Ortiz says suicide will not change handling of cases
bostonherald.com
bostonherald.com
And your Senators http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_c...
And ask them why this person is allowed to wield the full might and power of the US Government.
If you want to ensure that this gets attention it's a matter of sustained pressure, and of getting both houses of Congress to ask the embarrassing and obvious questions of the Justice department.
This is not a partisan issue, it cuts straight to the core of our system of government; when prosecutors misuse their position for political purposes it undermines our system of government and eats at the legitimacy of our institutions.
It's bad when done by Republicans like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leura_Canary and equally bad when done by Democrats like Ms. Ortiz.
Any role for foreigners? Which body to make a modest monetary donation to?
UK perspective: Trespass + Computer Misuse Act Section 1, so we are talking 6 months/£2000 if it ever went to court, which it probably would not have.
The EFF would be a reasonable recipient of your largesse: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/effs-initial-improveme...
That said, one wonders which audience Ms. Ortiz is attempting to court with this stance.
I know this isn't Reddit, but this was one of the most hilariously appropriate uses of the word "critter" I've heard lately.
And I have received written responses from postal mail but I don't recall seeing any personalized email.
(I'm the kind of person who sends hand-written Christmas cards, so this isn't that much of a stretch for me)
After all, it's not much effort to vote for his opponent at the next election.
Writing a physical letter introduces a barrier of effort which separates a two minute slap-out-an-email rant from a carefully composed and considered letter. Imagine if commenting on YouTube required writing a letter? The quality of comments would increase by many orders of magnitude.
We have people claiming, in specific terms, that the US Attorneys as a whole have an interest in encouraging defendant's to commit suicide...
This is hardly the first article to demonstrate this, and there are certainly many valid issues to be reviewed and discussed, but many commenters here are demonstrating that we're just as capable of turning into a lynch mob as anyone else.
I am much more concerned that she had that much power in the first place. I don't think she is any worse than many of the other prosecutors. I think we need to reign in the laws that prosecutors use in these situations.
A recent link also said that she liked to use civil forfeiture laws. I can't say I have much sympathy for her.
Would you want your fate to be determined by some people who read things on the Internet or even in the New York Times or on the nightly network news? When you say "evidence" are you privy to something that has been specifically vetted and proven to be a fact?
All those things are undisputed fact, and they are enough, in the eyes of many, to represent prosecutorial misconduct.
That's how every prosecution works. It's not misconduct. It should be, but it's not.
This btw goes for Ortiz et al. too. However, since their pressure in Aaron Schwartz case is pretty well documented, and since they refuse to show the slightest hint of regret, their share of guilt in this tragic suicide is pretty clear. What's more, the continued threat that their twisting of the due process of justice represents must be stopped. And this should be a signal for the DOJ to review its prosecuting policies in depth, and remember justice in general a little more, as opposed to political maneuvering.
People want to blame prosecutors, but the real problem here is Congress (as usual). Too many things are illegal under federal law. The justice system would take half the budget and we'd all spend half our time on jury duty if we wanted to take every single illegal act to trial. The only way out for the judiciary is to bully people into accepting plea bargains so only a tiny percentage of cases go to trial. If everyone refused to take a plea the entire system would grind to a halt.
Were I in charge plea bargains would be illegal. That would remove the incentive to throw the book at every minor criminal, and if Congress can't allocate enough money to prosecute a crime it's not important enough to be on the books.
On the contrary, the idea that they were seeking decades in prison has no evidence behind it, and contradicts the statements Ortiz and others have made.
As long as people are still spreading factoids like this, I think larrys comment is spot on.
The problem is that many people have a profound distrust of and disillusionment in the legal system and the government.
Most people who are outraged at Ortiz's handling of the Swartz case, her ass covering, and business as usual attitude after Swartz's suicide have little faith that the very system that put the likes of Ortiz in power in the first place would deal with her abuse of that power properly.
Aaron had a right to his freedom until convicted. Ortiz does not have a right to her job.
Sure, maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. Maybe she will clear her name tomorrow. But "business as usual" and "all the other prosecutors do it, too" doesn't cut it any more.
This is a strawman and nobody here has said it. The actual argument is that prosecutors have very strong incentives to put as much pressure as possible on defendants, and the latter most often cannot defend themselves because the process is so extraordinarily expensive. As a result, the defendant either has to settle for a plea bargain or lose the trial. Unfortunately, many times they take the third option, which is suicide.
Make no mistake: this isn't about Ortiz. This is a systemic problem.
>>This is a strawman and nobody here has said it.
Bobba Fett would have been president if he ran.
