White House Owes Response To Petition To Fire Prosecutor Of Aaron Swartz

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/02/11/white-house-owes-response-to-petition-to-fire-prosecutor-of-aaron-swartz-and-other-hackers/

by hachiya • 13 years ago

151 80 13 years ago

forbes.com

tadfisher5• 13 years ago

I'm sorry, but this has to be said:

The White House doesn't owe you shit.

They set up this petition system to expand the illusion that somehow the system is working for its constituents. It is not, and it was not designed to. The system makes decisions so you don't have to. It's better this way.

The fact of the matter is that these prosecutors were doing their job, which is to apply as much pressure as needed to achieve a negotiated prison term (a win), and they did it a little too well for our comfort. The White House will not speak against these actions because these actions benefit the White House in the vast majority of cases.

If you want things to change, change the system. Lobby against the CFAA. Lobby for rules to enforce ethical use of prosecutorial discretion. Protest. Volunteer for candidates that oppose these practices. Don't think that clicking a "Like" button is going to change anything, because if the White House petition system actually changed anything, it wouldn't exist.

If you want to change the system, don't ask the system to change. Change it yourself.

NathanKP• 13 years ago

Yeah I'm afraid this may just go the way of several other petitions regarding judicial cases, in which the response was basically "here is why we aren't going to respond".

In this case I feel some sort of real response is deserved even if I think it is highly unlikely that they can or will do anything as serious as firing people.

tadfisher5• 13 years ago

Why do we deserve a response from the White House? What can the White House possibly say to appease us if they cannot or will not do what we ask?

scarmig• 13 years ago

You miss the point: the White House isn't going to govern by petition, but the petition provides a useful organizing nexus. And these petitions have, if nothing else, put a serious damper on the prosecutors' professional goals and potential political aspirations.

Not nearly enough, but I don't think anyone's argument is that "all we need to do is get one or two prosecutors fired and then we're done." The only question is, what's next?

tadfisher5• 13 years ago

Then why not skip the farce and actually organize a movement? You know, like they used to do when "separate but equal" was a thing?

waterlesscloud• 13 years ago

Sorry, but this misses the point entirely.

The White House does in fact owe a response to the petition. That's the deal they set up themselves. They owe it to the people to live up to it.

tadfisher5• 13 years ago

And that response will be as meaningless as most of the responses they've given. So what? What will it do or change? Will this response prevent another Aaron Swartz incident?

aposiopesis• 13 years ago

That said, it's not been that long since Carmen Ortiz had this petition aimed at herself: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-stat...

As you can see, the petition reached over twice the required amount(and when it reached 25k, there was a discussion about raising the required amount to 100k). The site's been criticized several times now, because of this reason.

I personally think they should add a tab for petitions that reached the requirement, so that these petitions aren't lost, which would make it easier for people to see which petitions still require an answer.

chris_wot3• 13 years ago

Not to mention that the Whitehouse is the world's great bastion of representative democracy. Like hell they don't owe their own citizens a response. That's why they setup the petitions system.

The first comment so totally missed the point that it curved around and nearly smacked the author on the head.

politician2• 13 years ago

The White House says they established this petition system to increase the level of communication between them and the public. Shouldn't we take them at their word? If they fail to come through, then call them out on it (as some other threshold-breaching petitions already have).

Now, they've said that they are swamped with petitions and so have increased the threshold to 100,000. That's not an impossible number, it just requires a broader base of participation - more than say, just the readership of HN and Reddit.

I realize this petition system is widely seen as a gimmick, but it's a public gimmick. As the WH fails to properly respond per its own rules, the independent (and perhaps, foreign, but probably not mass-) media can easily write obnoxious stories calling them out.

As for the other calls to action: certainly.

philwelch8• 13 years ago

The White House is like any political body--they want to give the illusion of listening to the people without having to actually do what anyone else wants of them. Online petitions are perfect for this.

Their "word" is that 100,000 people sign an online petition, and some junior staffer writes an official response restating the administration's position. So in exchange for 100,000 people getting their slacktivism on and having a false sense of accomplishment, the White House gives up maybe an hour of time from their staff. It effectively reduces their accountability to the public by encouraging this false sense of accomplishment.

betterunix4• 13 years ago

"Shouldn't we take them at their word?"

