
How The U.S. Marshals Are Trying To Break My Hunger Strike - electic
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-the-us-marshalls-bureau-of-prisons-are-trying_us_586abd7be4b068764965c3af
======
int_handler
If anyone wants to read more information about Justina Pelletier, the patient
at BCH that the author DoS'ed the hospital donations website over, here are a
few articles you might find interesting:

* Parents of Justina Pelletier sue Boston Children’s Hospital: [https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/02/25/parents-justina...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/02/25/parents-justina-pelletier-sue-boston-children-hospital-for-negligence/jCrlgTQBVikJtokEnlFBmN/story.html)

* The Case of Justina Pelletier Still Requires Nuance: [http://www.harpocratesspeaks.com/2016/03/Case-of-Justina-Pel...](http://www.harpocratesspeaks.com/2016/03/Case-of-Justina-Pelletier-Still-Calls-for-Nuance.html)

* The New Child Abuse Panic: [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/the-new-chi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/the-new-child-abuse-panic.html?_r=0)

~~~
psyc
That second one, the blog post, raised a dozen red flags for me. The gist of
it is "We don't know what happened, therefore I will speculate about every
hypothetical way that the Pelletiers might be bad people, and Justina herself
might not know what she's talking about. Because, gosh, we just don't know.
BTW my primary concern is her welfare."

~~~
danso
So if that blog post can be dismissed as mere speculation because, well it's
just a blog post, right? Then on what basis can we give Martin Gottesfeld the
benefit of the doubt? As far as I can tell, the Pelletiers did not release the
relevant medical records, either into the public domain or through private
channels to Mr. Gottesfeld. Nor does Gottesfeld mention having a medicine-
related degree, or even having observed Justina in person. It appears that he
made his decision based on reading blog posts sympathetic to the family, and
not based on any firsthand or otherwise privileged observations of his own.

------
strainer
Much of the discussion in this thread is worryingly callous and dismissive.

This is a first person account of an activist _starving themselves to death_
in the service of a selfless and unviolent cause.

~~~
zzalpha
"This is a first person account of a confessed, unrepentant criminal _starving
themselves to death_ because they don't feel they should be punished for their
crimes."

Amazing how framing makes a difference, isn't it?

~~~
forumSzliding
Slippery slopes all around.

Hopefully he won't die though, or be tortured with force feeding, because the
shit his did is pretty tame, pretty boring, and pretty inconsequential.

It's, like, on the level of shop lifting bubble gum, regardless of whatever
intellectual psychobabble anyone wants to heap on top of it.

I've probably endangered more lives with multiple counts of reckless driving,
been arrested for it, AND released in under thirty hours with a ~$500 fine,
kept my licence and no misdemeanors on my record.

Think about it.

~~~
zzalpha
_Hopefully he won 't die though, or be tortured with force feeding_

While I disagree what he did was as minor as you claim, I agree with that, and
would agree with that no matter what he did.

It begs an interesting question, though: suppose a confessed murderer went on
a hunger strike, refusing to eat until they were acquitted (err, and to be
clear, I'm not saying this case is equivalent to murder... just using it as an
example). What do you do? I honestly am unsure of the ethics. Forced feeding
sounds awful, but anything else is effectively enabling suicide...

The alternative is to bend to their wishes, but that sets a very dangerous
precedent that threatening suicide is an effective means of manipulating the
criminal justice system.

~~~
pmyteh
The Suffragettes did this in the UK to either force their release/transfer to
'political' first-class prison status or martyrdom. The government passed the
so-called 'cat and mouse act' with temporary release followed by re-
incarceration. Not clear it worked out well, though.

------
bertil
I find is bizarrely self-serving to describe yourself as the next Aaron
Schwartz. Depression and suicide leveraged as political tools feel a little
too callous.

What would make more sense is some detail on what the case is about, i.e. a
third person report.

~~~
int_handler
Where exactly does the author describe himself as "the next Aaron Swartz?" The
only comparison I found was that the article draws parallels between
Gottesfeld's and Swartz's cases since both are being prosecuted by Carmen
Ortiz and the article is claiming similar to Swartz, the prosecutors are again
abusing the CFAA and trying to "make an example of" Gottesfeld.

~~~
danso
It was in the originally submitted title:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306320](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306320)

> “Aaron Swartz Redux -- The Man Carmen Ortiz Is Trying to Kill Next”

~~~
int_handler
Where is the evidence that this title was written by the author of the article
rather than just the poster of the article?

