Hacker News Reader

Comment by kristenlee | Hacker News Reader

Aaron Swartz was mentally ill and committed suicide as a direct result of his mental illness. He comtemplated suicide in 2007 long before any of this DOJ stuff happened.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dying

Furthermore the "glorification" of his suicide is doing nothing more but encouraging other suicidal "hackers" to go over the edge so they have their "story" and inconsequential blog posts plastered all of Hacker News. The focus should be on figuring out a way to get mental health services to those who need it most. Not a witch hunt for every person who had something to do with Aaron's prosecution for crimes he knowingly committed.

View on HN

You're asking readers to grant you an awful lot of your assumptions. For example: "committed suicide as a direct result of his mental illness."

Neither you nor I know that. Suicide is often precipitated by stressful incidents. Is the mental illness the direct cause? What if the stress is the direct cause and the mental illness simply prevents the depressed person from handling it, much as AIDS damaging the immune system so that the victim is killed by some other illness? AIDS is the indirect cause.

The next thing that strikes my eye is "glorification of his suicide." Really? What have you read that suggests his suicide was glorious? I haven't read everything, but what I've seen glorifies his attempts to free information and laments his suicide and the years of his life that have been lost forever.

I'll pick once last thing. "Witch hunt" is an inappropriate metaphor. Witch hunts are McCarthy-esque persecutions of people for something that isn't actually wrong or illegal. For being "un-mutual." The arguments I've seen are that people have been doing something very wrong. If you don't think it's wrong, that's your business. But you can hardly argue that this is a persecution of people for doing little more than being different.

What crimes did Aaron commit? My understanding is that he was alleged to have committed crimes, but this has not been proven in court, so we don't know that he committed crimes, and if he did, we do not know that he did so knowingly.

The innuendo carefully stage-managed by those who stand to gain from a conviction seems persuasive, but people have seemed guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt in the past and have in time been discovered to be innocent.

And in this case, I am reminded of Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who knowingly broke Canada's anti-abortion laws of the day but was declared innocent by juries, leading to changes in the laws. Who knows what might have happened?

I don't know what might have happened. Do you?

> What crimes did Aaron commit? My understanding is that he was alleged to have committed crimes, but this has not been proven in court, so we don't know that he committed crimes, and if he did, we do not know that he did so knowingly

IF he did what is alleged, it is pretty hard to see how it could not be knowingly. He had access to JSTOR as part of his work at Harvard. If he didn't know what he was doing was violating the rules, he would have done it at Harvard. He would not have bought a new computer, went to MIT, used a fake name and email address to access the guest network, used MAC address spoofing and a second computer to evade MIT and JSTOR's attempts to stop him, or trespassed and connected his computer directly to the wired network to bypass the guest wireless network.

Here's the indictment: http://web.mit.edu/bitbucket/Swartz,%20Aaron%20Indictment.pd...

If I'm correct then the central assertion behind your comment is that in this case obfuscation of identity occurred because Aaron was aware he was performing some malicious activity and sought to distance himself from the "crime" in question. The problem with that is that it requires the following implicit leaps to be made;

Underlying Leap; People only obfuscate their identity whilst doing malicious activity.

Contextual Leap 1; Aaron was aware that what he was doing was a federal crime.

Contextual Leap 2; He hatched a plan to perform that activity in context of knowing that his actions were a criminal activity

Leap 1 is decidedly false as people obfuscate their identity for all sorts of reasons including anonymity. What if Aaron was simply trying to be anonymous?

Leap 2 and leap 3 follow on the basis of what was going on inside his mind, and that is something we are not aware of, so let's not comment.

That said, here's my counter to your assertions, if indeed Aaron was as brilliant as his track record suggests, then do you not think he would have hatched a better way to obfuscate his identity if he knew it would cost him his entire fortune and deprive him of his freedom? Do you not think that he would have come up with an alternate, more anonymous plan such as accessing JSTOR at another library under a fake ID? Or have the common sense to pay some homeless guy $100 to put the laptop in their instead of doing it himself?

Of course this assumes that intelligence in one specific field translates to better planning capabilities in other, that he had the will and the ability to do so. However it can be demonstrated, given his track record, this is not an unreasonable assumption to make and that he was indeed capable of such planning if he assigned importance to it.

My first instinct was to crack a joke along the following rough lines:

I like this idea of debating what we can infer beyond a reasonable doubt from the evidence. But just to be sure we're both playing the same game, let's agree on a common set of rules. I'll start by proposing that instead of judging who wins according to up- and downvotes from thousands of anonymous Hn readers, we pick twelve reasonable people to read the evidence and listen to our arguments We can appoint an experienced referee to keep us on track and instruct our panel of twelve. Your turns. What other rules should our game have?

Snark aside, I'm uncomfortable arguing someone's guilt in such an unstructured fashion. That's what our courts are for.

The witch hunt angle has been bothering me a lot, and should be ample evidence that the people of Hacker News are no better than the reactionaries of Reddit or even 4chan. No sooner had the man's death hit the news that people started foaming at the mouth, writing long manifestos and diatribes, and calling for the head of everyone and anyone related to the prosecution.

We are better than this.

Actually, evidently, no we're not. We will take a single piece of news, and then fly off the handle, careening into supposition after rumor, and proceed to label people whose actions (or inactions) are far from certain, with the most heinous crimes our society knows - up to and including murder.

