The suicide of Aaron Swartz, the Internet pioneer and free-information activist, touched off accusations that federal prosecutors abused their power by seeking a long sentence and stiff fine against him for hacking into the MIT network. But the case may say as much about problems with federal cybercrime law as it does prosecutorial judgment, say those familiar with the law.
The cybercrime statutes are broad — critics would say disproportionately so — subjecting even minor offenders to heavy criminal penalties, say specialists. That fact, coupled with sentencing guidelines that encourage prosecutors to take advantage of the tough sanctions, can give rise to overreaching prosecutions, they say.
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Aaron Swartz was a thorn in the side of a corrupt government and a VERY CORRUPT FEDERAL COURT SYSTEM! Harassment over the PACER incident simply led Aaron to pursue another form of information release where as an academic he knew common sense would prevail because who in their right mind was going to object to the flurry of free knowledge? The “persecution” that led to the death of Aaron was the DOJ seeing the MIT - JSTOR incident as a perfect storm to carry retaliation over the PACER incident. THIS malicious prosecution could ensure a FELONY conviction if they could get a guilty plea (a jury conviction was very doubtful); a computer crime conviction would bar Aaron from computers & his open records campaign. What you are seeing is Risk management by the CORRUPT!!
Public servants have a fiduciary responsibility to the tax payer; the aforementioned includes a responsibility to provide HONEST SERVICE. Appointed, or simply hired on, the responsibility when you live off the tax payer is no less than if you were an elected official. What our high level public servants stated during the Dimasi trial as reported in the local papers follows:
“The judge said DiMasi inherited a responsibility to serve in office honorably and should have been aware that his actions were breaking the law,..” “Which person is more dangerous in our country,’’ Wolf asked, “someone who is doing what everyone he knows does, selling crack on a corner, or people who are undermining our democracy by successfully conspiring to sell their public office?’’
After Judge Wolf spoke Carmen Ortiz spoke:
“You heard what Judge Wolf said inside, that somehow it’s striking that elected officials think their good works (make the case) that a little corruption is OK. It’s not OK,” she said. “I am hoping by these prosecutions, the sentences that have been given out, that all elected officials — not just on Beacon Hill, but in the state of Massachusetts — will realize that these are serious crimes.”
Overreach in the prosecution of a good citizen with intention to only make the world better while ignoring the undermining of our democracy by lower tier public servants does not meet the standard!!
Carmen Ortiz do your job and go after real criminals; if you would just open your eyes you would see that the most dangerous criminals in our society are very low lying fruit! The citizens of this country want their rights back; they are tired of living in fear and having all that they worked for taken away on the whim of the corrupt. Please initiate the process!! http://www.scribd.com/tired_of_corruption
Carmen Ortiz is a disgrace to the legal profession since she is a rank bully. Nixon's War on Drugs has allowed the entire police and prosecutorial apparatus of the Commonwealth and the federal governments to become corrupt, thugish and overbearing.
Apparent miscarriages of justice happen every day in our nation and receive no attention from the media, who are usually far to busy covering the juvenile mis-deeds of so-called celebrities to fulfill their obligations to a feww society. The Swartz case has only occupied the local news fer a week because Swartz was bright and white, and threw his advantages away. Others far less fortunate languish in obscurity.
Actually, Swartz's influence was already very broad. You haven't heard of him if you are not part of the world he worked in, but you have probably used (without knowing it) stuff he either designed or built.
What I mean to say is, the attention that this has received isn't because he was white, or privileged, or famous, but because of the impact of the work he had already done and the potential he had to do more. I don't disagree that injustice is harsher and far more prevalent out in the world for those who suffer because of prejudice or poverty. I'm just saying that the attention has nothing to do with what Aaron Swartz was, but what he did.
Cybercrime is still relatively new and scares the feds so they want to scare potential ctiminals. They just didn't think that the guy would kill himself - they wanted to scare the stuffing out of him and others like him.
This "outrage" is too ridiculous. It seems Swartz didn't learn much from his time at the Harvard Ethics center, or perhaps he did assume the ethical principles that surrounded him.
The bottom line is that Swartz didn't like that the academic journals charged for their information - essentially that they were businesses at all. So he attacked them at their most vulnerable point, JSTOR.
So, if the journals can't charge for their product, how are they to survive? Peer review and standards have a cost. Perhaps Swartz preferred academics simply tweet their results. Great idea. Let's all reduce ourselves ot our lowest common demoninator and see how progress looks it a few years.
ha. as if the educational establishment is not sucking enough money from students and parents. Peer review and standards have a cost and one would think that with the enormous sums of money, JSTOR would be free. but this debate over JSTOR is a shiny object, a distraction. the point of this article is prosecutorial discretion, overcharging and bullying by an office which has quite the flawed track record, the Boston federal US Attorney ... they have enough blood on their hands for which they have never been held accountable and now this ?? you want to live on your knees? go find some other society where the government is the master.
Academic journals _don't_ pay for peer review and they don't pay for articles. In fact, authors sometimes you have to pay _them_ to publish, then you have to pay _them_ to get the article. Peer review is done by fellow academics as part of their academic work, without pay. And, if the research was done on a government grant, taxpayers already paid for the data. For-profit academic journals once had a place, they no longer do. JSTOR is not the villain in this case, but Swartz is not a criminal. He did an act of civil disobedience in order to show up the absurdity of the law.
draconian and dehumanizing?? look no further than this US Attorney. who says she has to be a bully to effectively prosecute crime??
for any Obama supporters, his Justice Department is nothing but a disappointment, to put it politely. States decriminalize or legalize pot as well as create medical marijuana laws and the reaction of the Justice Department is to double down on the War on Drugs ... and, as with the original Prohibition of the 20s, the only thing they have done is to invigorate criminal networks of thugs, powered by the money made on selling what naturally grows and what people want. now we will have mafias on steroids.
oh, and we get warrantless, no-knock searches and the fully appparatus of a Bully-Nanny State. and the Boston US Attorney is the face of that Bully-Nanny ... is it too much to hope that she has no political future and a shortened tenure as a lousy prosecutor? certainly has demonstrated that she has not one shred of humanity. no, the problem is not in the laws but in ourselves as we put up with school yard bullies grown up.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street crooks who wrecked the economy and caused misery for hundreds of millions of Americans go free and in fact, get invited to lunch at the White House.
Ms. Ortiz doesn't seem to be a fan of justice.
Let's say yoiu rob a bank, but didn't get much, and what you got you gave away. So, does that make you innocent, or are you guilty of bank robbery?
No one was hurt. No one was threatened. Bad analogy. Here's a better one: You know how libraries put out income tax forms this time of year? Let's say that someone has taken the free tax forms that libraries put out. Then they open a store and sell the tax forms. Then someone takes those tax forms without paying the store.
Was the info then unavailable in its original location? Surely, a business that gathers and collates info into a form that's more easily accesible is entitled to compensation for its efforts?
"Don't do the crime, if you can't do the time".
The question to be answered is whether or not these kinds of crimes should merit a jail sentence. Maybe years-long probation and fines would have been a better answer. Keepig an eye on him to prevent him from doing this again seems appropriate. What good is jail time?
Even after jail, he would then have to go on probation. So why not just put him on probation from the get-go?