~~~
grzm
I'm not sure what you're asking. Clicking through to the Huffington Post
article, the title is "How The U.S. Marshals And Bureau Of Prisons Are Trying
To Break My Hunger Strike", and the last portion of the URI is

    
    
      how-the-us-marshalls-bureau-of-prisons-are-trying_us_586abd7be4b068764965c3af
    

This indicates that the Huffington Post article title hasn't changed, as
generally URIs don't change even if article titles do.

As for the submission title original submission title "Aaron Swartz Redux --
The Man Carmen Ortiz Is Trying to Kill Next", that _was_ submitted by the
poster. See this comment from 'sctb when he updated the title:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306320](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306320)

Is this what you're asking? If not, can you clarify?

~~~
int_handler
Thank you, this is exactly what I am asking and verifies that the _poster_,
not the author, came up with the "Aaron Swartz Redux" title and that the
author did not describe himself as "the next Aaron Swartz."

Excuse my pedantry.

~~~
grzm
The author doesn't, though he does bring Swartz up as part of his story.

 _" I was tired of explaining this whole travesty over and over again: from
the troubled teen industry, to Justina Pelletier, Carmen Ortiz, the CFAA, and
Aaron Swartz."_

------
synicalx
To sum this up, dude DoS'ed a hospital, got in trouble for it, feels that
getting in trouble for breaking the law is something that doesn't apply to him
and thus refuses to eat food for a while, and tries to make the lives of
everyone else around him difficult (except for his special little African
friend).

He also tries to leverage someone else's suicide to his advantage which is
always a classy look.

------
marcoperaza
We don't let people kill themselves in prison. The state has a duty to protect
the health of people in its custody, even against themselves.

~~~
derrickdirge
"While in custody, you will be subjected to whatever torture is necessary to
_protect you from yourself._ "

~~~
marcoperaza
Frame it however you want. The government should not let people starve
themselves to death in prisons. Facing justice is not an easy thing, enough to
drive people to psychological extremes. But life goes on even for prisoners.

~~~
derrickdirge
I'd be interested to know how a starving individual being kept in solitary
confinement in a cold cell in standing water, regularly subjected to treatment
intended to apply physical and psychological pressure, could be framed as
anything other than torture.

I would also argue that if the government focused more on not torturing people
and instead treating them with basic human dignity, it wouldn't have to deal
with quite so many hunger strikes.

~~~
marcoperaza
That's a separate issue than keeping people alive. But yes, I agree that
torture is a bad thing.

But I also have a healthy skepticism for potentially self-serving claims made
by people facing criminal charges.

------
mox1
Hmm, to make a very long story short the guy DoS'ed a hospital.

~~~
jessaustin
Probably should read this: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-
successful-hospital-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-successful-
hospital-cyber-attack-that-hurt-no-one_us_5825bc49e4b0852d9ec2146b)

A fundraising campaign was inconvenienced. Probably not as bad as torturing a
little girl for months, leaving her unable to walk.

~~~
danso
Horrific, inexplicable tragedies happen in hospitals and emergency rooms
because in the normal chaos of medical emergencies and communication snafus,
surgeons don't properly wash their hands or mark which limb is meant to be
amputated [0]. But your experience with such institutions is that while they
may fuck up the routine small things and kill patients, they are yet able to
pivot like well-oiled military units when their information technology
infrastructure is unexpectedly cut?

[0] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-
checklist](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist)

~~~
strainer
If we can appreciate inexplicable medical tragedies - can't we appreciate a
mans emotional response? If he was wrong was he yet not caught in a tragedy?

>their information technology infrastructure is unexpectedly cut

You are attributing offence of a kind which is far removed from his case - he
never attacked the kind of critical systems which you indicate with the
Newyorker article.

He pestered and temporarily disabled a medical company website to highlight
the maltreatment of a patient, now he is facing many years in prison for the
protest.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-i-knocked-boston-
chi...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-i-knocked-boston-childrens-
hospital-off-the-internet-a-statement-from-martin-
gottesfeld_us_57df4995e4b08cb140966cd3)

" I also knew from my career experience as a biotech professional that no
patients should be harmed if Boston Children’s was knocked offline. There’s no
such thing as an outage-proof network, so hospitals have to be able to
function without the Internet. It’s required by federal law, and for
accreditation. The only effects would be financial and on BCH’s reputation. "

~~~
danso
> _He pestered and temporarily disabled a medical company website to highlight
> the maltreatment of a patient, now he is facing many years in prison for the
> protest._

Uh, OK...

