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Crime United States Your Rights Online

Aaron Swartz's Estate Seeks Release of Documents 131

theodp writes "The Boston Globe reports that the estate of Aaron Swartz filed a motion in federal court in Boston Friday to allow the release of documents in the case that has generated national controversy over the U.S. attorney's aggressive pursuit of a stiff sentence. The Court filing (PDF) suggests that the U.S. attorney's office is still up for jerking Aaron around a little posthumously, seeking what his lawyers termed overbroad redactions, including names and titles that are already publicly known. Swartz's family also seeks the return of his seized property (PDF). Last week, Swartz's girlfriend accused MIT of dragging its feet on investigating his suicide. Meanwhile, Slate's Justin Peters asks if the Justice Department learned anything from the Aaron Swartz case, noting that Matthew Keys, who faces 25 years in prison for crimes that include aiding-and-abetting the display of humorously false content, could replace Swartz as the poster boy for prosecutorial overreach."
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Aaron Swartz's Estate Seeks Release of Documents

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  • Re:Political attack (Score:4, Informative)

    by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2013 @10:10AM (#43212859) Journal

    You should also mention Julian Assange, who has never stepped foot in the United States and has never been subject to its laws.

    FWIW, he was on the Colbert Report (filmed in NYC) in 2010.

  • Re:Political attack (Score:3, Informative)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2013 @11:14AM (#43213429) Homepage Journal

    Put down the crack pipe

    - never.

    Manning wanted to embarrass the United States and he made that very clear in his statement in his court martial.

    - wrong, either you are misinformed or lying on purpose.

    full transcript [guardian.co.uk]

    excerpts:

    Up to this point,during the deployment, I had issues I struggled with and difficulty at work. Of the documents release, the cables were the only one I was not absolutely certain couldn't harm the United States. I conducted research on the cables published on the Net Centric Diplomacy, as well as how Department of State cables worked in general.

    ...

    The more I read the cables, the more I came to the conclusion that this was the type of information that should become public. I once read a and used a quote on open diplomacy written after the First World War and how the world would be a better place if states would avoid making secret pacts and deals with and against each other.

    I thought these cables were a prime example of a need for a more open diplomacy. Given all of the Department of State cables that I read, the fact that most of the cables were unclassified, and that all the cables have a SIPDIS caption.

    ...

    I did not see anything in the 15-6 report or its annexes that gave away sensitive information. Rather, the investigation and its conclusions were and what those involved should have done, and how to avoid an event like this from occurring again.

    ...

    The only place that you could possibly be referring to would be this part:

    I believe that the public release of these cables would not damage the United States, however, I did believe that the cables might be embarrassing, since they represented very honest opinions and statements behind the backs of other nations and organizations.
    In many ways these cables are a catalogue of cliques and gossip. I believed exposing this information might make some within the Department of State and other government entities unhappy. On 22 March 2010, I began downloading a copy of the SIPDIS cables using the program Wget, described above.

    Yes, releasing very honest opinions behind the backs might be embarrassing to some organisations, you are however implying that it was his motive, which is false or a lie. It was not his motive, his motive was to ensure that the public knew what was done in its name:

    The more I read, the more I was fascinated with the way that we dealt with other nations and organizations. I also began to think the documented backdoor deals and seemingly criminal activity that didn't seem characteristic of the de facto leader of the free world.

    ...

    It detailed corruption within the cabinet of al-Maliki's government and the financial impact of his corruption on the Iraqi people. After discovering this discrepancy between the Federal Police's report and the interpreter's transcript, I forwarded this discovery to the top OIC and the battle NCOIC. The top OIC and the overhearing battle captain informed me that they didn't need or want to know this information anymore. They told me to quote "drop it" unquote and to just assist them and the Federal Police in finding out, where more of these print shops creating quote "anti-Iraqi literature" unquote.

    I couldn't believe what I heard and I returned to the T-SCIF and complained to the other analysts and my section NCOIC about what happened. Some were sympathetic, but no one wanted to do anything about it.

  • by udachny ( 2454394 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2013 @11:16AM (#43213453) Journal

    No he did not, he finally returned some honor to his uniform by showing that there are still people that actually take the oath to defend and protect the Constitution seriously as opposed to those, who only pretend that they are there to do it.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday March 19, 2013 @11:24AM (#43213529)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

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