"The case was picked up by Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann in Boston, the cybercrime prosecutor who won a record 20-year prison stretch for TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez. Heymann indicted Aaron on 13 counts of wire fraud, computer intrusion and reckless damage. The case has been wending through pre-trial motions for 18 months, and was set for jury trial on April 1." [1]
Appears that Jonathan James and Aaron Swartz both had the same prosecutor after them...
Not a whole lot of information available about Heymann, but what little I can find doesn't make me like him more. Here's something that turned up from 1996, where he tried to get Harvard to authorize warrantless surveillance:
Stephen Heymann, deputy chief of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney's office in Boston, wanted Harvard to put an electronic banner on its intranet telling users they were being monitored. The banner, implying consent, would let law enforcement do the data tap without having to get a court order.
edit: He also apparently wrote a law-review article in 1997 entitled "Legislating Computer Crime", which might give a more accurate and perhaps nuanced account of his views on the subject. I'd link it, but it's paywalled.
Gonzalez stole real money, I'm sure causing many people a great deal of trouble and distress. He said in chat logs that he aimed to steal $15 million and retire. It's really not that much different from pickpocketing or bank robbery, except on a much larger scale, and I'm quite happy if pickpockets, bank robbers, insurance scammers, and other criminals get serious time.
This is quite different from Aaron Swartz who wrote a slightly more advanced recursive 'wget'/'curl' to download something he already had access to.
Oh, I'm certainly not arguing Gonzalez should not have been prosecuted.
What I am reacting to quite specifically is the notion that "winning" a higher sentence is somehow a goal in and of itself.
Having worked quite closely with the legal community over the last half decade, I have to say that the mercenary attitude many hold continues to jar me.
The US uses an adversary law system, where a side 'wins'. It's basically a competition rather than an organized attempt at finding a 'truth'. As twisted as it is to frame a legal system as a form of combat, it usually ends up being pretty fair.
>Most legal experts agree that, in the long run, the adversary system results in societal benefits that outweigh its inherent shortcomings. By allowing all sides of a controversy to be heard, the system protects against abuse of power, and forces those with the most at stake to focus on the issues in dispute.
Yes, that stood out to me too. There are people in the UKwjo have been released or sentenced much shorter terms for FAR more heinous crimes. We're talking juveniles who have tortured and killed infants, people who have beaten children to death, people who raped multiple women and much more.
I know he stole a lot of money but this is compared to people who have destroyed lives, many of whom enjoyed doing so.
"Gonzalez stole real money, I'm sure causing many people a great deal of trouble and distress."
I don't think I'll ever agree with this. I have seen this argument brought up times and times again and every time I feel that we miss the point.
Stealing money is bad, yes. Does it deserve a similar amount of time as someone who committed a murder?
Also, nowadays, people who steal money are stealing money from businesses that are protected against those very thieves (Banks, insurances, big commerces). So basically, it's better morally to steal from a bank/insurance than it is to pickpocket since pickpocketing has a direct impact on a single person.
Don't you guys have enough people in jail already?
EDIT: corrected amount of time in comparison to murder.
It depends. Did Gonzalez's actions result in anyone committing suicide, or any divorces or families breaking up?
If it did, then it definitely deserves as long a sentence as murder. Indeed, an (attempted) financial crime of this magnitude is frequently worse than murder since it (potentially) has similarly devasting effects on a much wider set of victims.
If you were somehow able to pickpocket thousands of people en masse, aiming to make $15 million out of all that distress, then yes, I'd like you to go to prison.
Yes, but even for the real money, I think it is too much.
For comparison, this guy[1] shot 77 people, but he was sentenced only "21 years and a minimum of 10 years" and he will spend this period in a luxury prison of Norway.
Yes. I know a few dozen criminal barristers in the UK.
They measure their success purely in terms of won cases, unsurprisingly - if you go to certain bars around the temples in London, you will overhear conversations along the lines of "got this guy sent down for 20 years today, don't know if he did it, but who gives a shit, and I'll be a QC in 5 years! Crack open the champagne!". They're not even in it for the money, as the CPS pays abysmally. They'd rather defend, as that pays - and again, on that side of the table, they have absolutely no interest in the innocence or guilt of their client, just in avoiding a conviction.
It's purely mercenary, and their stance is that it's just business as usual and impartiality - but it's a business that can cost innocent people their lives, and let the guilty walk free.
I believe your prosecutors in the US are rather better paid, which sets the incentives for conviction roughly on a par with acquittal.
Generally, the best prosecutors (in the sense of securing convictions) view their targets as trophies to be collected.
This is part of what makes them so "good"--by objectifying the target, they are better able to think purely strategically about how to secure a conviction.