Getting her out of office is going to require a big push but it will send a message to every single federal prosecutor in the nation. It's our duty as citizens and as hackers to see justice served here.
As for "valid issues", please enumerate them. What exculpatory facts are there? She's made her statements, twice. She's presented her case in her own words. Zero regret.
I was skeptical at first too, but statements from his friends and family as well bear that out.
> but that we can't trust a single word out of Ortiz's mouth... because she's a lawyer.
I did not see such a comment. Why not respond to it instead of a new toplevel statement of how HN sucks?
There are some comments linked in my comments page that say as much:
- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5079410 - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5073420
Please don't misinterpret, but my comment isn't that HN sucks. There has been a huge discussion on here on this issue, a lot of it productive, and admittedly I take more of a skeptical viewpoint, but have tried to contribute. But that doesn't change that there is a not-insignificant portion of comments that have let passion get in the way of reason (though understandably so, in many cases).
Seem to me like you're doing something similar when you, instead of replying to the actual comments you think are wrong, starts a meta discussion on the spirit of the conversation based on your feeling. It's not very constructive, especially since it's hard to differentiate from someone using it as a rhetorical argument.
I don't find it surprising at all that people have an immediate emotional reaction to something and perhaps initially will be irrational and jump to conclusions. We all do that occasionally.
What is unfortunate though is that after that immediate perhaps irrational reaction, I would hope that they would then give it some thought and say "ok you are right I haven't heard all the evidence (or may never)". Now if you are friends or family it's possible that emotionally that might never happen. You are to close to the situation.
This happens also with trials. People end up disagreeing with the jury (and I'm not saying juries don't screw up) but at least the jury was privy (if not sleeping or swayed by others) to normally much more information then someone only reading summary reports (keeping in mind that there are people that might watch the trial from gavel to gavel).
Sometimes "good" people get done wrong in the pursuit of justice. Real life is messy and things don't always work out they way we'd like. But its the system we have. There's room for improvement, sure, but its the best we've got right now. Its no one's fault in particular, sometimes things just turn out badly and the prosecutor loses her job along with her assistants.
The government doesn't threaten you with a bigger sentence if you refuse to be unconstitutionally searched (if you tell the cops to come back if they get a warrant). You don't get a smaller sentence for waiving your right to a silence, or counsel. But you do get a smaller sentence for waiving a right to a fair trial. I can't really see how this is constitutional, but being forced to waive other rights isn't.
Yes, things would be easier if criminals were coerced (by the threat of a larger sentence) to let the police search them without a warrant, to answer everything the police asked, to not to lawyer up, and to confess their guilt without a trial. But it's not the way a free country works.
And you are punished with stiffer sentences. If criminals are getting off lightly (due to plea bargaining), then politicians will raise sentences. This means people who do nothing more than demand a fair trial will receive stiffer punishments than they deserve.
I can't see how a lack of fair trials serves justice either. It encourages lazy police work. And an unfair process turns people against the system. If people accept plea bargains, do they really see themselves a guilty, or simply persecuted by "the system"?
I'm in the UK were there is talk of cautiously introducing some form of plea bargaining. At the moment I think pleading guilty (and how early it is done) is just something taken into by the judge. There may be some deals on the charges brought when there is some discretion but I don't think the opportunities are that great.
What a concept: prosecuting each case on its own merits.
And this is perfectly normal, European country we're talking about...
So no, I don't think this is going to negatively impact Ortiz career, it's possible that she's even saying this in hope of gaining popularity.
I know this seems improbable, but then winning the election by said party seemed improbable too in 2005 and then actually happened. It's easy to look at one's social circle and think it represents "the public". Well, it most often does not.
I'm not saying you're right (or wrong) but I'm really interested in the process.
Addendum: Also, Googling your HackerNews username, on my second page of Google shows more .pl domains where that username is found.
The Internet can be scary.
Thanks for explanation and for hinting to google results for my username - I haven't tried that one for too long.
Also, on your twitter account (same username as on Trello), you mention Warsaw a few times.
I was completely unfamiliar with the matters you mentioned in your comment.
Leader: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaros%C5%82aw_Kaczy%C5%84ski
Cases mentioned:
1. Doctor: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprawa_Miros%C5%82awa_G%2E . Police action cryptonim was "Mengele".
2. Politician suicide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Blida
There were many more such cases. Recently other parties want Kaczyński to be brought before State Tribunal.
This is not someone we want in a higher office.
9/11 happens: people panic and demand action. School shooting happens: people panic and demand action. I want a leader who DOESN'T succumb to the panic.
I only say that because, in my view, it is more important to understand what the principles ARE that a person stands for than to support someone for standing by them.