We will take the news of one man's death and twist that into character attacks against people and groups we don't know, and make blanket statements galore: whether it's about the staff of MIT, all lawyers, all prosecutors, all investigators, all Federal employees, etc, ad nauseum.

We will write posts filled with hyperbole after hyperbole, followed by insinuations, emotion-appealing analogies, and mindless rhetoric.

So no, we are evidently just as knee-jerky reactionary as every other stupid online community.

But we should be better than this.

Say that to Aaron's family, who themselves blamed MIT and the prosecutors.

Families aren't unerring. Taking a person's family reaction as the ideal course of action post tragedy is a hornet's nest of problems.

Better in what way? Less caring? More apathetic?

I think we should have been better than this too... I think we should have been up in arms while Aaron was still alive. It was wrong then too, but easier to dismiss because it was someone else' fight.

I agree, and it's why I find the witch hunt angle all the more troubling. Half of the people making angry diatribes right now on HN couldn't write a cogent paragraph about the failings of the American prosecutorial system, two days ago.

And now they're busy tripping over each other with hyperbole-filled condemnations, and casting all members of the justice system as something subhuman.

And in all of this noise we've only heard a few whimpers about the systemic failings that have brought about this tragedy, with vastly more voices calling for specific heads to roll. This is a classic pitchfork-wielding mob - less concerned with the future prevention of the injustice, and much more concerned with blame and vengeance.

There is justice, and there is mob justice. HN has seen vastly more of the latter than the former in the past couple of days.

>There is justice, and there is mob justice.

Which one is this? http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/bla...

Coincidentally the Whitey's case was by the same Carmen Ortiz, according to news sources.

> And in all of this noise we've only heard a few whimpers about the systemic failings that have brought about this tragedy, with vastly more voices calling for specific heads to roll.

"Calling for specific heads" is a perfectly reasonable response to systemic failings. The system is fucked up and it's not even as if they can say "I was just doing my job". There is a large amount of discretion involved here. Even hypothetically conceding that some crime was committed and that this is just how the game is played to get people to plea doesn't justify ruining someone's life.

Hold these specific people accountable and the message will be sent that these tactics are no longer accepted. It's just a band-aid but it's a start.

Did you read the recent discussion of article Black and Whitey?

It's fun to be a contrarian, but try to find a sensible angle.

Don't despair; HN will return to its usual NorCal Celebrity News in several days.

There was plenty of outrage (and lack of it) on other sites (and I assume here too), when the charges were made known.

It's really hard to say if punishment fits the crime when the evidence isn't available (so we can't really say what the crimes were) and what the punishment is; we only know the statutory maximums. Without a trial, verdict and sentencing we don't what the punishment is aside from the conditions of release which I don't think were unreasonable http://ia600504.us.archive.org/29/items/gov.uscourts.mad.137... )

The sanest comment I've read regarding HN's reaction to this tragic story.

Anger is one stage many will go through in the process of coping with such an immense loss.

It may be irrational, but it's only human. Humans aren't logical all the time.

Furthermore, on HN at least, your "we" seems to actually be "a vocal minority of us", and by no means represents the pervasive sentiment. I think overall, we're angry at the machine, not the cogs in it. Certainly I am.

In time those of us who mourn Aaron's passing will hopefully channel that anger into productive change. But until then, judging a community's reasonableness in the wake of a tragedy like this is setting a really, really high bar. Emotions. We've all got 'em, even hackers.

Thanks for saying that.

That is a fine display of histrionics; but, the specifics of this case DO merit removing Ms. Ortiz and her assistant Mr. Heymann from office.

Those of us who were following the case before Aaron's tragic episode knew that a great injustice was being perpetrated, but that it could not realistically be undone until after the damage had happened.

Ms. Ortiz and Mr. Heymann should be held accountable for their decision to use charges far out of proportion to the damage done. And the correct way to hold them accountable is to remove them from an office they have proven themselves incapable of using appropriately. They do not deserve to have the full power of the law behind their petty vendettas.

A Federal District Attorney in this country, at this time, has almost no checks on her power to prosecute. Petitioning the Whitehouse and the congress to remove one who has clearly overstepped the bounds of propriety is the only recourse we have.

You should sign the petition, because it is the only way that Ms. Ortiz's power will even be questioned officially. Like most online petitions it will accomplish little without a sustained campaign from many directions.

I intended to up vote this (downvoted by accident as I am reading on my phone)

I up voted it to cancel your accidental down vote. I have never understood why HN does not let people change a mistaken vote.

Amen. Especially in a world with small touchscreens.

Stackoverflow comes close to the same thing, with big warnings if you change your vote that you can only do it once. Maybe it's to prevent us from saying "I liked your comment" and then realizing tomorrow you said something offensive and going back and downvoting all your comments out of spite.

I guess. Doesn't seem worth it, but it's the best I got.

If a great injustice really was being committed, the EFF and the ACLU would have fallen over themselves to represent Aaron pro bnono (for free). The fact they did not suggests otherwise.

New method for determining guilt:

  if (respectedOrganization(lawyer.getOrganization())) {
          return INNOCENT;
  } else {
          return GUILTY;
  }

So, EFF and ACLU defend you if you're not guilty and if they don't defend you you're guilty?