I hate to say it but if these trends continue we'll be well on our way to a new sort of feudalism, where laws are selectively enforced and the little guys who hold political views or who are part of minorities that are despised by the powers that be get hit hard while the people who are rich or politically connected get a break. We've seen it with drug laws (where even cocaine possession translates to much different charges when the accused is white and affluent vs black and poor), with prescription drug abuse, with tax laws, with gun laws, with computer crime (where a corporation can install rootkits on people's computers with few legal ramifications), etc.
and I hate to say, especially since I just created a new account to rebut this, but David Gregory's holding a magazine has zero basis for reference in this discussion. None. Its a bit of rightwing talking point at the moment, but it has nothing to do with aarons trial. So, no, not relevant. I don't care how much karma you have, or how long you've been on this site. I've been here for four years, maybe commented a dozen times at most. You're using a blatant talking point of the right wing to what? Make some grandiose statement about "where we're headed"? As if David Gregory getting prosecuted for making a point about magazine capacity would have some how made aarons situation more.....fair? Really? This is kind of despicable.
This has nothing to do with the debate about guns and everything to do with prosecutorial and judicial discretion and the abuse there of.
Does the law matter? Does the law apply equally to everyone?
It certainly doesn't seem so. And if you look at the other examples I gave, this is all of a piece, irrespective of gun regulation. If you are wealthy and connected then many laws don't apply to you, or there is always a way around them. The prosecutors or judges will look the other way or go easy on you when you violate firearms law. Or, as with Rush Limbaugh, when you abuse prescription drugs. It's not a partisan issue, it's about class and status.
In the case of Aaron Swartz we have just such an example of being on the wrong end of prosecutorial discretion. JSTOR didn't go after Aaron, but the government decided to. They treated him like a terrorist.
I think one thing that users of HN are picking up on during this crisis is the sense that in some ways, "hackers" are alike--whether a relatively egregious case as in this article, a very mild to innocuous case such as Swartz's, or a truly innocuous case like reverse-engineering open source software--in that we are all curious and we are all sometimes foolish. What the justice department and the masses among us forget is that even very successful people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were and are hackers, and that in the case of the former's hacking (Jobs' blue-boxing days), it could have gotten him in really, really big trouble.
So I think a big part of this is that we know that people make mistakes and that justice is absurdly harsh and out-of-proportion, not to mention the fact that as hackers, we definitely have the ability to do really insanely great things with our lives.
But one thing to remember is that the justice system in this country is absurdly harsh to a lot of people. It's absurdly harsh to minorities and to drug users for example, too. The fact is, the way that justice is executed in this country needs to be re-thought for everyone.
Edit: I just wanted to add to this. The key to a better outcome is greater kindness. Kindness to others and kindness to ourselves. There will always be foolish people like Swartz's prosecutor or the people at MIT. But in this technological age, in first-world countries, our immediate needs are usually taken care of. The things that make a true difference is kindness. The kindness of mentors, the kindness of friends and lovers, the kindness of strangers. Swartz's prosecutor could have been more kind. Even Swartz, I think it could be said, could have been kinder to himself, loving himself and taking more caution for himself instead of placing himself in such peril. We all need to be kind to others and ourselves as much as we can, without putting ourselves in danger. Sometimes a little danger is what it takes to change things, true. But kindness is what we all need more of in this age and what, I think, we truly desire. RIP Aaron.
The vast majority of people will never experience the harshness of the US justice system, except those that chance or circumstance chooses. That really sucks, because how is anything supposed to change for the better if there isn't the awareness and outcry against the unfairness of the system?
"I have no faith in the 'justice' system. Perhaps my actions today, and this letter, will send a stronger message to the public. Either way, I have lost control over this situation, and this is my only way to regain control. I die free."
It is a testament to how control of this country has been completely wrested from the hands of the middle class since the 60s and 70s and taken over by megacorporations, the military-industrial complex, and the ultrawealthy. I recently read about this phenomenon in the book Who Stole the American Dream?, by Hedrick Smith[0]. I highly recommend it.
The first signs of change appeared in the 2012 election, as the young people voted for marijuana legalization (and gay marriage) in two states and the hundreds of millions spent by the wealthy on campaign ads (enabled by the Citizens United ruling) failed to produce material results. Unfortunately, it appears that the older generations' viewpoints are largely stagnant, so this change will probably have to occur one funeral at a time.
It has nothing to do with fashionable fable about ultraweathy ruining everything. The numbers of ultrawealthy are vanishingly small. They are not those who vote current political class into power and keep them there. They are not those who, knowing about politicians instituting mandatory minimum sentences of tens of years for victimless crimes, did not come to these politicians with tar and feathers but instead gave them their wholehearted support and their money to continue their campaigns. Blaming the vague alien group - being it the wealthy, Jews, Catholics, Christians, Muslims, black, white, whatever - for all problems, being behing the scenes and pulling all the ropes - is bullshit. It is your beloved middle class who has overwhelming voting power in this country. Those are the people who elect those politicians and enact those laws. Nobody is doing it to the innocent nation, the nation is doing it to itself and it is nowhere near innocent. The nation allows the current prosecutorial system where you either plead out or get a chance to fight 200 years in prison sentence with overworked public defendant that would have couple of hours to review your case if she'd sleep 4 hours a day. The nation allows the Congress to create 56 new federal crimes every year. US now has about 5000 different federal crimes, and who knows how many local too. Ultrawealthy have nothing to do with it - I'm sure if you ask random people on the street, overwhelming majority would support it with gusto.
