DOJ Admits Aaron's Prosecution Was Political

http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/44047376234/doj-admits-aarons-prosecution-was-political

by rrbrambley • 13 years ago

520 148 13 years ago

tarensk.tumblr.com

dccoolgai2• 13 years ago

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).

GHFigs5• 13 years ago

got a bunch of snivelly equivocating about "intent" as a reply

As somebody that took time out of his evening to address your prior comment with what I felt was sincerity and (I hoped) clarity, I'm sorry it came across to you as "snivelly equivocating".

that is just invalid here

It may help you to understand the relevance of intent better if you look at what Taren writes in the footnote: "His lawyers instructed him very strictly that he should never talk about motive with anyone before the trial, as it could play a key role in the defense and they didn’t want the prosecution to get any hint of what line of argument might be used."

As I said in my prior comment: In law, intent (if it can be proven) can make an enormous difference in what you get charged with or convicted of. Far from being invalid here, the importance of someone's intentions in a case like this is exactly why prosecutors would look at Swartz's prior writings and why his lawyers would instruct him not to discuss it.

dccoolgai2• 13 years ago

Assuming that what is charged here is true - namely, that the prosecutors brought the case against Swartz because of his philosophical writings on open data - any minutiae of the case is irrelevant. Thank you for your explanation of the importance of establishing intent in the context crminal law, but couched in the bed of prosecutorial misconduct that it apparently is, it just isn't relevant here and even bringing it up is compositional sophistry.

If I, as a prosecutor, decide to charge you with felony assualt because I don't like the color of your shirt, it simply does not matter that you either A) Slapped someone in the face last year or B) Wrote on your blog that you intended to do it. My case is prima facie invalid - I am not allowed to charge you with felonies because I don't like the color of your shirt or because I don't like your philosopy on government transparency.

wisty• 13 years ago

Ortiz tried to prosecute a lawyer who was just doing her job. The judge threw it out of court. So fortunately for Ortiz, the kind of miscarriages of justice which she advocated for aren't too likely to happen.

pyre• 13 years ago

  | The same law that says that anyone using a fake
  | middle name on Facebook is committing a federal
  | felony.

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.").

AnthonyMouse8• 13 years ago

It should be pointed out that unless the case went to the Supreme Court, a different circuit could yet come to a different conclusion, so better to fix it nationwide through Congress than risk some other court siding with prosecutors (and that defendant having to argue it to a different circuit's appellate court even if the court comes to the same conclusion).

Also:

>interpreting breach of ToS as a Federal crime effectively allows companies to set the bar for what is a Federal crime

Reminds me of something Larry Lessig said during his speech last Tuesday: The alternative interpretation is that it's a violation when someone violates code-based restrictions, right? So you're still allowing companies to set the bar for what is a Federal crime, they just have to do it in code instead of in contract. Write some nominal piece of code whose stated purpose is to prevent the thing you want to prohibit, even if it's facile and trivially bypassed, and now bypassing it is apparently back to being a federal crime again. Is this really something we want to allow? Shouldn't the law require prosecutors to prove there was some actual harm before we go throwing people in federal prison?

rhizome7• 13 years ago

It should be pointed out that unless the case went to the Supreme Court, a different circuit could yet come to a different conclusion

Sorry to pedant, but a case will typically not get to the Supreme Court at all unless two circuits come to different conclusions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_split

eurleif• 13 years ago

>Write some nominal piece of code whose stated purpose is to prevent the thing you want to prohibit, even if it's facile and trivially bypassed, and now bypassing it is apparently back to being a federal crime again.

I'm not sure what I think about this, but here's a real-world analogy to consider. Suppose I have a storefront, and I keep the doors unlocked, but I put a small sign on the door saying you can't enter unless I've issued you a membership card. Should it be a crime to enter without one? Probably not. Now let's say I get a card reader-based lock, so you can't enter without a card. Even if the lock is easily bypassed (let's say I've left a window open), isn't it reasonable to consider it a crime to do so?

snowwrestler4• 13 years ago

The law depends on reasonable interpretations of intent and harm, not tricks of code. If your nominal piece of code "protects" something that is reasonably understood to be public, and if access cannot reasonably be interpretted to cause harm, then the code does not create a federal crime.

But, wait, isn't that unworkably fuzzy? Who gets to decide what is reasonable? Ultimately the answer would be a judge or jury of your peers.

LAMike• 13 years ago

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?

thejsjunky3• 13 years ago

> "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto" played a role in the prosecution,

The fact that something Aaron wrote "played a role" in the prosecution does not mean it was politically motivated.

