DOJ, MIT, JSTOR Seek Anonymity In Swartz Case 236
theodp writes "Responding to an earlier request by the estate of Aaron Swartz to disclose the names of those involved in the events leading to Aaron's suicide, counsel for MIT snippily told the Court, "The Swartz Estate was not a party to the criminal case, and therefore it is unclear how it has standing, or any legally cognizable interest, to petition for the modification of the Protective Order concerning others' documents." In motions filed on slow-news-day Good Friday (MIT's on spring break), the DOJ, MIT, and JSTOR all insisted on anonymity for those involved in the Swartz case, arguing that redacting of names was a must, citing threats posed by Anonymous and LulzSec, a badly-photoshopped postcard sent to Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann and another sent to his Harvard Prof father, cake frosting, a gun hoax, and e-mail sent to MIT. From the DOJ filing: 'I also informed him [Swartz estate lawyer] that whatever additional public benefit might exist by disclosing certain names was, in this case, outweighed by the risk to those individuals of becoming targets of threats, harassment and abuse.' From the MIT filing: 'The publication of MIT's documents in unredacted form could lead to further, more targeted, and more dangerous threats and attacks...The death of Mr. Swartz has created a very volatile atmosphere.' From the JSTOR filing: 'The supercharged nature of the public debate about this case, including hacking incidents, gun hoaxes and threatening messages, gives JSTOR and its employees legitimate concern for their safety and privacy.'"
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Exactly.
They are quick to name persons of interest, slow to retract any such announcements, but now want to hide behind the Judges robes for over prosecuting a nothing case. The corruption of this DOJ exceeds anything under Bush.
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No kidding, when I read:
"outweighed by the risk to those individuals of becoming targets of threats, harassment and abuse"
My first though was double standards much? They must be afraid of getting the same treatment they gave Swartz?
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Are you justifying threats?
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A scumbag? I'll wager he accomplished more in his brief lifetime than a pointless AC like you ever will.
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
You're kind of wrong about that. He will be remembered. He will be remembered as a symbol of free information and as a symbol of government gone wrong. He is one of the many examples of what is wrong and what will continue to go wrong. As they continue their behavior, they are increasingly more guilty. They and the public have seen the harm this type of action causes. That they do not pause or apologize shows they believe what they have done and are doing is right. They are broken and need to be disassembled.
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In any case, it doesn't help anything when Anonymous and Lulzsec make threats. Personally I liked the Guy Fawkes image that V put out, but Anonymous doesn't fit it at all, in fact they ruin it if anything. Would V espouse silencing his opposition? That's what anonymous does when they DDoS. It seemed to me that V wanted to bring justice and empower the oppressed, if not he would have killed or at least silenced those detectives who were actively working against him, yet he didn't do either.
Anonymous and Lulz
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V killed his opposition and blew up their buildings. I'm kind of thinking he'd be just fine with a DDoS if it made a point.
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Something tells me you didn't fully read my post...
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Well, then I don't understand your post. V blew up buildings, took over TV, radio, and PA system, killed people, and incited revolt. Some of it was personal revenge, some to make a point, and some to destroy the oppressive ruling regime. Why would he cringe from using DDoS to silence those he disliked? If he's OK killing them, hijacking their media transmission systems, and blowing up their buildings -- why would he be unwilling to temporarily make their websites unavailable? That just doesn't make sen
Re:Translation: (Score:4, Interesting)
You have made some interesting arguments, but they are mostly wrong. Let's take them one by one...
In any case, it doesn't help anything when Anonymous and Lulzsec make threats.
Yes, it does. This response and the principal actors wanting to keep their identities secret is a testament to how much influence these threats have. These criminals with badges are scared. I am glad that there is at least fear to keep their abuse of power in check.
Personally I liked the Guy Fawkes image that V put out, but Anonymous doesn't fit it at all, in fact they ruin it if anything.
On the contrary, they are improving it. Guy Fawkes was nothing but a Catholic and a failure. He was caught in the attempt and hanged as a criminal. In addition, he had a cause that few today would identify as a righteous one. Anonymous, by contrast, has fought against government corruption, the Zetas, and even rapists. They are much more upstanding than Guy Fawkes ever imagined being.
Would V espouse silencing his opposition? That's what anonymous does when they DDoS.
IIRC, V was entirely intent upon revenge: "V for Vendetta". He silenced everybody that had any possibility of opposing his plan, but not with a DDoS. His opponents' silence was a bit more permanent.