No ultrawealthy can prevent the middle class to vote all these guys out. If they keep instead voting them in - it's time to stop blaming the aliens and start realizing who the real guilty party is.
Unfortunately I think this is spot on, and that makes it harder to figure to what to do.
People have probably seen it a dozen times, but a fairly famous Steve Jobs quote:
“When you’re young, you look at television and think, there’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth.”
I think that's largely true with the proliferation of felonies also. It's not a handful of elites who want absurdly long sentences for "computer hackers" and shoplifting; a huge proportion of middle-class "regular" people have absurdly retributive views on throwing people in jail for long sentences.
I think there are other things, especially in the economic sphere, where the concentration of wealth is a likely factor explaining our current situation. But when it comes to "tough on crime", that's middle-class suburban America voting its fears.
Things are far from being as simple as you make them sound. In a two-party system with extreme gerrymandering and extensive lobbying by the rich, politicians are no longer beholden to the people. People don't blindly support new laws like you say they do. In fact, Congress's approval rating has been in the shitter for a long time. People nowadays vote by figuring out who they dislike the least. But when it comes to referendums, we're seeing real change - marijuana was legalized in 2 states this time around. And you say voters want more people in jail?
The book I mentioned debunks your theory of the ultrawealthy not being responsible for these problems. The statistics are quite clear regarding the increase in lobbying efforts by the wealthy and by large corporations during the 70s.
What you mean "no longer beholden to the people"? If nobody votes for them, how they get into the office? If people vote for whoever their union leader or "community organizer" or local party hack tells them to vote for - they shouldn't blame "the wealthy" when their lives do not improve. They should blame themselves. Congress approval ratings are in the shitter, yet the chance of an entrenched incumbent to be reelected are still high - even those in the middle of corruption scandals and bribery investigations. Same people get reelected for years, especially in mono-party environments. And people who elect them always blame somebody else for the inevitable failure.
>>>> And you say voters want more people in jail?
If they didn't, politicians would be afraid to talk about more restrictive laws and more criminal prosecutions. For example, racism is despised by a large percentage of US population - at least open, overt racism - and show me one politician that is playing on the national scene and is openly racist? Does not happen. Did the wealthy do it? Nope, the people did. You want to make the problem of over-jailing become better? Make politicians supporting jailing people for minor offenses as popular as racists. No wealth would help them then.
>>>> marijuana was legalized in 2 states this time around.
Yet in California, where anybody can see that anybody willing can smoke like a 19-century locomotive 24hrs a day, legalization proposals still fail. I do not blame abstract "the wealthy" for it, I blame specific people of California being stupid.
BTW, I never said it is "simple". It is insanely complex and insanely messed up, and I have no slightest idea how to fix it. But I know one thing - blaming abstract "wealthy" for problems caused by regular citizens being stupid is not going to fix anything. Adding more stupid to the stupid doesn't make it better.
>>>> The statistics are quite clear regarding the increase in lobbying efforts by the wealthy and by large corporations during the 70s.
So what? Of course, lobbying is the most profitable investment in the known universe. Of course, there will be more of it. But try to think why it is profitable - who gives the politicians the power that they are selling and lobbyists are buying? The answer is - you do. Take it from them, and they'd have nothing to sell, and corporations would have to go and sell directly to you. Less profitable for them (wholesale is always cheaper, and buying power wholesale is not an exception), but better for you. The only thing you have to do is to get rid of the idea that you should give power to politicians so they solve your problems. If you can't - read your book and see what happens. The choice is yours.
> What you mean "no longer beholden to the people"? If nobody votes for them, how they get into the office?
Have you noticed how few people actually vote? When there are only two parties and neither is particularly appealing, people just don't vote.
> I do not blame abstract "the wealthy" for it, I blame specific people of California being stupid.
Then you would be wrong. The wealthy support marijuana being illegal. It results in increased revenue for the alcohol and tobacco industries, increased revenue for the for-profit privatized prison industry, and it results in more money for government contractors that get funneled money via DEA contracts.
The wealthy are in better placed to get their policies in place than the poor, because they can influence politicians even when there aren't elections coming up. The only chance the poor have of influencing politics is when there's an election coming up, and those elections aren't structured such that they're very effective.
> But try to think why it is profitable - who gives the politicians the power that they are selling and lobbyists are buying? The answer is - you do.
No, they do not. You still fail to understand the basic problems with our current electoral system, which limits us to two parties. When there is no competition in the electoral system, politicians can be influenced in other ways.
>viewpoints are largely stagnant, so this change will probably have to occur one funeral at a time.
