Why should I feel sorry for Aaron Swartz?

Great Debates
41

I think a lot of people are conflating the goals of his data access with the actions that got him in trouble.

I actually agree with Swartz point, it’s really shitty that there is a lot of data, created either by the government (in the case of PACER stuff, court documents) or by government funding (many of the academic papers behind paywalls) that we have to either pay disproportionately high per-article costs to access or disproportionately high subscription costs to access. For publicly generated stuff, I’m fine with some reasonable charge.

When everything was done by paper, if I wanted a bunch of copies of documents from a courthouse I was fine with the charge, same if I needed documents from the city or whatever. It costs money for the clerk to prepare those documents and costs money to physically print them. I’m fine with the fee being higher than just the raw material costs, since a person does have to work at this.

But with computerized court records, $7 a page? No, that’s a profit generation scheme for stuff that should be available at near cost. Same for the stuff on JSTOR, any research documents generated with public funds need to be somewhere that they can be accessed electronically for near-cost. I’m fine with private companies having high-price subscription services that provide a lot more than just that, but the publicly funded research itself ought to be widely available for a very low cost. I’m not even convinced it shouldn’t be free, given the trivial costs of housing PDFs of court decisions and academic papers when compared to the massive spending of the Federal government.

That being said, it doesn’t matter if Swartz is just illegally accessing a network to play minesweeper, that’s the criminal act, the illegal access.

Swartz was prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), that was passed in the 1980s in response to several extremely damaging and high profile hacking incidents. Now, the way this law is worded is indeed absolute shit. Under some interpretations of the law virtually everyone who uses computer networks is probably violating the law at some point. Technically the CFAA prohibits any use of the network that the owner doesn’t give you permission, so you’ve actually had a few cases where people who have accessed a network legally have been charged because they violated the terms of service.

As an example, a Missouri woman created a fake MySpace profile and used it to establish a relationship with a teenage girl. The woman’s behave was designed to inflict emotional damage on the girl, and she ended up committing suicide. Prosecutors tried to go after her for a CFAA violation because a fake profile is technically against MySpace’s terms of use. Luckily (not because I don’t think this woman in Missouri is a monstrous sack of shit), a judge ruled that a simple term of service violation is not sufficient to be a violation of the CFAA–since the woman had legal access, just in a manner inconsistent with the owner of the system’s intentions. A similar case was filed against a person who used an employee database against their employer’s policy, he was charged with a CFAA violation that was also thrown out as the courts have generally decided in recent years that if the access to the network itself was legal, then violating the terms of service is not enough to constitute a CFAA crime.

But it is definitely a problem so many people are getting charged in contravention to how judges feel about the law, and it’s unfortunate this antiquated law has text that makes such charges possible due to its vagueness.

Now, Swartz falls outside the categories of other people improperly charged under the CFAA–his access itself was illegal and prohibited, so he actually did not just commit a terms of use violation. Early on in his relationship with the MIT network, he had committed a simple terms of use violation, but when they suspended his access in response to this, and he persisted in getting access against MIT’s wishes, that was a legitimate illegal access of the network. Basically a type of hacking, and something that should be a crime.

My personal opinion on how it should have been handled:

-Illegal access occurred
-It appears damage was minimal
-I would have required restitution to MIT for any damages
-I would have required a six month sentence, with an option for parole or home confinement in lieu of jail
-I would have had him plea to a misdemeanor.

I think six months and the felony record was too much, but he did deserve to be punished for what he did.

Now, while I think the punishment suggested (either the felonies or the 30+ years) did not fit the crime, I cannot say that a prosecutor is derelict in their duty for enforcing black letter law and pursuing a sentence clearly specified in the statute. The fault for the penalty must then lie with the legislature, not with the prosecutor. The prosecutor probably should have used better discretion, but I can’t consider it misconduct when you’re pursuing penalties provided for in statute.

42

I haven’t defended it as activism, although I can see other people here would. The part about the law being too harsh even if it technically covers his deeds is the point here- or at least it is to me. The federal government doesn’t threaten people with 35 years in prison and a huge fine for breaking and entering. Perhaps they would if you broke into CIA headquarters or the White House. But for going into a room you weren’t supposed to be in and downloading stuff you were allowed to see anyway? That’s the issue from where I stand. Six months in jail and 13 felony convictions is an unreasonably harsh penalty for that.

43

No, YOU are dead wrong. Swartz broke a rule. It does not make that rule just or its application fair. What the feds did was monstrous, evil. If you can’t see that, you’re either not looking deliberately or incapable of seeing evil even when it bites someone in the butt. “The crime of breaking and entering” – so horrible! He went into a closet he was not supposed to go into! That BASTARD! Hang him!

Can’t you see how insanely vicious this makes you look?

See above.

He did it for what was arguably a good cause. I bet you would have been a Tory during the American Revolution. I bet when the Brits hanged Patrick Henry you would have been right there yelling, “He broke a law! It’s right that he should be hung! He shoulda known that the Brits would hang him! Patrick Henry deserves NO sympathy!”

