Aaron Swartz Was Targeted by Feds Over His Activism

http://mashable.com/2013/02/25/aaron-swartz-targeted-for-activism/

by ghosh • 13 years ago

281 62 13 years ago

mashable.com

t02• 13 years ago

>they offerred Swartz a plea deal that would have sent him to jail for three months

Why didn't he take that?

niggler2• 13 years ago

To take the plea deal, he would have had to admit guilt (Heymann insisted on it)

Summary: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/15/aaron-swart...

t02• 13 years ago

Wasn't he though? In hindsight this still seems like a better deal as opposed to what actually happened.

jacquesm• 13 years ago

It was that + branding him a felon.

mtgx2• 13 years ago

He wasn't guilty. Why would a prosecutor give someone an option between 30 years and 3 months - unless they know they have nothing to hold him on, but think they may get lucky and just accept the 3 months period and "admit he was guilty"?

Either he's a dangerous criminal who deserves 30 years in jail, or it's nothing, and the only reason they ask him to accept 3 months is because they would look foolish asking him to accept anything less than that (like say weeks or days).

jacalata• 13 years ago

What wasn't he guilty of?

olefoo• 13 years ago

A FELONY CONVICTION and three months in jail.

If you take the law and legal status seriously, you don't just accept being disenfranchised lying down.

nb. disenfranchised both literally and figuratively in this case.

mverwijs• 13 years ago

As I (a dutchman) understand US law a plea bargain is only that. A bargain that has the prosecution make a plea to the judge.

The judge, however, is free to ignore that plea.

There is no guarantee whatsoever that a judge will follow the recommendation in the plea. He/She could still have thrown the book at Swartz.

mpyne2• 13 years ago

The plea bargain can be made conditional on acceptance by the judge though.

klrr• 13 years ago

Similar things happen here in Sweden. Peter Sunde, the public face of TPB was a activist fighting for less fucked up copyright laws etc. He got blacklisted as a Neo-nazi by Sweden's feds SÄPO.

Very sad, but not very suprising.

clicks• 13 years ago

Indeed. The absurdity of that was explained by Peter Sunde himself in the documentary AFK (available for viewing here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTOKXCEwo_8 -- which I highly recommend as worth watching ).

mtgx2• 13 years ago

How does something like that even happen? Do they have laws like in US with their "associated forces" thing? Peter Sunder didn't do any infringement himself (neither did TPB, but let's just say that's a grayer area for now).

gavinlynch• 13 years ago

Gotta say... for all the flack the US Government takes around here, this illustrates there are no perfect systems. That is ridiculous.

3327• 13 years ago

Mashable links in HN, what has the world come to!

CrankyPants• 13 years ago

It's HN's favorite topic.

andreyf• 13 years ago

I wonder how his crime would have been reported/perceived in the US if he were a citizen prosecuted by his government in China or Russia... I image it would've involve a little swap of s/ro/er/

InclinedPlane2• 13 years ago

If true everyone involved should be out on their ass, this is banana republic shit, it should not be tolerated.

fennecfoxen• 13 years ago

Really? I would have said it's more Soviet or something (going after someone for ideology) and would save the 'banana republic' designator for when the NLRB "respectfully" declines to pay attention to the district court because they disagree. :P

But I digress.

sageikosa• 13 years ago

Soviet-style would indicate social control through the designation of locally delegated secret police (political officers).

The mode of operation here is less secret and more open, more akin to totalitarianism, with a Federal twist.

GHFigs3• 13 years ago

This is bullshit. Establishing intent is not "targeting" someone. Of all the things to get upset about in this case, this has got to be the least worthy. It is the wrongest of wrong trees to be barking up.

He was caught doing 'A'. He had previously written a manifesto that describes it as a moral imperative[1] to do 'A then B'. The prosecution believed that this established his intent[2] to do 'B'.

This is not an unreasonable conclusion. You don't have to respect or agree with any part of the prosecution to understand this. You don't have to believe that it was his actual intent to understand that it's not out of line to draw that conclusion from those facts.

Please, if you care about this case, don't waste energy on linkbait and bent truth.

