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Welcome to Hacker News, SocioTech. I see you joined when the Swartz case news broke and all of your posts so far have been to defend the actions of the prosecution while demonizing Swartz and his advocates.

That's fine, but why not take a look at the front page of Hacker News? As a tech guy and hacker, I'm sure there are lots of other topics that you as a new member would enjoy discussing and not just this single topic.

I'm a reformed programmer who's now a lawyer (with a pretty high profile, but no connection to the US Atty's office), and I have another account that is more easily tied to my real-life identity. I'm not on HN a lot, but I know the community pretty well.

This whole case is too politically touchy for me, which is why I'm on this different account. The last thing I want to do is get the attention of Anonymous, or anyone else. I am connecting through Tor when I write this. Maybe that underlies my fear of the mob mentality and the idea of witchhunts. ;)

Interesting. We should all beware. There are Reputation Management firms hired by people like Ortiz specifically to help "correct" what they believe are knocks against their reputation after a controversial incident. It usually starts off with carefully crafted and prepared statements followed by in-depth newspaper interviews in Sunday editions several weeks after the controversial incident. It ends when they write a book which presents their side of the story, uncontested, and provides an opportunity for them to have a newspaper article written against this one-sided story. In between they do have folks who would sandbag online forums like this one.

Yes - it has me wondering who SocioTech is, who he or she works for and what their role is there. Arguably the behavior reflects someone who is PR, political party or DA office, which in itself would be fairly big news.

Reading about this case, I've seen lots of people called "shills" for the US Atty's office or the DOJ. You probably won't (and maybe shouldn't) take my word for it, but that's just not how these organizations work. It isn't even close.

People in small communities often overimagine their own importance. That's not an insult, just a psychological truth. The DOJ doesn't care what people here write, and if you talked to people there, from political appointees down to staffers, most of them would fall somewhere between (a) pleasure that the democratic process is proceeding through random or organized discussion online and (b) snide dismissal of hackers they don't understand. They don't hire PR people to infiltrate discussion boards on general issues. (Of course, the FBI does hire people to infiltrate criminal communities.) Think of any cases of astroturfing that have come to light. It happens by hotels that want to post undeserved reviews on TripAdvisor, startups (and even charities, as Aaron once pointed out) that want to get attention, etc., etc. The DOJ and US Attys aren't in the astroturfing business.

Another thing that should give people some perspective: It's laughable for people to have suggested, as I think a dozen did, that the new limit for White House petitions (100,000 instead of 25,000) had anything remotely to do this this case. Most people in the administration haven't heard of it and never will. There's a lot going on in the world. ;)

> I've seen lots of people called "shills" for the US Atty's office or the DOJ.

I don't think you were just called a shill for either of those organizations, but rather a shill for one or more of the individuals involved.

Well, it's not true either way. But that too is very rare. There's just too much risk with it, and it's not how most nontechies think. Look what actually happened in this case: Ortiz's husband issued an ill-thought-out, insensitive statement in frustration on Twitter, and then eventually there was a calm, rational press release from the office.

Then they'll move on. They've got thousands of other cases, many of which have made other communities similarly angry. That we get 35,000 signatures for an online petition mostly speaks to the fact that we're online.

Jesus.

Believe it or not there are people who don't think like you. Some of them are lurkers, and a controversial subject like this one can draw lurkers out of hiding.

People can disagree with you and not be a paid shill.

I think you're wasting time trying to discredit someone based on who they are.

Why was jail time and a felony ever sought for in this case? Why not 2-5 years community service focused on computer needs in the community? He stays out of jail, doesn't get a felony and the community or government gets some much needed computer help <edit> while he pays his debt to society.</edit>

It's not that I oppose the fact that DA was prosecuting, it's how they were doing it. I see this as abuse of power by not showing restraint - but that's my opinion that a felony and jail time were excessive for the crime committed and the DA should have shown more restraint in how they plea barganed.