It seemed to me that V wanted to bring justice and empower the oppressed, if not he would have killed or at least silenced those detectives who were actively working against him, yet he didn't do either.
The detectives were a tool he used. Viewing himself as evil, he wanted to remove himself from the new world he had created, so he used the detective as a tool to kill himself. The detective was no more in control of himself than Brad Pitt's character was in Seven. While V's revenge had the element of justice, it really was an act of revenge concocted by a brilliant, semi-sane, suicidal freak. Anonymous, on the other hand, has mostly been motivated by injustice or entertainment. Either one is less damnable than revenge or suicidal insanity.
Therefore, I must reject your arguments until you base them upon a more solid foundation.
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For comparison, you should ask the same random person on the street about William Rowan Hamilton, or Gregor Mendel, or Emmy Noether, or Joseph Louis Lagrange, or Grace Murray Hopper.
Say That Again... and Again... and Again (Score:3)
The real bad actor in this saga is JSTOR;
This needs to be repeated until JSTOR is removed from existence.
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A person that allegedly committed multiple fellonies...
Nothing has been proven in a court of law. Trumped up charges made sure that at least something would stick, even if he plead to a lesser charge. He quite likely didn't see any remotely positive outcome and found it necessary to take his own life. While I certainly don't agree with that decisiion, I sure understand his mental anguish.
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And what he did was not anything that reasonably should be considered a crime. A stern talking to was about all he deserved, and it's basically what state prosecutors were seeking before federal prosecutors went batshit crazy on this case.
That's not quite true. What he did was wrong. Did it deserve the full weight of the US government to come down on him? No, it did not, which means that what DOJ, MIT and JSTOR did was a serious abuse of power that ended up with a human being feeling trapped to the point of having no other way out than to take his own life.
So, yes, he was wrong in what he did, but the people involved with this who should really be investigated and held accountable are off scott free.
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Just to clarify, are you talking about acquiring the documents or disseminating them? If it's the former, I disagree. If it's the latter, he didn't actually do that.
What if... (Score:3)
Even if he had disseminated the documents, it still would not have been wrong. Disseminating Public Domain documents is everyone's right no matter how they were obtained.
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So, yes, he was wrong in what he did, but the people involved with this who should really be investigated and held accountable are off scott free.
They are running scared, though. Hence the push for anonymity. It's too late for Aaron, but his family can still sue to hold them accountable. Intentional infliction of emotional distress, perhaps? Plenty of opportunity to get some redress with a civil lawsuit. That's what I'm hoping for, anyway.
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So, yes, he was wrong in what he did, but the people involved with this who should really be investigated and held accountable are off scott free.
They are running scared, though. Hence the push for anonymity. It's too late for Aaron, but his family can still sue to hold them accountable. Intentional infliction of emotional distress, perhaps? Plenty of opportunity to get some redress with a civil lawsuit. That's what I'm hoping for, anyway.
I'm not sure his family can sue the employees that were simply doing their job in reporting discrepencies in logs and the like. Nor would they be the targets of any of this as they were not the decision makers that made the choices that led to this escalating to a point where Aaron felt he had no other option than to take his own life.
More likely the reason they want the people involved to remain anonymous is that they could testify that standard procedures were not followed in this case or that they are p
JSTOR didn't do it. Yeah Right. (Score:4, Interesting)
JSTOR didn't do it. They asked DoJ to stop.
That is the lie JSTOR wants everyone to believe. While they claimed to be dropping the case, they were pushing MIT to prosecute -- repeatedly. They must have learned from Adobe's treatment of Sklyarov [wikipedia.org]. Like all corporations, they want to keep their reprehensible activities out of the spotlight. This is why they are pushing for anonymity. They can hide and claim it really was not their fault. In fact, they are the principal puppet master for this whole show. And in the end, they will be seen as having no guilt. This is both the worst possible and most probable outcome.
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What he did was wrong.
I'm sorry, but it looks like you just said that acquiring documents in the public interest through the only reasonable means with the purpose of public dissemination at no cost was wrong.
I never said that and that is not what he did. He violated an the acceptable use policy that he agreed to abide by. That is an objective wrong as he agreed to it, unless you are holding the position that his access to the system was illegal to start with, which would be a whole different situation.
The question at hand behind all of this is whether or not the violation of an acceptable use policy warrants the full force of the federal government to come upon you versus something more reasonable, like suspend
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Your entire argument is based on that he was some type of Robin Hood freeing these documents from bondage and giving them to the people who had no other way to access them. That is false. This is not some type of wikileaks type setup.