There's a good argument out there that a lot of the recent social change has nothing to do with Obama, the internet, education, awareness, etc but the fact that so many of the old guard are dying out and that what we Americans call "liberal" or "progressive" is the new norm. It just too many conservatives had too much sway in politics. I mean, look at the desperate Texas and other red state gerrymandering. These guys are certainly scared of something.
If you look at recent progressive victories, they're often of a slight majority. Votes that come in real close like 48-52 or 47% vs 48%, and losses are pretty narrow too.
I guess until a lot of the boomers start dying out, this stuff will continue. Heh, by the time I'm old and gray I won't have to worry about no-knock raids on harmless potheads and computer nerds being roughed up by the DOJ. Oh well, maybe I'll feel better about my country when I'm retired.
Well I mean the guy commited crimes and entered private systems. Its not like he is innocent. Are you saying you want it to be legal to hack into any random system in the world ? (that would remove all the fun of hacking)
PS: And I have done some hacking, stolen some files, financial information a long time ago, but I agree that it is highly illegal and should be punished and I do regret my actions. Thankfully I stopped before it was too late
This is the problem. It should be "illegal" but not "highly illegal" -- the penalties should be along the lines of trespass, e.g. 30 days in jail or a $1000 fine, not 30 years in prison and a million dollar fine.
More than that, the crimes need to be defined with actual specificity. Read the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act sometime if you want to scare yourself. It's preposterously vague. How about we repeal that in its entirety and defer to the laws that prohibit the actual bad stuff, like fraud, identity theft, misappropriation of trade secrets, etc.
If all you do is get root on a server and then leave, the penalty should be a $5 fine and a stern warning, and the same penalty for the "victim" who put an insecure server on the internet.
OK, forget the fine then, we'll just go with the stern warning.
The point is that they should both get the proverbial slap on the wrist -- the person who breaks in should be chastised but hasn't caused any real harm and the person who allowed it to happen should endeavor to be more careful and not redirect responsibility for something trivially harmful that they could have themselves prevented if they deemed it worthy of the required effort.
So, what your are saying, is that I shouldn't be penalized if I don't lock my door at home, but I have no basis to complain if someone comes into my house, snoops around, looks in drawers, and then leaves without damaging anything.
I'm actually ambivalent about this, but I'm always intrigued as to whether people's sense of "Protect yourself on the internet or you deserve what you get" translates to "Protect yourself at home, or you deserve to be burgled".
Indeed - one could take it so far as, "Protect yourself with a weapon late at night/in your home, or you deserve to be beaten/mugged/etc..." - but, in general, we recognize the black and white line somewhere between "ssh server" and "put in hospital with contusions" - I think the "snooping around my house with unlocked door" is the gray area.
I think there is also an argument that the internet is different, both because pretty good security is reasonably within reach for the typical server operator (unlike the cost of e.g. vault-quality doors and walls in a home), and because your government can't protect you from the wider internet because most of it is outside of its jurisdiction.
In that situation having a bunch of mostly harmless curious kids banging around creating antibodies in the system is probably a net positive, so that you find out your security is broken when some kid (who isn't trying to avoid detection and steal your trade secrets) is the one who opens your eyes to the vulnerability instead of the eye opener being a Chinese company selling your secret formula for near-cost on the world market.
It doesn't matter what's true. It matters what's provable. Otherwise he's innocent until shown to be guilty...regardless of what his father or anybody else thinks.
How is it a crime to access (force access) content that belongs to the public? It was created using tax payers money and should have been available to the public without the hurdles in the first place.
Note the same content is now available over the Internet for free legally. So what has changed, and what was lost?
I've seen the one funeral at a time solution play out, (it's still playing out where i live, inter country conflict).
It is something of a solution, but not much. Those older folk have a long time to poison a new generation, and the ideas which they hold are easy to believe and propagate.
It's only through real leadership and setting exampls which run counter to the narrative, that our hope lies now.
While the old grudges are being laid to rest, the effect is more like reduced signal propagation.
> Those older folk have a long time to poison a new generation, and the ideas which they hold are easy to believe and propagate.
This is definitely possible. But my hope is that the internet has started to change these things. Even someone living in a small rural town can now see what other young people are thinking and be exposed to a more diverse set of ideas.
For example, if you go on Reddit, you can see how people have become atheists after reading about how religion is bunk. Someone who is forced by their parents to go to church every Sunday can find solace in the fact that there are others going through the same thing, and that there are others who have successfully escaped from such situations. I think such communities have the ability to accelerate change among the youth.
> Unfortunately, it appears that the older generations' viewpoints are largely stagnant, so this change will probably have to occur one funeral at a time.
I have hope. The generations born since the early to mid 80s have been raised in a world where change has become at least constant if not accelerated. These generations, as they age and take over the roles of the higher echelons of business and government, may prove more adaptable to an ever changing world.
