whole notion of a "completely personal choice" is ludicrous, bordering on the metaphysical. There is an outside world, a reality, and things that happen there influce our actions, including any decision to commit suicide.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
jezfromfuture 13y ago
Agreed , finally a post not blaming others for the individual choice of one man.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

puppetmaster3 13y ago

What would be a less strict university in USA, more libertarian, less police state if you would?

rayiner 13y ago
What's more libertarian than calling the police when someone misuses and infringes on your property?
- dreamdu5t 13y ago
  Libertarians (at least consistent ones) call out intellectual property for what it is: government monopoly. In libertopia... Aaron would only face life in prison if he entered into a contract with MIT agreeing to life in prison for accessing the systems in the way he did. In libertopia... you cannot consent to terms you cannot negotiate (IE accessing a website does not magically enter you into some agreement).
  - rayiner 13y ago
    First, all property is a government monopoly, unless you're one of those religious libertarians that believe God created rights in real and chattel property. But I meet lots of libertarians that reject the idea that adultery should be illegal, so maybe there's some other holy book they follow. Second, the root of the CFAA charge wasn't intellectual property, but physical property: MIT's network. Libertarians certainly do recognize non-contractual violations of property rights, i.e. various incarnations of trespass.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      The CFAA charges were dubious at best, and were only pursued because the copyright charges were looking pretty shaky. The prosecutor also tacked additional charges on when Aaron decided to exercise his civil rights. I do not know many libertarians who support that kind of abuse of prosecutor power.

Smerity 13y ago

I'm still more disturbed by the laws in play. Aaron was facing a cumulative maximum penalty of 35 years in prison. The roommates of one of the Boston bombers was only facing 25 years in prison[1] if found guilty of helping Dzhokhar Tsarnaev dispose of a laptop, fireworks, and a backpack in the aftermath of the bombings. I understand it's not a straight comparison, but no matter how I try to re-arrange those numbers in my head, I can't reconcile the impact to punishment. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombings#Dias_Kadyrbayev.2C_Azamat_Tazhayakov_and_Robel_Phillipos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombings#Dias_K...

betterunix 13y ago
Well now, the Boston bombers only killed three people -- bad, but you know, not that bad. Aaron was going to freely distribute knowledge to people, threatening a centuries-old business model and potentially allowing undeserving people to learn something. Worse, Aaron had already freely shared legal documents on the Internet, and had the nerve to stand up for himself and not be thrown in jail for it. Obviously Aaron was doing something far more dangerous and destructive to our country than aiding a terrorist.
- herbig 13y ago
  It's money, power, and ego over individual humans lives. Yesterday's top post on HN was "Burn the Fucking System to the Ground."
- bananacurve 13y ago
  >Well now, the Boston bombers only killed three people -- bad, but you know, not that bad. That is cruel to the hundreds injured. Try harder to not be a jackass.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    I think you might have missed the sarcasm in that sentence, and maybe in the rest of my post. Try harder to understand the things you read before commenting on them.

rodrodrod 13y ago

What were MIT's obligations to Aaron? While there is a whole lot that MIT could've done to help Aaron (even if only just taking the JSTOR route and stating they were backing off entirely) and that would've been commendable, I don't really see why MIT had an obligation to help Aaron, so I have a hard time holding MIT morally culpable. If anything, I'd think screwed up laws and an overzealous prosecution are the real issue here, and I'm not sure what pointing fingers at MIT accomplishes.

