Because our law is made by the hands of ultimately fallible beings. We are inevitably going to make mistakes. This is the reason we have legislative bodies. They are a guard against our own lack of omnipotence.
a) He was threatened with 35 years in prison for downloading journal articles from MIT. Both MIT and JStor (the wronged parties) were against this heavy handed prosecution.
b) Aaron was not convicted because he chose to kill himself while the prosecution was ongoing. The prosecution wanted him to serve six months in a federal prison; Swartz refused this plea deal. Aaron killed himself shortly after the prosecution declined his offer.
c) This style of prosecution (ie - go to court and risk 35 years in prison vs plead guilty and spend six months) goes against justice.
a) No he wasn't, this is a common misconception by people who don't understand how the US court system works.
b) Aaron had a good deal, the indisputable breaking-and-entering charge would probably have gotten him more than 6 months. (Clarification: Aarons state charges were dropped to make way for the more serious federal charges, so in the end he didn't even get charged for the breaking-and-entering.)
c) Again, read up on the US court system.
You're disrespecting his memory by using him as a weapon for your misguided crusade.
Here's a good article written by Orin Kerr regarding Aarons charges http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/
b) Not for a college-class first time offender into an unlocked network closet, especially given the institution. That would have been handled at the local level, and would have most likely ended up in probation.
c) Yes, this case was business as usual for the US "justice" system. That doesn't make it right.
If Aaron was a good friend of yours, then you probably do have some different insight. Please share it here instead of repeating the same tired he-got-what-he-deserved FUD.
b) Debatable, a prison sentence of a few years definitely wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary
c) You make it sound like there's something wrong with deals by prosecution, I don't think so. The deals don't hurt anybody and offer an easy way out.
Aaron knew what he was doing, he made a conscious decision to do it. I believe Aaron also knew that he'd get in trouble for doing this, what he was doing was civil disobedience. Orin Kerr describes this fairly well in his article http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains...
Wow, I guess the hacks that happen at MIT do carry quite the risk then. I can only imagine how many decades people would have gotten if they were caught putting the Lunar Module on the Great Dome.
And with that, you lose a great deal of credibility. It goes against your claim to have a great deal of knowledge about this case.
> The deals don't hurt anybody and offer an easy way out
With this, you lose a great deal of reputation you might have as a moral person, since you seem to think that extortionate behavior is acceptable, particularly from those with overwhelming power, such as the USG prosecutors. True, you are in good company, as the US justice system largely agrees with you that they have the right to extort; but that doesn't justify your position so much as emphasize that theirs, and yours, is evil.
Plea bargaining is a system that leads the state to extort guilty pleas out of innocent people. If you think it doesn't hurt anybody, quite frankly you have no idea what you're talking about.
If you'd like to learn more, here's a well-known paper on the subject:
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
If sentencing guidelines were ratcheted sharply downwards, plea bargaining wouldn't have an extortative effect, because prosecutors wouldn't have the latitude to pursue outlandish sentences.
However, if plea bargaining was outlawed but sentencing guidelines remained as they are now, sentencing and criminal procedure would remain unjust for the majority of defendants, who are ultimately guilty but don't deserve outlandish sentences.
Both policy changes are very unlikely, but for different reasons.
Plea bargaining won't be outlawed or curtailed because doing so would require allocating a huge amount of money to the court system, which is already overtaxed. Preempting an argument nobody has made: that's not "their problem, not ours", because what we'd really be talking about is years and years of delayed trials during which people will be held in confinement anyways. Look at China for an example of a system that has that problem in a big way.
Sentences won't be ratcheted down because there's never a political upside for doing that. That's obviously tragic.
He also doesn't agree with your opinion that there's nothing wrong with the way prosecutors use plea bargaining.
He does argue that Aaron knowingly broke the law and should have faced some consequences, but probably not felony charges.
Really, you should read Kerr more carefully before linking to him.
What is wrong with some of you Americans?
How can you have as a part of justice system a deal where you can say "Ok. Let's pretend that I did this thing and you don't have to actually prove it and you won't try to convince anyone that I did this other more horrid thing you accuse me of. And who cares about the truth?"
I think plea bargaining is a red herring. Plea bargains are a necessity: jarring as it is for us to consider this, most felony† defendants are in fact guilty, as a simple consequence of how policing works. It doesn't appear that way to us intuitively, because we only hear about the interesting cases.
