these guys were corrupt officials engaging in, hacking, conspiracy (RICO laws), theft, destruction of evidence and probably blackmail and money laundering and tax evasion.
6 years.
schwartz was a political activist, these guys were just dirty special agents. thats how the book is thrown.
https://popehat.com/2015/10/08/bad-reporting-on-matthew-keys...
Popehat (a group blog run by geek lawyers) is really fantastic for getting into the nuts and bolts of criminal law, and I cannot recommend it to HN readers enough.
Given his abilities and renown he would find a job both despite and because of his would be conviction.
There are plenty of "security experts" that started as hackers/crackers and with time served on their records that don't have issue finding a job.
If you apply to Walmart with a record well GL, but in Tech hmm you've hacked into the DOD? well how about 6 figures + equity if you come work for us...
The guy was part of the RSS working group at what 14 and part of the RDF group at W3C at 15? If he would not have tragically ended his life he would've ended up working for Google or any other tech company he would choose to work for regardless of his conviction.
Even if that's true (for which no evidence is presented), the DEA agent, being a federal law enforcement professional, probably understands federal sentencing, so probably wouldn't be susceptible to threats that can only work on someone who doesn't understand that.
> His union lawyers or whatever made sure of it.
I am sure that any competent criminal defense lawyer makes both the theoretical maximum and the likely real sentences clear to their clients, yes. That's actually a good thing, I would say. Not, of course, that information on this is particularly hard to find even for reasonably intelligent laypersons with access to public information.
And no, Aaron was definitely not "threatened" with 50 years. Where are you getting that from?
Force faced a cumulative maximum sentence of sixty years and $750k in fines. He opted to plead guilty. There's no particular reason to believe the plea bargaining process was friendly. He got six years, and the prosecution argued for more.
While I agree with your sentiment, the problem is that Swartz faced charges up to 50 years, not that this crooked cop got convicted of 6.
Wishing this guy 50 years just because "that's what they threatened Aaron for" is the kind of attitude that is going to keep the US prison system as horrendously inhumane as it is today.
On the contrary, if we apply the law equally we might see some push for reform from current groups that consider themselves basically above the law.
Lying is a very questionable way to push your political agenda.
"he just downloaded medical journals from the campus networking closet" isn't very accurate either, he broke into a server cabinet and actively evaded security measures to download medical journals.
Keep in mind that he wasn't even ever sentenced, which makes him a REALLY shitty poster boy for US legal system abuses.
You'd expect for someone who is as ready to criticize the system as OP is to actually sort of understand what he's talking about.
Honestly, I'm just really pissed because statements like that are actually really harmful as they only work to divert attention from the real issues that need fixing. Some kid killing themselves because they were too scared to face court isn't an issue with the legal system, but with the (mental) healthcare system. (Note that at the time Swartz hadn't even been found guilty, much less sentenced.)
I don't think there were any media reports claiming that Swartz was likely to receive anything like the max sentence, only that it was the maximum allowed in the law.
Unsophisticated readers may have falsely concluded that Swartz was likely to receive that sentence, but that's not what any of the media reports I saw said.
> Remember that the 50 year figure was widely reported at the time, often by sources that seemed reliable.
None of the media reports I saw that presented the figure -- as an "up to" figure, invariably -- did so inaccurately, or claimed it was a likely sentence rather than the most extreme theoretically available for the offenses for which he was charged.