pdonis 13y ago
I don't really see why MIT had an obligation to help Aaron The Abelson report's take on this (with which I basically agree) is that, while MIT perhaps had no "obligation", it certainly missed an opportunity to use its position to educate the US government about a technical area in which the government is, to put it bluntly, clueless.
shawn-butler 13y ago
http://web.mit.edu/mission.html http://web.mit.edu/mission.html Now consider that someone using your open network in order to access a corpus of public-funded scientific literature with the intent to analyze and publish findings about any fraud that lexical analysis revealed. Does that fit the mission statement or not? I am deeply saddened by the whole affair and the extent it reveals about how much the institute has changed from a place of learning, innovation, and challenging yourself and others into basically a government-funded R&D lab run by administrators and lawyers. Determining whether this is the kind of place the faculty, staff and students of MIT actually wants it to be is what "pointing fingers" accomplishes. It seems to me after reading the report that it was seen as a potential attack on the government's interest in the IP on MIT's network and that was the cause of the ham-fisted response.

suprgeek 13y ago

MIT Played a key role in Aaron's Death: http://gothamist.com/2013/01/15/aaron_swartzs_lawyer_mit_refused_pl.php http://gothamist.com/2013/01/15/aaron_swartzs_lawyer_mit_ref... They refused to sign-off on any deal that did not involve Jail time. This was THE one point that weighed more on his mind than any else per the recorded statements of his partner. MIT's pig-headedness in this aspect really destroyed any respect I had for that institution. JSTOR made a much more reasoned statement http://docs.jstor.org/summary.html http://docs.jstor.org/summary.html - Clearly indicating that they had NO INTEREST in any further prosecution (since they were the primary wronged party).

inspectahdeck 13y ago
"MIT was never involved in any plea negotiation, and was never asked by either the prosecution or the defense to approve or disapprove any plea agreement" http://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pdf http://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pd... II.B.3, last sentence. Read the whole section for a summary of that event.
- ScottBurson 13y ago
  Here's more detail, from III.A.2 (top of p. 52): During the June 21 conversation, the lead prosecutor also told OGC [the MIT Office of General Counsel] that, essentially, his work was done, that the final decision about the prosecution was now in the hands of his supervisors, and that a decision would be made soon. The OGC attorney took the opportunity to suggest that some people at MIT would be likely to view the prosecution negatively. The lead prosecutor replied that he understood the complex dynamics at MIT. He said that he had also been in touch with JSTOR and understood their perspective, and had taken both into account in moving forward with the prosecution and he would let MIT know when the indictment came down. From this, OGC inferred that further presentations of MIT’s opinions were unlikely to have an effect on the prosecution: the views of both potential victims had already been taken into account. JSTOR (at that point) was regarded as the primary victim, and if JSTOR’s view didn’t have an impact, then neither would MIT’s view.
  - 13y ago

xacaxulu 13y ago

Bostonian of the Year!! This makes me profoundly sick. "United States Attorney Carmen Ortiz, in the midst of a prosecutorial tear that would lead the Globe to name her 2011’s Bostonian of the Year, held up Aaron’s indictment as a warning to hackers everywhere."

shawn-butler 13y ago
"Section 11H. Whenever any person or persons, whether or not acting under color of law, interfere by threats, intimidation or coercion, or attempt to interfere by threats, intimidation or coercion, with the exercise or enjoyment by any other person or persons of rights secured by the constitution or laws of the United States, or of rights secured by the constitution or laws of the commonwealth, the attorney general may bring a civil action for injunctive or other appropriate equitable relief in order to protect the peaceable exercise or enjoyment of the right or rights secured. Said civil action shall be brought in the name of the commonwealth and shall be instituted either in the superior court for the county in which the conduct complained of occurred or in the superior court for the county in which the person whose conduct complained of resides or has his principal place of business." https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleII/Chapter12/Section11H https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleII/Cha...

freejack 13y ago

What makes me absolutely, terribly sick is the extent to which the USG waves its hands to dismiss the seriousness of the extent and reach of the NSA's domestic data gathering activities and at the same time deciding that Swartz's data gathering was worth going to the mat over.