Is there some reason we should trust the Obama administration to follow through on its promises? They have repeatedly failed or only half-kept their promises. Like most of America's high-ranking major party politicians, Obama and his administration will say whatever they need to say in order to get votes, and will then turn around and do whatever their wealthy corporate sponsors demand.

"As the WH fails to properly respond per its own rules, the independent (and perhaps, foreign, but probably not mass-) media can easily write obnoxious stories calling them out."

The media outlets that actually matter are too busy promoting the illusion that the Democrats are a liberal party and that Obama is a liberal president to bother with such things.

philwelch8• 13 years ago

Nice job, HN. The one person who gives a realistic, grounded response gets downvoted.

mrbarrett84• 13 years ago

Agreed. We owe it to ourselves not to worry about what the government is going to feed us. Every one of us is smart enough to know what needs to change.

Back away from the keyboard for a second. Take a deep breath. Get out there and work for change until you are exhausted.

Don't ask any system a question you already know the answer to. It will break your heart.

woodhull• 13 years ago

Actually, the petition site is a clever way to harvest email addresses which the administration can then use to market it's policies back to constituents.

drunkenmasta• 13 years ago

If what you write is true, then it would be in their best interest to respond so that they could maintain the "illusion." So while maybe the "White House doesn't owe you shit," that does not mean that it is not in their best interest to keep their promise.

lukifer2• 13 years ago

Much of what you say is correct, but I see no reason not to use every tool in the toolbox. Public perception is a powerful weapon, and these petitions can be used effectively to that end.

n3rdy• 13 years ago

> because if the White House petition system actually changed anything, it wouldn't exist.

Reminds me the saying "If voting made a difference, it would be illegal".

> If you want to change the system, don't ask the system to change. Change it yourself.

I'm a fan of Bucky too.

cardine• 13 years ago

"Let the people think they govern and they will be governed." - William Penn

One of my favorite quotes, and completely true in this situation.

charonn0• 13 years ago

It will be very interesting to see the administration's response, which is, remember, all that's promised.

When they were in the early decision phase that resulted in the petitions website, they certainly would have realized that such a system would very quickly become overrun with pleas for Presidential Pardons, intercession in ongoing investigations/prosecutions, and, as in this case, for punishment of a government employee who is perceived to abuse their power. That's what the thresholds are for.

They knew this would happen; and they're already prepared. I predict the response will boil down to "we can't interfere with the machinery of Justice, etc." Their reply will give a lot of good points to support this, but will subtly rely on the people confusing prosecutors as being Judicial rather than Executive employees. Mr. Heymann and Ms. Ortiz will keep their jobs, though Heymann may no longer be put on "hacking" cases.

qiqing2• 13 years ago

"Governments have generally not recognized the legitimacy of civil disobedience or viewed political objectives as an excuse for breaking the law." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience

I would like to believe we live in a time when there is some self-reflection and self-correction on the part of the machinery of justice.

haven• 13 years ago

Author seems mistaken. Ortiz hit 25,000 before the White House raised the required amount to 100,000.

Since the Heymann petition didn't reach the mark before the cap was raised, there are another 75,000-or-so to go. Ortiz was grandfathered in.

edit: I thought only completed petitions were grandfathered in, but it appears I'm wrong and just having a petition started before the change is sufficient for grandfathered-status.

hachiya• 13 years ago

I believe both petitions were grandfathered in. And the site does indicate the "fire Stephen Heymann" petition has met the requirement. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-... "Signatures needed by February 11, 2013 to reach goal of 25,000: 0"

So the Forbes author does not appear to be mistaken.

olefoo• 13 years ago

One important distinction that this article misses completely is that Mr. Heymann is a civil service employee whereas Ms. Ortiz (his boss and supervisor) is a political appointee. The Executive branch is perfectly within it's rights to fire a political appointee at any time for any reason, but would have to show cause to terminate a civil servant. This system exists to prevent partisan patronage at the federal level from bringing the government down on a regular basis.