What he did was abuse his access account to a univeristy resource that provided him free access to millions of documents for his use as a university student and downloaded those documents. Those documents were freely available to every other university student, professor, and r
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...But everyone ever involved in any tiny and innocent phase of this story shouldn't have to endure vigilantes who think they can torment people who were honestly only doing their job.
The Nazi soldiers were "just doing their job." Just saying...
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The reason the prosecution has been called "overzealous" is because when the DOJ found they had no evidence of criminal behavior, the rolled out the overly broad CFAA, under which most people's Google searches might be able to be prosecuted, to get him. It is a classic case of the "everyone is guilty" attitude of the police in the English cultural sphere. "If I can't prosecute you for this crime, I will use some other irrelevant thing to make sure you pay." We might as well have cops go gun him down lik
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Oh, btw, my sister in not a whore. And if it matters, i don't even have a sister.
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Which person did he ever harm? No one.
That what he did is called "felonies" is much more of an indictment against the system that prosecuted him than against him.
And that you feel entitled to call him a scumbag, despite the fact he harmed nobody, just because of that same "felonies" tag, is an indictment against you.
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Did you slack off at work for half an hour in the last few weeks?
If so, you have committed a felony by violating the Honest Services Act, please go to your local police station and turn yourself in.
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By committing suicide all he did was show that he lacked the courage of his convictions.
You do know what the "C" in "AC" stands for, yes? WTF are you calling someone else a coward!?!
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All the personnel at JSTOR deserve to lose their jobs. They are the real pirates: They take a public resource, steal it from the public, and sell it back to the public. This is like someone stealing your car and charging to give it back to you. Or better yet, your neighbor charging you to walk the sidewalk in front of his and your house.
You would not tolerate this behavior from your neighbor. Why do you tolerate it from a website?
Should the employees and investors of JSTOR continue to get paid for
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I love how making something illegal, no mater how innocuous and innocent that something is, immediately polarizes the populace against them. After all, that person is now a scumbag felon.
Who cares if they were railroaded. Who cares if the prosecutions abused the law. Who cares if the prosecutors used smear campaigns and black mail to destroy a persons life just so they can cut a notch on their belt during their next their re-election. None of this matters because the ignorant pu
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People who do illegal stuff deserve everything they get. I teach my kids to report all Jews they see.
Yo mods, if I'm not mistaken, that's parody. It was illegal to not report jews in Nazi Germany.
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True enough, but the tone does not add anything to the discussion aside from confusion.
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Or more accurately, what does the GP have against JSTOR's low-ranking IT admin who found the access log when requested? Or the teenage daughter of the manager at JSTOR who passed on the request for that log? Or the MIT janitor who was supposed to lock that storage closet?
Those are the people whose names are going to be named, and whose lives will be ruined when Anonymous lets loose their unbridled vigilante mayhem. Of course, the dear Common Man will loudly praise Anonymous' "justice", and when that IT admin can't get a job, or that teenager's fake nude picture is plastered across her college's website, or that janitor's door is knocked down by a SWAT team responding to a tip about a bombmaker... those are just minor incidents, nowhere near as tragic as putting valid accusations before our dear Saint Swartz.
Re:Translation: (Score:4, Interesting)
More accurately, do you have anything to support this tautology that Anonymous would go after the bystanders in this affair, rather than the ringleaders who decided to "make an example" by blowing up a trespassing case into a 35 year prison sentence?
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"Now, we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men."
aaanyhow, I doubt the it admin would be named or that the it admin himself contacted any other organization from jstor or made any political decision on pursuing the case. however it is.. they work effectively in a public role, creating a chain of minor incidents which leads to them having power to direct law enforcement to spend energy and resources on a fairly minor case -
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Don't make it a crime just to make a dime.
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50 years for trespassing? (*)
This is how the Feds stick it to you if you help terrorists and violent drug kingpings -- you know, fucking murderers -- launder money for a decade:
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Oh, fuck off, everything is fine. Family's point of view is understandable. And request of anonymity is understandable. And when it is granted it is understandable.
There is no frustration at the family here. It is at losers that have nothing to do with the case that want some weird ass vigilantism applied to people who are completely innocent no matter what your perspective.
Cowards. (Score:5, Interesting)
If they're innocent they have nothing to fear, right?