You'll have to pardon my skepticism that you actually read the New Yorker
article when it appears you didn't even read the OP whom you defend. Here's
one sentence you appear to have skipped over:

> _Almost unbelievably, they kept their donation page on the same public
> network as the rest of their stuff. Rookie mistake. To take it down, I’d
> have to knock the whole hospital off the Internet._

Edit: clarification. The thing that I quote directly above is not in the OP,
but in the link u/strainer provided as rebuttal, i.e.
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-i-knocked-boston-
chi...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-i-knocked-boston-childrens-
hospital-off-the-internet-a-statement-from-martin-
gottesfeld_us_57df4995e4b08cb140966cd3)

~~~
strainer
I did only scan the article which I linked to establish that he never attacked
the kind of critical systems you indicated by your link. That was established
and only somewhat distracted by your reaching caveat -that he knew his attack
would take the whole hospitals websites temporarily offline.

You may think about admonishing u/danso for this - the hunger striker never
did attack the kind of critical systems indicated by u/danso's comment and
link.

~~~
danso
My argument with you is that I don't think we should trust Mr. Gottesfeld's
self-serving claim, at face value, that he knew that his attack wouldn't have
unintended consequences. He was not an employee at BCH, he did not have inside
knowledge about how their systems work, nor does he even appear to have read
their incident plan. No one is arguing that a hospital folds over and dies
when the Internet goes out; the argument is that a hospital operates
_suboptimally_ when under attack. I think it's a bit pretentious for an
outsider to argue that crippling "non-critical" systems like appointment and
prescription management is no big deal.

But the main reason why I think we should be skeptical of Gottesfeld's
professed expertise is...well, the fact that we are _discussing him at all_.
How was Mr. Gottesfeld caught so quickly? If you take Mr. Gottesfeld at his
word, it's because the FBI poured thousands/millions into investigating the
breach. According to the affidavit, though [0], the reasons for Mr. Gottesfeld
capture were:

1\. He allegedly posted a video calling for Anonymous to take action against
BHC, and this video was posted on a YouTube account attached to Mr.
Gottesfeld's identity.

2\. He used a Twitter account attached to his name to DM other people about
hacking the BHC.

3\. He created a separate anonymous Twitter account to tweet about the attack,
using an email address connected to his computer.

4\. He bragged about the DDOS attack to his friend, who then told the FBI
about it.

Since Mr. Gottesfeld, according to the FBI, initially denied his involvement
-- and then was caught after he and his wife attempted to flee the country by
boat but ended up being rescued, we can't make the argument that Mr.
Gottesfeld was sloppy about his personal opsec because he _wanted_ to get
caught.

So Mr. Gottesfeld appears to be ignorant of how the Internet can inadvertently
be linked to personal computer systems, even when such knowledge and awareness
is critical to his immediate, personal well-being. But we're supposed to take
his word that he can execute a hack with ninja-like precision on BCH because
he happens to be an expert in BCH's systems and IT dependencies?

[0] [https://www.scribd.com/doc/299575089/Gottesfeld-Martin-
Affid...](https://www.scribd.com/doc/299575089/Gottesfeld-Martin-Affidavit-
docx)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbnJyK_54Jo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbnJyK_54Jo)

~~~
strainer
You argument with me was that I don't adequately read sources and that I made
an untrue statement, which was in fact not untrue, and was merely open to
adjustment - which all summaries are.

My argument with you, was that you linked critical medical equipment to the
accuseds website attack, which you should really be aware _cannot_ be
vulnerable to a website attack. Yet I am the one criticised for "not a lie"
but "a major mistake ... made in rush to judgement"

I found neither your relevant or over-extended response to my criticism
tenable. You appear to be in a rush to prosecute beyond fair assessment. Which
is what years of hard prison for a temporary website protest attack that
_cannot_ threaten critical equipment presents.

~~~
danso
> _You argument with me was that I don 't adequately read sources and that I
> made an untrue statement, which was in fact not untrue, and was merely open
> to adjustment - which all summaries are._

The statement in question:

> _He pestered and temporarily disabled a medical company website to highlight
> the maltreatment of a patient, now he is facing many years in prison for the
> protest._

Mr. Gottesfeld's own statement:

> _Almost unbelievably, they kept their donation page on the same public
> network as the rest of their stuff. Rookie mistake. To take it down, I’d
> have to knock the whole hospital off the Internet._

Christ, if that's "not untrue" in your judgment, then I won't hold out hope
that you care enough about basic facts to see that even in the many words I've
spent in this thread bickering about the topic, I've never stated that I
support the prosecution or alleged mistreatment of Mr. Gottesfeld. My opinion
has been: I am more ambivalent about this case than I was about what happened
to Aaron Swartz [0]. Given how angry Swartz's case made me, me not feeling
strongly about Mr. Gottesfeld by comparison does not equate to me supporting
his prosecution.