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.

The HuffPo article explicitly states that this is what is being discussed:

> The "Manifesto," Justice Department representatives told congressional staffers, demonstrated Swartz's malicious intent in downloading documents on a massive scale.

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.

My comment should absolutely NOT be construed to say it wasn't 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.

droithomme2• 13 years ago

> It's a fundamental principal in our legal system that intent matters.

Context error.

If Bob dies by falling off a bridge while I am grabbing at him, my intent matters a lot. Was it completely an accident, Bob slipped and fell and I tried to pull him back? Or did I hate Bob and plot for months to kill him and was pushing him? From a distance the two things may look the same - it's important to figure out what I was thinking.

But let's say I dislike Bob and even once wrote a blog post about him and his annoying toenail clipping habits several years ago. Some people might even speculate I would not be unhappy if annoying old "Toenail Bob" was dead. I haven't actually done anything to Bob though. Charging me with murder at this point because it is speculated I am thinking about killing Bob and might do so in the future on account of my having complained years ago about his toenail clipping habits would be prosecuting a thought crime. Even if I happen to have bought an axe and rope recently. Or maybe I even stole the axe. What about that? So I could be prosecuted for stealing the axe, that's fair. But prosecute me for killing Toenail Bob because I once disliked his clipping protocols? Claiming that is reasonable to charge people with things they may or may not be thinking of doing but have not actually done because "It's a fundamental principal in our legal system that intent matters." just doesn't make sense. Especially when there's plenty of evidence the axe and rope were for some other purpose, such as I buy a new axe every winter, I need the rope for my spelunking hobby, or I have an established and documented history of downloading large datasets as a professional academic researcher in order to do statistical analysis on them.

GHFigs5• 13 years ago

Your analogy doesn't fit, as Aaron was not charged with something analogous to murder.

It would be more akin to attacking, but not killing, Bob after having publicly declared that "It is a moral imperative that we should kill Bob." You might then be charged with attempted murder. The law[1] recognizes attempt and conspiracy to attempt as crimes, just as it would if you had attempted to or conspired to kill Bob.

This is not "thoughtcrime", either: it still requires you to take a swing at him with your axe.

I have an established and documented history of downloading large datasets as a professional academic researcher in order to do statistical analysis on them.

Consider (again, because I mentioned this in reply to you once before) that Aaron did not make use of his status as an academic researcher when he did what he did. It might have made a good defense had he gone to trial, but it isn't a magic bullet that absolved him of scrutiny for what he was observed doing.

[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1030

thejsjunky3• 13 years ago

> Claiming that is reasonable to charge people with things they may or may not be thinking of doing but have not actually done because "It's a fundamental principal in our legal system that intent matters."

You seem to be rather severely misunderstanding my post - please read it again.

snowwrestler4• 13 years ago

This is silly. Intent matters but no one said it is solely sufficient for prosecution. Aaron was not being prosecuted for owning a laptop and network cable, he was being prosecuted for what he actually did with them--which is not under dispute. In that context, it is legally valid (i.e. not a sign of special political tampering) to consider prior statements when establishing his intent while acting.

AnthonBerg• 13 years ago

A MANIFESTO CANNOT DEMONSTRATE MALICIOUS INTENT TO DOWNLOAD DOCUMENTS ON A MASSIVE SCALE BECAUSE DOWNLOADING DOCUMENTS CANNOT BE MALICIOUS

Edit: Sorry, not against you personally jsjunky, it's just that my mind is getting stretch marks from being twisted around. The all caps were it snapping back.

cwzwarich2• 13 years ago

A manifesto written by the defendant discussing how there is a moral imperative to break a law is a pretty decent piece of evidence when you are trying the defendant for breaking that law. At the very least it demonstrates that he knew what he was doing.

thejsjunky3• 13 years ago

> A MANIFESTO CANNOT DEMONSTRATE MALICIOUS INTENT TO DOWNLOAD DOCUMENTS ON A MASSIVE SCALE BECAUSE DOWNLOADING DOCUMENTS CANNOT BE MALICIOUS

You're talking about something completely unrelated to what I am talking about.

mschuster91• 13 years ago

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.

corin_3• 13 years ago

At best you could make a case (and I'm talking you making a case here, not talking from a legal point of view) for involuntary manslaughter, not murder with intent, unless you can show that they knew prosecuting would lead to his death.

kamaal• 13 years ago

>>unless you can show that they knew prosecuting would lead to his death.