mpyne 13y ago
The USG also claims it's wrong for people to shoot each other all while maintaining an army of hundreds of thousands of people empowered to do exactly that, and worse, in the right situations.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  When "we" decided to grant the government a monopoly on violence, there was nothing in the contract about letting them hack and sabotage American computer systems or commit other crimes at will.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Has NSA sabotaged American computer systems? Most IP 'pirates' seem quite willing to claim that copying data is not at all destructive, and the NSA can make similar claims. But either way, "we" also didn't put anything in our "contract" that let them make nuclear weapons, air forces, computer inter-networks, or social security/welfare programs.
    - idle_processor 13y ago
      Do you not consider this[0] evidence of them sabotaging cryptography systems? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6944118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6944118
      - mpyne 13y ago
        In the context of NSA specifically, not really; the algorithm is meant to be secure for all uses except against NSA. I've noted before that I disagree with NSA's actions here but this isn't a case of them shipping crypto with a backdoor that anyone could target (contrary to the claim of the top comment from your link, only NSA could break the crypto in Dual EC DRBG).

1stop 13y ago

MIT clearly did something wrong here... The Secret Service seemed to get involved by accident, due to the fact MIT do a lot of "Super secret stuff, that China want". MIT should have immediately moved to limit how seriously this was taken, when they understood who was perpetrating it (and why). Kind of like if a kid accidentally (because he didn't know it was one) spray pants the side of nuclear missile silo, we would treat them differently to someone trying to sabotage a nuclear missile silo (I hope!) The article hinted at the fact MIT ran an "Open network" which ran counter to the charge of "unauthorised access". MIT should have commented on that in their report. MIT worked with the prosecution to help build there case, that's fine, but talk about "neutrality" as that clearly isn't. Anyone arguing that MIT didn't do anything wrong, I would say, just isn't rational. But we still haven't gotten causation (Are they to blame for Aaron's death?). There is always some people who say that suicide is only the victims fault, no one else. But do you apply that to people being tortured? Or people with no hope to live out their life as they thought they would. Was it the jews fault for committing suicide rather than face the camps? Now applying that extreme analogy to the US legal system, and in particular, the plea bargain system... isn't it the same dynamic? They want to make the proposed outcome so bad that you take an easy way out. In the process they destroyed parts of your life (in Aaron's case it was his friendships, girlfriend, family, wealth). Thus, aiding this system (the prosecutor) (as MIT did) certainly deserves some of the blame, no?

pdonis 13y ago
MIT should have commented on that in their report. Do you mean the Abelson report? That was published after the fact. (And it does address the issue you mention.)

marincounty 13y ago

It's just a sad story. I do know one thing, don't tell your significant other, or anyone else Anything-- "Instead, he grilled her until he had what he needed: Norton mentioned that Aaron had coauthored the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto " I am on the end of a civil suit. It's nothing big, but I have never felt so helpless. I can't imagine what Aaron was feeling. I don't know if MIT was complicit, but a few things suprised me--50k charge to public libraries.

inspectahdeck 13y ago

MIT's report on their involvement in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz: http://swartz-report.mit.edu/ http://swartz-report.mit.edu/

abvdasker 13y ago

What's clear is that the prosecution only got out of control once it got into the hands of the federal government, at which point Ortiz and Heymann threw the book at Swartz when he wouldn't take a plea deal. Swartz's death was the result of institutional failure. The criminal justice system and more broadly the US government are very sick institutions if their standard operating procedures can result in a tragedy like this.

noonespecial 13y ago

I wouldn't call MIT "responsible" as that would open the door to a world of "look what you made me do" thinking. It is sad that MIT had a chance to be differnet than the paranoid schizophrenic mess that the US security apparatus has become and reaffirm themselves as champions of free thought and somewhat rebellious free thinking. They chose to do the opposite. That is very sad indeed.

sjg007 13y ago

Universities are supposed to protect our youth and foster freedom and free academic exchange. Shame on MIT.

