
Aaron Swartz Died Innocent — Here Is the Evidence - Libertatea
http://io9.com/5975592/aaron-swartz-died-innocent-++-here-is-the-evidence
======
lifeguard
In the US justice system, one is technically always innocent until judged
guilty. He had only just begun the legal process. Sadly, the American system
has evolved into an administrative model where confessing to something is
mandatory to avoid a pernicious experience.

My sincere condolences to his friends and family.

~~~
rdl
Indeed. This leads to weird things like the R. Budd Dwyer incident. He was a
Pennsylvania Treasurer who was accused of a crime. He called a press
conference and shot himself on stage. Hence, he died without being sentenced
(and before being fired), and thus his family got a full pension.

The band Filter's song "Hey Man, Nice Shot" is about the incident.

~~~
philwelch
Wikipedia says Dwyer was convicted, but not sentenced, when he committed
suicide. However, he was not yet removed from office, which is what allowed
his family to receive the pension.

~~~
rdl
Yeah (I edited it based on wikipedia a while ago...).

I'd still say "accused", even though he was convicted, because subsequent
evidence (and the fact that he shot himself in the head) largely points to him
actually having been innocent.

The "criminal lawyer" Smith was to blame here.

------
askimto
United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz said, “Stealing is stealing whether you
use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or
dollars. It is equally harmful to the victim whether you sell what you have
stolen or give it away.”

Ortiz is an idiot. Unfortunately she is also a US Attorney.

~~~
denzil_correa

        It is equally harmful to the victim whether you sell what you have stolen or give it away.
    

I would like to ask Ms. Ortiz if AaronSw indeed did "give away" or "steal"
from the victim (JSTOR in this case)? If not, can we ask her to stop riding
the high horse?

~~~
Kim_Bruning
He did not. He returned the data to JSTOR. Later JSTOR gave away much of the
data themselves

------
gte910h
I think the matter of his guilt or innocence here isn't the matter: The system
in which systemic overcharging is used to coerce a plea bargain out of
everyone needs to be reformed. It FUNDAMENTALLY perverts our right to a trial.

The difference between 30 year sentence and 1-5 is HUGE and is exploitative to
charge a person for 20 crimes to generate that perspective 30 year sentence
just to get them to agree to 1-5. Especially with the high 90s conviction rate
of federal prosecutors (which is in part generated by the plea bargaining
system, in which witnesses had 5-10x sentences thrown at them if they do not
testify). Additionally, we should reinstate a functional golden platter rule
(right now expenses for illegal activity are non deductible, so people can't
really pay taxes on illegal activity, paying taxes on the full sale price of
say, Pot) and make many drug related criminals stop money laundering. This
would garner more taxes, and take a LARGE burden off the courts and prisons.

Plea bargaining is illegal most places. We should very much tone down the
overcharging (throwing the book at them, charging them for every violation,
etc), especially at the federal level. Additionally, parole requires
acceptance of guilt in most places, even if sent to prison via a coercive plea
bargain. Maintaining one's innocence is a no go if you want out "on time".

~~~
lifeguard
"The system in which systemic overcharging is used to coerce a plea bargain
out of everyone needs to be reformed"

That is much easier to type that the effect. Any ideas on moving forward? #OWS
taught me social change takes a decade.

I am not trolling, I would like to see change. I hope you spread the word.

~~~
gte910h
I honestly see the end of some prohibition fixing many of these issues, so I
think supporting that will neuter some of the drug prosecutions.

As it becomes more "good" that prohibition ends, prosecutors who are still
fighting for it to not will look worse then will become more easy to reform.

Also, the president can change policy on this pretty quickly. Overcharging
isn't required by law, merely enforcing the law.

------
andylei
> In the spirit of the MIT ethos, the Institute runs this open, unmonitored
> and unrestricted network on purpose. Their head of network security admitted
> as much to us.

irrelevant. the computers aaron gained unlawful access to were JSTOR's, not
MIT's

furthermore, dishonest. MIT tried banning his computer from the network
multiple times

> Aaron did not "hack" the JSTOR website for all reasonable definitions of
> "hack". Aaron wrote a handful of basic python scripts that first discovered
> the URLs of journal articles and then used curl to request them

just because JSTOR's website sucks doesn't mean its okay to abuse it. JSTOR's
terms of service limit the amount of downloads individuals can make. if you
forget to lock your door, does it make it okay for someone to take things from
your house?

> Aaron did nothing to cover his tracks or hide his activity

just not true. they put a security camera in the closet where his computer
was. when he came in to grab his laptop, he used his bike helmet as a mask so
he couldn't be identified.

also, they banned his computer multiple times from the network.

~~~
jasonzemos
It's dishonest to apply the word 'unlawful' with the implication that
statutory law (federal _penal code_ ) was violated. Service abuse is a civil
matter, it doesn't concern the state.

~~~
andylei
except its not dishonest. one of the charges was wire fraud. from the article:

> Wire Fraud. The Wire Fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. 1343, prohibits a scheme to
> gain “property” by false pretenses. This strikes me as a pretty strong
> charge here. The false pretenses are provided by the false identification
> and spoofing of Swartz’ IP address and MAC address. Swartz was trying to
> trick JSTOR into giving him access to their database after they had
> specifically tried their best to ban him from doing so. And the “property”
> was the contents of the JSTOR database itself.

do people on HN even read the articles anymore?

