
Losing Aaron: Bob Swartz on MIT's role in his son's death - cjbprime
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/01/02/bob-swartz-losing-aaron
======
suprgeek
MIT Played a key role in Aaron's Death:
[http://gothamist.com/2013/01/15/aaron_swartzs_lawyer_mit_ref...](http://gothamist.com/2013/01/15/aaron_swartzs_lawyer_mit_refused_pl.php)

They refused to sign-off on any deal that did not involve Jail time. This was
THE one point that weighed more on his mind than any else per the recorded
statements of his partner.

MIT's pig-headedness in this aspect really destroyed any respect I had for
that institution. JSTOR made a much more reasoned statement
[http://docs.jstor.org/summary.html](http://docs.jstor.org/summary.html) \-
Clearly indicating that they had NO INTEREST in any further prosecution (since
they were the primary wronged party).

~~~
sneak
> They refused to sign-off on any deal that did not involve Jail time.

It's not up to the victim how the perp gets prosecuted. It has absolutely
nothing to do with them - it is up to the prosecutor alone.

~~~
coldtea
> _It has absolutely nothing to do with them - it is up to the prosecutor
> alone._

The "absolutely nothing to do with them" is patently false. Prosecutors
listens to victims about such things and are influenced by them all the time.

------
Smerity
I'm still more disturbed by the laws in play.

Aaron was facing a cumulative maximum penalty of 35 years in prison.

The roommates of one of the Boston bombers was only facing 25 years in
prison[1] if found guilty of helping Dzhokhar Tsarnaev dispose of a laptop,
fireworks, and a backpack in the aftermath of the bombings.

I understand it's not a straight comparison, but no matter how I try to re-
arrange those numbers in my head, I can't reconcile the impact to punishment.

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombings#Dias_K...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombings#Dias_Kadyrbayev.2C_Azamat_Tazhayakov_and_Robel_Phillipos)

~~~
rscale
I also find the sentence Aaron faced to be excessive.

For additional context, David Headley received a 35 year sentence for his
active participation in the Mumbai bombings which killed 160 people.[1] The
median sentence for murder and non-negligent manslaughter in the US (effective
2000) is 24 years, 3 months.[2]

I can't help but find Aaron's prospective punishment to be far more abhorrent
than his crimes. It continues to sadden me that MIT used their influence in
such a hurtful manner.

[1]: [http://www.propublica.org/article/david-headley-homegrown-
te...](http://www.propublica.org/article/david-headley-homegrown-terrorist)

[2]:
[http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/Fssc00.txt](http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/Fssc00.txt)

~~~
pdonis
_It continues to sadden me that MIT used their influence in such a hurtful
manner._

I don't think this is a fair description; it would be fairer to say that MIT
failed to use its influence in a helpful manner. (Even then I'm not sure it
would have made a difference; it seems to me that the prosecutors were intent
on "getting" Swartz and weren't listening to reasonable arguments for backing
off.)

~~~
Jormundir
Whether it would have made a difference or not, the institution had the chance
to act for what was right, and they did not.

~~~
pdonis
True, but that's failing to use its influence helpfully; it's not the same as
using influence hurtfully.

~~~
atmosx
No, in this case it's the same. MIT is not average Joe, it's one of the top
Universities in the world. I believe people on the board understand
repercussions of _taking_ and _not taking_ action and the responsibility that
comes along and if they don't they are not suited for the position.

~~~
simpleigh
I've always thought it a nice feature of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (bear
with me here...) that the general confession covers "those things which we
ought to have done" before mentioning "those things which we ought not to have
done".

All that is required for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.

~~~
pdonis
_All that is required for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing._

That still doesn't make doing nothing identical to doing something. You may
consider them morally equivalent, but that doesn't make them identical.

My point was about how to correctly describe what MIT did. If we start
muddying our language because, oh, well, it's all morally equivalent anyway so
it doesn't matter how we describe it, we end up not being able to think
clearly. And if we can't think clearly, we can't tell good from evil, so we
end up doing even more evil.