One problem is that the elderly are living longer than ever, and continuing to vote. At the same time, the birth rate is not too high.
However, the internet has proven to be a very effective way of getting people to go to the polls, and you can target your campaigns much more specifically, so as to include young people and exclude the elderly (who don't use the internet much anyway).
This is an important thing to keep in mind in a country like America, which has relatively low voter turnout. Election engineering can make all the difference in the results, as we saw with the success of Obama's reelection campaign machine.
You know, I honestly think we should hack a few years off one side of the voting population and slap it onto the other. Let people start voting 5 years earlier, and forbid people from voting once they are five years younger than the current average life expectancy.
A vote in our system is a vote for what should be. The concept of a vote is inherently tied to the future; the young have the most to win or lose because the vote is for something in their comparably massive future, while for the elderly it represents little more than an opportunity to influence a world they will (again, comparatively) soon have zero stake in.
Of course that is more of a pipe-dream than owning my own bartending unicorn.
I disagree. Whilst I don't think that voting rights should be taken away from the elderly, I do think that giving a greater range of ages the ability to vote (say, optional voting between 13 and 18) could be beneficial to society. That extra 5 year gap isn't a large enough number of people to reshape the political landscape in most Western nations, but it is sufficient to stimulate a healthy interest in politics at a young age, thus (hopefully) producing better informed voters who can in turn elect better governments.
Shall we euthanize them and harvest their bodies for food, as well? You're coming across as quite the bigot.
I don't know about you, but I learn more every year, so I imagine by the time I'm 75, I'll know at least three times as much as I know now. I'd give my 75 year old self the vote long before I'd give my 13 year old self the vote.
Nor do I think being in school adequately prepares or informs anyone to be a citizen.
Why is it that preventing the old from voting is "bigotry", whilst preventing the young from voting is merely an act prudence? You must remember that democracy is governance "by the people, for the people", not governance by some arbitrarily selected subset of the people. There is an age below which the majority of people are unable to make informed decisions about political representation (either due to lack of understanding or pressure from third parties like family), but I'm not convinced that 18 is that age.
Mind you, age cutoffs aren't the only way of tackling this problem.
> I don't know about you, but I learn more every year, so I imagine by the time I'm 75, I'll know at least three times as much as I know now.
Unlikely. Net knowledge growth rate usually decreases significantly with age. You'll likely accumulate more knowledge between now and when you're 75, but certainly not three times more[0]. Ask a 75 year-old ;-)
> Nor do I think being in school adequately prepares or informs anyone to be a citizen.
I couldn't agree more. In fact, that was the point of my proposal. I don't think that today's youth take an active enough interest in politics, and I believe that allowing them to participate in the democratic system could increase their motivation to become more informed citizens.
[0]: At least, not by any measurable metric. "Common sense" is completely different.
> Why is it that preventing the old from voting is "bigotry", whilst preventing the young from voting is merely an act prudence?
There are lots of laws that restrict certain rights and privileges to adults only, and for fairly sensible reasons. No one wants to be governed by children. Maybe you want to lower the age of adulthood, and maybe that's possible, but it's something we'd need to do across the board.
There's also the troubling idea that you'd be taking the franchise away from people who already have it, rather than simply not extending it to people who do have it.
Finally, why would allowing people to participate in the democratic system at age 13 make them take an active interest in politics when allowing people to participate in the democratic system at age 18 does not? The root problem is that young people don't really have vested interests yet. They don't have jobs, or property, or children they're sending to school. When the 26th Amendment was passed, they did have the vested interest of not being drafted, I'll give you that, but that went away. Extending the vote to people who have even fewer vested interests won't have the desired effect.
I actually think that lowering the age of majority across the board to around 16 would be a good idea. You'd have to do it sensibly, though. So at age 16, compulsory education is over and you begin two years of national service, but you also immediately get voting and other rights. I can see something like that working.
> Net knowledge growth rate usually decreases significantly with age. You'll likely accumulate more knowledge between now and when you're 75, but certainly not three times more[0].
I was taking that into account, though. I'll probably know two and a half times more by the time I'm 50 ;)
> Diving down a ridiculously slippery slope by jumping from voting to euthanasia is hardly productive to the discussion.
On the other hand, that jump does provide contribute to the conversation by demonstrating the exact reason why wishing for a bartending unicorn would be a better use of my time. That is the exact sort of ludicrous hyperbole you would face if you sincerely brought this sort of proposal to the public. I mean hell, people already bitch about euthanasia when public healthcare comes up.
Any sort of unfamiliar change is absolutely impossible within the confines of the political system we have built ourselves into.
I've made substantial criticisms as well, criticisms that you interestingly ignore. I admit it's hard for me to take your outright dehumanizing bigotry in good faith.
I would say, and did say, that it's horrifyingly bigoted.
I would also say "all adult citizens" is probably the most just way to go about it. Inventing rationales to disenfranchise people is a dangerous way to enable bigotry.