Do you realize that Aarons case had yet to go to trial? And that there is a good chance the EFF would have stepped in if it had? And that even if they didn't that would have said nothing about Aarons guilt or lack thereof?

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/farewell-aaron-swartz

Swartz's trial was scheduled, approaching rapidly, and he had already apparently spent an enormous amount of money on at least two different firms. The trial was not something hovering nebulously in the future; Swartz's need for assistance was immediate.

I don't believe EFF's involvement or lack thereof speaks in any way to Swartz's guilt. I would say that this is the kind of thing you'd hope EFF would be right in the middle of. Were they?

Not openly afaik, which probably translates into not at all. Maybe someone should go and ask them if they were and if not why not.

I offered to contribute to Aarons defense a while ago but he declined. That may have been because he knew that any help he needed was outside of my ability to render.

Be careful, you're associating yourself with a 'known troll'.

"Legal defense fund" is a fairly standard thing to have. And lawyers usually are happy to extend credit to people like Aaron and wait to be repaid later.

This doesn't eliminate the fact that trials are extremely expensive, guilty or innocent, but it slightly ameliorates it.

I think Lawrence Lessig knows a bit more about this, one line in his piece stuck out for me, it reads:

"yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense".

I'm not sure what the background on that line is but it definitely makes you curious.

That was a cryptic statement in the Lessig post.

We're Aarons assets frozen? Was he banned from Internet as a condition of bail?

If it was that simple, would Lessig have said so after the case became moot?

I'm confused about this too.

Either of "Aaron's lawyers were required to bill upfront" or "Aaron was not permitted to set up a legal defense fund" would be huge civil rights issues. A lot huger than the narrative of a out-of-control prosecutor out for Aaron's head.

Lessig really really needs to explain that sentence.

True or False: a federal prosecutor decided to charge Aaron Swartz with 35 years in federal prison for downloading pdfs from JSTOR [1].

True or False: Lawrence Lessig, Alex Stamos (an expert witness) and Swartz's own family said that the overzealous and vastly disproportionate prosecution was the principal factor in his suicide.

The real witch-hunt was led by Carmen Ortiz and Steve Heymann and ended in Swartz's death. Witches don't exist, and the evil hacker of their imagination did not exist. Your proposal to be "better than this" seems to mean remaining silent, averting our eyes, and pretending that this was some act of nature like a mudslide. As for whether we should have done something beforehand: how could we have? Lessig himself said that the government had effectively muzzled Swartz to prevent him from defending himself online or alerting others to the severity of his situation.

There were specific people here to blame. If you believe the US Attorney's charges were merited, that they should not face discipline, that seeing a sitting US prosecutor forced to resign would not have the requisite "deterrent effect", or that we should all remain silent and accept this -- just say so. Otherwise your critique is contentless, and a recommendation for Aaron's death to be meaningless.

[1] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us-gov...

EDIT:

  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5052033

  And a court would have no choice but to find him guilty, as 
  that is the purpose of the judiciary. A court cannot let 
  someone walk after a crime simply because the law itself is 
  unjust.

OK, pretty clear where you stand. You are not really arguing against "overreaction", you actually think he should have been found guilty. What you are not taking into account is the direct personal responsibility of the prosecutor for the disproportionality of the charges.

I believe this is a per se example of what potatolicious was referring to.

Lessig, Stamos, and Swartz are what is legally known as "biased" toward Aaron's case. Naturally, MIT, JSTOR, and various persons in the federal government have differing opinions.

Aaron wasn't the target of a witch hunt; that would imply that he wasn't guilty of anything. He was--he admits to what he did. His defense was an MLK/Ghandi defense (i.e., civil disobedience).

Lessig himself said that the government had effectively muzzled Swartz to prevent him from defending himself online or alerting others to the severity of his situation.

Which clearly isn't true, since HN, reddit, and the interweb in general has been discussing this case nearly non-stop since the charges were dropped.

that seeing a sitting US prosecutor forced to resign would not have the requisite "deterrent effect"

This is a fantasy, both in the likelihood of occuring and its desired effect. People outside of the tech world simply don't think that way.

  This is a fantasy, both in the likelihood of occuring

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-aaron-...

  Hacktivist's suicide intensifies criticism of U.S. attorney, MIT

  But his suicide by hanging Friday has also stoked a 
  politically malignant aftermath for the prosecutors 
  pursuing 13 felony charges against him in a trial that was 
  set to begin in a month. Some said his death could be a 
  watershed moment in the ongoing intellectual property 
  debate over the things people share and create, and how 
  they share and create them.

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/13/the-brilliant-mind-righteous-...

  You should know his death is a good reason to revisit the 
  1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the law under which he 
  was prosecuted, since it is far too broad, and to take a 
  hard look at Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, 
  whose office prosecuted Aaron with such recklessly 
  disproportionate vigor, and who is reportedly considering a 
  run for governor.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732458150457823...

  To some in the Internet community, it was a Robin Hood-like 
  stunt.Prosecutors disagreed and threatened to put him in 
  prison for more than three decades.

  Mr. Swartz's lawyer, Elliot Peters, first discussed a 
  possible plea bargain with Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen 
  Heymann last fall. In an interview Sunday, he said he was 
  told at the time that Mr. Swartz would need to plead guilty 
  to every count, and the government would insist on prison 
  time. Mr. Peters said he spoke to Mr. Heymann again last 
  Wednesday in another attempt to find a compromise. The 
  prosecutor, he said, didn't budge.

