

White House Owes Response To Petition To Fire Prosecutor Of Aaron Swartz - hachiya
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/02/11/white-house-owes-response-to-petition-to-fire-prosecutor-of-aaron-swartz-and-other-hackers/

======
tadfisher
I'm sorry, but this has to be said:

The White House doesn't owe you shit.

They set up this petition system to expand the illusion that somehow the
system is working for its constituents. It is not, and it was not designed to.
The system makes decisions so you don't have to. It's better this way.

The fact of the matter is that these prosecutors were doing their job, which
is to apply as much pressure as needed to achieve a negotiated prison term (a
win), and they did it a little too well for our comfort. The White House will
not speak against these actions because these actions benefit the White House
in the vast majority of cases.

If you want things to change, change the system. Lobby against the CFAA. Lobby
for rules to enforce ethical use of prosecutorial discretion. Protest.
Volunteer for candidates that oppose these practices. Don't think that
clicking a "Like" button is going to change anything, because if the White
House petition system actually changed anything, it wouldn't exist.

If you want to change the system, don't ask the system to change. Change it
yourself.

~~~
waterlesscloud
Sorry, but this misses the point entirely.

The White House does in fact owe a _response_ to the petition. That's the deal
they set up themselves. They owe it to the people to live up to it.

~~~
tadfisher
And that response will be as meaningless as most of the responses they've
given. So what? What will it do or change? Will this response prevent another
Aaron Swartz incident?

~~~
mcherm
You miss the point.

Getting the law (or even policies on prosecutorial practices) changed to
prevent another such incident is a VERY HARD task. Taking small steps toward
that task is NOT "meaningless".

The victory to be celebrated here is NOT that the problem has been solved. It
is not even that the White House now has to help work to solve the problem.
The victory to be celebrated here is that the White House actually has to say
something. (And they DO have to... if not, then the press coverage will
increase until reporters demand an answer on their own. Heck, refusing to
comment would be GREAT for our cause.)

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to make the White House at least make
a statement about your issue? It is something powerful lawmakers and world-
spanning corporations often find themselves unable to accomplish.

Now, that's not much: the White House's response may consist of meaningless
blather. But it is not nothing: the White House has been forced to respond.
And it helps to increase the momentum toward taking some kind of REAL action.

The petitions at WhiteHouse.org don't fix problems, but when something is NOT
being discussed by lawmakers, this kind of thing can help get that
conversation started. Belittling it isn't helping.

~~~
miked
_And they DO have to... if not, then the press coverage will increase until
reporters demand an answer on their own._

No, the media coverage will the same as it has always been since Obama
announced his candidacy: fawning adoration, mixed with just enough mild
skepticism to create the impression amongst themselves and others that they
really do perform some sort of journalistic function and that what we see in
the media really is "news" and not just propaganda.

Poke a Mainstream Media "reporter" deep enough and you'll always touch MSNBC.

~~~
pekk
What a skewed view of the world - I hardly think you will find MSNBC by poking
FOX reporters, NYT reporters or Christian Science Monitor reporters (not to
mention al-Jazeera, BBC, RT, etc.) And Obama has gotten plenty of bad press.

~~~
miked
_I hardly think you will find MSNBC by poking... NYT reporters or Christian
Science Monitor reporters (not to mention al-Jazeera, BBC, RT, etc.)_

I assume this is a joke, particularly the NYT. And I'm not seeing ABC, CBS,
NBC (owned by GE, which has gotten massive "green energy" subsidies from
Obama), PBS, the former Current TV, not to mention almost every newspaper in
the US, anywhere in your list. Kinda lopsided, huh?

As for the _foreign_ media organs, the BBC, al-Jazeera, and RT are all
famously anti-American. Obama still manages to get much better press that any
Republican. They hate America and they like Obama. Odd.

------
dclowd9901
>“Heymann saw Aaron as a scalp he could take,” she wrote. “He thought he could
lock Aaron up, get high-profile press coverage, and win high-fives from his
fellow prosecutors in the lunchroom. Aaron was a way of reviving Heymann’s
fading career. Heymann had no interest in an honest assessment of whether
Aaron deserved any of the hell he was being put through.”

I get that this girl is upset and feeling vocal, but she's drawing these
conclusions and painting this picture for a person about which she knows
nothing. I feel like everyone is doing this a lot lately: talking about Aaron
like he is a simple, sweet martyr, and about Heymann like he's the warden from
Shawshank Redemption.

I'm really trying not to come off as contrarian for contrarian's sake, but
this kind of demonizing seems really counterproductive to me. It goes without
saying that the prosecutors of this case took it too far, and that the justice
system is incredibly unbalanced. Why can't those facts alone be enough without
turning the involved people into charicatures?

