JSTOR=good; MIT=bad; Assistant US Attorneys=very very bad.  Change the law so if the person or entity whose stuff was hacked doesn't care (JSTOR didn't) the government will leave it alone.  Also, look at whether or not the hacker made a profit (Schwartz didn't).  The kid should have (maybe) been prosecuted for trespassing in state court.  I know suicide is a complicated issue but I blame the US Attorney's Office. 

Just as prosecutors jobs are not about winning, they are about seeking justice, so also laws that are unreasonably harsh and cannot be applied in a just manner are not a sign of strength, they are a sign of weakness.

Justice is difficult to achieve and, while it is the ideal goal of a “justice system,” this system is the product of, and implemented by, fallible human beings.  That the more money, power and social status one has, the more likely it is that “the system” will treat you leniently is obvious, but not the whole story.

On one hand, Aaron misjudged the amount of freedom he had.  On the other, prosecutors were too enamored with their ability to inflict pain, to make an example, to use excessive punishment of one person to deter others.  It is a well known, long used practice.  In this case it went terribly, tragically wrong and justice was not done.  I wish I trusted Mr. Issa's motives more...but I don't.

Swartz did not only obtain the intellectual property without authorization, he physically entered MIT's property and connected his hardware to the MIT network to then connect to JSTOR.  It's not only hacking but trespassing.  Letting it go unaddressed would allow others to trespass without consequences.  One could extend this to a person's home, where a trespasser connects a laptop to your router to access the Internet.  I don't want him/her in MY house!

People have been through a heck of a lot worse prosecutions and have stood up to fight to prove their rights.  Swartz took the easy way out.

THE OFFICIAL BULLYING AND UNWARRANTED, UNJUST PERSECUTION OF AARON SWARTZ

 "Went to far" is an understatement.  

The Boston United States Attorney's office engages in selective prosecution, judicial retaliation and revenge and specializes in corruption of the worst kind.

Attorneys and prosecutors using the courts to complete crime are not unusual. In fact, based on my direct knowledge and experience it's fair to say, it's the standard by certain attorneys and prosecutors who have mastered "gaming the system," while judges look down from the bench and allow conduct they know to be ethically and legally improper.  Real or actual oversight is only a myth and due process is a distant memory.    

Just the same as Ms. Ortiz declared that "stealing is stealing," so is the rule of law that affirms, "crime is crime." The difference is that when Ms. Ortiz and several of her prosecutors or well protected and/or well connected attorneys engage in crime, commit and suborn perjury and obstruct justice, there are no consequences.  Based on my direct experience, pro se litigants are not entitled to due process and the “Doctrine of Clean Hands” means nothing to Ms. Ortiz.

Ms. Ortiz' conduct, actions and behavior do not resemble "equal justice under the law," and her abuse of power and selective prosecution is not consistent with the rule of law. 

 The facts, circumstances and the evidence leave no doubt that Aaron Swartz was persecuted and bullied by a deeply disturbed set of individuals and a bizarre culture operating under "color of law."  Ms. Ortiz should have the ability to recognize that true justice is motivated by the desire to establish a better society and revenge is motivated by the desire to harm.  

 In a January 31, 2013 Cape Cod Times story by Judge Richard Latimer ("Perjury Is Perjury") he writes:

"After the suicide of Aaron Swartz, in desperate response to the take-no-prisoner efforts of U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz to put him in jail for making public certain proprietary information taken from MIT's computers, she dismissed all criticism by stating "stealing is stealing." The problem with that, however, is the information belonged to JSTOR, not MIT, and JSTOR didn't want to charge Swartz with stealing."

Judge Lattimer raises the question: Is "perjury, perjury, no matter who the liar is? Again, the answer depends on who's committing perjury. If it's the justice department or the FBI, perjury is totally acceptable in the courts and condoned by many judges, but not the honest ones.

Consider Chief Judge of the Federal Appeals Court, Second Circuit, New York, Dennis G. Jacobs comment on the lawyer/judge fraternity:

“Judges can be counted on to rule in favor of anything that protects and empowers lawyers."

 Judge Jacobs' comment can be corroborated by my personal experience during my years with the court and in two federal cases in Judge William G. Young’s court.

According to distinguished justice John F. Malloy (“The Fraternity: Lawyers and Judges in Collusion”) he writes:

 “The once-honorable profession of law now fully functions as a bottom-line business, driven by greed and the pursuit of power and wealth, even shaping the laws of the United States outside the elected Congress and state legislatures.” 

Justice Malloy also writes:

  “When a lawyer puts on a robe and takes the bench, he or she is called a judge.  But in reality, when judges look down from the bench they are lawyers looking upon fellow members of their fraternity.  In any other area of the free-enterprise system, this would be seen as a conflict of interest.”

Gaming the system via various manipulations can best be characterized in the words of the Defense Contract Management Agency's chief counsel, Mr. Bruce Krasker, who used every measure and pressure possible to force me to join in with his criminal practices. His rationale for framing innocent employees and other violations, as he told me when I asked that he not retaliate and frame an innocent employee: "We (the Legal Directorate) can do anything we want. It's called gaming. We can deny, we can delay...dismiss. We can manipulate the system any way we want."   