  Mr. Heymann didn't reply to requests for comment Sunday.

  The Massachusetts U.S. attorney's office declined to 
  comment Sunday, saying it wanted to respect the family's 
  privacy. But in a press release from July 2011 when the 
  charges in the case were announced, U.S. Attorney Carmen 
  Ortiz said, "Stealing is stealing, whether you use a 
  computer command or a crowbar."

No comment from Heymann. A "hard look" at Ortiz. Politically malignant aftermath. Doesn't sound good.

This is a CAT-4 shitstorm. Getting phone calls from the Wall Street Journal about why your aggressive prosecution caused the death of a young computer genius is not what Heymann and Ortiz signed up for. They were gunning for Bostonian of the Year, stuff like that. So already there is a deterrent effect. If and when the politicians get involved and call for an investigation into disproportionate sentencing, it will kick up to CAT-5. Moreover, there are 2300 articles like that on Google News now. Go check. The more calls for resignation, the more she becomes a public embarrassment to Obama, the more likely she is to be put on leave.

Now, pretty much everything else you've posted in these threads has been either trivially wrong ("federal prosecutors have no discretion") or a naked argument in favor of unlimited state power. But this is at least a prediction about a future outcome.

So let's make a bet. Prediction: Carmen Ortiz will be at a minimum put on administrative leave and will likely be forced to resign by the end of February. If I win, you never darken Hacker News' doorstep again. If you win, I in turn stop posting and you can push HN towards what appears to be your ideal venue: a space for lawyers rather than hackers, a space for people who sympathize with the federal prosecutor who hounded a hacker to his death.

Deal?

PS:

1) JSTOR is not on the same side as MIT. And MIT by their recent statement is not on the same side as the prosecutor.

2) Aaron never admitted guilt/plead guilty.

3) The charges weren't "dropped", they were rendered moot by his death.

Indeed there's a lot of emotions involved, but that's because people know Aaron well and what he did wasn't worth 35 year jail intimidation. I think you inverted the meaning of reactionaries, this is not a conservative movement, it's actually about changing the state of justice.

Hate to repeat myself but this information is important:

Aaron's "crime" - http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartz...

Strategies to disable legal defense - http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/bla... Whithey's case seems to be related the same attorney(Ortiz)

>But we should be better than this.

I am ashamed to be a part of the same community that you claim to embody.

>calling for the head of everyone and anyone related to the prosecution

Not everyone. I think Lawrence clearly named ONE name. An appointed office. Not an elected representative. Her superior can politely ask her if she'd like to step down.

This is not supposed to be the most difficult part, people.

Yes, and if you looked carefully you'll notice that he didn't actually do anything until he was threatened with spending a life in jail and being bankrupted, without the option to get off without pleading guilty.

And all that for trying to do something good.

You describe yourself as a 'public interest lawyer'. I suggest you try to live up to that title and have the public interest at heart. The subject of your little rant definitely had the public interest at heart. At least go and read up a bit more about what actually happened, it's not as if there is a shortage of information.

>"he was threatened with spending a life in jail and being bankrupted, without the option to get off without pleading guilty."

...I don't quite understand this. Surely he did have an option to "get off without pleading guilty" - to be found not guilty by a jury of his peers.

Except he was guilty, and didn't stand a chance in an actual trial. This part's not even controversial - Aaron was evidently fighting laws that he believed were unjust. The fact that he violated them is not in question.

And a court would have no choice but to find him guilty, as that is the purpose of the judiciary. A court cannot let someone walk after a crime simply because the law itself is unjust.

> A court cannot let someone walk after a crime simply because the law itself is unjust.

Incorrect. That's what the power of jury nullification is for. It's been ensconced in Western law for centuries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lilburne

Aaron only committed a crime worthy of severe punishment if one takes the point of view of the Crown...I mean, of the government.

Jury nullification is to all intents and purposes mostly a theoretical thing nowadays.

According to Clay Conrad, author of this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Jury-Nullification-The-Evolution-Doctr...

And according to an article that he wrote in 2003[1]:

Jury nullification occurs in 3-4% of all criminal trials. Jurors cannot be ordered to convict or punished for acquitting. A jury verdict of Not Guilty is final.

[1]: http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/02/05/a-guide-to-surviving-...

That’s not what jury nullification is for – not in the sense you are talking about it.

The possibility of jury nullification is an inevitable consequence of how the US justice system is set up. There is no way around it. It’s a property of the system, not a intentionally designed feature.

Put another way: For juries to have meaningful power, jury nullification has to be a possibility.

I also think it’s illusory to believe that jury nullification is in any kind of way a meaningful escape. It’s a fluke, nothing more.

You are wrong and it is intentionally designed in the system. Why then have the verdict of a jury be final, with impossibility of re-trial, even in the eyes of Congress, if not to defend the Constitutional Right of Jury nullification?

From the same article[1] I quoted in another reply:

Theophilus Parsons, first Chief Justice of Massachusetts, explained:

The people themselves have it in their power to resist usurpation, without an appeal to arms. An act of usurpation is not obligatory; it is not law; and any man may be justified in his resistance. Let him be considered a criminal by the general government, yet only his fellow citizens can convict him; they are his jury, and if they pronounce him innocent, not all the powers of Congress can hurt him; and innocent they certainly will pronounce him, if the supposed law he resisted was an act of usurpation.