~~~
Ygg2
If you see a drowning man and do nothing you are guilty of inaction. In this
case they knew what was happening and before issuing an informal warning went
for the nuclear option.

~~~
pdonis
_If you see a drowning man and do nothing you are guilty of inaction._

Yes. But if you take a man and throw him in the water with chains around his
arms and legs so that he drowns, you are guilty of something worse. I'm not
saying MIT is blameless; I'm saying that there are degrees of blame, and the
prosecutors deserve more than MIT does, because MIT failed to help but the
prosecutors actively sought to harm.

 _In this case they knew what was happening and before issuing an informal
warning went for the nuclear option._

I'm not sure what you mean by this. What "informal warning" could MIT have
issued? They didn't know who had broken into their network until after Swartz
was arrested. As for "the nuclear option", see above.

~~~
Ygg2
The article implies that MIT knew that students were downloading JSTOR files
illegally.

~~~
pdonis
Swartz wasn't a student, so even if MIT had issued some sort of warning to
students, he wouldn't have seen it.

------
vex
Suicide is completely a personal choice. MIT had no reason to try and defend
an outsider who hijacked part of their network, and trying to make them seem
like they caused him to hang himself smacks of tunnel vision.

It's a natural response to a suicide; we try and search for something to
blame. But unless you argue that MIT should have known Aaron was mentally
unstable, saying MIT "caused" him to kill himself is illogical. People who
commit suicide may desire to because of what they feel about their lives, but
the final decision is one's own.

It's sad that it takes a death to bring attention to the IP issues that
Aaron's trial had raised.

~~~
mentalhealth
A desire to kill oneself is a diagnosis of mental instability.

~~~
bradleydwyer
I'm genuinely curious, is that a widely accepted position on suicide and
mental stability? I can think of a number of situations where suicide might be
preferable to continued existence.

~~~
cjbprime
I think it may be widely accepted, but I also think it's nonsense. As you
allude to, someone with a terminal and painful disease could have an entirely
rational desire to commit suicide based on a sensible projection of the future
as containing a persistent unacceptable level of suffering.

I think we should only invoke "mental instability" when someone's projection
of their future level of suffering is clearly mistaken.

~~~
mentalhealth
I think it's theoretically possible for someone to arrive at the decision to
end their own life via careful evaluation, but it's quite unlikely (and at
this point, the only real acknowledgement of it in the psychiatric field is in
the case of terminally ill patients, when the calculus is pretty clear).

Regardless, the vast majority of suicides are the result of a combination of
depression and loss of inhibition, both of which are psychiatric symptoms that
can be brought on or exacerbated by severe stress. The assumption can and
should be that this is the case, not that an individual who was self-
admittedly under huge amounts of personal stress performed a rational
evaluation of their own future prospects in life and determined that it wasn't
worth living.

------
tzs
Several comments have talked about 35 year or longer potential sentences.

Those big numbers come from simply taking the maximum possible sentence that
can ever be given out for each charge, and adding them all up.

There are two things that make that unrealistic in most cases. First, the
defendant is almost always charged with several similar or related crimes that
have mostly the same elements. If convicted on more than one charge from such
a group, they are only sentenced for one of the convictions.

Second, the sentence takes into account the severity of the particular acts
that constitute the crime, and the prior criminal record of the defendant. To
get the maximum possible sentence you'd need to have gone way beyond what
ordinary violators of that particular law usually do, and you'd have to have a
serious criminal history.

What Swartz was actually facing if he want to trial and was convicted was
something ranging from probation to a few years, depending on just how much
damage the court decided he caused.

If he took the plea the prosecutor was offering, he was facing up to 6 months.

Details with citations on the above are available at [1] and [2].

In the dozens of discussions of the Swartz case we've had in the last year
here, the 35 year or 50 year myth has been repeatedly busted. Yet it keeps
coming up in each new discussion--often from people who were in some of the
previous discussions! Why is it so persistent?

[1] [http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-
charges/](http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/)

[2] [http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-
agains...](http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-
aaron-swartz-part-2-prosecutorial-discretion/)

~~~
onli
Because you are wrong. It doesn't matter whether the chance to get such a high
sentence was a realistic one, it is about the fact that there was a time when
Aaron was facing such a long time in prison, that he couldn't know for sure it
would not happen. From the article:

