DOJ Admits Aaron's Prosecution Was Political

&#62; "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto" played a role in the prosecution,<p>The fact that something Aaron wrote "played a role" in the prosecution <i></i>does not mean it was politically motivated<i></i>.<p>It's a fundamental principal in our legal system that intent matters. Of course if you are charged with a crime the prosecutors will use whatever evidence they can to try and back their claims of what your intent was.<p>The HuffPo article explicitly states that <i>this</i> is what is being discussed:<p>&#62; The "Manifesto," Justice Department representatives told congressional staffers, demonstrated Swartz's malicious intent in downloading documents on a massive scale.<p>So we're not talking about anything "political" here, they planned to use it as evidence. One can make a strong argument that it's lousy as evidence...but the fact that they planned to use it as evidence does not suggest any sort of political motivations (on it's own)...only that they are bad at selecting evidence for their case.<p>My comment should absolutely <i></i>NOT<i></i> be construed to say it <i></i>wasn't<i></i> politically motivated or that it was handled well....I'm strictly speaking about that one little line...you can't use that one line to support an assertion that it was politically motivated, because it's just not valid. Use other information to bolster the case instead.

No, they didn't admit that. An anonymous staffer told the Huffington Post they felt that the prosecution was overcommitted to a token prison sentence and felony convictions to justify the effort they had put into the case, and Swartz' "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto" was used as evidence to establish his intent.<p>4/5ths of Hacker News believed the day the news about Swartz came out, when we learned about the prison time demand, that this was what was happening. There has been no revelation, unless Taren or one of her peers was at the hearing and learned something different than the Huffington Post.

The government is chosen through a political process and so everything it does is political.<p>The DOJ's actions were heavy-handed in a way that has freaked out a lot of people who evidently never realized that the government was like this.<p>Anyone who has ever gotten a letter from the IRS or has been pulled over by a surly police officer knows well that even though there are laws which apply to everyone fairly, the way those laws are enforced is mostly left up to the discretion of whoever is enforcing them.<p>Try being an immigrant and dealing with INS officers or a traveler dealing with TSA. Our government has created all kinds of thugs whose job it is to put on a big show of force to intimidate people.<p>Why are government buildings so big and grand? To create a show of force and make our government seem formidable. Why are there so many ceremonies involving soldiers, government officials, marching, etc. Simply to put on a show and create the impression of solemnity, gravity, and importance.<p>Governments must continually act to keep the power they have achieved. They do this mostly through propaganda and PR efforts. Every white gloved soldier in a ceremony is a PR stunt. Every wood paneled room, dramatic monument, motorcade, marble building, podium, flag and seal are part of the PR show.<p>The world is full of greedy people who seek power over others. Whether it's an ambitious Carmen Ortiz or an up-and-coming young congressman or a mild mannered traffic cop. Each seeks to control others as a <i>very</i> significant portion of his/her motivation and life's goal.<p>Most people who do startups just want to build something and work with interesting technology and so we often forget just what government is. We must wake up and realize that it's about control and force, and now and then the victim of this control and excess is a fellow hacker and we start to take it seriously for a few minutes before we forget about it again. Don't assume that you won't be the target, don't adopt that conservative worldview.

<p><pre><code> | The same law that says that anyone using a fake | middle name on Facebook is committing a federal | felony. </code></pre> Federal prosecutors tried to get this interpretation through the courts with that mother that drove her daughter's 'rival' to suicide via MySpace. It didn't work. The judge threw it out, rightly stating that interpreting breach of ToS as a Federal crime effectively allows companies to set the bar for what is a Federal crime (e.g. "You must always access this website while standing on one leg or else we revoke your permission to use it! Now you're a 'hacker' with a felony conviction. Have a nice day.").

In light of this, it is clear that Ortiz and Heymann should be in prison. I made this same comment in a thread earlier and got a bunch of snivelly equivocating about "intent" as a reply...that is just invalid here. These people either didn't like or criminally misunderstood something Swartz did and used that and the position given to them by the government to terrorize him. Inexcusable, at least and it should be criminal (if it's not outright already).