Or, as Patrick Henry put it:

Why do we love this trial by jury? Because it prevents the hand of oppression from cutting you off. This gives me comfort ” that as long as I have existence, my neighbors will protect me.

[1]: http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/02/05/a-guide-to-surviving-...

As a former defense attorney, I would have loved it if jury nullification was intentionally designed into the system.

Unfortunately, it's not. It's just a great side effect of the right to a trial by jury.

In the American legal system, the modification of laws is left to the legislature. A jury can express its displeasure with a law by nullifying, but this has no legal import, since a different jury could easily convict. Thus, the primary method of expressing displeasure in a law...is to express displeasure in a law (by calling your local legislator).

> As a former defense attorney, I would have loved it if jury nullification was intentionally designed into the system.

Jury nullification is part of law. Design is the part that dictates that you, as a defense attorney, cannot inform juries of their power. The prosecutors certainly won't.

Every American jury has the power* to ignore the law and make their own verdict if they decide that's how justice would be served.

Last year, it became part of New Hampshire law to protect the right of the defense to inform juries of their power:

http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/29/new-hampshire-adopts-jury-...

*edit: changed "right" to "power"

The don't teach enough constitutional history these days, apparently. Trial by jury and the jury's ability to nullify the prosecution's factually correct case are part of the same, intentional design of the American judicial system.

So while we're on the topic of jury nullification, could you please enlighten us how this subject is usually handled by defense attorneys for the times it would be advantageous to pursue?

A. Fully advocate for their client by informing the jury of their right to nullify in open court, especially if that nullification would involve disregarding mere administrative law in favor of a no-frills reading of constitutional law.

B. Refrain from informing the jury to avoid risking their relationship with the court or bar, but inform their client of this conflict of interest so that the client may interject partial self-representation if prudent.

C. Avoid informing the client of their rights or this major conflict of interest, but pretend they're still being fully represented.

You have claimed to be a former defense attorney, which anyone can claim, and yet your comment history is full of incorrect statements about the law.

Whether this reflects on your honest or competence I do not know, but I do not trust anything you claim. Former defense attorney or not.

It may adequately explain the 'former'.

It’s a property of the system, not a intentionally designed feature.

It was not intentionally designed into common law, but when the Constitution specified when trial by jury should be used, it was widely understood that this was the power that juries had. And this was approved of by the founding fathers. For instance Thomas Jefferson said, "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."

Therefore jury nullification may be an accidental property of common law, but it is NOT an accidental property of the US system of law.

As a matter of fact a jury can do that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification although of course this is a controversial topic.

I actually find it implausible that a jury would have been savvy enough to know, even after courtroom-education by the defense, that nullification was an ideal option.

The status quo would seem to agree with you, and would like to keep it that way:

http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2012/04_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

> Jury nullification occurs when juries acquit criminal defendants who are technically guilty, but who do not deserve punishment. It occurs in a trial when a jury reaches a verdict contrary to the judge's instructions as to the law.

I do not agree with kristenlee but I did want to bring up at a jury can let someone walk who is technically guilty.

Edit: Sorry, didn't mean to post the same as 2 other people I read the article then came back to read the comments and I didn't see the other comments as I hadn't refreshed the page

Not necessarily, and it is controversial. I read the indictment and have followed the case and, though I'm not a lawyer, it seems to me that most of the charges were dubious, at best. They seem to have over-charged him, perhaps to extract a plea deal. In other words, the prosecutors may not have even expected to be able to convict him on all counts.

You cited nothing, and your claims are impossible to back with reasonable facts. I suspect you haven't even read about the case (though I see in some of your other comments that you claim to be familiar with the facts).

You want us to be "better", and I agree that anger after the fact is less ideal than anger beforehand. But making ridiculous statements about guilt or innocence is just as bad as condemning the prosecutors for murder.

A court cannot let someone walk after a crime simply because the law itself is unjust.

Yes they can.[1]

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

> Surely he did have an option to "get off without pleading guilty" - to be found not guilty by a jury of his peers.

1. That would have bankrupted him anyway.

2. He was guilty, as far as the law book is concerned.

I'm not sure but weren't all the charges he was accused of require mens rea?

Maybe a Massachusetts jury would be better, but I would generally expect the alleged fact that Aaron hid his face from a camera with a bike helmet (sorry, can't remember where I read this) to be enough to convince most juries of ill intent, given that most people seem to equate "sneaky" with "wrong."

One of the issues that's been topical around here lately is that the cost of being found not guilty by a jury, is itself ruinous, if not totally out of reach of most people. This is part of the fed's strategy in massively overcharging people: It pressures them to accept a plea deal, which is how the vast majority of cases are resolved, because they can't possibly afford to stick it out long enough to be found not guilty.

So from what I've read, he had the option to plead guilty to some charges and I'm sure spend very little time in jail, but he didn't want to plead guilty at all. He had options.

Being labeled as a felon, with the implications thereof regarding voting, employment, serving on a jury, etc. is hardly an option worth considering.

So the two options were: 1) Plead not guilty, case drags on for years, costs $millions to defend, get convicted, serve 2-3 years in jail, unable to fight for something you believe in during that time

2) Plead guilty, case is over quickly, not expensive to defend, get convicted, serve 2-3 months in jail, get on with fighting for something you believe in

I would say option #2 is "worth considering".

