Related: Sunday Globe Special: Swartz's Suicide
"Swartz case is sad, but not an overreach" by Joan Vennochi | Globe Columnist, January 17, 2013
When a citizen takes actions that break standing laws, there can be consequences, no matter how wrong the laws may be. Remember “Letter from Birmingham Jail,’’ composed by Martin Luther King Jr. after his arrest for protesting racial segregation laws? King wrote: “One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”
Of all the times for the divisive, agenda-pushing, war-promoting paper to quote King.
********************
The US attorney is under widespread, personal attack. A petition on whitehouse.gov calls for her ouster, and now has enough signatures requiring a response. An ill-advised tweet from her husband, who rushed to her defense with postings critical of Swartz’s family, further fueled the controversy.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Globe Erases Petition Signatures
Not funny now, is it?
Federal prosecutors took a tough, all-or-nothing position, as they always do once they take on a case involving a clear violation of law. The system encourages it, and it’s worth questioning why there’s no room for mercy. But why this case was prosecuted doesn’t seem that mysterious....
Why the banks weren't is.
Related:
"Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the nation’s banks had become too big to jail. “The size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them,” Holder said at a hearing Wednesday. “If we do prosecute — if we do bring a criminal charges — it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.”"
But social activist hero Swartz has to have the book thrown at him. This from a guy whose department said waterboarding isn't torture, and that helped move guns to Mexican drug cartels.
Free information is a nice principle, but right now everyone is trying to bury it behind a paywall.
Which is why those media entities are failing so miserably (that and the never-ending lies, distortions, obfuscations, and omissions).
Swartz ran up against the power of money. As smart as he was, he didn’t know when to back down and it sounds like his lawyer didn’t tell him.
Wow. Talk about blaming the victim.
Nice to see them on the defensive for a change.
"US attorney went too far in pursuing Aaron Swartz" January 18, 2013
One can never know what drives another person to suicide, especially someone who, like Internet-freedom activist Aaron Swartz, suffered from crippling depression. In the aftermath of his death last week, it is unfair for his supporters to pin the blame on US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, whose office was prosecuting Swartz on a variety of criminal charges, or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which by some accounts encouraged the government to take a tough line.
At the same time, the fact that Swartz’s death was his own choice does not mean the US Attorney’s Office and the university acted properly. Ortiz’s office, at least, did not; the government was far too intent on giving Swartz prison time for offenses that appear quite minor on close examination.
There are some questions about that, but once again the agenda-pushing, staged and scripted, mind-manipulating intelligence operation we call media in AmeriKa aren't asking them. That's why you and I are here.
Swartz, 26, was a computer prodigy. He gained fame as the creator of RSS, a widely used protocol for sharing content on the Web, and as the co-creator of the social news website Reddit. But fatefully, Swartz was arrested in 2011 when, while on a fellowship at Harvard, he tapped into MIT’s computer networks to download nearly 5 million academic journal articles and other documents from JSTOR, a database that makes such files readily available to researchers at member universities.
There is, in fact, a legitimate need to broaden public access to academic research — at least to the significant portion of it that is funded with public money. But Swartz, who saw himself as using guerrilla tactics to make information freely available, clearly knew he was doing something improper; at one point, authorities say, he disguised his face while entering a wiring closet at MIT to keep downloading articles.
The question is, how serious an offense was all this? Unfortunately, the federal laws that define certain computer-related crimes are open-ended enough to make potential felonies out of a vast range of activities — from hacking for private financial gain, which is clearly worthy of punishment, down to far more ambiguous cases involving, for instance, the unauthorized use of legitimate passwords. The more latitude prosecutors have in such cases, the more vital it is that they use discretion in applying it.
Yet Swartz’s reputation likely preceded him. He had come to the FBI’s attention in 2008, when he tried to release the contents of the federal government’s database of public court records by exploiting a free trial. In that case, no charges were filed. In the MIT case, prosecutors played hardball. In September, the government added nine more felony counts to an original four. What Swartz seemed to see as civil disobedience — taking advantage of a loosely guarded research service widely available at universities — looked to federal prosecutors like wire fraud, computer fraud, and unauthorized computer access.
The potential penalties were daunting and could well have terrified him: a $1 million fine and 35 years in prison. He could have risked a trial, which would have been costly and could end badly. Or, as one of his lawyers told reporters, he could have taken a bargain that would have involved pleading guilty to 13 felonies and spending about six months in prison.
Yet even that shorter sentence would have been excessive. Swartz gave back the files he’d duplicated; JSTOR, the clearest victim in the case, declined to take action against him and urged the government to do the same; the service later decided to make many of the articles he had downloaded more broadly available for free.
That right there is SO IMPORTANT to ME! It proves this is an ASSHOLE GOVERNMENT!
MIT’s role, meanwhile, remains unclear. Swartz’s lawyers have maintained the university blocked a plea deal that would have avoided a prison term; MIT is not commenting pending an internal investigation ordered by president Rafael Reif, who took office last year. But if MIT officials did support the government’s hard line, they were wrong to do so.
Doesn't MIT get loads of defense and government dollars?
Related: A crisis of values at MIT
Don't they mean cri$i$ of value$?
Swartz’s abuse of the university’s facilities was akin to trespassing — a charge that might merit a modest fine and court-ordered community-service. The sentence should prompt MIT, JSTOR, and all other owners of computer networks and intellectual property to consider how aggressively they want federal agents to enforce their terms of service.
It seems quite likely that the US attorney’s office wanted to make a harsh example of one high-profile defendant in order to serve as a deterrent to others.
Yeah, they DO THIS ALL the TIME! Gonna send a message!
But doing so can be deeply unfair to the defendant involved, and lead to punishments well out of proportion to the relevant crimes. It also puts unjustified pressure on such defendants to plead guilty simply to avoid the possibility of a life-altering sentence.
That is HOW our "justice" system works, Globe? It is the SOP! It's not about truth or justice, it's about convictions.