 _Aaron was charged with wire fraud, computer fraud, and “unlawfully obtaining
information from” and “recklessly damaging” a “protected computer.” There
would be 13 felony counts in all. At the time of the indictment, the U.S.
Attorney’s Office said he could face 35 years in prison._

~~~
watty
Please stop belittling Aaron's intelligence. I know many people on HN feel
like they have to defend Aaron's life and want to find someone to blame but
he's not an idiot. He knew as well as anyone that actual jailtime would be
very minimal. He had lawyers and a brain (a smart one).

So claiming that he killed himself over a number that wasn't even a
possibility is damaging to his image. To me it seems like a bright man got
caught doing something illegal and couldn't face the music.

~~~
onli
It is highly questionable to claim to know for sure how long the jailtime
would have been. It is not like the USA isn't known for overly hard
punishments.

Besides, I still think that such a possible outcome can be a hard burden, even
with the knowledge that it is unlikely.

> _To me it seems like a bright man got caught doing something illegal and
> couldn 't face the music._

"Face the music"? we are not talking about a game here, but about jail and a
real life. Besides, that comment totally ignores how far the prosecution
stretched the law to define the illegality of his actions.

 _edit:_ I never claimed he killed himself over the number.

------
rodrodrod
What were MIT's obligations to Aaron? While there is a whole lot that MIT
could've done to help Aaron (even if only just taking the JSTOR route and
stating they were backing off entirely) and that would've been commendable, I
don't really see why MIT had an obligation to help Aaron, so I have a hard
time holding MIT morally culpable.

If anything, I'd think screwed up laws and an overzealous prosecution are the
real issue here, and I'm not sure what pointing fingers at MIT accomplishes.

~~~
pdonis
_I don 't really see why MIT had an obligation to help Aaron_

The Abelson report's take on this (with which I basically agree) is that,
while MIT perhaps had no "obligation", it certainly missed an opportunity to
use its position to educate the US government about a technical area in which
the government is, to put it bluntly, clueless.

------
xacaxulu
Bostonian of the Year!! This makes me profoundly sick.

"United States Attorney Carmen Ortiz, in the midst of a prosecutorial tear
that would lead the Globe to name her 2011’s Bostonian of the Year, held up
Aaron’s indictment as a warning to hackers everywhere."

~~~
shawn-butler
"Section 11H. Whenever any person or persons, whether or not acting under
color of law, interfere by threats, intimidation or coercion, or attempt to
interfere by threats, intimidation or coercion, with the exercise or enjoyment
by any other person or persons of rights secured by the constitution or laws
of the United States, or of rights secured by the constitution or laws of the
commonwealth, the attorney general may bring a civil action for injunctive or
other appropriate equitable relief in order to protect the peaceable exercise
or enjoyment of the right or rights secured. Said civil action shall be
brought in the name of the commonwealth and shall be instituted either in the
superior court for the county in which the conduct complained of occurred or
in the superior court for the county in which the person whose conduct
complained of resides or has his principal place of business."

[https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleII/Cha...](https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleII/Chapter12/Section11H)

------
noonespecial
I wouldn't call MIT "responsible" as that would open the door to a world of
"look what you made me do" thinking. It is sad that MIT had a chance to be
_differnet_ than the paranoid schizophrenic mess that the US security
apparatus has become and reaffirm themselves as champions of free thought and
somewhat rebellious free thinking. They chose to do the opposite. That is very
sad indeed.

------
1stop
MIT clearly did something wrong here... The Secret Service seemed to get
involved by accident, due to the fact MIT do a lot of "Super secret stuff,
that China want". MIT should have immediately moved to limit how seriously
this was taken, when they understood who was perpetrating it (and why). Kind
of like if a kid accidentally (because he didn't know it was one) spray pants
the side of nuclear missile silo, we would treat them differently to someone
trying to sabotage a nuclear missile silo (I hope!)

The article hinted at the fact MIT ran an "Open network" which ran counter to
the charge of "unauthorised access". MIT should have commented on that in
their report.

MIT worked with the prosecution to help build there case, that's fine, but
talk about "neutrality" as that clearly isn't.

Anyone arguing that MIT didn't do anything wrong, I would say, just isn't
rational.