A lot of people have stood on principle. From George Washington to MLK. From Castro to Pinochet. From John Wilkes Booth and Jefferson Davis to Pinkerton and Harriet Tubman. We cannot support them all. As Lincoln said, "...both MAY be, but one MUST be wrong..."
It's the principle that makes a person worthy of your support, not that the person stands by it.
The leaders are not succumbing to panic. The "leaders" (whom I should actually call "rulers," because one day they decided they should rule instead of lead) are succumbing to their own mistakes that the American public is now waking up to and demanding action.
On a broader note I believe the way the law was written is worse than what Oritz did - but she was in fact trying to hand-chop an apple thief in order to make an example. The decision to go after Swartz and to pursue a high (the maximum?) penalty was clearly wrong and she deserves all the public scrutiny directed at her office.
AG Ortiz needs to go not only for the prosecutorial bullying but also because she was dumb enough to expose how these tools are abused by prosecutors around the country.
Smart politicians will get rid of her soon, they don't want to risk this to grow to the point Congress needs to actually do something about it.
But anyway, yeah I'd like my public officials to recognize when they are wrong and to adjust their behavior. If her principles make her bully defendants and she wont adjust, yeah, I don't want her in office.
The real problem with the response to the Newtown shooting is not the call for gun control, but that the call focuses almost exclusively on guns that are rarely used in crime: rifles. The Newtown shooter had two handguns, and just a few days before the shooting, a handgun was used to murder a man, in broad daylight, on a New York City street. So on the one hand, you have the exceedingly rare case of a lunatic shooting children using a rifle, and on the other you have the exceedingly (and unfortunately) common case of a criminal shooting someone with a handgun. Which of these sounds like a more urgent issue to you?
For what it's worth, handguns are a target for thieves. After a newspaper published a map of handgun owners in New York, there were at least three cases of houses being burglarized with a clear goal of stealing a handgun. Criminals buy handguns on the black market; they are not buying rifles on the black market, and even when they do buy rifles, they rarely use them because it is too hard to hide such a large weapon. Despite the media's mischaracterization of the Newtown shooter's rifle as a "high-power military-grade weapon," it is the less powerful cartridges like .22lr and 9mm Parabellum that are commonly used to kill.
The panic over, "It looks scary and some lunatic killed people with it," is nothing but a distraction from the real problem we face in America. If we can only muster enough political strength to make stricter regulations on a single class of firearm, we should tighten the restrictions on the handguns, which people strangely find to be less "scary" (nevermind that it is deadly, right?) and bizarrely enough want to distance themselves from regulating (after all, by restricting guns, we don't want to restrict the right to defend one's home with force -- unless you are using a scary-looking gun to do it).
Let's be reasonable about this: we have a real problem, and a not-so-real problem. Let's address the real problem first.
With as much public outcry as there's been regarding this, I think it's inevitable that she will resign from her role as a prosecutor. By doing this though she may save Stephen Heymann's job and easily be able to land another (probably better paying) job.
It would be nice to have a leader who says "Yes we were wrong, I apologize. Let me fix the system" and actually fix it.
The very least she could do, is stop making more statements.
Not exactly a recipe for "far right".
How can a suicide of a 26 year old man under prosecution by your office not warrant some sort of change? How can you not reflect and try for a better outcome. To not change suggests that this was an acceptable outcome... which is the point we are trying to make. Prosecution should not be so severe that suicide is a viable alternative.
The first one is that if someone is suicidal and they commit a crime, you can't decide not to prosecute them simply because they may kill themselves. Our community might be certain that his suicide was a result of the prosecution, and there may or may not be evidence of that, but all things being equal, simply being suicidal cannot be a get-out-of-jail-free card.
The second response is that these people are lawyers. They're not going to openly admit to having done wrong even if it's obvious because it will only make their punishment that much swifter. Statements like the above are publicly made until it becomes clear that an act of contrition will reduce the penalty. That isn't obvious to Ortiz or her department right now, so there's no reason to expect them to attempt to publicly admit wrongdoing.
Note that this would be true even if Ortiz actually were wracked with guilt. These people are lawyers.
When a suicidal criminal is caught you do need to prosecute them. That means that you need to keep them alive to be able to prosecute them. Justice is not served when suspects kill themselves. We still don't know whether what he did was a crime or not.
When no person is harmed, and there has been no physical damage, (but with some kind of monetary loss due to shutting off a connection) it's absurd to suggest that 35 / 50 years in prison is a suitable punishment. It's absurd to suggest that any time in prison is a suitable punishment. Note that this applies even if the suspect is not suicidal.