In piling on 13 charges and thereby threatening Swartz with up to 35 years in prison, Ortiz’s office went way, way too far. Congress and the courts must reassess the legal statutes that make such eye-popping prison sentences possible in murky cases of unauthorized computer use. In the meantime, the Justice Department must also understand that some electronic intrusions are more harmful than others and prosecute its cases accordingly.
--more--"
"Ortiz should offer answers" by Kevin Cullen | Globe Columnist, January 18, 2013
If US Attorney Carmen Ortiz is serious about going into politics, somebody needs to sit her down and explain a few things about the art of public relations.
Well, her political career is now over. Better just stick to lawyering.
First, while it helps to have a supportive spouse, said spouse should be advised to keep social media commentary to himself. Especially when said commentary is directed at the family whose sensitivities you have cited in refusing to explain yourself.
Second, promising the media a statement all day and then delivering it at 10:45 at night is not exactly a winning strategy. Most likely the blame lay somewhere in Washington, where someone at a higher pay grade had to sign off. But, absent an explanation, the unusual late-night statement “Regarding the Death of Aaron Swartz” came off as somewhat haughty.
She works for the federal government, right? Well, there ya' go!
Finally, issuing a three-paragraph statement after a 26-year-old man without a criminal record has killed himself amid widespread accusations that your office was pursuing a vindictive prosecution just doesn’t cut it.
If Ortiz really believes that her office acted appropriately — not just in charging Swartz with crimes that carry the possibility of a sentence usually reserved for the most unconscionable criminals, but by insisting on prison time for someone who she concedes was acting on principle for no financial gain — then she should be willing to explain herself at length. And that wasn’t what she did Thursday when she took a few questions at an unrelated news conference before abruptly ending the inquisition.
Yeah, that's another thing. Banksters don't even see a courtroom or jail.
Here’s one I’d like to ask: Did Swartz’s struggle with debilitating depression ever enter the equation as prosecutors insisted he plead guilty to 13 felonies and serve six months in prison? And if it didn’t, why not?
Here’s another: What purpose would be served by locking Swartz up, even if it was, as Ortiz was at pains to point out, a low-security setting? What purpose would be served by forcing him to accept the label of felon? Swartz was willing to accept probation terms that would have mandated prison if he reoffended. Why wasn’t that enough?
Last Friday, on the same day that Swartz hanged himself in his Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment, prosecutors from Ortiz’s office stood in a Boston courtroom and allowed a former state representative named Stephen “Stat” Smith to plead guilty to a misdemeanor for rigging absentee ballots in three elections. Swartz’s lawyers asked for the same consideration, that Swartz be allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor. Prosecutors refused.
So, given that Ortiz will not explain herself, we’ll just have to presume she believes that illegally manipulating the outcome of elections, which are the essence of our democracy, is less serious an offense than downloading an online archive of obscure academic articles.
Just one more reason I hate s*** politics now because all the elections are rigged. My solution is the DEATH PENALTY for ELECTORAL FRAUD! That ought to stop it!
As Swartz’s lawyer, Elliot Peters, notes, if Swartz had pleaded guilty to felonies as prosecutors demanded, among the rights he would have forfeited was his right to vote. While Swartz’s brilliance as a Web programmer and advocate for a more informed public has been duly noted, he was also a committed prodemocracy activist. And the government, his government, wanted to disenfranchise him.
Ironically, the Internet and social media that Swartz believed so deeply in as a means to a better informed, socially engaged public have been used to cast ugly insults and even threats against Ortiz and prosecutors in her office. That’s indefensible.
Yup, that big, bad Internet again. So when was the last time the Internet lied us into a mass-murdering war that killed millions, huh?
All I can say in defense of the Internet is it certainly has made me a better informed person. I look back and am saddened at how long I believed such rank shit coming from my newspaper, thinking I was learning something when I was being lied to.
I can only feel sadness for that fresh, dewey-eyed 18-year-old of today who is inquisitive and wants to learn about our world. Wait a minute, today's kids aren't picking up a copy of the Boston Globe (or reading their website for that matter). I'm referring to myself.
But Ortiz is doing herself no favors by refusing to explain at length decisions made in a case that raises legitimate concerns about antiquated laws and government overreach in the digital age. Such reticence doesn’t bode well for someone contemplating a future in politics.
It isn’t too much to expect a public servant to take questions that serve the public.
--more--"
Related: Ortiz ‘upset’ by suicide but backs data theft case
Ortiz became emotional as she discussed the case and the criticism against her.
My comment in the margin of my paper was fuck you!
Aaron Swartz’s supporters hack MIT site again
In a tribute to Aaron Swartz, the cyber activist who committed suicide this month, hackers took down MIT’s website for an hour on Tuesday. Hacked by grand wizard of Lulzsec, Sabu.”
Lulzec is another intelligence operation along the lines of Anonymous and Wikileaks.
The cybercrime statutes are broad — critics would say disproportionately so — subjecting even minor offenders to heavy criminal penalties, say specialists. That fact, coupled with sentencing guidelines that encourage prosecutors to take advantage of the tough sanctions, can give rise to overreaching prosecutions, they say.
“If there’s a statute that allows for 13 felonies and decades in prison to flow from what he was accused of doing, there’s a problem with the statute,” said Zoe Lofgren, a California congresswoman who is seeking to amend the law. “Aaron’s activity was not for personal gain, which is a very different situation from other crimes.”
Boston lawyer Martin Weinberg, who was one of Swartz’s lawyers, said the sentencing guidelines federal courts rely on are “Draconian and dehumanizing’’ because in white-collar cases, including computer fraud, sentences hinge largely on the amount of financial loss.
“The starting place for a federal sentence for a corrupt hedge fund manager, a Ponzi schemer, a corrupt banker who betrays his oath, and somebody that entered a computer without authorization is all the same,” Weinberg said. “And it’s all driven by the potential loss to the person who owns the data or the person who owns the money.”
