> "Look at the nearby discussion: Instead of asking why Carmen Ortiz, who's been in her current job for nearly six years, is still there, we're debating the terms of use of the petition site. Instead of wondering why a law originally designed to protect NORAD was used to drive Aaron Swartz to suicide -- despite his JSTOR "victim" never asking for a criminal prosecution -- we're reminiscing about other, equally useless, petitions in the past."

As an interesting aside, I was reading the article about the internal communications of the Chinese communist party's propaganda machine (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8856218) and one of the internet commenters on the payroll for the Party had this to say:

> “When transferring the attention of netizens and blurring the public focus, going off the topic is very effective.”

I find the USG response to this petition laughably transparent in the same way, but it will still be effective in general.

> "The White House's non-response on the two-year anniversary of Aaron Swartz's death shows why these petitions are not only flawed, but should be avoided by people who actually care about political or policy change."

This has always been true; it's not just in this specific case or with respect to whitehouse.gov. A petition is a slightly more sophisticated form of the "like" button, invented in a pre-internet time. Intelligent, directed actions sustained over a period of time cause changes; a boolean expression of opinion without the threat of some undesirable (by those perpetuating the status quo) action behind it is just a way of venting.