[1] http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamju... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_(criminal_law) (I link to this because some people seem to be unaware that intent has a legal meaning.)

mycroftiv• 13 years ago

I believe your answer, while correct as to matters of law, is actually missing the essential point. The fundamental issue is the morality of the prosecution of Aaron Swartz, not whether the legal team conducting the prosecution was following the rules of law. It is undoubtedly true that they were.

The reason people care so much about this issue is that many of us feel it shows that the current method of applying the rule of law produces bad and immoral consequences. Yes, it is true that Mr. Swartz's previous writings may establish intent in a way that is relevant to criminal prosecution. It is also true - and I believe an ultimately more significant matter - that this case demonstrates that "writing about what you believe" may indeed place you in greater criminal jeopardy, and that consequence of the "rule of law" as it was enforced in this case may cause more harm to society than the "evils" the laws were intended to prevent.

In other words, the significance of this case is that it shows our current methods of applying the laws may have negative consequences. Saying "the prosecution was applying the law correctly" is not relevant to the question: does this case show that we should change the laws, and how they are applied?

rayiner3• 13 years ago

If I write about doing A then B, and I do A, and it's a crime to do A with intent to do B, then the only moral issue is whether it should be a a crime to do A then B. Using the writing as evidence of intent to do B isn't just "our current method of applying the law" or a bit of hyper-technical lawyering--it's obvious and common sense. Even a child will infer your intent from the things you say you are going to do.

alan_cx• 13 years ago

I'd suggest that its the law that is bent.

pms• 13 years ago

The stuff you write is bullshit.

If we treat the law the way you treat it then we violate the rule of proportion again. How can you talk about "criminal intent" when we are talking about copyrights protection? It's extremely different to murder somebody, than to violate copyrights. The first is widely perceived as morally wrong among all nations. What about the second? How can you, therefore, talk about "criminal intent" in case of copyright protection? The intent here is quite obvious, the intent is to CHANGE THE LAW. This is "criminal intent" for you? If intent to change the law were "criminal intent", because it hurts some specific businesses, then the law would never change for the good of nations, instead it would change for the good of people with power. Or, it would change, but like it has happened historically, with a bloodshed. This is right for you?

Think about it, use your brain, please!

sigzero• 13 years ago

No, what you write is bullshit.

There are LEGAL ways to try and change a law. That isn't what happened. There was "criminal intent" whether or not you AGREE with the law or now.

Peaker2• 13 years ago

According to the article, didn't the manifesto claim to legally purchase non-copyrighted material and then distribute it legally?

If what Aaron did is legally get non-copyrighted material with the legal intent of distributing it, then there's no legal case to be made at all.

If what he did is illegal, or getting of copyrighted material, then it mismatches what the manifesto said, so is problematic at establishing intent.

tptacek2• 13 years ago

What the hell? You could just Google it to read it in its entirety. Do you really need to argue about what Mashable says Techdirt says the Huffington Post says an anonymous staffer says Carmen Ortiz says her AUSA says Aaron Swartz says?

Short answer: no, you're wrong about the "manifesto".

Lagged2Death3• 13 years ago

He was caught doing 'A'. He had previously written a manifesto that describes it as a moral imperative[1] to do 'A then B'. The prosecution believed that this established his intent[2] to do 'B'.

The exact word being tossed around here isn't "established," but "proved." The claim is that a document Swartz didn't even write on his own "proved" his intentions in a questionably related situation years after he wrote it.

This is not an unreasonable conclusion.

Have you been on the internet long? Have you ever written anything on the internet that a stranger could misinterpret or that could similarly "prove" you had bad intentions in some unrelated situation years from now? No? Are you sure? How could you even know?

Since when are we prosecuting relatively minor civil offenses like copyright infringement based on intentions rather than actions anyway? Will we start prosecuting people who plan to jaywalk?

Bear in mind the prosecution's goal was apparently to put Swartz in prison, to label him a felon for life, for an act even the prosecutors admit that he hadn't actually yet committed, without a trail. And your "not unreasonable conclusion" is essentially their entire argument for justifying this.

If this is different from prosecuting a thought crime, I'd sure like to know how.

waps• 13 years ago

Wasn't a not-insignificant part of the prosecution established to be him breaking and entering into a secured room and then proceeding to force access to a network port ?