When are those financial criminals going to be arrested? And what about the war criminals of this country? Of course, those are only rhetorical questions. We all know this country is too far gone to see those things.
Weinberg said the government alleged that JSTOR, which provides access to its online archive system to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other users for a subscription fee, estimated its potential loss would have been millions of dollars if Swartz had posted the articles on the Internet.
Oh, he never even posted the stuff?
While critics say prosecutors have used the expansive law to cast a wide net, subjecting minor offenders to disproportionate punishment, other legal specialists note that prosecutors in the Swartz case have stayed well within the legal sanctions provided by the law. While prosecutors have the discretion to recommend lesser sanctions, they typically rely on strict sentencing guidelines, many specialists say.
In the Swartz case, that financial calculation led to a sentencing guideline range of about five to seven years, even though he had no criminal record and did not profit from the downloaded documents.
“That’s the institutional problem,” said Marc Zwillinger, a former federal cybercrime prosecutor who founded a law firm that works with companies on computer crime issues. “Everything in the sentencing process is guideline-driven, which warps the perspective of all the participants. The focus is on how the sentence compares to the guidelines, instead of what is the right outcome for this individual.”
Same problem with the drug sentences.
As a result, many defendants are pressured to strike a deal with prosecutors and plead guilty to avoid the prospect of lengthy prison sentences, legal specialists say.
Such specialists, including former federal prosecutors, say the Swartz case is highly unusual and has no obvious precedents. Most people who steal data, they say, do so in hope of financial profit, which prosecutors acknowledge was not Swartz’s motive....
In announcing Swartz’s indictment in 2011, US Attorney Carmen Ortiz said that “stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar.”
And if you use a complex financial instrument like mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps?
Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge in Boston who retired in 2011, pointed to the remarks as evidence of Ortiz’s failure to weigh the individual circumstances of cases.
“There’s no sense of proportion,” she said. “There’s no sense of when you use the extraordinary powers of the office and when you don’t.”
There have been at least a couple of cases before Ortiz took over the office in which plea deals were negotiated that allowed defendants accused of illegally using computers to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and receive probation. In one of those cases, the defendant agreed to cooperate with the government.
Which one?
“While we will not comment on individual cases, it is important to understand that there are a variety of factors that go into both charging decisions and sentencing recommendations in every case,” said Christina DiIorio Sterling, a spokeswoman for Ortiz. “Every case is different, and we try to take into account the variety of circumstances of each case in making decisions.”
The US attorney’s office in Boston created its cybercrimes unit in 2005, and it remains one of a handful of such units in the country.
Three of the four lawyers have at least a decade of specialized training and experience in the investigation and prosecution of cybercrime, the office said.
Over the past four years, the unit has prosecuted 47 cases, including 16 last year.
"US attorney went too far in pursuing Aaron Swartz" January 18, 2013
One can never know what drives another person to suicide, especially someone who, like Internet-freedom activist Aaron Swartz, suffered from crippling depression. In the aftermath of his death last week, it is unfair for his supporters to pin the blame on US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, whose office was prosecuting Swartz on a variety of criminal charges, or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which by some accounts encouraged the government to take a tough line.
At the same time, the fact that Swartz’s death was his own choice does not mean the US Attorney’s Office and the university acted properly. Ortiz’s office, at least, did not; the government was far too intent on giving Swartz prison time for offenses that appear quite minor on close examination.
There are some questions about that, but once again the agenda-pushing, staged and scripted, mind-manipulating intelligence operation we call media in AmeriKa aren't asking them. That's why you and I are here.
Swartz, 26, was a computer prodigy. He gained fame as the creator of RSS, a widely used protocol for sharing content on the Web, and as the co-creator of the social news website Reddit. But fatefully, Swartz was arrested in 2011 when, while on a fellowship at Harvard, he tapped into MIT’s computer networks to download nearly 5 million academic journal articles and other documents from JSTOR, a database that makes such files readily available to researchers at member universities.
There is, in fact, a legitimate need to broaden public access to academic research — at least to the significant portion of it that is funded with public money. But Swartz, who saw himself as using guerrilla tactics to make information freely available, clearly knew he was doing something improper; at one point, authorities say, he disguised his face while entering a wiring closet at MIT to keep downloading articles.
The question is, how serious an offense was all this? Unfortunately, the federal laws that define certain computer-related crimes are open-ended enough to make potential felonies out of a vast range of activities — from hacking for private financial gain, which is clearly worthy of punishment, down to far more ambiguous cases involving, for instance, the unauthorized use of legitimate passwords. The more latitude prosecutors have in such cases, the more vital it is that they use discretion in applying it.
Yet Swartz’s reputation likely preceded him. He had come to the FBI’s attention in 2008, when he tried to release the contents of the federal government’s database of public court records by exploiting a free trial. In that case, no charges were filed. In the MIT case, prosecutors played hardball. In September, the government added nine more felony counts to an original four. What Swartz seemed to see as civil disobedience — taking advantage of a loosely guarded research service widely available at universities — looked to federal prosecutors like wire fraud, computer fraud, and unauthorized computer access.
The potential penalties were daunting and could well have terrified him: a $1 million fine and 35 years in prison. He could have risked a trial, which would have been costly and could end badly. Or, as one of his lawyers told reporters, he could have taken a bargain that would have involved pleading guilty to 13 felonies and spending about six months in prison.
Yet even that shorter sentence would have been excessive. Swartz gave back the files he’d duplicated; JSTOR, the clearest victim in the case, declined to take action against him and urged the government to do the same; the service later decided to make many of the articles he had downloaded more broadly available for free.
That right there is SO IMPORTANT to ME! It proves this is an ASSHOLE GOVERNMENT!
MIT’s role, meanwhile, remains unclear. Swartz’s lawyers have maintained the university blocked a plea deal that would have avoided a prison term; MIT is not commenting pending an internal investigation ordered by president Rafael Reif, who took office last year. But if MIT officials did support the government’s hard line, they were wrong to do so.
