Carmen Ortiz: A Case Of Prosecutorial Diligence Or Legal Overreach?
radioboston.wbur.org
radioboston.wbur.org
http://www.wbur.org/2013/02/20/carmen-ortiz-investigation
Not a full transcript, but a long form article on Ortiz's history.
edit: A key passage that will interest some here, particularly the ones who believe that assistant DA Stephen Heynmann is the one to blame:
> A former federal prosecutor who worked alongside Ortiz for several years and did not want to be identified for fear of reprisal said Miner’s assessment is spot on.
“She is totally hands off and defers to her staffers more than any other U.S. attorney I have seen,” the lawyer said of Ortiz. “There are some [AUSAs] who have been in the office for a long time who have developed these little fiefdoms and are basically able to push her around. That’s just wrong for a whole host of reasons.”
One of those reasons, according to Miner, is that line prosecutors have an incentive to return indictments to keep their numbers up and often lack perspective when assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their own cases. It is the job of the U.S. attorney and her hand-picked supervisors to question the decisions of the AUSAs and to set the tone for the office.
The motel owner fighting against Ortiz to keep his property out of the hands of the Feds didn't kill himself. Did Ortiz just screw up her methods when she failed to drive him to suicide?
It's a coarse phrasing[0], but think the sentiment is and was a valid and reasonable one for the HN zeitgeist to have espoused given what we knew and thought we knew. At the time of that request for donations, Aaron himself was writing "a series of pieces on getting better at life" including such advice as "Look at yourself objectively"[1] and "Lean into the pain"[2]. These are not obviously the writings of someone who will shortly commit suicide, and those closest to him have been vocal about how well he seemed to the end.
Maybe there is a lesson that we should be nicer to everyone in general, but I have a really hard time feeling like there should be some kind of communal shame over having drawn imperfect conclusions from incomplete information.
[0] With the benefit of hindsight, I might phrase it as "I wish that he had been emotionally equipped to handle the situation he was in". [1] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/semmelweis [2] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/dalio
In fact I think the notable thing was how very quiet the reaction had been. A lot of CFAA cases that did acquire wide acclaim (including places like HN) were for things like accessing the "wrong" publicly-accessible URL, or finding security vulns and getting in trouble for just trying to let the organization know that they were vulnerable.
In this case it seemed to me there was a strong sense of "huh, this guy [Swartz] actually did break into a network, and server closet too" and therefore there was not nearly the outcry as we'd seen for most.
It is disturbing that some are still claiming he broke into the closet when it was unlocked [1], and others here apparently believe that changing your MAC address should be enough to trigger federal charges.
[1] Swartz broke into a closet in the basement of a building at MIT http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/
As soon as the information was transferred over interstate communications channels to Boston the jurisdiction would have been properly Federal in nature.
If it is also a state crime than the attorney's offices can negotiate as to which (if any) will prosecute but the Constitution makes it very clear that the Federal government has primary jurisdiction in this situation.
It is true that most Federal crimes are more severe than state (since they necessarily tend to involve more serious offenses by their scope alone). But had a "misdemeanor-level" CFAA-like Federal law been available it is possible that it could have been used instead of the actual felony-level CFAA. I'm not aware of any though, as far as I can tell it's either CFAA, nothing, or the prosecutor can perhaps try to get extra-inventive with other law on the books.
Either way though, changing a MAC address was not the only thing Aaron did. Your point about the server closet not actually being locked is well-taken, but you bring discredit to your own plea for accuracy by implying that the MAC address is the only reason any sort of charges were levied on Aaron.
Thank you for the explanation of the difference between Federal and State offences though.
> The thing that galls me is that I told Heymann the kid was a suicide risk,” Good told me. “His reaction was a standard reaction in that office, not unique to Steve. He said, ‘Fine, we’ll lock him up.’