The same goes for the manifesto he wrote. It's not like "A" was "riding ponies", "A" in your text is using violence to force access to documents, because he believed them to be public domain, and then republishing them. As the prosecution claims, that document was not used to establish criminal intent, nor to prove that he committed a crime, but was merely used to establish motive. Needless to say, the criminal part came from the breaking and entering and hacking someone else's computer system.

GHFigs3• 13 years ago

The exact word being tossed around here isn't "established," but "proved."

There are degrees of proof. The standard of proof required to press charges is lower than that to actually convict someone in a trial. This is high-school civics class material.

Have you ever written anything on the internet [...]

Conceivably, yes. I'm not in the habit of publishing manifestos, but as somebody that is routinely misinterpreted by people that don't share his views, the possibility has crossed my mind.

But there are reasonable and unreasonable conclusions that one could draw based on any pairing of a person's actions and their prior writings. I'm only saying that this one is not outlandish or evidence of unreasonable "targeting". They did not (for example) accuse him of intending to blow up an MIT building. That would be totally unreasonable in a way that this is not.

Since when are we prosecuting relatively minor civil offenses like copyright infringement based on intentions rather than actions anyway?

That's not what happened here. Swartz was not charged with copyright infringement. Look at the actual charges and the actual law they're based on. The actions he was observed doing are as much a part of the charge as the intent that was alleged.

And your "not unreasonable conclusion" is essentially their entire argument for justifying this.

I said the inference is reasonable, not the prosecution's zeal. That's why I say this particular part of the story is the wrong thing to be focusing on. (And yet, here we are.)

If this is different from prosecuting a thought crime, I'd sure like to know how.

If it were a thought crime, he would have been charged in 2008, when he had the thought 'We should all do A then B'. But he wasn't. He was charged when he was caught doing 'A' and somebody inferred that his intention was to do 'B' as well.

coldtea• 13 years ago

>This is bullshit. Establishing intent is not "targeting" someone.

Legally speaking maybe. In right life, fuck no.

And it's not just for the trial. What were the FBI files for Aaron like even before that?

tptacek2• 13 years ago

One sentence in one Huffington Post article. An endless stream of wild extrapolations by publications trying to gin up rageviews.

JoeAltmaier2• 13 years ago

What is surprising here? Folks who publicly flout the rules are asking to be censured, and it happened.

metaphorm4• 13 years ago

wow. thats an astonishing thing to say. you sure have a high regard for "rules". some rules don't deserve to be respected. they're not automatically right just because they are codified. there's also a difference between a censure (a formal reprimand) and criminal prosecution. you ought to think more about the implications of what you've said.

JoeAltmaier2• 13 years ago

I'm just weary of all the gesticulating. The conversation isn't even about the right thing. This guy presumably had friends - where were they? They failed him. But all the talk is about projecting it onto someone else.

Why do they do this? Because after years of cheering on this manic-depressive guy, laughing at his antics and ignoring his crashes, his cohort hopefully feel shame at their part in egging him on to ultimately irresponsible acts.

wglb• 13 years ago

While I have enormous sympathy for Taren, Aaron's family, and all who knew him, there isn't very hard evidence for this particular assertion. I do recall that his lawyer didn't feel that it was a politically motivated prosecution.

An agressive prosecution will naturally research what the target has done in the past as a way of establishing intent.

Not that I don't feel that the prosecution Aaron wasn't egregious.

nwzpaperman• 13 years ago

The spirit of the United States Constitution and subordinate laws has been wholesale abandoned and legalism has been adopted. The law has been usurped by corporate interests, both for-profit and unprofit, to consolidate power in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals.

Equalitarianism has over-taken liberalism. Democracy, as H.L. Mencken projected, has been leveraged to undermine the Republican government.

The noble lie of the nation state is fighting to preserve its perceived legitimacy. Regardless of the specifics, Swartz has gone down as a martyr in the court of public opinion and "the people" are becoming increasingly untrusting of their governors and government. Once trust is lost, it isn't easily restored.

The elephant of tyranny remains until generations to come forget again.

RIP Swartz

nwzpaper.com/articleView?articleId=133 nwzpaper.com/articleView?articleId=141 nwzpaper.com/socialContract

Aaron Swartz Was Targeted by Feds Over His Activism

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