Which it very clearly has, or more precisely in this case it can be described as "Abetment to suicide"

oleganza4• 13 years ago

So it is okay for some people to threaten other people with jail when some files get copied? Do you know what the "jail" means? Humiliation every day, statistically guaranteed rape and possible murder.

andreyf• 13 years ago

Many people speculated throughout the whole ordeal that this was a political prosecution [...] but Aaron actually didn't believe it was

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.

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]". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgh2dFngFsg#t=411s

InclinedPlane2• 13 years ago

That video is heartbreaking to watch.

SagelyGuru2• 13 years ago

Surely 'intent' only becomes material after some crime was actually committed? Otherwise prosecuting just for intent alone makes it into a thought crime?

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?

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?

twoodfin• 13 years ago

Please refrain from referring to hn posters who disagree with you about the scope of "thought crime" as "shills". It's unbecoming.

Yes, intent only matters if you've committed a crime, but it's not at all difficult to argue that Swartz probably did commit a felony under the CFAA. If you can't see that, imagine he had downloaded loosely protected private emails or credit card account lists.

analog9• 13 years ago

"imagine he had downloaded loosely protected private emails or credit card account lists"

Respectfully I don't think that's a great argument. That what he did is in the public interest (imo) is central to the issue. You can't just ignore that.

betterunix3• 13 years ago

"Yes, intent only matters if you've committed a crime, but it's not at all difficult to argue that Swartz probably did commit a felony under the CFAA"

You are not saying much here. The CFAA is so broad that one could argue that any Internet user has violated it at one time or another. We might as well pass a law that says, "You are a criminal if the government does not like you."

"If you can't see that, imagine he had downloaded loosely protected private emails or credit card account lists."

Hm, I see where you are going. You are saying that if a business posts a bunch of credit numbers on its website, and says to everyone, "Please only download these numbers one at a time by manually clicking on the links on our website," it should be a felony for someone to write a script that automatically downloads all the numbers.

SagelyGuru2• 13 years ago

Aaron downloaded many research papers which, individually, he had every right to do. I remember it and at the time it was quite clear that the reason he needed so many papers was because he was doing statistical research on them - establishing how many were publicly funded.

However, we now know that he was a target for a political trial, so it was clearly imperative that some 'bad intent' be found to boost the charges to 14 counts with the total of 50 years in prison that had driven him to suicide. Having laws that make an intent alone (to make publicly funded work available to the public) into a crime has made this possible, of course.

Anyone trying to justify this, while making a living off the technological revolution made possible by free exchange of scientific knowledge which Aaron was trying to defend, is a shill in my book.

snowwrestler4• 13 years ago

It remained to be seen whether he had committed a crime. That is what the trial was going to determine.

That said, I agree that since the prosecution was taking the position that it was a crime, it's not surprising or particularly concerning that they were looking at his past statements as evidence for establishing intent. That is a normal and expected thing for prosecutors to do.

rdl• 13 years ago

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.

intended2• 13 years ago

No it wont.

After a decade, it will be a far fainter association, current trajectories of life being held equal. Beyond that...say after 3 decades? There will be a new generation of whipper snappers saying all sorts of stuff that barely intersect with today's actors. (They will intersect with the issues and choices we make today)

She will not be defined by it unless she chooses to pursue that path.

beagle3• 13 years ago

It hasn't been two months yet. Many cultures settled on one year as the reasonable mourning time, after which people are expected to get on with their life. Some people need less, some people need more.

Your comment might be warranted in five to ten years if she does indeed define herself that way.

unreal37• 13 years ago

I was thinking this too. More so along the lines that she will learn to master karate and katana sword skills over the next 10 years, and exact her vengeance upon the US Prosecutors office.

jheriko8• 13 years ago

Can we stop giving a shit about this already please?

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.

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.

Disrespectful tone fully intended.

beedogs• 13 years ago

Authoritarian prick detected. "He deserves bogus prosecution because he had it coming for acting like a douche." Yep, that's all it takes to justify ruining someone.

jheriko8• 13 years ago

I'm not saying its right - just that the amount of fuss is massively disproportionate. Bogus prosecution is basically nothing compared to having your life threatened with bona fide aggression.

First world problems, in the extreme.

csense• 13 years ago

> the murder of tens of thousands innocent children

Citation needed

> relatively tiny consequences of their actions

So we can send you to jail for 30 years? It would only be a minor inconvenience if we did so?

jheriko8• 13 years ago

See drones in Pakistan, and collateral damage in the most recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - then there is the support of the IDF in Israel. I could go back further but there is little point - it was a different administration, a long time ago etc. even if the same mistakes are being repeated.