Re:Cowards. (Score:4, Insightful)
False. Vigilante justice rarely if ever determines if a person is innocent before coming down with full force.
You can test this for yourself. Have your friends report you for kiddy porn in a completely unfounded way and watch hilarity ensue as you're put through months of shit. If you're lucky enough they'll put you straight on the sex offender list and inform your neighbourhood and THEN investigate your case.
Re:Cowards. (Score:4, Insightful)
False. Vigilante justice rarely if ever determines if a person is innocent before coming down with full force.
You can test this for yourself. Have your friends report you for kiddy porn in a completely unfounded way and watch hilarity ensue as you're put through months of shit. If you're lucky enough they'll put you straight on the sex offender list and inform your neighbourhood and THEN investigate your case.
The hilarious thing is, the example you quote isn't vigilante justice - it's what passes for official justice. It's not a case of vigilante justice being wrong, and due process being right - it's a case of due process being indistinguishable from knee-jerk crowd-mentality mob justice.
Fuck em (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets have every name, every detail, all of it. Beaurocrats like to hide behind their organisations, which enables every manner of abuse. Haul these insects out into the light, overturn the rocks. A man is dead, there must be accountability. They need to learn that they are personally responsible for their own decisions.
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Im pretty certain the man responsible for Schwartz' death is already dead.
However, Im glad that in your zeal for justice you are prepared to justify death threats.
Re:An eye for an eye (Score:5, Insightful)
Not as blind as a world without accountability. It's always the same story, whole organisations mess up or turn on lone individuals, then when the smoke clears there's mysteriously nobody to blame. That manager moved to another department, this clerk is not available for comment. Bring the beaurocrats to heel, I say.
Re:An eye for an eye (Score:5, Insightful)
Good, let's have their names and we'll reward them.
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There was an earlier case (I don't remember specifics) where someone committed suicide after being teased on facebook for being gay, and the people who did the teasing were charged with a crime
Re:Fuck em (Score:4, Insightful)
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Taxes paid for this persecution... prosecution. (Score:5, Insightful)
We have a right to know who decided to do that. It's our money being shot out of their legal gun.
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Your money? You're not serious!
Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
"...become targets of threats, harassment and abuse..."
God God, is somebody dragging them into police stations, questioning them for hours, threatening them with 30 years in jail?
Because those actions would be threats, harassment, and abuse indeed.
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Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What's wrong with naming names and ruining live (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, why don't we just abandon our laws and due process and solve every problem by lynch mobs.
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Sure, why don't we just abandon our laws and due process and solve every problem by lynch mobs.
There are some, who believe this has already happened, except it's autocratic instead of democratic mob doing the lynchings.
Anyway, your "let's solve everything by lynch mobs" is kinda bad argument. "If being obese is so bad, then let's starve everyone to death!"
And to be clear about it, I don't approve any kind of lynch mobs. People should be held accountable, tried and acquitted or punished, by due process. If this does not work in some country, mere lynch mob isn't going to solve anything.
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Mobs are uncontrollable. Once they start to rage, you won't be able to constrain them to a select few cases.
Re:What's wrong with naming names and ruining live (Score:5, Insightful)
Lynch mobs are about as much "due process" as plea-bargains are. "Hey, let's threaten you with 35 years in jail, so you'll be willing to forfeit your right to a trial and go to jail without one!"
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And we already know who did that. Anonymity would only protect the victims of Swartz from getting caught in the crossfire.
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You're using that term, "victims", but it doesn't mean whatever it it is you think it means.
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Wouldn't it be nice if the Feds supported due process? I mean, isn't that they're primary purpose as defenders of the Constitution? The Feds are the biggest threat to due process of any organization on the planet.
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This is slashdot, the solution to EVERY problem must involve a mob.
Re:What's wrong with naming names and ruining live (Score:4, Insightful)
I say, put their names out there for all to see, and let Anonymous make a bonfire out of their pathetic lives.
The very fact that this kind of idiotic thinking is out there justifies the request for anonymity.
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I say, put their names out there for all to see, and let Anonymous make a bonfire out of their pathetic lives.
I'd say that the fact that these particular individuals are being protected from answering for their actions by these corrupt private and public entities puts all of the individuals in those organizations, private and public, from top to bottom, into the target pool by their own choice in protecting these individuals. The others in those organizations not directly involved are also guilty of passively accepting such injustices by staying silent and continuing to work in and with those corrupt organizations.
Government does not deserve anonymity (Score:5, Insightful)
The moment you give government anonymity, it turns around and gives you tyranny, because it is no longer accountable.