Doesn't MIT get loads of defense and government dollars?
Related: A crisis of values at MIT
Don't they mean cri$i$ of value$?
Swartz’s abuse of the university’s facilities was akin to trespassing — a charge that might merit a modest fine and court-ordered community-service. The sentence should prompt MIT, JSTOR, and all other owners of computer networks and intellectual property to consider how aggressively they want federal agents to enforce their terms of service.
It seems quite likely that the US attorney’s office wanted to make a harsh example of one high-profile defendant in order to serve as a deterrent to others.
Yeah, they DO THIS ALL the TIME! Gonna send a message!
But doing so can be deeply unfair to the defendant involved, and lead to punishments well out of proportion to the relevant crimes. It also puts unjustified pressure on such defendants to plead guilty simply to avoid the possibility of a life-altering sentence.
That is HOW our "justice" system works, Globe? It is the SOP! It's not about truth or justice, it's about convictions.
In piling on 13 charges and thereby threatening Swartz with up to 35 years in prison, Ortiz’s office went way, way too far. Congress and the courts must reassess the legal statutes that make such eye-popping prison sentences possible in murky cases of unauthorized computer use. In the meantime, the Justice Department must also understand that some electronic intrusions are more harmful than others and prosecute its cases accordingly.
--more--"
"Ortiz should offer answers" by Kevin Cullen | Globe Columnist, January 18, 2013
If US Attorney Carmen Ortiz is serious about going into politics, somebody needs to sit her down and explain a few things about the art of public relations.
Well, her political career is now over. Better just stick to lawyering.
First, while it helps to have a supportive spouse, said spouse should be advised to keep social media commentary to himself. Especially when said commentary is directed at the family whose sensitivities you have cited in refusing to explain yourself.
Second, promising the media a statement all day and then delivering it at 10:45 at night is not exactly a winning strategy. Most likely the blame lay somewhere in Washington, where someone at a higher pay grade had to sign off. But, absent an explanation, the unusual late-night statement “Regarding the Death of Aaron Swartz” came off as somewhat haughty.
She works for the federal government, right? Well, there ya' go!
Finally, issuing a three-paragraph statement after a 26-year-old man without a criminal record has killed himself amid widespread accusations that your office was pursuing a vindictive prosecution just doesn’t cut it.
If Ortiz really believes that her office acted appropriately — not just in charging Swartz with crimes that carry the possibility of a sentence usually reserved for the most unconscionable criminals, but by insisting on prison time for someone who she concedes was acting on principle for no financial gain — then she should be willing to explain herself at length. And that wasn’t what she did Thursday when she took a few questions at an unrelated news conference before abruptly ending the inquisition.
Yeah, that's another thing. Banksters don't even see a courtroom or jail.
Here’s one I’d like to ask: Did Swartz’s struggle with debilitating depression ever enter the equation as prosecutors insisted he plead guilty to 13 felonies and serve six months in prison? And if it didn’t, why not?
Here’s another: What purpose would be served by locking Swartz up, even if it was, as Ortiz was at pains to point out, a low-security setting? What purpose would be served by forcing him to accept the label of felon? Swartz was willing to accept probation terms that would have mandated prison if he reoffended. Why wasn’t that enough?
Last Friday, on the same day that Swartz hanged himself in his Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment, prosecutors from Ortiz’s office stood in a Boston courtroom and allowed a former state representative named Stephen “Stat” Smith to plead guilty to a misdemeanor for rigging absentee ballots in three elections. Swartz’s lawyers asked for the same consideration, that Swartz be allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor. Prosecutors refused.
So, given that Ortiz will not explain herself, we’ll just have to presume she believes that illegally manipulating the outcome of elections, which are the essence of our democracy, is less serious an offense than downloading an online archive of obscure academic articles.
Just one more reason I hate s*** politics now because all the elections are rigged. My solution is the DEATH PENALTY for ELECTORAL FRAUD! That ought to stop it!
As Swartz’s lawyer, Elliot Peters, notes, if Swartz had pleaded guilty to felonies as prosecutors demanded, among the rights he would have forfeited was his right to vote. While Swartz’s brilliance as a Web programmer and advocate for a more informed public has been duly noted, he was also a committed prodemocracy activist. And the government, his government, wanted to disenfranchise him.
Ironically, the Internet and social media that Swartz believed so deeply in as a means to a better informed, socially engaged public have been used to cast ugly insults and even threats against Ortiz and prosecutors in her office. That’s indefensible.
Yup, that big, bad Internet again. So when was the last time the Internet lied us into a mass-murdering war that killed millions, huh?
All I can say in defense of the Internet is it certainly has made me a better informed person. I look back and am saddened at how long I believed such rank shit coming from my newspaper, thinking I was learning something when I was being lied to.
I can only feel sadness for that fresh, dewey-eyed 18-year-old of today who is inquisitive and wants to learn about our world. Wait a minute, today's kids aren't picking up a copy of the Boston Globe (or reading their website for that matter). I'm referring to myself.
But Ortiz is doing herself no favors by refusing to explain at length decisions made in a case that raises legitimate concerns about antiquated laws and government overreach in the digital age. Such reticence doesn’t bode well for someone contemplating a future in politics.
It isn’t too much to expect a public servant to take questions that serve the public.
--more--"
Related: Ortiz ‘upset’ by suicide but backs data theft case
Ortiz became emotional as she discussed the case and the criticism against her.
My comment in the margin of my paper was fuck you!
Aaron Swartz’s supporters hack MIT site again
In a tribute to Aaron Swartz, the cyber activist who committed suicide this month, hackers took down MIT’s website for an hour on Tuesday. Hacked by grand wizard of Lulzsec, Sabu.”
Lulzec is another intelligence operation along the lines of Anonymous and Wikileaks.