Mirroring the arguments about MAC spoofing in another thread, I have a question.

If I got banned from an IRC server, switched my proxy settings and came back on to spam a channel with "I Dunno LOL ¯\(°_o)/¯" Can I be prosecuted and sent to prison for it? After all, I'm "evading access restrictions" and every other ridiculous vague threshold for illegal activity Aaron was charged with.

The programmer/lurker in me would react by banning open proxies (DNSBL?) and requiring registration. Which is what we've been doing for decades. Would the federal prosecutor in you hunt down this potentially 10 year old kid and charge them with computer fraud to set an example?

I think the sane reaction to a security issue is to fix the issue. Especially in the cyberlibterarian utopia I wish the Internet was. If it was exploited with enough maliciousness, I can look the other way while the hacker is sentenced for it.

But for something this stupid? An open wifi network? An open closet? Aaron broke through no walls but made-up protocol restrictions. Where is the line drawn?

"Can I be prosecuted and sent to prison for it?" Probably not, but even if so, this is where prosecutorial discretion comes in. This is what people aren't understanding.

If you avoid a channel ban, or sign up as "Mickey Mouse" to get free WiFi, nobody's going to prosecute you. If they did, you "stole" $30 worth of stuff and the penalty would be tiny.

I'm not criticizing Aaron, but what he did was to intend to compromise a valuable database. If the gov't could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he intended to make that valuable database public, that is a serious harm at issue.

You might (and I might) not agree that the harm is important, but that's what many parties (journals, authors, JSTOR, universities who pay JSTOR) have relied on. Do we think one person should change the rules just because the can?

Also, I didn't think even libertarian extremists would think that just because you installed windows rather than armed steel plating around your house, nobody could be blamed for breaking in. And I hate to say it, but the security - the combination of personnel and online monitoring - WORKED in this case. They outsmarted Aaron, as is clear when you read the docket. They engaged in a ruse to trap him and it worked.

If an IRC channel, or HackerNews, kicks me off, and while I know that they don't want me back I reconnect, that's almost assuredly illegal.

It won't hit CFAA standards until damages exceed $5,000, though. The IRC channel, or HackerNews, probably doesn't have $5,000 worth of stuff to damage, unless I really harass them for months. JSTOR and MIT, whether you like them or not, did have something that valuable.

The physical analog is entering a store that you have been forbidden to enter. That's misdemeanor trespass and probably only a small fine for the first time you do it. However, if you harm people or take/harm property while trespassing, you can quickly find yourself in the neighborhood of felony trespassing.

"There's other manipulative PR worth identifying."

Yes, like the press release Ortiz issued stating that Aaron faced up to 35 years in prison.

Again, that number was not pulled out of thin air- it came directly from her office in an official press release.

This never was a purely legal case at any time. It has always, at all times, also been a case the prosecution intentionally made into a media case.

>The statement makes clear

The statement doesn't actually provide any new information. All it says is that they decline to resign or admit wrongdoing. That much was expected and nothing else is anything we didn't already know.

>If we're going to be rational, that shouldn't change when a defendant commits suicide while the case is pending.

You're assuming that we were being rational before and now are being irrational rather than the other way around. It was previously irrational for us not to do something about this. (I don't mean these prosecutors specifically, but the system that allows this sort of thing to be "normal" is hugely problematic.)

As for "manipulative PR," I'm not sure how much we should care about being "manipulated" to try and fix something which is legitimately in our own self interest to fix anyway.

Who was the victim?

MIT, JSTOR, and publishers with JSTOR contracts.

Not liking the victim doesn't make them not a victim.

I strongly disagree with the grandparent comment, for what it's worth.

JSTOR settled, and so were no longer a victim. http://about.jstor.org/statement-swartz just sayin'.

> I strongly disagree with the grandparent comment, for what it's worth.

I'd be interested to hear why, if you haven't burned out on the subject... which presumably you haven't, since you just commented on it.