Re:Government does not deserve anonymity (Score:4, Interesting)
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Pity it didn't see fit to step between Aaron Swartz and Cameron Ortiz. It's that double-standard that inspires vigilatism. People don't want vigilante justice. But when it's the only sort on the table, they'll take it.
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It's a system but increasingly not ours and not one of justice. It is too often a fig leaf for might makes right.
Hiding in Darkness (Score:3)
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
John 3:19
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Did John reconsider his position at 3:30? Or 4pm?
And who is this John fellow anyway?
It is funny, aint so? (Score:2)
No pun intended.
Very volatile atmosphere? (Score:2)
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Um no. Most of these people had nothing to do with the decisions made by the DOJ in the processing of this case.
MIT students should go on strike (Score:3)
Every last MIT student should stop and protest the school. It should shut down until the people who helped to create the situation are called onto the carpet. It is my understanding that MIT wanted to stop things but were unable to stop things. But they did make a rash choice of calling in the authorities. They could have handled it differently. Some people have grown completely insensitive to the prospect of ruining the lives of others with police involvement. I blame entertainment/media saturation for turning the entire population into people as in touch with the depth of reality as "The Cable Guy."
Life is longer than 30 minutes with commercial breaks. Ruining a life is a life ruined. But with our reduced attention span, our consciences have been reduced as well.
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Every last MIT student should stop and protest the school.
...
I blame entertainment/media saturation for turning the entire population into people as in touch with the depth of reality as "The Cable Guy."
Tel me again: how long the MIT students will be working to repay the student loans? Maybe this is another explanation the US student protest movements died with the '70-ies?
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If MIT students stopped for a week or even a day, the school would immediately pay attention to what is going on. Without stidents, the school shuts down and becomes worthles. It's a message to be sent, not quitting school. The school needs to know that how it treats people is important. More care and thought into how they manage situations such s these is important.
After all, the "soul searching" they said they would do? Have they produced any findings? Any resolutions? Any statements to the public?
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But they did make a rash choice of calling in the authorities. They could have handled it differently. Some people have grown completely insensitive to the prospect of ruining the lives of others with police involvement.
I don't buy that. If police involvement ruins lives, then it is entirely and directly the screwed up so-called justice process that is to blame. Calling in the authorities is what you're supposed to do when there's a crime. Your supposed to put your faith in due process and the judicial system; that's not the problem. The problem is that that faith is entirely misplaced.
Not informing authorities doesn't fix the root of the problem; it just shifts the burden of dealing with it onto private individuals with f
A brilliant light extinguished (Score:2)
A brilliant light extinguished itself when faced with the very credible possibility of several decades in prison.
In order to avoid repeating this kind of tragedy, it would be beneficial for society to know all of the details of the case, understand the thinking of the individuals involved, and examine their actions, so we can fully understand why the tragedy occurred, and work to avoid it in the future.
It's very simple really. Our society should be encouraging its Aaron Swartzes, not hounding them to death.
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It's very simple really. Our society should be encouraging its Aaron Swartzes, not hounding them to death. This benefits all of us.
Here's something even simpler: be one yourself (instead of just waiting for others to do it for your benefit - yes, your magnanimous "all of us" didn't escape me). This will bring a step closer the transition between should and is.
Dear DOJ, MIT, and JSTOR. (Score:2)
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Yeah, that'd be nice.
Unfortunately, far too many people think they have an absolute right to whatever they feel "justice" might be. If that means torching someone's house because they handed over an access log, then someone will likely do it. Maybe some investigator's family will have their whole social calendar thrown up on 4chan for public discussion, or a JSTOR programmer suddenly finds he owes $5,000,000 on a resort home in Dubai. This is the sad world we live in today, where people believe that it's no
Re:Did they pull the trigger? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's ironic that today, just and fair trials are so common that they don't make the news, but the injustices and scandals reported in the media are what shape people's opinions of the government.
Given how powerful the government is against the individual, shouldn't it be the concern of everyone when the government commits injustices? Or, should it only be a big deal when the boot is on your own throat?
I'm not arguing for vigilante justice, rather I'm arguing for full disclosure of who is involved in acts of injustice. Such disclosure is the only effective way of discouraging such abuses in the future. Perhaps if the government was seen as being transparent in such cases and effectively policing itself there were be much less risk of vigilante justice occurring in the first place.