Yeah! At least the rope they used to hang Patrick Henry was reuseable!

Nobody’s blaming MIT for what happened to Swartz. Everybody is blaming Ortiz. Justly!

Yeah, Patrick Henry was an idiot. He practically let the Brits catch him! He deserved no sympathy, like Swartz.

Well yes it does. But you don’t seem to care at all.

Exactly! Patrick Henry went to his death with brave words! He did not kill himself, he made the Brits do it! He understood the consequences and was able to handle them. We need not regret his death at all. It was a simple matter of actions and consequences.

On a side note, I bet he would have been a model citizen after tha… wait, I ALREADY think he was a model citizen and admire him for his deeds. Well he would have been a LOT more careful about his activism and would never have been caught. Yeah!

44

Personal comments like this belong in the Pit, not here.

45

It’s a shame that he was mentally ill and decided to kill himself because he couldn’t cope with how his life was at the time.

But I’m not at all sorry that those circumstances were they way they were, because he completely brought it upon himself. It’s one thing to knowingly break the law to make a point and accept the results as a way to make change. It’s another thing to break the law, get away with a warning, break it again and get upset that he couldn’t just get away with it again. Sorry, but that was just plain arrogance and stupidity on his part.

His options as an activist were to break the law and do the time, break the law and defend himself in court and hope to convince a jury that his view was right, or not break the law and work to change it to what he wanted it to be through legal methods.

46

The federal government is not supposed to be a petty, spiteful bastard. Crushing all dissent is not supposed to be one of its objectives.

47

Nobody was out to hang him. He did that to himself.

Swartz did – apparently the thing that most upset him was that MIT wasn’t actively preventing the prosecutors from moving forward, somehow. Swartz’s family also released a statement specifically mentioning MIT and suggesting it was at fault.

A prosecutor worked to enforce the laws that were passed by those legally elected to pass such laws. She offered a plea that was quite generous that he could have either accepted or gone to court to try to convince a jury he was innocent. The fact that he chose neither option is not her fault. She was just doing her job.

I’m frankly disgusted by those who are trying to use the tragedy of this man’s suicide to advance their own nihilistic political views. Instead of excusing his criminal actions and suggesting he was right to kill himself in this situation they should be advocating improvements to our mental health system and letting other people know that suicide is not the answer to life’s setbacks.

48

Oh, please. This wasn’t about dissent. He was free to lobby on behalf of his views. He ahead ready access to a hugely popular website to present his opinions. He had friends with sympathetic views capable of gaining more attention to his cause. He could have used a court case for tons of free publicity. He was young and photogenic. Nobody was in a better position to serve as a rallying point of dissent than he was. He threw that all away. He did that, not anyone else.

Like it or not, one of the objectives of government is to enforce laws by punishing those who break them as a deterrent to future law breaking. This is exactly how things work. This is common sense, obvious, practical and completely uncontroversial to everyone except anarchists.

49

Why do prosecutors have discretion?

50

My apologies, I’ll dial it back.

51

For when they think it’s appropriate not to charge someone with a crime they probably committed.

I don’t think it’d have been inappropriate to use prosecutorial discretion here. But I don’t see how someone can say Ortiz is guilty of misconduct or abuse of power for charging someone with a crime for which there was more than enough probable cause. I don’t see how you can want to punish a prosecutor for not using their discretion. This isn’t Duke Lacrosse or a case where a prosecutor hid evidence, lied to get a conviction or etc. It’s a case of a law too harsh for the circumstances and a prosecutor that wasn’t inclined to be merciful. That might make her a bitch, but it’s not the same as dereliction of duty or improper prosecutorial behavior. I don’t exactly understand why this wrath exists for the prosecutor instead of the legislature, the prosecutor did not write the law.

52

Also, what the hell on the Patrick Henry comments? Patrick Henry died of stomach cancer at age 63 in his home, 16 years after the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolution.

Do you perhaps mean Nathan Hale? A spy hanged by the British? If so, I’ll note that while he was a true patriot, he was a spy. Spies knew the risks at that time, and they were routinely hanged. We also hanged spies of theirs.

53

Oh, right, Nathan Hale. “One life to give for my country” and all.

Sure, spies knew the risks, are you ALL RIGHT with the Brits hanging him? Do you think it was a fine thing that they did? Don’t you think it was a shame to see a man punished for his defense of freedom in his land?

54

I don’t think it has any real parallel to this situation for one. But there’s a big difference between me being “all right” (alright?) with something and me thinking something is criminal or legally improper. Under the norms of the 18th century, it was widely accepted by the rudimentary types of “international law” (really just commonly understood international behaviors) that spies were hanged. Nathan Hale knew that when he volunteered, and for that and his stoicism when death was imminent he is venerated as a hero. But the British were no more “wrong” in hanging him than we were in shooting the British and killing them in battles, or they were in doing the same to us.