And speak of the devil:
"Group hacks site of justice agency
The hacker-activist group Anonymous said it hijacked the website of the US Sentencing Commission to avenge the death of Aaron Swartz, an Internet activist who committed suicide. The FBI is investigating. The website of the commission, an independent agency of the judicial branch, was taken over early Saturday and replaced with a message warning that when Swartz killed himself two weeks ago ‘‘a line was crossed.’’ The hackers said they’ve infiltrated several government computer systems and copied secret information that they now threaten to make public. Family and friends of Swartz, who helped create Reddit and RSS, say he killed himself after he was hounded by federal prosecutors (AP)."
Would Swartz have approved of activity that would have given the government the very action they need for a crackdown?
With friends like that....
"Swartz case prompts debate over cyber law" by Peter Schworm and Shelley Murphy | Globe Staff, January 25, 2013
The suicide of Aaron Swartz, the Internet pioneer and free-information activist, touched off accusations that federal prosecutors abused their power by seeking a long sentence and stiff fine against him for hacking into the MIT network. But the case may say as much about problems with federal cybercrime law as it does prosecutorial judgment, say those familiar with the law.
“If there’s a statute that allows for 13 felonies and decades in prison to flow from what he was accused of doing, there’s a problem with the statute,” said Zoe Lofgren, a California congresswoman who is seeking to amend the law. “Aaron’s activity was not for personal gain, which is a very different situation from other crimes.”
Boston lawyer Martin Weinberg, who was one of Swartz’s lawyers, said the sentencing guidelines federal courts rely on are “Draconian and dehumanizing’’ because in white-collar cases, including computer fraud, sentences hinge largely on the amount of financial loss.
“The starting place for a federal sentence for a corrupt hedge fund manager, a Ponzi schemer, a corrupt banker who betrays his oath, and somebody that entered a computer without authorization is all the same,” Weinberg said. “And it’s all driven by the potential loss to the person who owns the data or the person who owns the money.”
When are those financial criminals going to be arrested? And what about the war criminals of this country? Of course, those are only rhetorical questions. We all know this country is too far gone to see those things.
Weinberg said the government alleged that JSTOR, which provides access to its online archive system to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other users for a subscription fee, estimated its potential loss would have been millions of dollars if Swartz had posted the articles on the Internet.
Oh, he never even posted the stuff?
While critics say prosecutors have used the expansive law to cast a wide net, subjecting minor offenders to disproportionate punishment, other legal specialists note that prosecutors in the Swartz case have stayed well within the legal sanctions provided by the law. While prosecutors have the discretion to recommend lesser sanctions, they typically rely on strict sentencing guidelines, many specialists say.
In the Swartz case, that financial calculation led to a sentencing guideline range of about five to seven years, even though he had no criminal record and did not profit from the downloaded documents.
“That’s the institutional problem,” said Marc Zwillinger, a former federal cybercrime prosecutor who founded a law firm that works with companies on computer crime issues. “Everything in the sentencing process is guideline-driven, which warps the perspective of all the participants. The focus is on how the sentence compares to the guidelines, instead of what is the right outcome for this individual.”
Same problem with the drug sentences.
As a result, many defendants are pressured to strike a deal with prosecutors and plead guilty to avoid the prospect of lengthy prison sentences, legal specialists say.
Such specialists, including former federal prosecutors, say the Swartz case is highly unusual and has no obvious precedents. Most people who steal data, they say, do so in hope of financial profit, which prosecutors acknowledge was not Swartz’s motive....
In announcing Swartz’s indictment in 2011, US Attorney Carmen Ortiz said that “stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar.”
And if you use a complex financial instrument like mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps?
Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge in Boston who retired in 2011, pointed to the remarks as evidence of Ortiz’s failure to weigh the individual circumstances of cases.
“There’s no sense of proportion,” she said. “There’s no sense of when you use the extraordinary powers of the office and when you don’t.”
There have been at least a couple of cases before Ortiz took over the office in which plea deals were negotiated that allowed defendants accused of illegally using computers to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and receive probation. In one of those cases, the defendant agreed to cooperate with the government.
Which one?
“While we will not comment on individual cases, it is important to understand that there are a variety of factors that go into both charging decisions and sentencing recommendations in every case,” said Christina DiIorio Sterling, a spokeswoman for Ortiz. “Every case is different, and we try to take into account the variety of circumstances of each case in making decisions.”
The US attorney’s office in Boston created its cybercrimes unit in 2005, and it remains one of a handful of such units in the country.
Three of the four lawyers have at least a decade of specialized training and experience in the investigation and prosecution of cybercrime, the office said.
Over the past four years, the unit has prosecuted 47 cases, including 16 last year.
"Activist Aaron Swartz’s suicide echoes in Congress; Reddit founder’s kin urge easing of Internet laws" by David Uberti | Globe Correspondent, February 05, 2013
WASHINGTON — The suicide of Internet activist Aaron Swartz is reverberating throughout Congress this week, with family members arriving on Capitol Hill to urge passage of legislation that would soften some Internet laws, and a House committee investigating whether prosecution of Swartz went too far.
Criticism of Swartz’s prosecution has led the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to open an inquiry about the case....
Which is all well and good as it adds to his legacy; however, would Congress have swung into action for me or you, readers? No, they would have said our suicides were tragic, but that's that.
Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, and Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, drafted legislation last month excluding breaches in user agreements and terms of service from the antihacking law. “Aaron’s Law,” as they dubbed it, would also draw a distinct line between criminal hacking and more minor instances of unauthorized access.
“A thorough revision of the CFAA and substantial reform of copyright laws are necessary,” Lofgren said in a statement on Reddit, the user-generated news website that Swartz helped found. “ ‘Aaron’s Law’ is not this complete overhaul, but is a first step down the road to comprehensive reform.” The proposal could be introduced to the House floor as early as next week, a Lofgren aide said....
I'm not even sure I want any new laws because they always seem to contain some sort of tyranny tucked away in them -- even when they are "fixing" things.