Different people have different standards. Maybe Aarons choice helped protect people who follow in his footsteps.

He was facing potentially 35 years in jail, not 2-3 years.

I'm pretty sure employment wouldn't be an issue for him.

Anyway, if you want to protest the law, you can let yourself be found guilty at trial, then challenge the law on appeal.

This place needs more public interest lawyers. It does not need more questions about whether its participants deserve to call themselves that. Please stop doing this.

I agree that this place needs more public interest lawyers.

Informed ones, rather than state level prosecutors that try to wash their professions hands clean without some introspection on cause and effect.

Is Kristin Lee a state prosecutor? All I see is "public interest lawyer". If she's worked as a prosecutor, we should 10000x more want her here. I'm trying my best to find someone who's worked as a prosecutor to explain the mentality behind the baffling-in-retrospect decisions made in the Swartz prosecution.

It is very obvious how upset you are. But we should want more perspectives, not fewer, especially from people with actual legal training.

> Is Kristin Lee a state prosecutor?

Yes. By her own account.

> If she's worked as a prosecutor, we should 10000x more want her here. > I'm trying my best to find someone who's worked as a prosecutor to explain the mentality behind the baffling-in-retrospect decisions made in the Swartz prosecution.

Agreed, but she has already made up her mind. Aaron killed himself because he was mentally ill, and that's that as far as she's concerned.

> It is very obvious how upset you are.

You don't know the half of it.

> But we should want more perspectives, not fewer, especially from people with actual legal training.

This I agree with. But attempting to whitewash this is not very productive.

Jacques, I hear you, and I'm sorry. But can we ask her questions? There's so much I want to know about how this happened.

Go for it, I don't think anybody ever stopped you from doing anything you wanted to do.

My biggest question is this: was there any link at all between the PACER case and the way Aaron was hit over the JSTOR issue?

And if there wasn't what was the reason that Aaron was prosecuted when the aggrieved party was already satisfied that no harm had been done?

I'm pretty sure that with Hal Abelson as the head of the MIT internal investigation that we'll get a very clear picture of what happened at MIT but I'm not so sure that the Justice department will come clean (in fact I'm pretty sure they'll just put the blame squarely on Aaron, just like ms. Lee did here).

And I highly doubt ms. Lee has any of the answers here that would truly give us insight in where this whole thing went off the rails.

I'd like to know if there was a link between PACER and this, too. Other people seem to suggest that there's some kind of grudge between the MA US Attorney's office and the Cambridge hacker community. I'm not familiar with either, but the PACER case wasn't managed by Heymann or Ortiz.

Other people seem to suggest that the prosecution in this case was driven by gamesmanship and an urge to "make their numbers". But Heymann is a nationally acknowledged authority on the prosecution of electronic crimes and a deputy chief. Is by-the-numbers quota- style prosecution so endemic to the US Attorney's office that it reaches that level?

I agree that the Abelson appointment is a heartening development.

Even then, suicide is not the only option.

One could walk across a border, for example. Not the easiest course, not as easy as being released from responsibility for one's actions, but better than death for sure.

He wasn't merely threatened with being bankrupted. He was bankrupted, and was having to rely on family for support as I understand it.

If only Reddit had taken on more ads, Aaron might have had enough wealth to fight.

"Aaron Swartz was mentally ill and committed suicide as a direct result of his mental illness. He comtemplated suicide in 2007 long before any of this DOJ stuff happened."

But he didn't do it then, did he? It's absurd to think that these things are completely unconnected. (Look at the timing, for one thing.) A severely depressed person is perhaps more likely to commit suicide than a person who is not severely depressed, but that's no reason to think that the actions of a severely depressed person (in relation to suicide or, for that matter, anything else) are independent of what else is going on in his or her life.

It's furthermore frankly insulting to think that (a) anyone is glorifying his suicide (or did you miss the many suicide hotline links, links to posts saying "don't do what Aaron did", etc., on the front page yesterday?), or that (b) someone who is already depressed/suicidal hasn't already engaged in some suicidal ideation.

(Who would commit suicide in order to get attention? You can't get attention when you're dead.)

> (Who would commit suicide in order to get attention? You can't get attention when you're dead.)

As someone who has contemplated suicide, I've had significant moments when I'd (1) recognize that my ideation was a direct reaction to someone else's actions or inactions, (2) remind myself that this was a bad reason to commit, (3) stop myself. It was not "getting attention" so much as a willful desire to punish. It was not sane. But it was also real.

Not saying that this is what Aaron went through, but if you're going to generalize, that's not the right question to ask.

> It's furthermore frankly insulting to think that (a) anyone is glorifying his suicide (or did you miss the many suicide hotline links, links to posts saying "don't do what Aaron did", etc., on the front page yesterday?), or that (b) someone who is already depressed/suicidal hasn't already engaged in some suicidal ideation.

While I fully agree with you that this is not glorifying suicide, it does normalize suicide and create social proof that may make it easier for others to carry out theirs. The specific application of this to suicide is sometimes called the Werther effect (after Goethe's character), after an alleged "wave" of suicides across Europe after the publication of The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1774.

For a more modern take, according to Cialdini's book "Influence" (I have read the book but not chased down the refenced paper), Phillips, D.P.'s "Airplane Accidents, Murder and the Mass Media: Towards a Theory of Imitation and Suggestion" estimates almost 50 excess deaths due to airplane and car crashes alone in the US in the few months following a highly publicized suicide.