The one thing learned from the Vietnam war being made so public seems to be 'control the media better' rather than 'war crimes are wrong'...

Any source of figures I quote is going to be suspect so I invite you to find your own an make your own judgement. I prefer Wikipedia to demonstrate how easily uncovered this information, or at least the suggestion of it is. Some official statements on the matter downplay the issues even by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude...

A quick browse of wikipedia on these matters gives a good overview of how confused the situation is... In particular even US allies do not agree with various statements from inside the US that the number of innocent deaths is as low as 'double figures'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan

For Iraq I believe the consensus is that civilian Iraqi deaths outweighed US military deaths somewhere between 15 and 250 times. There is a nice table with cited sources again on Wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

The cleanest cut case is perhaps Israel, where many Israeli organisations themselves keep track of figures. I think nobody disagrees that the IDF have killed more Palestinian children, than Israelis in total have ever been killed by Palestinian terror attacks. This is an organisation which is funded in part by US aid at a time when the money could be better spent back home helping the economy...

e.g. http://www.btselem.org/statistics/fatalities/any/by-date-of-...

... and yes, going to prison in the US for 30 years would be an improvement in quality of life for most of the world's population.

There is a reason why the US is so often loathed by Arabs and its nothing to do with Islam, fanaticism or oil...

grandalf4• 13 years ago

The government is chosen through a political process and so everything it does is political.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 very significant portion of his/her motivation and life's goal.

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.

kristenlee• 13 years ago

I find it overreaching to conclude that every individual who is employed by the government in a law enforcement capacity chose their job out of a need to control other people. The world is not black and white and there are shades of gray. The police officers you despise hunt down the murderers, rapists, and child molesters that harm society, the soldiers fight against genocidal sociopaths like Adolf Hitler & Sadaam Hussein, and the congressmen you despise fight for things like universal healthcare. With regards to startups the primary motivation for most entrepreneurs, but not all, is to make money, not some noble goal of making the world a better place. Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and the like do little or nothing to solve the world's most serious problems, they're just toys for upper middle class people with money and time to burn. Finally no reputable news source has reported on this story because everything is based on hearsay on what a "DOJ representative" allegedly said which fails to pass the credibility test for reputable news outfits such as the NY Times, Reuters, Washington Post, CNN, with reporting standards. Before you act on the word, consider the source.

Wintamute2• 13 years ago

But he didn't conclude that "every individual who is employed by the government ... chose their job out of a need to control other people", you put those words in his mouth. Neither did he say he "despised" anybody, you put that word in his mouth too. He didn't claim that startups weren't in it for the money, and neither were any of his statements predicated on any new information in the "unreputable" linked article.

I'm not sure why you've chosen to attack his comment on these spurious grounds. It'd be more interesting to discuss why it engendered an emotional response from you, or perhaps if you disagree with it then make a coherent criticism of his main point: that there exists a formidable power structure in our society and many of us chose to remain unaware of it.

Tyrant505• 13 years ago

"I find it overreaching to conclude that every individual who is employed by the government in a law enforcement capacity chose their job out of a need to control other people."

Honestly, I look at all my childhood friends who became cops and such and I do see a correlation to their social statuses.

anoncow• 13 years ago

Individual goals will vary. GP's points still hold.

Some people want to start a business so that they can positively change the world. Many people who work for corporations and the govt may have similar aims in life. After all, this may be the only chance at life that you get.

jerf• 13 years ago

"The police officers you despise hunt down the murderers, rapists, and child molesters that harm society, the soldiers fight against genocidal sociopaths like Adolf Hitler & Sadaam Hussein, and the congressmen you despise fight for things like universal healthcare."

And which of those things was Carmen Ortiz doing?

One of government's very effective dodges is to point at the truly good things it is doing and playing the hell out of them like they are the bulk of the work. But go look at a budget; how much of the budget of the federal government is actually spent on those things? Even just the discretionary budget? And when you see umpty billion dollars going to the "Justice Department", don't forget that nowhere near all of those umpty billion dollars are actually going to things like that. Only a fraction.