But I'm not surprised you aren't able to see the distinction, if you don't see
the difference between a website and the Internet.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306401](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13306401)

~~~
jessaustin
Either you are a master troll, or you need to draw a network diagram. You
invoked "horrific, inexplicable tragedies" because "surgeons don't properly
wash their hands or mark which limb is meant to be amputated". (Frankly I'm
not sure the latter qualifies as "inexplicable".) Hand-washing and limb-
marking don't require internet access. If hospitals require non-internet-
enabled signs to inform surgeons of these risk factors, those are available at
restaurant suppliers. (Well maybe not the limb-marking...)

Life support devices also don't require constant internet access. Diagnostic
equipment also doesn't require constant internet access. Local medical
procedures do not require internet access. Hospital medical records do not
require constant internet access. In fact no life supporting activity requires
constant internet access, because designing the system to rely on something
that is unreliable would be stupid. Physicians are not stupid.

It is conceivable that telemedicine sessions might have been interrupted, but
telemedicine is inappropriate when life is in jeopardy. We could imagine the
future invention of remote robotic surgeries that would qualify, but if that
were going on it would have been mentioned in the indictment, and also a
dedicated and isolated network would have been created. In fact since every
federal indictment written includes everything but the kitchen sink, and this
indictment mentioned only the customary ridiculous inflated monetary damages,
we know that this DDoS attack did not hurt anyone physically.

I don't think that we normal easygoing HN folks would really mind your
conceptual mistakes, but the combination of those with the withering scorn
you've exhibited here is probably what inspired us to keep this thread going
long past the point of interest and utility. So, nice trolling!

------
danso
Aaron Swartz's suicide coincided with one of the worst downtimes of my own
life so the tragedy of his death has always had special poignance for me. Even
seeing his name now makes me blink back tears at what a goddamned unnecessary
tragedy it all was, and I was as disappointed as anyone that the campaign to
pressure Ortiz to resign eventually petered out.

But it didn't surprise me that the outcry didn't cause her termination. She
was just doing her job, and for most of the time for most people, that's just
fine. Just 3 weeks ago there was a highly upvoted thread on HN praising the
labor of her office: the prosecution of pharma execs accused of racketeering
[0]. A few users called her out by name, but I don't think anyone argued that
that invalidate what most people agreed was a worthy case.

So I have a strong reluctance to assign to her office a vendetta against
Swartz-like offenders. I do think the indifferent incompetence that led to the
decision to drop the hammer on Swartz justified her resignation, but not
because she's malicious. I think framing the machinations of politics as
simple good vs evil is not only inaccurate, but harmful in the long run.

So seeing the headline of the OP (as originally submitted) -- "Aaron Swartz
Redux, The man Carmen Ortiz is trying to kill next" \-- reflexively raised red
flags for me. Actually reading the content of the OP did not help, as it is an
incoherent mess. I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt, as being
coherent is probably a difficult task given his circumstances.

But when reading an earlier statement by the OP, in which described his
actions and motivations in more specific detail, I'm left with even more
apprehension:

[http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_57df4995e4b08cb140966cd3](http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_57df4995e4b08cb140966cd3)

If I'm reading his statement correctly, the OP learned on the news that a
hospital was accused of mistreating a young patient. So the OP unilaterally
decided the hospital must be punished by _shutting off the hospital 's
internet_ during a fundraising drive.

Here are his own words:

> _I also knew from my career experience as a biotech professional that no
> patients should be harmed if Boston Children’s was knocked offline. There’s
> no such thing as an outage-proof network, so hospitals have to be able to
> function without the Internet. It’s required by federal law, and for
> accreditation. The only effects would be financial and on BCH’s reputation._

> _The network was strong, well funded, but especially vulnerable to a
> specific attack. Apparently BCH was unwilling to architect around the
> problem. I see such laziness often in my work, and it leaves our nation
> vulnerable._

> _I had spent my career building cyber-defenses. For the first time, I was on
> the offensive. I coded around the clock for two weeks to perfect the attack.
> Small test runs were made. BCH bragged to the media that they were
> withstanding the onslaught and hadn’t been taken down. They had no idea what
> was to come._

> _I finished the code just in time. It ran. BCH’s donation page went down. As
> they were down, I was nervous. I left it running for a few hours._

> _Then, with some donation time still let, I issued the command to stop the
> attacks—the point had been made. Justina wasn’t defenseless. Under the
> banner of Anonymous, she and other institutionalized children could and
> would be protected. There have been no such egregious parentectomies
> published at BCH since._

That is a seriously fucked up rationalization, based on my experience of the
massive dissonance between IT and non-IT people about technical issues and
downtime and what constitutes a disruption. It's like a small-scale Mr. Robot
in real life, except lacking the calm rationality of f-society.

This doesn't invalidate the OP's claims of mistreatment. I'm just expressing
the roots of my ambivalence on this, even as a huge sympathizer of Mr: Swartz.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13164826](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13164826)

edit: added more excerpts from his statement about the why and how of his
alleged DDOS attack.

------
boona
Considering that one of the top stories on the site is "Fitness Star Proves
There's Nothing Wrong With Stomach Rolls", I have a hard time taking this
article seriously. Are we not better than HuffPo?