Of course it is hard to prove a direct causal link here, but a particularly chilling part of this research that makes the causation likely showed that there was a strong correlation between the type of "accidents" and the type of suicide: If the publicized suicide was "just" a suicide, the largest increase in car accidents was lone drivers driving into obstacles etc. If it was a murder-suicide, the largest increase in "accidents" were drivers with passengers and/or drivers hitting other cars.

The "Werther effect" is well known enough that in many places, journalists self-censor reporting of them. E.g. in Norway it was until very recently considered ethically dubious for newspapers to report a suicide (the death would be reported, but the cause would be left out or obscured), and while that's loosened up somewhat, media is still generally very cautious about it.

I'm not saying people should not discuss this suicide. But on the other hand, downplaying the effect it is likely to have on other people who may be on the cusp of making the decision, is not great either.

So instead of hiding from the word "suicide," wouldn't society be better served by destigmatizing whatever the victims of these "accidents" were going through so they aren't at risk when there is news of a self-inflicted death?

"Who would commit suicide in order to get attention? You can't get attention when you're dead."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Bouazizi

What crimes do you actually believe he committed? He downloaded a ton of academic articles, and then he did as JSTOR asked him to, and returned the Intellectual property.

The focus should be on getting mental health services to those that need it most AS WELL AS ceasing to judge prosecutors based on their prosecution rate.

This sets the stage for over-prosecution and can blind the prosecutor into not just trying to prove everyone guilty, but force them into submitting that they are guilty whether they are or not.

Police officer's used to be judged on arrest rate, we figured out that wasn't actually doing any good, and changed the criteria to lower crime rates.

The prosecutor who grossly over-charged Aaron (and is obviously technically illiterate) should be forced to resign. If you think that sending someone to jail for 30 years (or even the minimum of 5) for downloading academic articles is fair, then you should do the right thing and resign from your position as a state level prosecutor too.

His "crimes"[1] were not worthy being intimidated with a 35 year old sentence. In any sane society this young man could've done community work(if guilty). A sane society would like to use his skills to teach at schools or something, not throw him in a hell-on-earth prison system were humans are disposable.

The justice system can be a game[2], strong players have it their way, and the seminal work by Aaron's "Demand Progress" was a direct affront to very strong players. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, "the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs", and tragic events like these are what move people in one direction and make things change. His mental state is secondary to the injustice he suffered.

[1] http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartz... [2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/bla...

I don't think anyone is glorifying his suicide. I think people are outraged about the fact that overzealous prosecution based on an unjust law may have contributed to the death of an extremely talented person. People were unhappy with the law before, but it didn't have direct, concrete consequences for them to point to. Now it does.

I agree that Aaron was ultimately responsible for his own suicide. However, the overzealous overprosecution of either minor crimes or non-criminal civil violations wrecked his life. Doing that, even had he not killed himself, was more than bad enough.

The focus is and should be on fanatical public employees that have an overinflated sense of their importance.

Aaron was worth 100 Federal prosecutors.

While it's clearly true that he suffered from depression of some sort, you can't separate that from the fact that he was actively being persecuted. What the DOJ and MIT did was wrong, and it would be wrong even if Aaron was still alive today.

I think a useful way to look at it is, "well, it certainly didn't help."

So you think 20-30 years in prison for downloading digital content is a just punishment?

Woww this is strong.

As many this week-end I have thought about it a lot. I don't know what factor his problems with the DOJ weighed in his decision to commit suicide. But I know few things, when he committed his actions he was very young, moreover what he did is certainly not criminal. The system must be fair must be proportional and balanced. This is a remainder that there is a difference between a citizen taking an action and a system, you can not compare both. The system has an history, has some experience and knows that the decisions it take may affect life of human beings. This is life and deaths decisions. When you represent the justice you can not decide on your own that you want to make an example or that you will seek the harshest penalties possible, you must be fair you must think about the consequences of your decisions, your are responsible, you have duties. I think the persons in charge of this case failed in this regard.

We can both strive to provide mental health services to those in need and work to prevent overzealous prosecution (which in this case was a major contributory factor to an avoidable tragedy). The two aren't mutually exclusive.

How does your contention that Aaron's suicide was a "direct result of his mental illness", discounting any external factors as relevant, square with your assertion that the discussion of this event might encourage others to take their life? Either external factors are relevant in a suicide or they are not.

P.S. Putting scare-quotes around the word hacker isn't likely to endear you to many in this place.

nope. the outpouring is motivating places like MIT to look into their actions, and others to look into the actions of the US Attorney. that's not 'nothing.'

looking the other way in order not to encourage copycats doesn't sound right.

a Chinese official would say media attention just encourages people to set themselves on fire in Tienanmen Square, so we should pay no heed to them or to root causes.

fair warning to would-be suicides, if you're not an Internet / tech leader HN isn't going to front-page you.

the media circus surrounding mass killers is more problematic.

I fucking hate this, put the "mental illness" stamp on someone and you can disregard everything else because the person "is sick", these abstract unscientific terms only serves to dehumanize people.

Do you know much about how prosecutions like this work?

What do you think the logic might have been behind "doubling down" on the felony charges last September?

I do not remember intentionally downvoting anyone on the internet, your comment made me want to break that pattern.