Yes, I acknowledge that I want a police force that adequately protects me. But after decades and decades of bloated growth, that is now no more than a mere sideline of government, not its core task.

rquantz• 13 years ago

The congressmen I despise aren't the ones fighting for universal healthcare.

downandout2• 13 years ago

> Finally no reputable news source has reported on this story because everything is based on hearsay

One could easily argue that none of the "reputable" news sources you mentioned would report on this because it would be damaging to the administration that they feverishly backed and helped get elected. Regardless of your political views, if mainstream media reported a factual account of what happened to Aaron Swartz, the "warm and fuzzy" image of the Obama administration would go right out the window.

This case is truly disturbing, and it shows prima facie evidence of an extremely dark and hypocritical underbelly to the current administration that I don't think most people believe could possibly exist. Some of the what has gone on in this particular case can only be described as evil, and I'm not sure that even the best PR spinners would be able to spin this in any other way.

sampsonjs• 13 years ago

"the soldiers fight against .... Sadaam Hussein". Before arming the next group of sociopaths nominally running the country, and leaving in disgrace from the smoking ruins of said country. Kristen, baby, I didn't ask "the soldiers" to invade Iraq, so they will get no thanks from me for that war. By the way, when's your next vacation to Baghdad?

grandalf4• 13 years ago

Think about it this way. Suppose an activist decides that he/she wants to run for office to make a difference on some issue that matters to him/her and gets elected.

The activist does not strive to get 100% of the vote, only the requisite majority to pass a law, thus forcing the minority to abide by a law it does not support. Consider pre-Brown-v-Board black students who had to follow the law and attend segregated schools. They were in the minority subjected to the will of the majority. The same goes for poor students today who are unable to obtain a school voucher b/c they are in the political minority and so must attend vastly inferior schools.

So my statement is trivially true for all efforts to create legislation that is not unanimously supported, regardless if history decides the majority view is enlightened or backward.

redm• 13 years ago

It's a good thing that Aaron wasn't around to 'unlock' his phone from his cell carrier; they would have really gotten him then. :D

graycat4• 13 years ago

I took the statements by grandalf as meaning 'some' or 'many' and not literally 'all'.

But notice

http://www.businessinsider.com/a-third-of-people-manipulate-...

with

About A Third Of People Have A Fundamental Desire To Manipulate Others Max Nisen | Dec. 4, 2012, 7:07 PM

So if there is 1/3rd in the general population, the fraction in 'fitting' parts of gumment might be much higher, still not 100% but high enough to underline the grandalf theme.

rayiner3• 13 years ago

You've hit the nail on the head, but come to the wrong conclusion. Signals of the authority of government are good things, within reason. We are merely tribes of monkeys--without authority we'd do whatever the hell we wanted and that's not how civilization happens. The alternative to living under government authority isn't just peacefully building things and working with interesting technology. It's living under the authority of different thugs. Thugs we don't vote for, thugs we don't pay the salaries of, thugs we don't have any influence over.

My family comes from a country where the government has little authority (Bangladesh). It's not a good thing. People don't respect the law, and it's a deep moral failing of the country. It's a contemptible characteristic of the people. It's a hindrance to collective prosperity. I note with some amusement that tons of people like my father got the hell out of Bangladesh and moved to a country where he paid much more taxes, where there was much more regulation, much more oversight of society by government. Yet, not very many people seem to want to do the opposite.

grandalf4• 13 years ago

While I agree with your overarching point that it's a good thing when institutions gain legitimacy and authority, I think it's also important to appreciate the corrupting influences that exist within organizations. In the corporate world we have watchdog groups, regulatory agencies, etc. But for governments there are few checks and balances. The US Government has conducted a war on whistleblowers and watchdog groups.

In my view, the government is just the gang that drove out all the rival gangs and got rich enough to start laundering its reputation, rewriting history, etc.

Even in 2013, the atrocities committed by the US government are worse than those of nearly any criminal gang in the world. Consider rendition. Consider drone attacks on children.

Shivetya• 13 years ago

the thuggery starts at the top and because of that it becomes accepted behavior by those within. Look at the mindset these people have, what we see playing out with the budget games in Washington I have seen the same at the local level.

They play the thug, always threatening their own constituents with less services, longer lines, less safety, and if all that doesn't work they go after your freedoms. The insinuate, they investigate, they intimidate.

To use a favorite term of the political class but in a different way, we have a government too big to fail.

dyno12345• 13 years ago

One of mankind's greatest insights in the past few thousand years was the idea of not seeing all phenomena as caused by human motives, jealousies of gods, etc.

jen_h• 13 years ago

I don't disagree wholly on substance here, but will point out that, according to the WBUR investigation, many of the issues coming out of Ortiz' office were not because she sought to control others, but that she didn't wield enough and let others control her:

http://www.wbur.org/2013/02/20/carmen-ortiz-investigation

(Seriously worth a read; even if you skim, be sure to read the case descriptions in full. They're pretty shocking.)

nonamegiven• 13 years ago

OT: Why doesn't web text flow anymore?

