
Anonymous Hijacks Federal Website Over Aaron Swartz Suicide - Jaigus
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/anonymous-hijacks-federal-website-threatens-doj-document-dump-174943824--abc-news-politics.html
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lemcoe9
I may get flamed for asking this, but am I the only one that thinks the Swartz
suicide has been over-reacted to by HN and the tech community at large? In no
way to I mean to be disrespectful or callous, but it seems that there is way
too much coverage of his suicide.

~~~
archgoon
I think the real issue is that everyone (both Hacker News types and the public
at large) has, up until now, been far too complacent about computer law and
the justice system in general.

We should be making this much noise more often.

~~~
mpyne
Computer law, absolutely. But I'd be careful about the untrained tinkering
with the justice system. A lot of the "features" it now sports are due to even
worse corruption in the past.

IMHO the best fix that could be done with the justice system is to simply
decriminalize many existing classifications of "crime" that are essentially
minor and victimless. Even what little Aaron did caused more harm than someone
smoking pot in their home or consensual sexting with their 1-year-younger
girlfriend.

But I can't overstress enough how all of these failings (computer crime, harsh
sentences on negligible offenses) lie at the hands of the legislature at
large, not the courts.

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doe88
I really think for once Anonymous guys should shut up and find another _cause_
to _defend_ , because If they wanted to harm the currently insightful ongoing
debate on the handling of the Aaron Swartz's case they wouldn't do otherwise.
And btw the actions of Aaron Swartz were not even remotely comparable with the
reckless behavior of Anonymous. All this can do is make Aaron Swartz guilty by
association in the mind of the average person when she hear about the actions
of Anonymous. It doesn't serve any meaningful purpose.

~~~
wildranter
The guy killed himself for something greater then you. So what are you
standing for anyway?

As far from as I see you're just saying a bunch of words instead of doing
something meaningful like he did.

Man up or shut up.

~~~
derleth
> Man up or shut up.

This is sexist. That's why you lose.

~~~
reinhardt
Oh FFS with the sexism police in HN

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ctbeiser
Anonymous needs to get a better understanding of the effects of their actions.
I'm all for taking illegal but morally acceptable actions on a calculated and
reasonable basis. Using vigilante website-takeovers as a way to call for a
more fair justice system is not reasonable. A pseudo-criminal, intellectually
unsophisticated hacking collective's endorsement does not do justice to the
reality that Aaron was hounded despite lacking any substantial wrongdoing, as
acknowledged by JSTOR's lawyers.

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The1TrueGuy
Mr. Swartz was a canary in our coal mine. When tyranny encouraged his death we
all became more acutely aware of it, yet another thing we owe him gratitude
for no matter how much we wish he'd toughed it out so we could crack a beer
with him. For very good reasons Anonymous has done something I doubt myself or
most of you would have the courage to undertake and I am grateful to them.
Blank is Beautiful!

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film42
Cache link:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sV8dPXf...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sV8dPXftnTcJ:www.ussc.gov/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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berlinbrown
Hijacking a website is so 1990s. Hack a website and then give me all the
logins. That would be kind of interesting.