That's not a defense of US criminal procedure! We have a terrible, back-breaking policy flaw: sentences are much too onerous, as a result of several decades of "war on crime" legislation from the 70's, 80's, and 90's.
† The word "felony" there is important.
This principle is an essential safeguard, critical for the preservation of order in a democracy.
As I have said before in this thread. Don't rob Peter to pay Paul. It is simply illogical and counter productive.
No doubt a functioning court system is also extremely critical.
We just need to think about it like a bug in the software. In the end it is up to social innovators to correct this deficiency. There is a solution to this problem.
EXTRA --
There is the argument that this does not apply to illegal combatants or immediate threats to national security. Obviously that is another problematic and complicated position that my have policy bleeding into this case.
P.S. > the nuance of your position is clear
It is an unfortunate problem with the current judiciary system. Pleas do avoid trail and as I understand it when things go to trail the penalties are substantially harsher.
So in many ways it can become the best bet... even for an innocent person.
This isn't bickering; the C.W. about Swartz is indeed that he was facing decades in prison. He was not.
I agree with the overwhelming majority of everyone that a custodial sentence for Swartz' actions would have been a miscarriage of justice. But the distinctions being made in this thread are not minor ones.
From a security mindset, you must surely know that if something can happen, then you must consider it. The statistical "expected outcome" of the sentence is irrelevant when it's the variance that's so crushing.
I'll give you that "decades" is an emotional exaggeration the other way. But unless you can bound that maximum at less than three years, then I would still call it "bickering". Anything in that range is life altering, and distinguishing between personality-ending and life-ending isn't particularly meaningful when they have a similar effect on the defendant.
Another question you could ask is, is there an expert in criminal law who has made a case for Swartz actually facing 3+ years in prison?
Amazing deal? Really? Do you think that serving 6 months or more for his "crimes" is justice?
This is how the world works, if you make a bad decision you'll have to live with it... Or not.
So, your "guess" is as good as mine, or any of my fellow armchair analysts on HN? Are you sure Aaron even considered you a friend?
Or perhaps, you were just trolling HN, eh?
This has been a crucial ongoing debate.
Does that sound 100% OK to you?
Essentially he was exploiting a vulnerability in JSTOR to mass download court documents, what if he was downloading credit cards instead? Or some sort of corporate secrets?
(Sure, credit cards and court documents are very very different. But the act here is the crime, not what he gains from it)
Swartz had previously downloaded court documents from a service called PACER. An FBI investigation was opened, but closed with no charges being filed; he was not prosecuted for that.
What if he was raping women? Or committing genocide?
> But the act here is the crime, not what he gains from it
Downloading scientific journals is not the same "act" as committing credit card fraud. It is an outrageous defect in the law that it doesn't adequately distinguish them.
He was downloading academic articles, not court documents. You're mixing up the JSTOR download and the time he pulled down PACER documents. He did have legitimate access to the JSTOR documents, but was bypassing rate limiting. In the process, he did do some things that were illegal, but nothing that honestly justified the Feds charging him with CFAA or wire fraud charges filed, nor anything that justified a felony conviction. What he was doing wasn't the sort of crime those laws were written to address and that they were intended to stop. The Feds. abused the ambiguities in poorly written laws to charge him.
We have constitutions and laws specifically to product/advance those interests. If that is the standard by which we judge actions, then it change how we should view the case.
This debate has fueled technological literacy among the general population/legislative/judicial. Much like the fappening is doing for crypto/personal_security (Re: Android/Apple announcements). It further underlines the critical role that technology plays in our civil life.
P.S. btw, please look up what "dichotomy" is. You can not have dichotomy of one thing, at least in the meaning of the word we're dealing with here.
Many people who violate the law think what they did wasn't wrong, but this has no bearing in the matter when it comes to sentencing.
To this, I can only add that there are a lot of bad laws and even more, much more, bad prosecutions, so sounding like every prosecution is right and if you don't like it, just don't break the law, is not only sounding mean and morally obtuse, but also very uninformed.
Most on HN are outraged with this type of sentencing because it's someone they liked, but if it was anyone else it would be perfectly acceptable.
Hence my comment above, if you can't do the time don't do the crime.