~~~
danso
The Huffington Post not only has a Pulitzer [0] -- which is rare for an
online-only outlet -- it regularly does serious journalism [1], even if it
runs clickbait to help pay the bills. As I explained in another comment
downthread, I'm not strongly convinced by the OP's claims, but I didn't
dismiss the OP simply because of where it was originally published.

[0] [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/apr/22/huffington-
pos...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/apr/22/huffington-post-
pulitzer-prize)

[1] [http://data.huffingtonpost.com/2016/jail-
deaths](http://data.huffingtonpost.com/2016/jail-deaths)

~~~
geezerjay
> The Huffington Post not only has a Pulitzer [0]

That's a bit misleading. David Wood was awarded the Pulitzer prize for a story
that was published by the Huffington Post.

Just because the merit of David Wood's work was recognized by Pulitzer's board
members it doesn't automatically mean everything posted by the Huffington Post
is a Pulitzer contender.

> it regularly does serious journalism [1]

I believe you meant that some authors who host their work in Huffington Post
do serious journalism. That's not exactly the same thing at all.

~~~
danso
> it doesn't automatically mean everything posted by the Huffington Post is a
> Pulitzer contender.

That's a straw man argument I never made.

~~~
geezerjay
You argued that the Huffington Post won a Pulitzer to try to refute the fact
that their top content is clickbait trash such as "Fitness Star Proves There's
Nothing Wrong With Stomach Rolls". Stating that the Huffington Post won a
Pulitzer to refute that its content is mostly clickbait trash and suggest that
the amount of Pulitzer-worthy material is the norm is disingenuous at best.

~~~
danso
The comment I responded to suggested that the OP was not credible because it
appears on a website in which the top story is "Fitness Star Proves There's
Nothing Wrong With Stomach Rolls".

I brought up the Pulitzer example because, under the commenter's reasoning,
that story too should be dismissed because of the clickbait links that are
published along side of it.

In fact, you can check this for yourself. Here's the direct link to the lead
story in the Pulitzer series:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/10/beyond-the-
battlefi...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/10/beyond-the-battlefield-
part-1-tyler-southern_n_999329.html?ref=politics)

I've taken a screenshot to preserve what it looks like for me at the moment:

[http://imgur.com/a/GQw5Z](http://imgur.com/a/GQw5Z)

As you can see, the top trending story is "Baby And Beagle Pose For Adorable
Monthly Photos Over Course Of 2 Years". So here's a remix of u/boona's
argument:

> _Considering that one of the top stories on the site is "Baby And Beagle
> Pose For Adorable Monthly Photos Over Course Of 2 Years", I have a hard time
> taking this anti-American-military article seriously. Are we not better than
> HuffPo?_

I read over my comment. Still don't see where I said claimed that the
Huffington Post's Pulitzer Prize meant that Pulitzer-level (or even just
"serious") journalism was the "norm". My argument was that an article being on
Huffington Post was not itself a decisive reason for dismissing the article.
_You_ are the one who interpreted that as a glowing endorsement of all of
Huffington Post's editorial content. Somehow you missed the part where I said,
"even if it runs clickbait to help pay the bills." (though to be fair, I could
have said, "even though clickbait probably pays most of the bills"...but I
honestly don't have access to their analytics to make that an assertion)

------
sctb
We've updated the title from “Aaron Swartz Redux -- The Man Carmen Ortiz Is
Trying to Kill Next”, which breaks the guidelines by editorializing.

~~~
ternaryoperator
Thank you. I appreciate you de-sensationalizing posts. Your constant work as
well as dang's enables me to read these comments, which show a wide range of
opinions, and enjoy and learn from the conversations. No insults, no rancor,
no superficial arguments -- but rather a useful exchange of POVs. Thanks for
making this possible!

