
Why Did the Justice System Target Aaron Swartz? - wglb
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-did-the-justice-system-target-aaron-swartz-20130123
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nonamegiven
"Some of Swartz's advocates believe the prosecution sought excessive
punishment to set an example in the age of Wikileaks and Anonymous."

I seriously doubt that setting an example was a significant motivation.

"Ortiz and Heymann refused to offer a deal that didn't include at least six
months of prison time and a guilty plea on all 13 charges."

In other words there was no deal being offered that didn't include a guilty
plea -- a pelt on Ortiz's belt.

They targeted Aaron Swartz because he was a rung on their ladder, an easy win.
One, he was part of an all but not understood minority to the rest of the
population, a hacker. Two, it's routine to portray neutral hackers (our sense
of the word) as evil hackers (everyone else's sense). Not understanding what
we do makes us all potential witches, and no one is sad when an evil witch
gets what he deserves, even when we don't understand what he did.

With Swartz ringed in by a large pile of charges, the result would likely have
been at least one conviction. It only takes one out of N for Ortiz to put
another mark in the "successful prosecutions" column.

Swartz just got in the way of Ortiz's and Heymann's ambitions. Collateral
damage.

~~~
mpyne
> One, he was part of an all but not understood minority to the rest of the
> population, a hacker. Two, it's routine to portray neutral hackers (our
> sense of the word) as evil hackers (everyone else's sense).

His motives might have neutral but his actions were not, at least in this
case.

But either way, I wish we would all take a step back and critically examine
_why_ it is that it is so easy for 'hackers' to be portrayed negatively.

Part of it is because "they don't understand", sure.

But there's another large part, which is the feeling of helplessness.
Computing controls more and more of _everyone's_ life with each passing day.
In the past people could take control of more of what was important to them.
They could tweak with their car's engine and chassis, they could put money in
the bank and feel reasonably safe it wouldn't have disappeared to some
identity thief by the morning, they could go home secure in the knowledge that
their work would physically be still sitting on their desk when they went back
the next day.

Now computers have taken over everything and there are very, very few people
who actually understand what's going on. And when the "average Joe" sees
someone taking advantage of that, for whatever reason, it is natural to feel
distrustful. You trust Aaron and I trust Aaron (even if I disagree with his
methods), but why should everyone trust Aaron?

The past two weeks we've seen a chorus of criticism from hackers regarding a
justice system that they don't understand. Much of the criticism is accurate,
and much of it wasn't even in the right ballpark. This isn't even the only
example, just look at the strictly-technical debates about open source
software like Ruby on Rails or systemd where FUD is the rule. So if even the
very smartest of us are liable to this type of behavior, why should we expect
any better of the general public?

People in general _want_ to think that at least _someone_ understands hacking
besides the hackers and is working to keep them safe from those few with the
means to destroy those computerized things which are becoming increasingly
valuable to them.

~~~
rayiner
> The past two weeks we've seen a chorus of criticism from hackers regarding a
> justice system that they don't understand. Much of the criticism is
> accurate, and much of it wasn't even in the right ballpark.

Dead on. The DOJ might have, in a fit of paranoia, jumped to the "evil hacker"
stereotype because it didn't understand Swartz's actions, but the "hacker
community," in a similar fit of paranoia, jumped to the "big evil government
suppressing any threats" stereotype.

I don't think the DOJ understand the "free culture" movement. At the same
time, I don't think a lot of hackers understand the public's desire for order,
boundaries, and security.

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JulianMorrison
The why of it is really, really obvious. The system attacks those who threaten
the system. Successful activists are top of the list. (What makes A.S. stand
out is that he was white and middle class. He doesn't fit the pattern-match
for an _expected_ target.)

~~~
epo
Put your tin hat away. The why of it is really, _really_ obvious. Low hanging
fruit, an easy target for prosecutors wanting to score an easy win.

~~~
alan_cx
Why are the low hanging fruit / easy win points "tin hat"?

The wrong part was the nonsense race point.

~~~
rayiner
The race point isn't non-sense. The targets of aggressive prosecution are by
and large involved in the drug trade or with gangs, and as such are very often
black or hispanic. Aggressive prosecution pretty much evolved to target those
people. One of the reasons you can get so many years out of what seem like
relatively minor convictions is because prosecutors often have to deal
reticent minority communities. Everyone knows that the defendant is involved
with certain crimes, but nobody is willing to testify to the effect of "yeah,
he's the major local drug source here," and the prosecutors end up having to
go after the defendant on secondary crimes.

Swartz's case is unusual because of his background (upper middle class, well-
connected with the community) but also because of his race.

~~~
pyre
... So Federal prosecutors said, "He's white and middle-class... Does...
Not... Compute... Must... Prosecute..." ?

~~~
rayiner
That's not what I said. I said that Swartz's case is unusual because he's
white and rich and well-connected in the community, and he wasn't accused of a
financial crime.