--more--"
"Inquiry widens into Swartz prosecution" by David Uberti | Globe Correspondent, February 28, 2013
WASHINGTON — A congressional committee is broadening its investigation of the Boston-based prosecution of political activist Aaron Swartz, whose January suicide prompted questions about whether the Justice Department went too far in enforcing a 27-year-old law regulating computer use.
Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in an interview that he plans to expand his inquiry into how the office of US Attorney Carmen Ortiz of Massachusetts handled the case.
“Are we using excess prosecution, excess claims in order to force guilty pleas?” the California Republican asked. “Or are we trying to genuinely offer punishment fitting the crime? In the case of Aaron Swartz, it’s very clear that they were trying to send a message to people other than Aaron Swartz with what they were willing to offer him and what he was charged with.”
This government and its states do it all the time.
Issa said his committee is seeking information from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Swartz hacked computers, and JSTOR, the scholar database whose files he downloaded.
Issa’s staff was recently briefed by the Justice Department on the rationale for the prosecution of Swartz, but Issa said the committee was left with many questions that he hopes will be answered in an expanded inquiry.
Whatever happens in the investigation, the case has simultaneously pushed Congress to review whether to update the law under which Swartz was prosecuted. That has prompted a debate with potentially far-reaching consequences, as lawmakers ponder whether to revise a law enacted in 1986 — when the Internet as it is known today barely existed — without creating an opening for illegal hacking.
Swartz was arrested in Boston in 2011 after allegedly using MIT’s network to illegally download 4.8 million documents from JSTOR, one of the Internet’s largest collections of scholarly articles. Though JSTOR didn’t press charges, Swartz faced 13 felony counts that carried up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines.
Ortiz offered Swartz a plea deal that would have cut his time behind bars to less than a year, an offer the activist turned down. Aides said Ortiz declined to comment Tuesday....
Some Internet activists are pushing lawmakers to rewrite the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act under which Swartz was prosecuted. Aimed at narrowing the statute, draft legislation dubbed “Aaron’s Law” is set to be introduced on the House floor in the coming weeks.
Lawmakers, however, face a balancing act that will only intensify as commerce and communication continue to move online: how to keep the Internet free and open while combating the growing threat of cybercrime....
Now I'm starting to feel this is being used to once again expand tyranny.
Two officials with knowledge of the House Oversight Committee briefing said the Justice Department pointed to Swartz’s past advocacy of free and unrestricted information online as evidence of his intent to distribute the documents.
That is what I AM DOING HERE!
The officials confirmed a report in The Huffington Post that a Justice official referenced the “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” that Swartz wrote in 2008, which called for “civil disobedience” toward copyright laws since “information is power.”
I don't like the violation of copyright, but at the same time, it is often publicly-paid for information and I paid (sadly) for this paper!
“There is no justice in following unjust laws,” Swartz wrote. “We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world.”
************************************
The briefing also touched on prosecutors’ knowledge of Swartz’s history of depression the two officials said, as critics contend that the prosecution contributed to the 26-year-old’s decision to take his own life. Swartz’s release on $100,000 bond in July 2011 came under a condition, among others from Judge Judith Dein, that he seek mental treatment as directed by pretrial services.
I'm very suspicious of the whole depression characterization. It sure seems like a cover story as so many "official" suicides are. He sure didn't seem that way in the earlier link up top, and it seems unlikely for such a motivated kid. Again, there are also questions not being asked.
“I’m a little concerned about some mental health issues here,” Dein said during Swartz’s arraignment, according to a court recording of the proceedings. “I guess there’s been some concerns in the past about his ability to handle the situation.”
What crap!
********************************
Orin S. Kerr, a professor at the George Washington University Law School, argued that the law’s punishments are overly harsh, adding that its broad language can criminalize something as minor as violating a terms of service agreement. Falsifying personal information on a Facebook account, Kerr offered as an example, breaches the site’s small print, terms of service to which most users automatically agree.
There are false Facebook accounts all over the place. Government spies use them to befriend and keep track of you, and remember Gingrich's fake Facebook mob?
Also see: Who Are the Hackers?
They are working for the government, cui bono?!
Can't even relax on the web anymore.
“The government can put in jail any Internet user they want,” said Kerr, an expert in computer crime law....
In the land of the freeeeeeeee....
Representative Zoe Lofgren of California drafted legislation to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act soon after Swartz’s death. The proposal would rewrite certain aspects of the hacking law, decriminalizing violations of terms of service, and giving “unauthorized access” a more concrete definition. “Cybersecurity is a serious problem,” Lofgren said in an interview. “This has nothing to do with it.”
Still, “Aaron’s Law” could prove a tough sell in Congress, especially given recent steps to ramp up protections against cybercrime and cyberterror. A report released last week by Mandiant, a US-based computer security firm, tracked years of cyberattacks on American corporations and government agencies by a group tied to the Chinese Army....
Related: Private firms playing major role against cyberattacks
And cui bono?
Swartz first gained fame as a teenager when he cofounded Reddit and helped develop Creative Commons and RSS, a feed to automatically update content for online users. Over the past five years, he began translating his knowledge of Internet tools to mainstream progressive causes.
After the House and Senate unveiled legislation in 2011 to bolster copyright law — and fundamentally change how information is shared online, critics argue — Swartz catalyzed an Internet response that helped stall both bills in January 2012.
And now he is dead. Hmmmmmmm!
Giants such as Google, Wikipedia, and Reddit joined tens of thousands of other sites in blacking-out web pages, and millions of Internet users protested online through petitions and e-mails.
--more--"
You might want to hold your fire here:
"Holder defends Swartz prosecution" by David Uberti | Globe Correspondent, March 07, 2013
WASHINGTON - Attorney General Eric Holder defended the prosecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz during a Senate hearing Wednesday, calling Boston-based US Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s handling of the case against Swartz “a good use of prosecutorial discretion.”