But we still haven't gotten causation (Are they to blame for Aaron's death?).

There is always some people who say that suicide is only the victims fault, no
one else. But do you apply that to people being tortured? Or people with no
hope to live out their life as they thought they would. Was it the jews fault
for committing suicide rather than face the camps?

Now applying that extreme analogy to the US legal system, and in particular,
the plea bargain system... isn't it the same dynamic? They want to make the
proposed outcome so bad that you take an easy way out. In the process they
destroyed parts of your life (in Aaron's case it was his friendships,
girlfriend, family, wealth).

Thus, aiding this system (the prosecutor) (as MIT did) certainly deserves some
of the blame, no?

~~~
pdonis
_MIT should have commented on that in their report._

Do you mean the Abelson report? That was published after the fact. (And it
does address the issue you mention.)

------
freejack
What makes me absolutely, terribly sick is the extent to which the USG waves
its hands to dismiss the seriousness of the extent and reach of the NSA's
domestic data gathering activities and at the same time deciding that Swartz's
data gathering was worth going to the mat over.

~~~
mpyne
The USG also claims it's wrong for people to shoot each other all while
maintaining an army of hundreds of thousands of people empowered to do exactly
that, _and worse_ , in the right situations.

~~~
nitrogen
When "we" decided to grant the government a monopoly on violence, there was
nothing in the contract about letting them hack and sabotage American computer
systems or commit other crimes at will.

~~~
mpyne
Has NSA _sabotaged_ American computer systems? Most IP 'pirates' seem quite
willing to claim that copying data is not at all destructive, and the NSA can
make similar claims.

But either way, "we" also didn't put anything in our "contract" that let them
make nuclear weapons, air forces, computer inter-networks, or social
security/welfare programs.

~~~
idle_processor
Do you not consider this[0] evidence of them sabotaging cryptography systems?

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6944118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6944118)

~~~
mpyne
In the context of NSA specifically, not really; the algorithm is meant to be
secure for all uses _except_ against NSA. I've noted before that I disagree
with NSA's actions here but this isn't a case of them shipping crypto with a
backdoor that anyone could target (contrary to the claim of the top comment
from your link, _only_ NSA could break the crypto in Dual EC DRBG).

~~~
idle_processor
Suppose I take your claim that "only the NSA could break [it]" on good faith.

You're missing the word "presently."

That back door is there. Others not having figured out how to interact with it
yet is a matter of security through obscurity[0], and the system is still
weaker for it, even though it's not _yet_ fully cracked.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity)

------
bumbledraven
_[U.S. Attorney Stephen] Heymann subpoenaed Aaron’s girlfriend, Quinn Norton,
to give grand jury testimony. That was bad enough, but even before the jury
convened, Norton agreed to meet with Heymann—against Aaron’s pleas. Norton
would say later that she thought she could talk Heymann into dropping the
prosecution. Instead, he grilled her until he had what he needed: Norton
mentioned that Aaron had coauthored the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
(remarkably, the prosecution had failed to read through the blog posts of the
Internet activist they had intended to charge). For Heymann, this was a key
piece of evidence: It established a motive._

I never realized Norton agreed to talk with the prosecution against Aaron's
wishes.

------
marincounty
It's just a sad story. I do know one thing, don't tell your significant other,
or anyone else Anything-- "Instead, he grilled her until he had what he
needed: Norton mentioned that Aaron had coauthored the Guerilla Open Access
Manifesto "

I am on the end of a civil suit. It's nothing big, but I have never felt so
helpless. I can't imagine what Aaron was feeling.

I don't know if MIT was complicit, but a few things suprised me--50k charge to
public libraries.

------
abvdasker
What's clear is that the prosecution only got out of control once it got into
the hands of the federal government, at which point Ortiz and Heymann threw
the book at Swartz when he wouldn't take a plea deal.

Swartz's death was the result of institutional failure. The criminal justice
system and more broadly the US government are very sick institutions if their
standard operating procedures can result in a tragedy like this.

------
puppetmaster3
What would be a less strict university in USA, more libertarian, less police
state if you would?