bumbledraven 13y ago

[U.S. Attorney Stephen] Heymann subpoenaed Aaron’s girlfriend, Quinn Norton, to give grand jury testimony. That was bad enough, but even before the jury convened, Norton agreed to meet with Heymann—against Aaron’s pleas. Norton would say later that she thought she could talk Heymann into dropping the prosecution. Instead, he grilled her until he had what he needed: Norton mentioned that Aaron had coauthored the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto (remarkably, the prosecution had failed to read through the blog posts of the Internet activist they had intended to charge). For Heymann, this was a key piece of evidence: It established a motive. I never realized Norton agreed to talk with the prosecution against Aaron's wishes.

codecrusade 13y ago

Whats disturbing is that law turned a blind eye to one of America's most promising young men- And No One- No One cared to do a thing about this. History will remember this as a shameful moment when the deprived world lost a messiah when the rich and influential were busy playing poker

tzs 13y ago

Several comments have talked about 35 year or longer potential sentences. Those big numbers come from simply taking the maximum possible sentence that can ever be given out for each charge, and adding them all up. There are two things that make that unrealistic in most cases. First, the defendant is almost always charged with several similar or related crimes that have mostly the same elements. If convicted on more than one charge from such a group, they are only sentenced for one of the convictions. Second, the sentence takes into account the severity of the particular acts that constitute the crime, and the prior criminal record of the defendant. To get the maximum possible sentence you'd need to have gone way beyond what ordinary violators of that particular law usually do, and you'd have to have a serious criminal history. What Swartz was actually facing if he want to trial and was convicted was something ranging from probation to a few years, depending on just how much damage the court decided he caused. If he took the plea the prosecutor was offering, he was facing up to 6 months. Details with citations on the above are available at [1] and [2]. In the dozens of discussions of the Swartz case we've had in the last year here, the 35 year or 50 year myth has been repeatedly busted. Yet it keeps coming up in each new discussion--often from people who were in some of the previous discussions! Why is it so persistent? [1] http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/ [2] http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aaron-swartz-part-2-prosecutorial-discretion/ http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains...

onli 13y ago
Because you are wrong. It doesn't matter whether the chance to get such a high sentence was a realistic one, it is about the fact that there was a time when Aaron was facing such a long time in prison, that he couldn't know for sure it would not happen. From the article: Aaron was charged with wire fraud, computer fraud, and “unlawfully obtaining information from” and “recklessly damaging” a “protected computer.” There would be 13 felony counts in all. At the time of the indictment, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said he could face 35 years in prison.
- watty 13y ago
  Please stop belittling Aaron's intelligence. I know many people on HN feel like they have to defend Aaron's life and want to find someone to blame but he's not an idiot. He knew as well as anyone that actual jailtime would be very minimal. He had lawyers and a brain (a smart one). So claiming that he killed himself over a number that wasn't even a possibility is damaging to his image. To me it seems like a bright man got caught doing something illegal and couldn't face the music.

epipsychidion 13y ago

Quinn Norton proving one again that you should never talk to the authorities. Especially not without a lawyer.

justin66 13y ago
This article she wrote for The Atlantic gives some idea of the sort of legal representation she was getting: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/life-inside-the-aaron-swartz-investigation/273654/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/life-i...

cowmix 13y ago

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-02/hsbc-judge-approves-1-9b-drug-money-laundering-accord.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-02/hsbc-judge-approves... Zero jail time.

DonGateley 13y ago

Frankly, my main takeaway with respect to Aaron Swartz was his willingness to terribly damage the people close to him. Could he have had insufficient self esteem to understand that consequence? Because if the answer to that is no, his behavior becomes sociopathic and all the blame that is being thrown around is misdirected.

esbranson 13y ago

> They watched via video feed as their suspect removed the laptop, this time with a bike helmet obscuring his face. Aaron Swartz did not attempt to obscure his face. The DOJ just chose a screenshot of when the helmet happened to pass over his face, making it falsely appear as though he was. That's malicious on the part of the DOJ, and that's slanderous and sloppy journalism on the part of Janelle Nanos and Boston magazine. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/swartz-video/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/swartz-video/