Because I refused to break the law by placing my name and work reputation on egregious retaliation, fraudulent promotions, frame ups, rigged investigations, well-planned race and gender discrimination, sexual harassment, promotion fixing and other corrupt practices, Mr. Krasker directed his deputy, Mr. Jerome C. Brennan, to prepare retaliatory false charges against me. One of the fabricated charges for not being a "team player" was "disloyalty," which did not exist in the DCMA's Table of Offenses & Penalties. Mr. Brennan and Mr. Krasker, working together with the Boston United States Attorney's office pulled every dirty trick in the book to prevent their conduct from being examined in a trial setting, including a $32,500 bribe to my attorney to walk away from my case, which he did.  Despite absolute and unequivocal evidence in the form of my 30-page affidavit, concerning verified attorney criminal activity, subsidized by millions of taxpayer dollars, the Board refused to investigate Mr. Krasker and Mr. Brennan’s conduct violations.    

In my second federal complaint of retaliation, after my attorney held an ex-parte meeting with the US Marshals Service, he lost his zeal to prosecute my complaint. Despite the fact that Judge William G. Young admitted in open court that he read my thirty page affidavit, I lost on summary judgment.  At the summary judgment hearing I told my attorney to object to the false statements being made by the AUSA prosecutor (“failure to object is fatal”). He refused. He said he would appeal, but he did not.   

The sad fact is that Ms. Ortiz and her predecessors are not bound by the rule of law. That office can frame and/or trump up charges on anyone they dislike and they do.

Based on my firsthand knowledge the US Attorney's office specializes in frame ups, bullying and selective prosecutions using deceit, misrepresentations, fabricated evidence, concealing evidence, perjury, dishonesty and fraud. Unfortunately, no one can or will do anything about it, not even Mr. Issa or his Committee.  

When you are dealing with deeply disturbed and corrupt law enforcement officials who thrive on abuse of power and authority, there is nothing you can do unless the media does your side of the story. That's the only best chance any citizen has. Without the media, the citizenry is out of luck and out of law.  When retaliatory frame ups can occur and law, facts and evidence mean almost nothing, everyone loses.

The revolving door, lawyer/judge fraternity has determined to protect the legal profession in a way that no other professions enjoy and as one law professor wrote, "It’s regulation by lawyers for lawyers." A profession that is self-regulated means that, "foxes make poor custodians of henhouses."

Regarding my reporting to Ms. Ortiz, her public corruption officer, Brian Kelly and members of the federal bench as required by 18 USC 4, the justice department ordered the US Marshals Service to visit me at the courthouse on two separate occasions and threaten me to stop reporting verified corruption and verified crime to law enforcement and the federal bench or else. On June 16, 2011, I learned that I was placed on a government "watch list."

There was a time when a threat by the justice department to "stop reporting [corruption and crime] or else" would have been newsworthy. Not anymore.

Ms. Ortiz and her prosecutors should know that "ignorance of the law is no excuse."

By copy of this email to Mr. Issa, I offer myself as an expert government witness concerning the verified crime operating out of the US attorney's office.

dougkinan@yahoo.com

Sworn and Commissioned Officer - Massachusetts Trial Court (Retired)

Call me cynical but I very much doubt Rep. Issa would bother to investigate this if there were a Republican in the White House, or if DA Ortiz were a Republican. Consider also that Reps. Tierney and Markey won't comment. Would they be so reserved across Party lines?

As for Swartz, we are not talking about a violent individual, or one whose crime had any impact on economic or military security. A guilty plea in exchange for a suspended sentence would have been a far more reasonable approach.

That's why it's called the "Just Us Department!"

I like that Congress is taking a closer look at this prosecution, I am just very surprised that Darrell Issa is leading it.This suggests a degree of flexibility that I'm not used to in people with his political biography. Good for him.

Dont do the crime if you cant do the time...

Need to get rid of the liberal moral-relativism.

Criminal.  Got Caught.  

We shouldn't go easy on him because others do worse...we should round them both up....

More than any other level of prosecution, federal prosecutors in a US Attorney's office SELECT the types of items they will prosecute. Quite often, they do so to make a wider point. So, what was the wider point to the Swartz prosecution? Two high level ADAs were assigned to the case, not some recently-hired prosecutor, indicating that the US Attorney's office thought this was an important case and that Swartz was a big fish. There are many sub-parts to this story, but again, what was the real point, the wider point, the "larger good" that was intended by this prosecution? What was the message they were trying to send? Had Swartz become a real thorn in the side of the feds, as some suspect, so they decided to come down on him like a ton of bricks? With the number of REAL big fish out there, in organized crime or high finance, the amount of time, money, and talent expended on this item seems to too many people as out of proportion to what the public thinks the US Attorney's office should be doing. And that's why many commenters are not saying that Ortiz's office didn't have the RIGHT to prosecute Swartz, they are asking why, out of all the potential cases available to her, she CHOSE to do so, and with such a heavy number of charges? And we still haven't heard that reasoning from Ortiz.