Using these kind of plea-bargaining tactics when you know the suspect is suicidal is cruel.
> Using these kind of plea-bargaining tactics when you know the suspect is suicidal is cruel.
If your point is that you should prosecute someone who is suicidal differently from someone who is not, wrt prosecuting them then I'd strongly disagree.
If you do prosecute them less severely then where is the line? What about pregnant women, stress can cause miscarriges. what about old people, stress can cause them to have heart attacks What about overweight people, stress can cause them to die from a heart attack.
What if someone is faking being suicidal? You can never know for sure until they actually die, if they attempt suicide and survive then it might just be a hoax to get out of prosecution.
I think the world is better served when everyone knows they will be treated equally.
Thinks like this make me think that some is really rotten in this system. Some people think that is justified, fair and right to menace the life of an innocent baby if you got the robber mother in jail?.
There is really a need to say that this idea is a monstrosity?
Should be noted that the system is _obliged_ to care for the life of this baby?
"What if someone is faking being suicidal?"
Absolutely nothing
Is not so easy to fake this for much time... in the end this man or woman will reach the same place in front of a jury, but anyways is a better choice that the other option, that you _help_ to someone to be a suicidal.
> Thinks like this make me think that some is really rotten in this system. Some people think that is justified, fair and right to menace the life of an innocent baby if you got the robber mother in jail?. There is really a need to say that this idea is a monstrosity?
Being pregnant should not, under any circumstances, give you a get out of jail free card.
I can't believe I even have to state this and I have a hard time believing that you actually think this should be the case.
> Is not so easy to fake this for much time... in the end this man or woman will reach the same place in front of a jury, but anyways is a better choice that the other option, that you _help_ to someone to be a suicidal.
I can't parse this into a coherent sentence. I'm guessing english isn't your first language. No harm done, i'll move on.
> Being pregnant should not, under any circumstances, give you a get out of jail free card.
Of course, but this is not what i'm saying...
You can't wait, let's see,... six months?, eight months? You can't wait a year until the baby is born and someone can care or him? You really need to put this pregnant woman in jail Just Right Now?
Even if the proccess could be so stressful for the mother that the life of the foetus could be in danger?
> Unfortunately, a primary tool in that job seems to be plea-bargaining.
I cannot reconcile those statements. If a prosecutor's job is to prosecute then they should charge with crimes, and say what the maximum sentences might be, and go to court. But they clearly think that part of their job is to adjust the sentence to be commensurate.
He didn't commit suicide because he was, you know, chronically depressed for years. Obviously, people who are chronically depressed for years but are in great life circumstances never kill themselves(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace)
Let's not shy too far from the facts here. Aaron knew what he was doing was breaking the law. He participated in an act of civil disobedience, that does not grant freedom from consequences.
Yes, it is obvious to anyone downloading academic papers that they are committing 13 crimes and could be imprisoned for the rest of their lives. After all, changing your MAC address, hiding a laptop in a closet, and ignoring JSTOR's TOS clearly add up to 13.
He should have read the law? Have you read the law? Are you sure you haven't committed any felonies today?
I seriously doubt that Aaron really considered the possibility of criminal action for what he did, and certainly not so many charges that he could have been legally imprisoned for the remainder of his adult life. A civil suit by JSTOR would have been a reasonable expectation, and note what Aaron did when faced with a civil suit: he returned a hard drive of files to JSTOR and settled the matter, without any suicidal actions.
Your sort of reasoning -- that he allegedly broke the law, therefore no mercy can be considered and the prosecutor was right to harass him -- is one of the most destructive far-right concepts to have been popularized in America. It is the line of reasoning that leads to teams of soldiers attacking civilian homes to serve a basic search-and-arrest warrant. It is the sort of reasoning that opens the door to the crushing tyranny of overly broad laws and abuses of the justice system. Allowing ourselves to fall victim to the logic that the law is perfect and absolute, that prosecutors have a moral duty to enforce all laws, opens us to a system where nobody is safe from the government.
If he had been accessing student's personal info, would you still be defending him?
Unauthorized access is unauthorized access.
I did not say that he thought he was doing something entirely legal, I said that he probably only expected a civil case for his actions, which is entirely reasonable. If I had to guess, I would say that whatever attempt he made to conceal his identity was done to ensure that he would not face a court order to stop until he had finished what he had set out to do.
If you are saying that concealing one's identity is evidence that a person is doing something criminal, then you are accusing a good friend of mine of being a criminal. He used proxy servers to download large numbers of patents, as part of his masters thesis project, to avoid bandwidth restrictions imposed by servers. In the end, he developed a system that helps locate patents, and could help people avoid violating patents or find prior art. Should he face a 50 year sentence too?