On top of that, if you really want to give voting power to those who have the greatest stake in the future, then you should probably disenfranchise people without living descendants, or potentially give people more votes the more descendants they have. If you die without ever having children, you have no interest in what comes after your lifetime, but if you do have children, you want to pass on a better world and a better country to them. This is doubly true if you have grandchildren, since now you're interested in an even longer term, even after your children die. So why not give people one vote for themselves, two votes if they have children, three votes if they have grandchildren, and so forth, with one additional vote for each new generation added to their family line? This is also radically bigoted and unjust, but you could just as plausibly argue that it does give voting power to those who have the greatest stake in the future while having nearly the exact opposite effect.
Because those children and grandchildren have their own votes.
Regardless of whether you want to take away anyone's right to vote (and I don't), I take jlgreco's suggestion as a starting point for a discussion of the fact that, through politics, much older people have an undue influence on the present and future lives of the young.
You're missing the point. The point is that you can use plausible sounding justifications to disenfranchise anybody, and once you start that game it'll never be played in good faith. Universal suffrage just works.
I also wanted to pry a little into the assumption that people only care about their own well-being and not about anything after their own lifetimes. Actually, people are concerned about the well-being of the children and grandchildren that will survive them. I suspect if you measured it, you'd find that young, childless people are the worst at long-term orientation, partially because they have less reason to be, partially because they haven't had the personal experience of short-term thinking turning around to bite them, and partially because they have less conception of the fullness of time in the first place.
But who knows, right? Either one of us might be wrong, but either one of us can make a pretty convincing-sounding argument to disenfranchise arbitrary groups of people, which in effect means that either one of us will end up trying to disenfranchise whatever demographics vote against us. People used to think there were convincing-sounding reasons to disenfranchise women and blacks, or even people who didn't own land. I'd like to think we've moved past that kind of thing.
> Elections are won by convincing the "right" people to get out and vote and the "wrong" people to stay home. Disenfranchisement is already happening.
Yes, it's bad enough what already happens, but that's hardly an argument for making it worse.
> I would also argue that concern for one's offspring is not sufficient to know what's best for them, let alone the offspring of others
Now you're changing the argument entirely, and not in a very promising direction for you. If it's a question of knowledgeability, you've just undermined your entire scheme to give 13 year olds the vote.
Now you're changing the argument entirely, and not in a very promising direction for you. If it's a question of knowledgeability, you've just undermined your entire scheme to give 13 year olds the vote.
In fairness, that was proposed by jlgreco, and I just wanted to use that suggestion to move toward a more practicable discussion of the de facto disenfranchisement of younger voters by the two-party system, higher turnout among older voters, etc.
A possibility I would like to consider for discussion is a multi-tiered legal system in which every ~25 years the new generation starts from scratch with a new set of laws, limited only by a small set of human rights guidelines. People can then opt into whichever generation's set of laws they want, with the ability to switch tiers every year or two, but you can only vote in the tier for your age group.
It's not a fully formed idea and I"m sure one could poke lots of holes in it, but I still think that it would be interesting to discuss in another context (this thread's already long enough that this comment is only an inch wide on the article page).
By this argument, rich people should have 1000:1 vote compared to poor people - their stake in the policy outcomes are far greater, they could lose millions upon millions with tax changes, regulation changes, economy downturns, etc. In fact, by this logic, poor people who don't pay taxes shouldn't be allowed to have voice in anything regarding taxation at all, since they won't be taxed and have no stake in it. You can go very far with this kind of twisted logic. Good thing nobody thinking this way would get anywhere near real power. At least in this regard the American political system yet holds some sanity and doesn't allow disenfranchising people to engineer some or other outcome.
This is actually not that dissimilar from the argument for only allowing free male landowners to vote.
It's bad enough that people are statistically disenfranchised by things like gerrymandering and small states. I can't imagine what it would be like if you let the politicians actually disenfranchise people.
I have more faith in the average 13 year old than the average 75 year old. Worse case scenario we'll (continue to) have no coherent or thought out economic policy, but I really don't see such a shift being anything but good for social policy.
The only real issue I see with it is that it could allow conservative religious parents who pump out kids to add a multiplying factor to their own vote. Efforts would need to be taken to ensure parents could not influence the votes of their children (improved voter privacy, and improved education).
Really though, with the amount of 18 year olds currently voting, the 13-18 demographic would only have token representation. The important part of this change would be the age cutoff.
You think matters can't be worse, but they can. But the idea of disenfranchising part of the nation because you disagree with political views of significant part of it is really what is appalling. The goal justifies the means, right? So when I say matters can be worse, I mean, for example, if people like you gain majority and it would be OK to deny people rights because they think wrong thoughts - it would be much worse. At least now everybody has a chance to vote.
And if it doesn't work to disenfranchise those old stupid bastards, should we maybe put some arsenic in their food, so they leave us alone faster? If they don't deserve to have a vote, maybe there are other things they don't deserve too... Just kick the bucket already and free the road for the fresh 13-year-olds, eh?