Paradoxically this means that any effort to remove Mr. Heymann is made more difficult by the existence of a qualified petition for his removal. He would have to have made overt and on the record declarations of ill intent and bad faith for the Obama administration to remove him at this point. Ms. Ortiz on the other hand, could be asked to depart at any point. Although it seems unlikely to happen before she testifies to congress, and is in any event unlikely to happen unless the Presidents political calculations suggest that her absence will allow him to access resources ( of political support ) that are necessary for him to achieve his agenda.

bonchibuji• 13 years ago

I remember reading sometime back that White House had increased the threshold to 100,000 signatures. The 'Fire Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann' has got only 25,760 signatures as of now. Am I missing something?

asdfologist• 13 years ago

The threshold doesn't apply retroactively.

dclowd9901• 13 years ago

>“Heymann saw Aaron as a scalp he could take,” she wrote. “He thought he could lock Aaron up, get high-profile press coverage, and win high-fives from his fellow prosecutors in the lunchroom. Aaron was a way of reviving Heymann’s fading career. Heymann had no interest in an honest assessment of whether Aaron deserved any of the hell he was being put through.”

I get that this girl is upset and feeling vocal, but she's drawing these conclusions and painting this picture for a person about which she knows nothing. I feel like everyone is doing this a lot lately: talking about Aaron like he is a simple, sweet martyr, and about Heymann like he's the warden from Shawshank Redemption.

I'm really trying not to come off as contrarian for contrarian's sake, but this kind of demonizing seems really counterproductive to me. It goes without saying that the prosecutors of this case took it too far, and that the justice system is incredibly unbalanced. Why can't those facts alone be enough without turning the involved people into charicatures?

Everyone was playing their part, and it got messy. It's like Tommy Lee Jones responding to Harrison Ford's "I didn't do it!" in The Fugitive: "I don't care." I doubt Heymann was sitting in his office cackling about "scalping" Aaron. It was just another case on his docket that he was trying to put to rest. The real problem is that his incentive is not to be fair or find truth, but to convict and incarcerate at all costs.

Kroem3r• 13 years ago

I am definitely going to have to sit down in front of a movie screen sometime soon. I've really missed out on how to think about stuff.

If I could only get someone to follow me around playing music, I'd have a soundtrack to help me feel stuff, too.

shail• 13 years ago

When I see such responses, I feel that how undeveloped human mind is. How hard is it to understand that when you hold a job related to justice and you are the prosecutor, it does not give you the right to misuse your power.

If justice is always given by books, my god I don't think even a single person will be barred from facing sentence. You always have to look at it from human perspective.

You cannot threaten someone who stole something with life imprisonment of 35 years, that is plain bullshit. I don't understand why people find it difficult to understand.

"...his incentive is not to be fair or find truth, but to convict and incarcerate at all costs."

Really? Does his job description say that bring as harsh punishment as possible to any kind of crime.

Does not matter even if the text says so, I think we can expect people holding such positions be intelligent enough to understand beyond black and white words.

johnpowell• 13 years ago

Didn't they offer him six months in jail? It's not like they were cleaning the needle.

My mom did ten years for a probation violation (granted it was killing my abusive father) but she only did time served on the original charge.

So if six months was a option I'm not sure why he didn't take it. And to be honest I do believe he committed a crime and six months was reasonable. In my eyes masking yourself and sneaking into a server closet isn't different from using SSH.

likeclockwork• 13 years ago

No one killed Aaron Swartz. He killed himself. He could have become a political prisoner. He might have beat the charges. He would have gotten out eventually. The only cause he is a martyr to now is mental illness.

devcpp• 13 years ago

That's the Middle Ages mentality: in some religions where murder was not tolerated but people wanted to get rid of other people, they put them in a terrible position (buried alive, closed room with no food, daily torture) with some sort of fatal weapon. The poor person would usually suicide, and no murder would have been committed. These people were cheating God's system.

In modern societies, this kind of thing is fortunately not tolerated, and is usually punishable as murder or conspiracy to commit murder. So what you said is an invaid argument. It remains to be proved that Schwartz was punished unfairly and too much, given his psychological past.

sigzero• 13 years ago

Um...no. It doesn't remain to be seen. You will never be able to prove that and there is absolutely no way that they will consider it "murder" or "conspiracy to commit murder".

nonamegiven• 13 years ago

If all it does is provide a talking point to Ortiz' political campaign opponents, it's worth signing these petitions.

A signature on Heymann's petition contributes to undermining Ortiz' political aspirations, so it's worth it to sign this petition too.

No Ortiz political opponent will ignore this rock to throw.

White House Owes Response To Petition To Fire Prosecutor Of Aaron Swartz

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