What a f***ing tool this guy turned out to be. Just proves race, gender, and all that divisive diversity crap doesn't mean shit. Assholes come in all colors and sexes.
Holder contended during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that those who have denounced the prosecution focus too much on the charges levied against Swartz while overlooking his offered plea deals....
That must have been the SAME HEARING where he said BANKS are TOO BIG to JAIL!!
The Internet and activist communities claim that an overly aggressive prosecution of Swartz contributed to the 26-year-old’s decision to take his own life in January....
Some of us out here are not so sure of that.
Related: Aaron Swartz was Murdered – He Faced 3 Months in Jail Not 35 Years!
What, another lie from my newspaper?
Aaron Swartz: Suicide or Murder?
Looking like murder more and more.
The activist first rose to fame as a computer programmer, co-founding a popular user-generated news site called Reddit and helping develop Creative Commons and RSS, a feed service that updates online content. Over the past few years, he took his knowledge of Internet tools to mainstream progressive causes and pioneered web-based grassroots political organizing.
Despite outcry from the activist community, legal scholars differ in their analyses of whether Swartz’s prosecution was out of line. Nearly all, however, agree the 1986 law under which he was prosecuted must be better tailored for the digital age. Reform legislation - dubbed “Aaron’s Law” - has already been drafted and will be introduced on the House floor in the coming weeks.
So they got Aaron out of the way and now we are going to get another SOPA and PIPA.
“We need Congress to come to a more mature place in its understanding of technology,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet advocacy group.
The reform faces an uphill battle in a Congress increasingly wary of cybercrime and cyberterror.
Oh, now it's "terror," too. Going to be getting after a lot of government web sites then.
Nevertheless, Swartz’s death has changed the way lawmakers talk not only about the Internet, but also criminal justice as a whole, contended Matt Stoller, a close friend of Swartz and policy advisor to Representative Alan Grayson of Florida.
“Aaron was in a protected class,” Stoller said, noting Swartz was white, wealthy, well-educated and well-connected.
And Jewish. He left out the most important one.
“This isn’t supposed to happen to people in the protected class. But it did. And what it’s showing people is that maybe your class isn’t as protected as you thought it was.”
And as the blogs I've linked have said, they were sending a message to the other members of the class.
--more--"
Here's an Idea: Can juries tame prosecutors gone wild?
Yes, they can, and it's called jury nullification. It means juries can excuse crimes based on stupid and unjust laws.
WASHINGTON — The suicide of Internet activist Aaron Swartz is reverberating throughout Congress this week, with family members arriving on Capitol Hill to urge passage of legislation that would soften some Internet laws, and a House committee investigating whether prosecution of Swartz went too far.
Criticism of Swartz’s prosecution has led the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to open an inquiry about the case....
Which is all well and good as it adds to his legacy; however, would Congress have swung into action for me or you, readers? No, they would have said our suicides were tragic, but that's that.
Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, and Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, drafted legislation last month excluding breaches in user agreements and terms of service from the antihacking law. “Aaron’s Law,” as they dubbed it, would also draw a distinct line between criminal hacking and more minor instances of unauthorized access.
“A thorough revision of the CFAA and substantial reform of copyright laws are necessary,” Lofgren said in a statement on Reddit, the user-generated news website that Swartz helped found. “ ‘Aaron’s Law’ is not this complete overhaul, but is a first step down the road to comprehensive reform.” The proposal could be introduced to the House floor as early as next week, a Lofgren aide said....
I'm not even sure I want any new laws because they always seem to contain some sort of tyranny tucked away in them -- even when they are "fixing" things.
--more--"
"Inquiry widens into Swartz prosecution" by David Uberti | Globe Correspondent, February 28, 2013
WASHINGTON — A congressional committee is broadening its investigation of the Boston-based prosecution of political activist Aaron Swartz, whose January suicide prompted questions about whether the Justice Department went too far in enforcing a 27-year-old law regulating computer use.
Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in an interview that he plans to expand his inquiry into how the office of US Attorney Carmen Ortiz of Massachusetts handled the case.
“Are we using excess prosecution, excess claims in order to force guilty pleas?” the California Republican asked. “Or are we trying to genuinely offer punishment fitting the crime? In the case of Aaron Swartz, it’s very clear that they were trying to send a message to people other than Aaron Swartz with what they were willing to offer him and what he was charged with.”
This government and its states do it all the time.
Issa said his committee is seeking information from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Swartz hacked computers, and JSTOR, the scholar database whose files he downloaded.
Issa’s staff was recently briefed by the Justice Department on the rationale for the prosecution of Swartz, but Issa said the committee was left with many questions that he hopes will be answered in an expanded inquiry.
Whatever happens in the investigation, the case has simultaneously pushed Congress to review whether to update the law under which Swartz was prosecuted. That has prompted a debate with potentially far-reaching consequences, as lawmakers ponder whether to revise a law enacted in 1986 — when the Internet as it is known today barely existed — without creating an opening for illegal hacking.
Swartz was arrested in Boston in 2011 after allegedly using MIT’s network to illegally download 4.8 million documents from JSTOR, one of the Internet’s largest collections of scholarly articles. Though JSTOR didn’t press charges, Swartz faced 13 felony counts that carried up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines.
Ortiz offered Swartz a plea deal that would have cut his time behind bars to less than a year, an offer the activist turned down. Aides said Ortiz declined to comment Tuesday....
Some Internet activists are pushing lawmakers to rewrite the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act under which Swartz was prosecuted. Aimed at narrowing the statute, draft legislation dubbed “Aaron’s Law” is set to be introduced on the House floor in the coming weeks.
Lawmakers, however, face a balancing act that will only intensify as commerce and communication continue to move online: how to keep the Internet free and open while combating the growing threat of cybercrime....
Now I'm starting to feel this is being used to once again expand tyranny.
Two officials with knowledge of the House Oversight Committee briefing said the Justice Department pointed to Swartz’s past advocacy of free and unrestricted information online as evidence of his intent to distribute the documents.