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If slashdot comments be believed, the majorty of posters seem to believe that we (those in the US) live in an orwellian police state.
Thats kind of what GP was talkinga bout.
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The Orwellian part might be inaccurate but the police state is quite accurate. There are millions of Americans in jail with a large percentage in jail to prop up failed business methods. Your government isn't much different then China's, alternating between progressive and conservative every 8 years though the people do have slightly more input and the capability of throwing out a (perceived) weak ruler after only 4 years.
The smart thing about Americas rulers is that they let the plebs bitch and even let th
Re:Did they pull the trigger? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just and fair trials are actually exceptionally rare, in part because actual trials are quite rare. The system is entirely based on pressuring defendants into plea-bargains, regardless of their innocence.
In 1990, around 85% of federal prosecutions resulted in a plea-bargain, while 15% went to trial. Today, about 97% of federal prosecutions result in a plea-bargain, and only 3% go to trial. It's not because 97% of people charged are guilty, but because prosecutors make it abundantly clear that you had better take their plea-bargain if you know what's good for you.
Re:Did they pull the trigger? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't seem to understand the kind of "work" that Anonymous actually does. Burning down someones house? Racking up a $5 million debt in Dubai? What parallel world do you live in where that kind of thing actually happens as a result of Anonymous raids? In this one, we deal primarily with generally embarassing leaked documents and DDoS attacks. I also call into question your perceived choice of targets in another post... The JSTOR janitor having their life ruined by them? You think enough people hold the janitor personally responsible to dish out vigilante justice on him? I think you've boarded the crazy train a little too long.
You're worse than that Fox news report a few years back, showing the exploding van as a "demonstration" of their "domestic terrorism."
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A lot of Americans think of the American Revolution when they consider revolution. In reality no American revolutionary got within a 1000 miles of the King or Imperial Parliament and the revolution morphed into a (very successful) war of separation.
Real bloody revolutions hardly ever actually resort in an improvement whereas non-bloody revolutions sometimes do result in an improvement.
Re:Did they pull the trigger? (Score:5, Insightful)
No? Then, not guilty. Anyone that offs themselves is solely responsibly for that act.
So if I lock you in my basement and threaten to torture you for the next ten years, and you find a way to kill yourself, nobody should ask me any questions. Your death was your own fault in that instance, right? I grant it's an exaggerated analogy, but it refutes your fallacy concisely. Somebody contributed to threatening an American citizen with decade(s) of prison time over essentially mild internet mischief, and I for one would like to know who is to be held accountable for that.
Re:Did they pull the trigger? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? No wrong committed? The same people who threatened with 35 years something that alternately could be convicted with only 6 months, if only he assuaded their pride by proclaiming himself guilty?
They threatened a man with 70 times the supposedly appropriate punishment -- he'd have to go to jail WITHOUT a trial, if he didn't want that threat against him.
So either they were willing to help a man escape 34.5 years of a just punishment, or they were willing to penalize a man with an additional 34.5 years that he didn't deserve. Which one is it?
FUCK your plea-bargaining system, and anyone who defends it. You put to jail people who never had a trial, by merely SCARING them with a hundredfold vengeance if they dare proclaim their innocence. Anyone who doesn't DEMAND that your horrid and villainous plea-bargain system changes is complicit to such crimes.
Re:Did they pull the trigger? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Even if you think what he did was a bad action, it's not something deserving any pri
Re:Did they pull the trigger? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Fair enough, but if the posts be believed the "major problem here" is that Schwartz was somehow goaded into suicide because he was threatened with legal consequences for having broken the law. To me, that seems kind of backwards.
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Key people from Wikileaks got visited by spooks and quickly changed their tune about how they felt about the leaks, and blamed everything on Assange and said they didn't agree with releasing thigs that could "harm" people, even though nothing ever released by Wikileaks has actually harmed anyone. They then started OpenLeaks, which is basically a useless copy of WikiLeaks that the government has control over.
Assange is still trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy. Until he dies, gets out, or they come and grab
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Just like the abortion doctors who hide their names and addresses so their houses don't get blown up, right?
Re: (Score:2)
What consequences? Trivial things that are soon forgotten like three people eating a cake outside Ortiz's house (Let 'em eat cake!)? There are no consequences at all for Federal abuse of power and cake eating events like that are probably less annoying to Ortiz than morning traffic.
Here's another person who's getting raped by the Feds:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/21/barrett-brown-persecution-anonymous [guardian.co.uk]
But we don't hear much about it. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't happ