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.

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.

I checked with FF and Chromium on linux, same behavior.

lerouxb• 13 years ago

Basically: browsers started scaling pixel sizes years ago, so if you set the width of the page as a pixel size it will scale when you zoom the page. If you use sizes relative to the size of the text (ems or rems) to set the widths of containers, then those will scale when you increase the text size.

Developers can turn zooming off on mobile devices by specifying a fixed viewport which obviously upsets a large subset of people. (But then you potentially have the pinch gesture to yourself and it isn't intercepted by the system, but I digress..)

Alternatively percentage based and max-width css can be used on containers and then you can probably start to get the behaviour you're looking for. I'm not 100% sure if browsers will scale max-width. You can probably set pixel widths on containers and use percentage based sizes for fonts, but then a) you're assuming the default font size is 16px forever and b) the results are still going to depend on whether the browser scales text or zooms the entire page.

In this website's case it probably wouldn't be very helpful if the text scaled up without the design going wider, though. Maybe one or two steps but at a point the main column width gets ridiculously narrow.

Oh and obviously you can just never give containers widths, but then you probably get that html 1.0 look where text just goes all the way from one edge of the screen to the other.

I don't think it really is a solvable problem in a way that will make everyone happy all the time.

tptacek5• 13 years ago

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.

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.

ScottBurson• 13 years ago

the prosecution was overcommitted to a token prison sentence and felony convictions to justify the effort they had put into the case

In short: to keep themselves from looking bad.

I wasn't sure, before I read this, that I actually wanted to see Ortiz and Heymann fired. Now I'm starting to think I do. Putting someone in prison just so you don't have to publicly admit that you shouldn't have been prosecuting them in the first place... I can hardly think of a worse reason.

tptacek5• 13 years ago

I commented yesterday when these HuffPo rageview pieces started spooling out: you should listen to the WBUR piece on Ortiz's office:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5264200

Unlike Mashable or Techdirt, WBUR did actual reporting, talking to multiple defense attorneys that handled Ortiz-managed prosecutions, tracking down judges admonishing Ortiz, even finding people who had recommended Ortiz for the post who have since backed away. The WBUR investigation is packed full of details.

They don't paint a pretty picture! There is good reason to be concerned about Ortiz. There are concerns about the way she manages her office, sets up incentives for AUSAs, oversees cases, and handles transparency. The story they build is of a US Attorney appointment that is simply not working out. It's damning enough that I actually started to reconsider whether Heymann was really the root of the problem; if he'd been reporting to a different US Attorney, things might have worked out differently.

The most disquieting thing Ortiz says in the WBUR show is an offhand comment. "It's an adversarial system" she says, defending her aggressive handling of prosecutions. But while that's true at one level (prosecutors are technically & mechanically adversaries of defense attorneys), it's deeply untrue at the level she seems to mean it on. She comes off as believing that her job is to present the most aggressive possible case for conviction and let the judge & jury sort out the truth. But that's not the prosecutor's role in the US! Prosecutors have discretion over what cases they bring and are required to use it. It's very worrying when a US Attorney implies that it's not their job to deploy that discretion.

mahyarm2• 13 years ago

This kind of callousness and careerism happens with anybody who starts working in the industry of putting people in jail. They have to succeed in their organizations.

rayiner3• 13 years ago

I agree that if they though they shouldn't prosecute they should have dropped the case. Arguably, that's part of their duties as prosecutors. But we don't know what they thought. We just have huffpo rumors.

abraininavat2• 13 years ago

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

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.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results

littledot5566• 13 years ago

It's as if choosing between a douche and a turd sandwich.

weareconvo• 13 years ago

> Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results

I think insanity has to do with how one perceives reality, rather than one's aptitude for inferring future results based on past ones. Wouldn't this more aptly be characterized as naivety?

abraininavat2• 13 years ago

It's a commonly referenced quote. I didn't coin it.

nwzpaperman• 13 years ago

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!

Page 42:

http://www.justice.gov/usao/reading_room/reports/asr2011/11s...

api• 13 years ago

"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."

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.

mkhalil• 13 years ago

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.

Do blame them for bringing down the sledge-hammer though.

known• 13 years ago

"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

DOJ Admits Aaron's Prosecution Was Political

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