I'm not going to try to wade into the fearful fog of correlation vs causation. I know very little about Aaron, or the case.

Instead, I'd just like to try an analogy on for size. Two people are blindfolded and beaten equally during a robbery. One, a 20 year old, suffered only minor injuries, the second, a 70 year old woman with a heart condition, died from a stress induced heart attack during the beating.

Was she murdered or did she die naturally of a heart condition?

Its possible the prosecution knew all about Aaron's depression and history. That might actually make what they did worse and not better. He clearly needed the help you speak of... his "crimes" may even have been a symptom. Did anyone consider this or try to help him?

I agree with you in spirit even though I would not call it mental illness. I would call it a deep unconsciousness, a complete entrapment in ones mind, a belief that one is in fact ones thoughts. He was liberated only at the time of his death. Many are stuck in this belief - I certainly was, and certainly at his age. I think therefore I am - nothing could be further from the truth.

That said there are many things being confused and mixed up here - I and probably most on HN feel a sense of incredible loss; I did not know him personally but I wish I had, I admired Aarons hacking skills, his guts, his convictions, and his sheer brilliant intellect. He made the world a better place. I was looking forward to his next big thing. - The loss to his actual friends and family; all we can do is express out heartfelt condolences. - His work and your opinion of it - its unrelated to the above and seems insignificant in comparison. - The governments actions; surely, the man has struck back, those actions were unreasonable, and despicable. But insignificant in comparison with our sense of loss. The government did not kill him - don't give them that victory. We can continue to push back and support open leaks, hacktivists, bradley manning, and so on. This is a fight about power, and its fought between the people and the corporations - even if not everybody is aware of it.

Washing your hands are you? Good company with Lady Macbeth and Pontius Pilate...

Do you post such absurdities because you are guilty of similar bullying in your role as a state prosecutor, and this is what you convince yourself of in order to sleep at night?

On behalf of the public, I'll say that you don't serve our interests.

I don't really understand this "mental illness" obsession on Hackers News. Yes, there is probably such a thing as "mental illness", but it is not directly comparable in most cases to physical illness, and what we refer to as "mental illness" is really a very complex interrelation of a range of factors including an individuals life circumstances, stress factors, history of abuse and trauma, drug usage, relationship issues, and possibly actual brain disorders that are purely physical/genetic in origin.

Historically, accusations of "mental illness" has been one of the most common ways of denying and shielding abuse, and then provided as an explanation when victims commit suicide. Its downright scary that this same term is being bandied about without any sensitivity to its historical context. People who commit suicide may be mentally ill, or they may be trying to escape intolerable and unbearable events in their life - but simply defining suicide as a symptom of mental illness ignores the underlying complexities of why someone might reach this decision.

Imagine the case of a young girl being sexually abused over many years by a close family member whom she fears. Her behaviour becomes more erratic over time, and is diagnosed as being mentally ill and forced to take medication. In a state of unrelenting emotional anguish, and unable to share her pain with a world that is motivated to explain everything as mental illness and unwilling to look at a dark reality they would rather avoid than confront, she takes her own life. Was she mentally ill? Well obviously something wasn't right, but to describe her as suffering a "disorder" when clearly the problem was something external being imposed seems almost inhuman. What if she hadn't committed suicide, and eventually escaped her abusers and went on to live life, but continued to suffer depression and anxiety decades later. Would you describe her as mentally ill then? A doctor today almost certainly would.

Who knows why Aaron committed suicide. Clearly he was faced with extraordinary life stress - can anyone here really imagine what it must be like to face 35 years in jail for doing something he though was right? It would be reasonable to assume this played a part, probably a large part, is his decision. However, the actual reasons for his suicide, or the nature of his "crimes", does not excuse the prosecution for it's excessive and overblown nature. It would have been just as wrong had Aaron not taken this decision, and instead received a lengthy jail term for a fairly benign crime, as the present tragic outcome.

You are mostly right here, but abuse can absolutely cause a legitimate mental illness, just like it can break bones.

Kristen, please ignore jacquesm, he is a known troll.

Public interest lawyers are far more valuable contributors to HN, and especially to this discussion, then the histrionics and hyperbole of him and his ilk.

I don't usually engage with people in this manner, but may I ask why you feel that jacquesm is a troll? Especially a "known troll?" He seems to be a rather passionate person who is willing to stand up for his views.

jacquesm is a long-standing member of the community and one of HN's greatest contributors (#4 by karma on http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders). Not a troll.

Nature VS Nurture.

Both play a part.

Aaron's high expectations for himself sure made it hard for him to live up to them and be satisfied with whatever he was doing but....

Nurture plays a role in suicide. In this case, the Feds were definitely trying to stop this beautiful flower from growing.

It was having trouble on his own.

What they should have done, the "appropriate" thing to do, as Larry put it was to cut the weeds nearby and any sick branches he may have had. JSTOR apparently death with it pretty well and tied to cut off the sick branches that Aaron had on him.

No one has gloried the suicide either. He will just truly be missed. AND it is especially sad that he was put in a situation that was blown out of proportion and tried to crush him. It could happen to you.

Say you're in Cancun and some people find you having sex in public and then throw some cocaine at you, trying to accuse you of drug smuggling but it just so happens you don't have the money or the connections to ward them off. (This is everyday life in Latin America)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com