<i>Many people speculated throughout the whole ordeal that this was a political prosecution [...] but Aaron actually didn't believe it was</i><p>Aaron was an idealist that had some idealistic misconceptions about reality. Being an intelligent and nationally famous activist, which he was well on his way to becoming, is not something you can do without ruffling the feathers of some very powerful people. He knew it [1], but his idealism stopped him from understanding what it meant for him, personally. I'll admit I don't know much about "how Washington really works", but I wouldn't be surprised if those with such power over senators have some sway with prosecutors, as well.<p>1. "You don't just introduce a bill on Monday and pass it unanimously a couple of days later [...] but this time, it was going to happene [...] somehow, and the kind of thing you never see in Washington, the senators had all managed to put their personal differences aside, and come together to support one bill they were persuaded they could all live with, a bill that would censor the internet, and when I saw this, I realized, whoever behind this was good [i.e. powerful]". <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgh2dFngFsg#t=411s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgh2dFngFsg#t=411s</a>

OT: Why doesn't web text flow anymore?<p>I increased the text size of this post because it started uncomfortably small (for me). Curiosity made me keep increasing the text size until it hit both ends of my browser, then I increased it some more and the text disappeared off the ends. The text did reflow as the size increased, within some internal margin set by the site's style, so it's clearly possible to reflow within the bounds of the window.<p>Why doesn't it reflow to stay inside the window, and why is this considered good? I vaguely recall that it used to be normal to reflow and keep everything visible.<p>I checked with FF and Chromium on linux, same behavior.

"This is making me angrier than almost anything I’ve heard since Aaron died. I finally figured out why: Because I worked my ass off to elect the Obama administration in 2008. I helped these people get in power. And then they drove the man I loved to suicide because they didn’t like something he said once."<p>A lot of people think the Democrats are lot more socially and politically liberal than they really are. Look no further than their repeated reiteration of punitive "War on Drugs" policy. The Democrats play that tune during elections, but it's a scam... as much as the Republicans and their Jesus babble. (Karl Rove is an atheist.) Both parties are absolutely status quo parties. Since the Reagan era, their stances have differed significantly only on hot-button "culture war" issues-- because these issues are really just tools to segment the electorate. On issues that matter to money and power they differ little if at all.

I don't know her, but I wonder if Taren S-K is going to define the rest of her life w.r.t. being Aaron's "widow". That can't be healthy, either.

Is the governments recent announcement that they would make all tax-funded research papers free to access a big enough silver lining for people to forget about Ortiz and Heymann?

I hate to say this, but the DOJ didn't kill Aaron Swartz...he took his own life. Selfishley, if I may so. Many activists stand up to the oppressor, raise awareness, fight, he didn't. Not taking anything away from what he was trying to do with JSTOR (semi-noble), but don't blame the DOJ on his death.<p>Do blame them for bringing down the sledge-hammer though.

"If you wish to keep slaves, you must have all kinds of guards. The cheapest way to have guards is to have the slaves pay taxes to finance their own guards. To fool the slaves, you tell them that they are not slaves and that they have Freedom. You tell them they need Law and Order to protect them against bad slaves. Then you tell them to elect a Government. Give them Freedom to vote and they will vote for their own guards and pay their salary. They will then believe they are Free persons. Then give them money to earn, count and spend and they will be too busy to notice the slavery they are in." -Alexander Warbucks

Surely 'intent' only becomes material after some crime was actually committed? Otherwise prosecuting just for intent alone makes it into a thought crime?<p>Specifically, in this case, I do not understand how the shills are hoping to keep justifying the use of the manifesto as proof of intent to distribute the articles, when he has NOT actually distributed them? How can that be possibly relevant?<p>Or is it the case that we are not only not allowed to read research that we paid for but now are potentially all guilty of thought crimes as well?

I believe that this behavior is just the same as effectively murdering him. Ortiz and Heymann should be convicted of whatever the US equivalent of "Murder with intent" is. Let them rot in hell forever.

Can we stop giving a shit about this already please?<p>There are a million and one worse things perpetrated and supported by this government that they actually do happily admit to and which are actually /really bad/ - i.e. resulting in the murder of tens of thousands innocent children.<p>I refuse to pity self entitled pricks who should have known what they were doing and taken some responsibility for the relatively tiny consequences of their actions instead of topping themselves.<p>Disrespectful tone fully intended.

<i>This is making me angrier than almost anything I’ve heard since Aaron died. I finally figured out why: Because I worked my ass off to elect the Obama administration in 2008. I helped these people get in power</i><p>So stop being a chump. Stop voting in the same career politicians from one of two sides of the same political coin. A coin that's entirely beholden to corporate interests and only nominally beholden to the people.<p><i>Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results</i>

What is the statistical probability of a .920+ batting average over a decade period? If the Feds come after you, forget about how much money or connections you have; it won't be enough!<p>Page 42:<p><a href="http://www.justice.gov/usao/reading_room/reports/asr2011/11statrpt.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.justice.gov/usao/reading_room/reports/asr2011/11s...</a>