It was a war, hanging spies was a valid part of it. I’m not glad Nathan Hale died, I obviously came long after that war, and in fact my ancestors would have still been living in England at the time so if anything my family would have been on the British side–but I like all Americans feel like the colonists were “us” and thus I don’t like that one of them got killed. But that’s not the same as me thinking it improper it happened.

Would it have been a mercy if Howe had spared Hale? Sure, but it wasn’t improper that he didn’t. I feel about the same with Ortiz and Swartz. I think she could have, should have gone easier on Swartz, but I don’t think it improper she chose not to, it’s validly within her discretion.

55

“All right” is the traditional spelling, “alright” is considered a solecism.

The more you know … :starwipe:

56

If this is the second time Swartz has been caught performing illegal activities then I’m supportive of Ortiz’s actions. He got away with it once and six months seems reasonable for a second offence.

57

It doesn’t make me look insane. Data security is a very big issue, though many people are all for ‘free access to data’ until that data happens to be their own. When the data is their own, suddenly it becomes a big deal.

Secondly, physical security is also a big deal. And Swartz violated that with the B&E. That is an uncontroversial law that has been on the books forever.

Quick question for ya. Do you know what other systems he might have had access to by breaking and entering that closet? What other data could he have accessed? Did he have access to student records? Billing information? Secure research? How many servers and PCs were on that network and might have been compromised by Swartz? How long did it take and how much did it cost to ensure that the network was uncompromised?

It seems like a good cause to you. I disagree. However, one of the things about breaking the law in furtherance of a good cause is that one is supposed to expect punishment. Especially if one has been caught before and let off.

Swartz tried to evade detection. He hid his face from cameras. Obviously, he didn’t do that with civil disobedience in mind.

This is too silly to even respond to.

Blame the legislators who wrote the laws for the possible sentence. Blame Swartz for B&E and illegally accessing a network.

I’ve already stated that it sucks that he killed himself. However, that doesn’t change the fact that he brought this down on himself. He compromised MITs network after committing B&E. If he couldn’t handle the consequences of his actions, then he should have done something else to reach his goal. And he certainly knew the possible consequences of his actions.

Tell me, exactly how much should I care? And how do you know I do not meet that level?

Well, your model citizen did a very dumb thing multiple times. If his goal was to change things, he certainly went about it in the wrong way. He managed to cause a JSTOR network outage at MIT and put a bunch of articles online. How exactly is that going to change anything? I am sure that MIT fixed the hole in their security which allowed Swartz to access the network illegally. JSTOR was already planning on allowing free access to some of the articles and working on pricing with the publishers on the rest. So Swartz actions didn’t really do much at all, which is a waste.

If you feel a law in unjust, you have a couple of choices. One is to obey it anyway. Two is try and change the law through normal legal channels. Three is to break the law and accept the consequences in an act of civil disobedience. Swartz chose to break the law and try and get away with it. That didn’t work and he couldn’t accept the consequences the second time around.

Slee

58

I remain confused.

Again: Ms. Ortiz, the law, the courts … did not kill Mr. Swartz; depression did.

Ortiz’s “crime,” to those who feel something was done wrong, was in prosecuting a law to full degree the law was written to allow, instead of showing leniency and using discretion.

There is no way to know whether or not a judge would have agreed with Ortiz or not when it came time for sentencing. This was a game still in progress, wasn’t it? The prosecution was going all out but the judge could have used discretion if such was appropriate, yes?

The law may be a poorly written and outdated law. It might be in need of massive revision. Fine. Correcting the problems of the law however is not Ortiz’s job. Ortiz’s job is enforcing the law, not writing it. If she was overzealous the courts should be doing their job and declining to sentence as requested. A defense attorney who tries to get a possible murderer off is not at fault if they succeed and then the person then goes out and kills someone else; a U.S. attorney is not in the wrong for pursuing a case in the manner that they believe the law instructs them to, even if discretion was an option. Blaming either for doing their job as written is wrongheaded.

But again as to Swartz’s death – blame depression. I don’t know what sort of treatment he getting or not getting. I don’t know if he was bipolar. I have read however that he had previously written about the stigma of depression and the lack of funding for research into better treatment and to providing better care. Was he getting the care he should have been getting? Was his death preventable by better psychiatric care? Maybe his father is so invested in blaming Ortiz because he feels, rightly or wrongly, that he should have identified the risk his son was at and gotten him to better help? Better to blame someone else than have to deal with those thoughts.

This is not a matyr’s death, or the result of prosecutorial over-reach. It is the result of an illness that we as a society do a crappy job taking care of. Perhaps those who want to honor his memory would do more good by focusing on changing that.

59

DSeid, do you doubt that external factors (such as facing felony charges and what could be several years’ worth of legal battles) can worsen depression?

I don’t think the legal system gets all the blame in this case, but I don’t think it is entirely blameless, either.

60

As much as having a relationship end, or finding out that spouse is cheating, or losing a job, or a parent die, can worsen depression.

The former lover, spouse, employer, now deceased parent … is not however the cause of the depression or of a suicide that results from an inadequately treated depression, even if the dumping, the cheating, the firing, the death, is the proximate trigger of the worsening of the condition.