>>>> The only real issue I see with it is that it could allow conservative religious parents who pump out kids to add a multiplying factor to their own vote. Efforts would need to be taken to ensure parents could not influence the votes of their children (improved voter privacy, and improved education).
Yeah, so the elderly is not the end. Let's get rid of all that disagree with you. Let's make it so they can't have kids, of at the very least - so that they can't poison kid's brains with their incorrect opinions. The only opinions the kids should be having are the right ones - yours. And with improved education it is of course exactly the opinion they would be having - because any person educated enough agrees with you. Or he isn't educated enough. Brilliant!
Ah, so I imagined you mentioning "conservatives" who "pump out kids". I see. And 75-year-olds don't care neither for next 10 years they are expected to live, nor for their relatives, nor for their kids & grandkids, etc. Just wow.
> And 75-year-olds don't care neither for next 10 years they are expected to live
So the 75 year old has 10 years left to care about (actually 3.2 years on average...) while the 13 year old has well more than half a century.
If the 75 year old feels they have information and insight that is critical to the future, they should be spending their time telling younger people about it even without my proposal. With today's system they will only get the opportunity to vote a handful of more times; if they know something that their children and grandchildren need to know they should talk to those children and grandchildren to let them know. Elections are a horrific way to pass down generational knowledge. That is not what they are designed for.
The elderly should be in a position to advise, never to dictate.
I'm not sure about my stance on minors voting, but I think an upper limit on voting should exist either way. I don't see why someone who's probably going to die soon should get to vote on decisions that will affect the country for decades to come.
The way I see it is that the elderly could still effect politics, but only indirectly. If 7+ decades on this planet have not taught them how to effectively communicate their ideas to younger generations, then I really don't see how they could have any worthwhile insight at all.
If you are old, you can engage in public political discourse and pass on your knowledge, but you have no business leading by example anymore. That time is past.
I'm sure average 13 year old can't, and doesn't give half rat's ass about it, since average 13 year olds have different interests, but I would be glad to be proven wrong. Any proof? However, more interesting is that you think while you can disenfranchise US citizens at will, somehow you can't change eligibility age for presidency. Where this sudden reverence for tradition comes from, I wonder?
An 13 year old is in what, 8th grade? Probably the only year that most Americans ever spend learning about their own government? When else does the average american learn about their government, if not in school?
Some of Americans read those things called books. You know, on their own volition, without being forced to do it by unionized government workers. Some of them also read magazines, newspapers and such, containing plenty of information. There's also this newfasioned thing called the internets, where they say you can read about stuff too. Of course, I'm not sure how "average" your American has to be - maybe for you, average one is one that only can be taught by a teacher in a coercive mass-production setting and forgets everything he had been taught very soon. I see how you want to increase a number of such people among the electorate - if you other ideas are as harebrained as this one, you need a big supply of short-attention-spanned, never learning, reading averse, infantile electorate to gain any acceptance.
Yes, it's much more likely that they know the age limit than your average baby boomer. Haven't you watched that show Are you smarter than a 5th grader? Most adults have shockingly poor general knowledge.
You really believe participants on the TV shows aren't selected to maximize entertainment value and present anything except show producer's views on what entertains mass audience?
Not to minimize what you wrote: wanting to regain control is a part of having suicidal thoughts, regardless of the political situation. Often the only relief to people who are suicidal is the thought that they can control when to end their life (which sometimes brings slight relief without having to go through with it).
I read an article today which pointed out how Feynman went around cracking safes during the Manhattan Project. Something fundamental has changed in the society ... Imagine the present if people like Jobs/Woz would have been locked up for phone phreaking.
The Secret Service did hire Albert Gonzalez, the guy Jonathan James was accused of conspiring with. The story, including Jonathan James' involvement is well told by the NYT:
The problem I have with the justice system in cases like this is that there are curious people, they will have, probe, poke, tickle, whatever systems are available. The justice system, as mentioned, only sees those making these "intrusions" in black and white terms -- criminals.
In the case linked, "NASA had to shut it's systems down for 3 weeks at the cost of $41000 to check and fix it's systems"...This is bullshit. First off, you should have sufficient redundancy in your internal systems, especially for life critical code, that an intrusion affects the front line, not things like your source repository. Further, you should have regular backups and checkpoints -- checksums, etc. to be able to compare and identify anything compromised.
Laws to guard against lazy employees should not be allowed.
It's not really a bogus case at all. The message that these submissions are supposed to be sending is not that any of these people did not in fact commit crimes but that the ruthless pursuit of these individuals is immoral given the intent. Besides, there's no way for you to know how much it would cost NASA in time or money to double and triple check the integrity of their systems. $41k doesn't even sound like a whole lot of money for such a chore.
Except that what grandparent was pointing out what not a case of victim blaming at all; rather, that the response was completely disproportionate to the act.