That is what I AM DOING HERE!
The officials confirmed a report in The Huffington Post that a Justice official referenced the “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” that Swartz wrote in 2008, which called for “civil disobedience” toward copyright laws since “information is power.”
I don't like the violation of copyright, but at the same time, it is often publicly-paid for information and I paid (sadly) for this paper!
“There is no justice in following unjust laws,” Swartz wrote. “We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world.”
************************************
The briefing also touched on prosecutors’ knowledge of Swartz’s history of depression the two officials said, as critics contend that the prosecution contributed to the 26-year-old’s decision to take his own life. Swartz’s release on $100,000 bond in July 2011 came under a condition, among others from Judge Judith Dein, that he seek mental treatment as directed by pretrial services.
I'm very suspicious of the whole depression characterization. It sure seems like a cover story as so many "official" suicides are. He sure didn't seem that way in the earlier link up top, and it seems unlikely for such a motivated kid. Again, there are also questions not being asked.
“I’m a little concerned about some mental health issues here,” Dein said during Swartz’s arraignment, according to a court recording of the proceedings. “I guess there’s been some concerns in the past about his ability to handle the situation.”
What crap!
********************************
Orin S. Kerr, a professor at the George Washington University Law School, argued that the law’s punishments are overly harsh, adding that its broad language can criminalize something as minor as violating a terms of service agreement. Falsifying personal information on a Facebook account, Kerr offered as an example, breaches the site’s small print, terms of service to which most users automatically agree.
There are false Facebook accounts all over the place. Government spies use them to befriend and keep track of you, and remember Gingrich's fake Facebook mob?
Also see: Who Are the Hackers?
They are working for the government, cui bono?!
Can't even relax on the web anymore.
“The government can put in jail any Internet user they want,” said Kerr, an expert in computer crime law....
In the land of the freeeeeeeee....
Representative Zoe Lofgren of California drafted legislation to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act soon after Swartz’s death. The proposal would rewrite certain aspects of the hacking law, decriminalizing violations of terms of service, and giving “unauthorized access” a more concrete definition. “Cybersecurity is a serious problem,” Lofgren said in an interview. “This has nothing to do with it.”
Still, “Aaron’s Law” could prove a tough sell in Congress, especially given recent steps to ramp up protections against cybercrime and cyberterror. A report released last week by Mandiant, a US-based computer security firm, tracked years of cyberattacks on American corporations and government agencies by a group tied to the Chinese Army....
Related: Private firms playing major role against cyberattacks
And cui bono?
Swartz first gained fame as a teenager when he cofounded Reddit and helped develop Creative Commons and RSS, a feed to automatically update content for online users. Over the past five years, he began translating his knowledge of Internet tools to mainstream progressive causes.
After the House and Senate unveiled legislation in 2011 to bolster copyright law — and fundamentally change how information is shared online, critics argue — Swartz catalyzed an Internet response that helped stall both bills in January 2012.
And now he is dead. Hmmmmmmm!
Giants such as Google, Wikipedia, and Reddit joined tens of thousands of other sites in blacking-out web pages, and millions of Internet users protested online through petitions and e-mails.
--more--"
You might want to hold your fire here:
"Holder defends Swartz prosecution" by David Uberti | Globe Correspondent, March 07, 2013
WASHINGTON - Attorney General Eric Holder defended the prosecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz during a Senate hearing Wednesday, calling Boston-based US Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s handling of the case against Swartz “a good use of prosecutorial discretion.”
What a f***ing tool this guy turned out to be. Just proves race, gender, and all that divisive diversity crap doesn't mean shit. Assholes come in all colors and sexes.
Holder contended during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that those who have denounced the prosecution focus too much on the charges levied against Swartz while overlooking his offered plea deals....
That must have been the SAME HEARING where he said BANKS are TOO BIG to JAIL!!
The Internet and activist communities claim that an overly aggressive prosecution of Swartz contributed to the 26-year-old’s decision to take his own life in January....
Some of us out here are not so sure of that.
Related: Aaron Swartz was Murdered – He Faced 3 Months in Jail Not 35 Years!
What, another lie from my newspaper?
Aaron Swartz: Suicide or Murder?
Looking like murder more and more.
The activist first rose to fame as a computer programmer, co-founding a popular user-generated news site called Reddit and helping develop Creative Commons and RSS, a feed service that updates online content. Over the past few years, he took his knowledge of Internet tools to mainstream progressive causes and pioneered web-based grassroots political organizing.
Despite outcry from the activist community, legal scholars differ in their analyses of whether Swartz’s prosecution was out of line. Nearly all, however, agree the 1986 law under which he was prosecuted must be better tailored for the digital age. Reform legislation - dubbed “Aaron’s Law” - has already been drafted and will be introduced on the House floor in the coming weeks.
So they got Aaron out of the way and now we are going to get another SOPA and PIPA.
“We need Congress to come to a more mature place in its understanding of technology,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet advocacy group.
The reform faces an uphill battle in a Congress increasingly wary of cybercrime and cyberterror.
Oh, now it's "terror," too. Going to be getting after a lot of government web sites then.
Nevertheless, Swartz’s death has changed the way lawmakers talk not only about the Internet, but also criminal justice as a whole, contended Matt Stoller, a close friend of Swartz and policy advisor to Representative Alan Grayson of Florida.
“Aaron was in a protected class,” Stoller said, noting Swartz was white, wealthy, well-educated and well-connected.
And Jewish. He left out the most important one.
“This isn’t supposed to happen to people in the protected class. But it did. And what it’s showing people is that maybe your class isn’t as protected as you thought it was.”
And as the blogs I've linked have said, they were sending a message to the other members of the class.
--more--"
Here's an Idea: Can juries tame prosecutors gone wild?
Yes, they can, and it's called jury nullification. It means juries can excuse crimes based on stupid and unjust laws.