Then justify the distinction of

Trespass: up to 30 days in jail and/or 100$ fine

!!!COMPUTER!!! trespass: Years and years in jail, hundreds of thousands of dollars fine, Federal felony.

Yeah. SOUNDS LEGIT.

Your comment has nothing to do with mine.

I agree that that's the right question. The intended "victims" were journals and JSTOR. I'm glad JSTOR didn't lean heavily on the prosecution, but they're not the only party who has a stake in this, and it's routine for government not to be simply a "victim's rights" organization that lets private people tell them what to do. Many small journals depend on subscription fees from services like JSTOR.

But look, I'm not saying the law is perfect. There are whole encyclopedias written on legal theory about people's responsibilities to follow arguable but imperfect laws, and that is a big debate. The essence of the case here is that a "long ranger" activist who acts to publicize a massive database does threaten a significant financial disruption to many parties, and that is "harm" even under JS Mill's "harm principle." It's not like possessing drugs (which of course people go to harder jails for 20 years for possessing).

If I am recalling correctly, a key point in the government's case was that Aaron was going to distribute the documents to the world had he succeeded. If so, they would have had to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt. If Aaron had a good case that he was just downloading the documents for his own personally curiosity, he would probably have won, and it would be easier to say the prosecution was overblown.

But all that seems to have happened here is that the government offered 6 low-security months to someone who the government believed it could prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, was intending to undermine the revenue model of a significant part of the world's academic infrastructure. That doesn't mean that revenue model is praiseworthy, but the law doesn't let you take matters into your own hands.

I don't want to sound dismissive, but the conspiracy theory stuff - that they targeted him because of SOPA or whatnot - is not something that anyone I know takes seriously. I am trying to say that mildly and respectively. (There are many harsher ways to say it.)

>I don't want to sound dismissive, but the conspiracy theory stuff - that they targeted him because of SOPA or whatnot - is not something that anyone I know takes seriously.

Interesting that the Secret Service ECTF took over the investigation into Swartz despite the fact his crime doesn't meet any of their stated criteria for involvement ("Significant economic or community impact", "Participation of organized criminal groups involving multiple districts or transnational organizations", or "Use of schemes involving new technology").

http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/01/13/two-days-before-cambrid...

The Secret Service was brought in before MIT knew who the intruder was. Thinking they were brought in to get revenge against Swartz is serious tin-foil hat territory.

I haven't looked into the details, but "new technology" means something different to the public than it means to us. Publicizing a valuable database sounds like it's in their mandate.

>"new technology" means something different to the public than it means to us.

Good point. Would be interesting to see with what frequency they get involved in these kinds of cases.

My understanding is that the articles Aaron downloaded and intended to distribute were in the public domain. I suppose one could make a case that the scans of those articles that JSTOR had prepared at its own expense were not in the public domain, but even if copyright law supports such a distinction, which I'm not sure it does, it seems to me that the worst crime Aaron would have commmitted would have been copyright violation -- a civil matter, and not one, AFAIK, that the US Secret Service routinely gets involved in.

In short, if Aaron had scanned the same articles and made them available on his own server, he would have been in the clear. Here's an interesting analysis from well before Aaron's death: http://www.theawl.com/2011/08/was-aaron-swartz-stealing

No, no. Some of the articles were in the public domain, but not all of them. (The precise ratio could have been a relevant fact at sentencing for some of the charges, because it would speak to the monetary value of what his actions threatened to publicize in violation of copyright law.) Copyright violation is routinely both a civil and a criminal manner.

He would not have been in the clear if he scanned and publicized the articles himself.

I said, "the articles he downloaded and intended to distribute". There is some suggestion he only intended to distribute the public domain ones. Of course, this might be hard to prove in court.

If the government couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he intended to distribute the public-domain part of the archive, he would have won the largest part of his case, or at least received a very minimal sentence (with no prison time).