If you have a really nice sports car and I open the hood to see what engine it has and how it works, yes, I am in the wrong for not asking your permission first. However, if you then try to sue me for $100k because you claim that you had to have expensive maintenance done, you had to get the entire car diagnosed and $20k of repair done, etc. then you are clearly responding in an inappropriate manner.
That's what the whole "NASA had to shut it's systems down for 3 weeks at the cost of $41000 to check and fix it's systems" is about.
I hope you see now how that is very much different from the "she was asking for it" kind of BS.
Securing top-secret facility after a beak-in (where we know keyloggers and such were installed) is a bit more expensive than popping the hood of the car. At minimum, whole OS and all software packages have to be reinstalled from known clean media, and whole software stack needs to be recreated from scratch, without using backups (which could be compromised too). If you're properly paranoid, add new hardware too (most of the current hardware is programmable at some level, i.e. needs to be replaced after a breakin). And then you need to invalidate all passwords on all the systems and have everybody to reset their passwords. And not only user login passwords - all router passwords, domain passwords, service logins, everything.
I can easily see how such work can take, for multiple systems, several weeks and 41K is not an outrageous sum for completely recreating the system. Especially when something controlling life-preserving equipment is involved - which means additional testing, etc. - it's not a website that you can just push into production and if some page glitches the user would tell you.
The difference is that having to avoid certain public places for fear of being assaulted infringes on your personal freedoms. Locking down a server does not.
We cannot see into Aaron's thoughts of course but if I had to guess, maybe he thought he was going to be Bradley Manning-inged which might drive anyone over the edge.
Stripped naked and thrown into a cell "for his protection" (he got a whopping 100 days off his 30 years to life sentence for that abuse btw, so that will teach the people that did that right?)
Perhaps we should use this energy to help the living Bradley Manning in protest as it does little to help Aaron or his loved ones now.
This article does not mention that the real J.J. in the TJX case could have been '7 foot tall' Stephen Watt, a former Morgan Stanley employee with the aliases 'Jim Jones' and 'Unix Terrorist'
Anyone who argues for any punishment, should first have experienced a sample of the same treatment. How can someone who doesn't know what it means and feels to live through a punishment wish to inflict it upon others. Seems like the behavior of a beast.
I'm not sure we should glorify Jonathan James or even compare him to Aaron Swartz. His "hacking" of the DoD was undeniably illegal, and his sentencing seemed appropriate for his actions. We will never know if he was innocent or not of the TJX case. It's tragic that he killed himself, but, at least to me, his actions seemed on the whole more malicious than Swartz's ever was.
"I'm not sure we should glorify Jonathan James or even compare him to Aaron Swartz."
I just posted the Wiki article in no way did I glorify him. However, to suggest I am in error to even compare his story to Aaron's is well....an error.
"His "hacking" of the DoD was undeniably illegal, and his sentencing seemed appropriate for his actions."
Illegal is an absolute term, an act is either illegal or not, there are not degrees such as "undeniably illegal." As to your observation that the sentence was appropriate, keep in mind that James was 15 at the time of his alleged hacking and he was the first minor tried by the US federal government. Further, the federal prosecutors (Janet Reno, in particular) used James story as a political gain by threatening James with adult charges carrying more than 10 years, all so they could "prove the Justice Department is willing to get tough on juveniles offenders accused of cyber crime." So James took a plea deal and at 16 was on 6 month house arrest and probation to 18 and he had to stop using computers for recreational use, shit even drunk drivers can drive again.
"It's tragic that he killed himself, but, at least to me, his actions seemed on the whole more malicious than Swartz's ever was."
I only want to address this as devil's advocate, but in terms of James' act being malicious, James acquired $1.7 million in NASA software, he did publish it or sell it, rather he did it to learn more coding. Further, he said he only pursued his exploits because he wanted to explore, which seems to be the very opposite of malicious, after all anyone who was malicious and in control of the Space Stations life sustaining systems could surely have caused more damage than copying the code if they were truly malicious. Whereas Aaron breached a system and copied information with the intent to redistribute it in mass to the detriment of the system itself, which fits the very definition of malice. I am in no way justifying anyone's actions and condemning another's actions, simply highlighting that your word choice of malicious really does not seem fitting for James as much as curious, whereas Aaron intended to destroy a system albeit one that many feel unethically controlled the flow of knowledge which should otherwise be open and free. Besides assuming Aaron did have intent and malice toward the system, is he any more legally culpable than say someone who takes bread to feed the hungry where they are otherwise being starved?
"The case was picked up by Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann in Boston, the cybercrime prosecutor who won a record 20-year prison stretch for TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez. Heymann indicted Aaron on 13 counts of wire fraud, computer intrusion and reckless damage. The case has been wending through pre-trial motions for 18 months, and was set for jury trial on April 1." [1]
Appears that Jonathan James and Aaron Swartz both had the same prosecutor after them...
[1] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/01/aaron-swartz/