~~~
jasonzemos
Except that MIT runs an open network, so Swartz didn't have to "spoof"
anything. Rotating your IP or MAC address on an open network is simply not a
violation of the statutory penal system. MIT can sue him for damages and abuse
at most, the state is a non-party to the matter.

~~~
andylei
The federal charges are with respect to unlawful access to JSTOR's computers,
not MIT's computers. Furthermore, Aaron didn't have to "spoof" anything. JSTOR
tried to ban him from their computers for activities against their terms of
service. Orin Kerr's argument is that attempting to circumvent those bans to
gain property is wire fraud, which there is a federal law against. So the
actually the state is a party.

~~~
jasonzemos
It seems the problem with interpreting wire fraud with his cited precedent
comes down to an IP address versus an identity. The cited case contained two
employees with specific usernames to denote their identities. When one uses
the other's identity it's an impersonation -- or a false pretense. This case
contains publicly available IP addresses and network-wide access and with that
comes access to JSTOR. Rotating the IP to gain continued access might be
immoral or tortious conduct at best, but as long as he didn't impersonate
another user (possibly by spoofing an active IP address even) the court
wouldn't be right in interpreting with the cited precedent.

If the court decided this way: Say my dhcp-obtained cable IP becomes banned
from JSTOR, when it changes and I _simply check_ if I can access JSTOR again,
I'd be in violation. Furthermore, a reasonable person wouldn't know that an IP
address could be an identity similar to a username and that changing it would
be a crime.

------
nightpool
Repost: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5048820>

------
mpyne
Although I am deeply saddened by Aaron taking his life, I feel that part of
the article is intellectually dishonest.

I.e., it recites synopses of the charges and then states that the charges are
not true because:

\- "MIT runs an open network" But this is irrelevant, if Aaron used my public
Wifi it wouldn't be my job to police his actions even if I had the resources
for that.

\- "MIT could have locked the network down, but didn't." This is a poor excuse
as well. "I could have locked my car doors, but I didn't, so I guess it's my
fault." Or better yet, "I could have worn my hijab, but I didn't, so I suppose
it's my fault I was punished in a Sharia court".

\- "MIT doesn't specifically tell its users not to do dickwad things to its
network." This is the same logic that gets those "stupid warning labels" put
on everything!

\- "JSTOR didn't have technical facilities in place to stop people like
Aaron." But the only reason such technical facilities would be needed is if
Aaron's behavior on the network were unacceptable in the first place.

\- "Aaron did not 'hack' the JSTOR website for all reasonable definitions of
'hack'". But this is kind of a strawman, go back and read the article's own
description of the charges if you don't believe me, they claim only generic
things like "unauthorized access" or "deceptively appearing as if he were from
MIT".

\- "He didn't try to hide his behavior". Who CARES? If I steal something in
broad daylight in the real world people would say I was an idiot, not that I
was "innocent".

\- "Other people use fake identities too". Which is the same argument every
parent of a 5-year-old has heard and taken care of...

\- "If JSTOR had properly responded to the DoS/unauthorized access it wouldn't
have been such a big deal". See above about victim blaming.

\- "But he wasn't trespassing!". And in the next sentence, "the Federal
government isn't charging him with such". Uh, OK?

Now, did he deserve even the possibility of 35 years in prison? No. Is it
right to prevent him (as Lessig claims) from forming a proper legal defense
fund? Absolutely not.

In fact, _that_ would be an area that needs to be properly "witch hunted" over
because it's obvious from the outpouring of support now that Aaron's dead that
he could have found help if he were able to ask... so why wasn't he able? What
did the district court judge order that led Aaron to kill himself rather than
risking the ire of a district judge?

I wonder also why Aaron was so worried about being termed a 'felon'. I've
worked with a felon, it was a similarly stupid charge (let's just say he later
married his "victim"), and absolutely no one cared. Roman Polanski is still
making movies; Aaron would have been just fine. But that was his choice to
make. :(

But I worry about articles like this that have popped up in the aftermath,
especially when they are so full of inaccuracies as this.

~~~
commandar
>I wonder also why Aaron was so worried about being termed a 'felon'.

Convicted felons are stripped of a wide swath of legal rights; notably the
right to vote. Additionally, unlike with felonies for crimes that violate
state laws, there is _no_ legal process for having those rights reinstated
after the completion of your sentence for Federal convictions, i.e., you lose
those rights for life.

~~~
mpyne
I know this (I'm trained to provide voting assistance myself). But given the
alternative....

~~~
commandar
For somebody as ambitious as Aaron, I could see how felon status would feel
like a huge roadblock to the things he wanted to do.

Depression largely isn't rational.

~~~
mpyne
> Depression largely isn't rational.

I think that sums it up, really. I'm just glad I made it through my teenage
years without my then-depression taking my life.

------
ck2
Oh come on. He was an activist, he purposely broke outrageous laws to protest
the laws themselves.

The fact there is only innocent or guilty in a court of law forces to defend
actions as innocent where instead it should be the law itself on trial, not
Aaron.

US law codes, public scientific journals, should openly available to all who
are subject to them or could benefit from them. That's what he was protesting
and the amazing thing about Aaron was instead of sitting on his couch like
most of us do, he actually did something in protest and risked his personal
freedom.

There is practically nothing we can do for Aaron now, perhaps instead we
should focus our efforts on someone who might benefit from the outrage like
Bradley Manning.

------
hhjj
No need for an article : he died innocent since he wasn't proven (yet?)
guilty.