~~~
rayiner
What's more libertarian than calling the police when someone misuses and
infringes on your property?

~~~
dreamdu5t
Libertarians (at least consistent ones) call out intellectual property for
what it is: government monopoly.

In libertopia... Aaron would only face life in prison if he entered into a
contract with MIT agreeing to life in prison for accessing the systems in the
way he did.

In libertopia... you cannot consent to terms you cannot negotiate (IE
accessing a website does not magically enter you into some agreement).

~~~
rayiner
First, all property is a government monopoly, unless you're one of those
religious libertarians that believe God created rights in real and chattel
property. But I meet lots of libertarians that reject the idea that adultery
should be illegal, so maybe there's some other holy book they follow.

Second, the root of the CFAA charge wasn't intellectual property, but physical
property: MIT's network. Libertarians certainly do recognize non-contractual
violations of property rights, i.e. various incarnations of trespass.

~~~
betterunix
The CFAA charges were dubious at best, and were only pursued because the
copyright charges were looking pretty shaky. The prosecutor also tacked
additional charges on when Aaron decided to exercise his civil rights. I do
not know many libertarians who support that kind of abuse of prosecutor power.

~~~
rayiner
The premise of the CFAA charge is entirely consistent with libertarian
thinking: owners of private property, like computer networks, are entitled to
exclude people from their use, or revoke a previously granted license of use,
for any reason at all. This charge makes sense even if you don't believe in
intellectual property: it doesn't matter what he was doing on the network,
only that he had reasonable notice that his license to use it had been revoked
when they banned his MAC, but then continued to use it, thus trespassing.
That's "get off my lawn or I'll call the cops." That's as libertarian as it
gets. If you're talking about classic libertarianism, prosecuting trespassers
(I.e. Securing property rights) is one of the few legitimate functions of
government.

Arguing that violation of property rights is justified by some greater social
purpose is distinctly unlibertarian.

As for "abuse" of the process, that's orthogonal to libertarianism. Classic
libertarians believe in limited government, but once the legitimate object of
government is implicated, in this case protecting property rights, they do not
have any tendency towards favoring more forgiving or lenient prosecution.

~~~
nitrogen
Banning a MAC from an open network isn't "get off my lawn or I'll call the
cops", it's more like "quit taking all the potato chips; save some for others
and come back later."

~~~
rayiner
That's an utterly ridiculous characterization. Its an attempt to convey that
someone is no longer welcome to use your property. Not only is it such that a
reasonable person would take it to have that meaning, which is all that's
required, but Aaron actually understood that he was no longer welcome to use
the property because his subsequent accesses to the network were under
disguise.

------
inspectahdeck
MIT's report on their involvement in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz:
[http://swartz-report.mit.edu/](http://swartz-report.mit.edu/)

------
esbranson
> They watched via video feed as their suspect removed the laptop, this time
> with a bike helmet obscuring his face.

Aaron Swartz did not attempt to obscure his face. The DOJ just chose a
screenshot of when the helmet happened to pass over his face, making it
falsely appear as though he was. That's malicious on the part of the DOJ, and
that's slanderous and sloppy journalism on the part of Janelle Nanos and
_Boston_ magazine.

[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/swartz-
video/](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/swartz-video/)

------
cowmix
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-02/hsbc-judge-
approves...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-02/hsbc-judge-
approves-1-9b-drug-money-laundering-accord.html)

Zero jail time.

------
DonGateley
Frankly, my main takeaway with respect to Aaron Swartz was his willingness to
terribly damage the people close to him. Could he have had insufficient self
esteem to understand that consequence? Because if the answer to that is no,
his behavior becomes sociopathic and all the blame that is being thrown around
is misdirected.

------
epipsychidion
Quinn Norton proving one again that you should never talk to the authorities.
Especially not without a lawyer.

~~~
justin66
This article she wrote for The Atlantic gives some idea of the sort of legal
representation she was getting:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/life-i...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/life-
inside-the-aaron-swartz-investigation/273654/)

------
sjg007
Universities are supposed to protect our youth and foster freedom and free
academic exchange. Shame on MIT.

------
codecrusade
Whats disturbing is that law turned a blind eye to one of America's most
promising young men- And No One- No One cared to do a thing about this.
History will remember this as a shameful moment when the deprived world lost a
messiah when the rich and influential were busy playing poker