Everyone was playing their part, and it got messy. It's like Tommy Lee Jones
responding to Harrison Ford's "I didn't do it!" in _The Fugitive_ : "I don't
care." I doubt Heymann was sitting in his office cackling about "scalping"
Aaron. It was just another case on his docket that he was trying to put to
rest. The real problem is that his incentive is not to be fair or find truth,
but to convict and incarcerate at all costs.

~~~
Kroem3r
I am definitely going to have to sit down in front of a movie screen sometime
soon. I've really missed out on how to think about stuff.

If I could only get someone to follow me around playing music, I'd have a
soundtrack to help me feel stuff, too.

------
olefoo
One important distinction that this article misses completely is that Mr.
Heymann is a civil service employee whereas Ms. Ortiz (his boss and
supervisor) is a political appointee. The Executive branch is perfectly within
it's rights to fire a political appointee at any time for any reason, but
would have to show cause to terminate a civil servant. This system exists to
prevent partisan patronage at the federal level from bringing the government
down on a regular basis.

Paradoxically this means that any effort to remove Mr. Heymann is made more
difficult by the existence of a qualified petition for his removal. He would
have to have made overt and on the record declarations of ill intent and bad
faith for the Obama administration to remove him at this point. Ms. Ortiz on
the other hand, could be asked to depart at any point. Although it seems
unlikely to happen before she testifies to congress, and is in any event
unlikely to happen unless the Presidents political calculations suggest that
her absence will allow him to access resources ( of political support ) that
are necessary for him to achieve his agenda.

------
haven
Author seems mistaken. Ortiz hit 25,000 before the White House raised the
required amount to 100,000.

Since the Heymann petition didn't reach the mark before the cap was raised,
there are another 75,000-or-so to go. Ortiz was grandfathered in.

edit: I thought only completed petitions were grandfathered in, but it appears
I'm wrong and just having a petition started before the change is sufficient
for grandfathered-status.

~~~
hachiya
I believe both petitions were grandfathered in. And the site does indicate the
"fire Stephen Heymann" petition has met the requirement.
[https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-
us-...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney-
steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb) "Signatures needed by February 11, 2013 to reach goal
of 25,000: 0"

So the Forbes author does not appear to be mistaken.

------
charonn0
It will be very interesting to see the administration's response, which is,
remember, all that's promised.

When they were in the early decision phase that resulted in the petitions
website, they certainly would have realized that such a system would very
quickly become overrun with pleas for Presidential Pardons, intercession in
ongoing investigations/prosecutions, and, as in this case, for punishment of a
government employee who is perceived to abuse their power. That's what the
thresholds are for.

They knew this would happen; and they're already prepared. I predict the
response will boil down to "we can't interfere with the machinery of Justice,
etc." Their reply will give a lot of good points to support this, but will
subtly rely on the people confusing prosecutors as being Judicial rather than
Executive employees. Mr. Heymann and Ms. Ortiz will keep their jobs, though
Heymann may no longer be put on "hacking" cases.

~~~
qiqing
"Governments have generally not recognized the legitimacy of civil
disobedience or viewed political objectives as an excuse for breaking the
law." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience>

I would like to believe we live in a time when there is some self-reflection
and self-correction on the part of the machinery of justice.

------
likeclockwork
No one killed Aaron Swartz. He killed himself. He could have become a
political prisoner. He might have beat the charges. He would have gotten out
eventually. The only cause he is a martyr to now is mental illness.

~~~
devcpp
That's the Middle Ages mentality: in some religions where murder was not
tolerated but people wanted to get rid of other people, they put them in a
terrible position (buried alive, closed room with no food, daily torture) with
some sort of fatal weapon. The poor person would usually suicide, and no
murder would have been committed. These people were cheating God's system.

In modern societies, this kind of thing is fortunately not tolerated, and is
usually punishable as murder or conspiracy to commit murder. So what you said
is an invaid argument. It remains to be proved that Schwartz was punished
unfairly and too much, given his psychological past.

~~~
sigzero
Um...no. It doesn't remain to be seen. You will never be able to prove that
and there is absolutely no way that they will consider it "murder" or
"conspiracy to commit murder".

------
nonamegiven
If all it does is provide a talking point to Ortiz' political campaign
opponents, it's worth signing these petitions.

A signature on Heymann's petition contributes to undermining Ortiz' political
aspirations, so it's worth it to sign this petition too.

No Ortiz political opponent will ignore this rock to throw.

------
bonchibuji
I remember reading sometime back that White House had increased the threshold
to 100,000 signatures. The 'Fire Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann' has
got only 25,760 signatures as of now. Am I missing something?

~~~
asdfologist
The threshold doesn't apply retroactively.