~~~
pyre
IIRC, one of the charges against Aaron was wire fraud. Bernie Madoff (rich,
white, well-connected) plead guilty to wire fraud (amongst other charges).

I'm not sure how the fact that it wasn't a financial crime has much to do with
how the Federal prosecutors handled things.

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brudgers
As I read about the early involvement of the secret service and in light of
the later actions of the DoJ, I couldn't help but wonder if there was
something to the signature of Swartz's actions that raised the Federal
Government's level of interest.

To put it another way, how likely is it that that particular closet had been
used for similar activities before? Is it more plausible that Swartz
discovered the closet or that someone told him about it?

Hell, it was unlocked. The camera may have already been there and the Secret
Service already involved. Swartz may have blundered into a honey hole and
screwed up an ongoing investigation. That's the sort of thing which pisses
cops off.

It's not easy to make sense of MIT's actions as naive responses to a one off
event - disconnecting the laptop and alarming the closet would be more
plausible as responses to a commercial crime. Putting in cameras and letting
the crime continue just doesn't make sense in response to the sort of hacking
which is traditional on the MIT campus (e.g. lockpicking). MIT went along
until JSTOR took radical public action and data collection and observation by
the Feds was no longer feasible.

If the proposed plea bargain required Swartz to cooperate with investigations
of other hackers, neither side would have an interest in exposing it. The Feds
for fear of tipping their hand, Swartz's survivors for remembrance of his
legacy. All along I have had the feeling there is more to the tragedy than the
press can get from their chairs.

~~~
rayiner
> I couldn't help but wonder if there was something to the signature of
> Swartz's actions that raised the Federal Government's level of interest.

Of course it was the "signature" of Swartz's actions that raised the federal
government's interest.

1) The "target" was MIT;

2) There was physical intrusion into MIT's network;

3) Millions of documents were downloaded;

4) Swartz previously did something similar to PACER.

You can argue about whether walking into an unlocked closest is "physical
intrusion" or whether the "actual target" was JSTOR but that's all just a
matter of characterization. The Feds are not "shades of gray" people--
everything is like the show "24" to them. They will assume the worst.

I'd bet money that the "bullet points" similar to the above landed on
someone's desk, and even though I think the prosecution definitely was
overzealous, I'm not at all surprised at the way they reacted. I'm really
shocked that anyone is surprised.

~~~
brudgers
_"You can argue semantics about whether walking into an unlocked closest is
"physical intrusion" or whether the "actual target" was JSTOR but that's all
just a matter of characterization. The Feds are not "shades of gray" people--
everything is like the show "24" to them. They will assume the worst."_

To the extent I am arguing anything, it is against the convenience of casting
events into the form of a morality play...or of a Fox Television apologetic
for torture. Cartoon characterizations don't require much of us and simple
causal chains don't require us to deal with messy realities.

They just make for easy journalism and lazy citizenship.

~~~
rayiner
Sorry, I meant "you can argue" in the sense of "it is possible to argue."

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jacquesm
I don't agree with the articles contention that a 'DDOs is the internet
equivalent of a sit-down strike'.

~~~
cbs
Its not 1:1, but while its people coordinating its pretty easy to draw the
comparison, only when its done by a botnet wrangler or extortionists do things
start to diverge.

You just don't see the equivalence because operating on the internet you only
see your susceptibility to a ddos, and it's always different when it can
happen to you.

It's a nuisance you deal with until the protesting party gets board. In one
case you call the cops, in the other case you pay someone with a fat pipe to
absorb the hit and forward the legit traffic to you.

~~~
CJefferson
I am unaware of any successful DDOS (other than accidental ones) which food
not make some use of unsuspecting people's computers, either by ping
reflection, botnets or secret iframes. All of these sound less like a sit-in
and more like an attack which should be prosecuted to me.

I am happy to hear of counterexample.

~~~
bad_user
How many successful DDOS attacks do you know about and how can you find out if
the participating nodes are part of a botnet or use iframes?

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btown
Swartz aside, Rolling Stone has possibly the least responsive web design ever.
If your window's width is less than the page width, the left side of the text
gets cut off on Chrome dev and Safari. There's no way to scroll to make it
visible; the only way is to make the window larger. It seems they are using
Javascript to change the main container's `margin-left` to keep the content
centered on different large monitors, but there's no check to make sure that
it's positive on small monitors. So the takeaway is: if you're trying to make
a site responsive, do it right, or don't do it at all.

On that note, if you're trying to prosecute crime: do it for justice and
society, or don't do it at all.

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darec1
I'm all for fighting the system and stuff. But in which country of the world,
doesn't the system fight back?