"If he had been accessing student's personal info, would you still be defending him?"
He did nothing even remotely similar to that. His actions were as close to accessing private information as posting to HN.
"Unauthorized access is unauthorized access."
His accessing was not unauthorized. MIT's network is open to the public, and JSTOR's archive is open to anyone on MIT's network. What access was unauthorized in this case?
(b) except as set forth in Section 2.1(e) and 5 of the Terms and Conditions for Use for Journals, Plants, GIS Data, Select Other Content Types, and Data for Research below, provide and/or authorize access to the Content available through Individual Access, the Publisher Sales Service, or other programs to persons or entities other than Authorized Users;
(d) undertake any activity such as computer programs that automatically download or export Content, commonly known as web robots, spiders, crawlers, wanderers or accelerators that may interfere with, disrupt or otherwise burden the JSTOR server(s) or any third-party server(s) being used or accessed in connection with JSTOR; or
(e) make any use, display, performance, reproduction, or distribution that exceeds or violates these Terms and Conditions of Service and the Content-Specific Terms and Conditions of Use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lori_Drew#Guilty_verdict_set_a...
Do you not comprehend that you've just restated the despicable fallacy that overzealous prosecutors use to rationalize their behavior?
Stealing is stealing, so stealing a tic tac = stealing a cargo ship. Breaking the law is breaking the law, so jaywalking = mass murder.
No, they're not the same. They're comprehensively, fundamentally, entirely different.
There's a certain proportionality that's very definitely lacking in this case.
Way to intentionally not understand the situation.
Once someone assumes a public office they should assume they are now a public good working for the betterment of the society that appointed them. One of the rights, we the people, should have, is the ability to provide direct oversight; maybe not in real time, but at least post hoc.
Similar things have happened, although not always with the government's enthusiastic cooperation:
You absolutely don't want other cases or issues to be advanced through people killing themselves, or threats of suicide.
You also don't want non-violent civil disobedience hacking to face $1.5mm in legal costs, $1mm in fines, and 13 felony counts and multiple years in prison, particularly when the injured party comes to a successful private resolution with the offender.
Also, the cases in the future should not be handled by USA Ortiz of AUSA Heymann, who should no longer be involved in the practice of law, particularly not as employees and representatives of the people of the United States.
In other words: Is this surprising, in any way?
"Don't make a federal case out of it!"
~DAVID MAMET, Faustus
It doesn't even matter anymore whether she's right or wrong. Personally I feel that she mishandled this case (and that the whole system is pretty messed up), but the truth is somewhere between the two positions we keep hearing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Saeed_al-Sahhaf#During...
Justice being the best your money can buy - it's a sad reality. They can charge an innocent and he would have to spend all he has to prove he is not guilty. How can we stop that?
Maybe we need more lawyerless law suits, like those from Small Claims Court, to even the playing field.
If only we could get rid of mandatory minimums and put common sense back in the driving chair, it would be much better. Mandatory minimums are one of those thought free zones of US, together with the war on drugs, war on terror and "won't anyone think of the children?". I believe we need more common sense and ethic into our justice and less automatic rubber stamping of convictions.
It is the reverse. If you have too many cases to deal with because of absurd legislation that criminalizes a large portion of your population then you are already DDOS'ing your legal system. The 'lets try to route all requests straight to jail' option is not a solution for this problem.
The DDOS is cause, not effect, and it is the laws that cause the DDOS, not the fact that people have (in theory apparently) a right to a fair trial.
Then you don't understand what a plea bargain is. Plea bargains are used only in criminal cases. You may have heard that 90% of lawsuits are settled before they go to court but that has nothing to do with what a plea bargain is.
>Trumping up accusations in order to scare the defendant is a negotiation tactic that comes in package with it.
No, trumping up accusations is grandstanding. It is neither necessary nor wise if you have a plea bargain system in place. Yes, you can tell the defendant what the possible maximum sentence is, but that doesn't mean you have to grandstand and press conference the result for the rest of the world's consumption.
>They can charge an innocent and he would have to spend all he has to prove he is not guilty. How can we stop that?
Talk to Kevin Mitnick and Bernie S about this...
>If only we could get rid of mandatory minimums and put common sense back in the driving chair, it would be much better.
This I agree with. The entire purpose of having a judge involved in sentencing was to make sure that each case was judged on its own merits. Mandatory minimums castrate the judicial system and give too much control to a legislature that is largely bought and paid for by the military/prison/school/election/industrial complex.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044358930457763...