I think it's kind of ridiculous that everyone is pointing fingers at "everyone else" other than the man responsible for the suicide, Aaron Swartz himself.
Sure, he was in a tough situation, and I'll admit I don't know the entire backstory of what led up to this man's suicide(although there is no shortage of information on the HN front page as of late), but there is nobody that can be held responsible for his suicide other than himself.
It is self-evident that this man was well-respected in the online community.
He killed himself. Nobody else is responsible for that extraordinary action. We can only speculate on his exact reasoning for doing it, but I would suspect a man in that state of mind may not be acting completely rationally and just wanted to escape but sadly could not find a way out other than ending his own life.
Let's celebrate his life and accomplishments and stop trying to find people to blame.
One can view Swartz as completely responsible for his own suicide, while still observing that the overzealous prosecution was a factor that shouldn't have happened regardless of Swartz committing suicide.
In other words, the suicide serves to highlight what was already an absurd injustice, and that injustice alone is sufficient to act on. Doing so doesn't make Ortiz or Heymann responsible for the death; only for their own manifestly unjust prosecution.
Well put, but in the context of this post, I think the parent comment is valid. The title, "US Attorney Chided Swartz On Day of Suicide", seems to imply blame rather than shedding light on an injustice.
“If you add up everyone's responsibility for something, it doesn't equal 100% — it equals a billion percent if it has to, because any number of entities can be fully responsible for the same thing.”
— Ran Prieur, The Mathematics of Responsibility (http://ranprieur.com/essays/mathres.html)
And you are taking the exact opposite stance. Suicide is the one crime where the person is both victim and perpetrator. You can't just choose to look at one and not the other. He is victim and perpetrator in one.
People treating suicide as pure-victim is absolutely wrong, not in the least because it tends to make it look much more appealing. The real victims of suicide are the loved ones and close friends. They are the ones that suffer, and they are the ones that are truly blameless "victims" (in so much as anyone can be blameless). There is a reason why suicide is considered to be a selfish crime. I am not lambasting Aaron here, but you have to treat suicide for what it is, rather than turn it into a heroic act of defiance and finally sticking it to the man. If only to make people think twice about taking the "easy way" out for themselves.
> The real victims of suicide are the loved ones and close friends.
This is bullshit. And so fucking insensitive. This idea, that anybody owes it to their ‘friends’ to force themselves to stay alive when they want to die, just so those ‘friends’ can continue to feel good about themselves and don't have to deal with the reality that their friend wants to die, is completely fucked up. Have some empathy for the people dealing with those feelings, not their selfish ‘friends’.
I think you're being a bit harsh here. As many people have pointed over the last day, most suicide decisions are made in less than an hour, often less than 5 minutes. A substantial portion of people who 'want to die' don't really want to die all the time - they have more and less depressed periods, and during one of those periods they make an impulsive decision.
Suicide has a lasting impact on friends and family; it significantly increases the risk that another family member will also attempt to kill themselves. I don't know if you've ever dealt with depression, but the impact on friends and family is the one thing that consistently stops me when I have suicidal thoughts. I don't think it's a stretch to say that, if your friends and family support you (or don't know), killing yourself impacts them in a substantial way that you should consider.
You're right that most people who want to die don't want to die all the time, and suicide decisions are impulsive to the extent that that they're made when the suicidal person wants to die (which is only some of the time) and not when they don't.
However, I think even when the decision is "impulsive", it's a decision to execute a plan whose details have been worked about over a long period of time. Usually suicidal feelings aren't acted upon the first time they surface. I'd imagine that it's actually very difficult to kill oneself, and it takes a lot of preparation to do it right, and a lot of determination to will oneself into following through with it.
I think "I love my friends and if I kill myself now I'll never get to see them again" is a valid reason to keep oneself alive. But shaming and pressuring suicidal people, making them feel bad (as if they don't feel bad enough already) for the impact their decision will have on others is totally out of order. Everybody has the right to choose to end their life and they shouldn't be shamed for it. At the same time, that choice does not exist in a vacuum, and it's worth looking at the external pressures that influenced the person's decision, and external entities can absolutely be blamed (and held responsible) for a person's suicide.
(I have dealt with some suicidal feelings before, but who hasn't? I don't want to come across as authoritative on this: I'm speculating based on my own experiences and those of other people with whom I've talked about this stuff. I'm completely open to correction and to hearing other people's perspectives and I appreciate your comment. I have no time though for the kind of victim-blaming that some people are doing in this thread.)
I've seen a lot of comments, here and otherwise, with regards to Aaron's suicide with many of them trying to skirt the issue, or apparently not understanding the subject at hand in the slightest. Many of these being people seemingly believing that he didn't think anything through and as if his brain was a processors that received an execute command and simply followed through the actions. However, this post is one of the few that provides insight, a lot of insight into the minds of Aaron Swartz and others like him, and how he may have actually been thinking things through over the course of time. Suicide isn't a person jumping off a ledge it's someone standing at a ledge slowly being pushed off by a thousand little things behind them until they slip.
I was going to write this on the parent, but I didn't because I thought it was tangential. You have to realize this is my personal experience, but it speaks volumes.
The scariest, closest to suicide moment I ever experienced was when I was shopping at a mall. It wasn't very busy, and I was feeling very... manic might be the word. Head down, headphones in, speed walking between errands. I had to keep moving, no matter what. I noticed the sort-of cut-away in the floor, so you could see from the top floor down to the ground. It was only 3 stories, but I had a really strong, sudden impulse to vault over the railing and see what it would do to me. Maybe I could land on my head, that might work. It was something I had never really considered before, it wasn't a very efficient way to do things, but it just gripped me very suddenly and all of a sudden it was a huge crisis.
Being suicidal, generally, is death by a thousand cuts. You have a predisposition, and all the stresses in life push you in that direction (as you've said). But the jumping off the ledge moment is crucial; personally, I have strategies for daily temptations like putting away knives in the kitchen. It's the spur of something unexpected, the sudden, strong, irrational impulse that really scares me.
Did you not see the quotes around it? Some people do turn to suicide because they perceive it to be a solution to their problems. Painting suicide victims is heros and martyrs as doing no one a service.
Can you point me to where I said they were heroes or martyrs? I said there was complex psychology involved, not pop-psych extremism.
duairc's point is that multiple parties can be responsible for something - that it's not appropriate to just blame the victim. duairc wasn't painting Swartz as a hero, a martyr, a villain, or even just a regular guy - or even that he's not primarily responsible.
We really need to get away from the idea that responsibility can only ever be assigned to one entity.
There's nothing ridiculous about claiming Aaron caused his situation and killed himself. There is a prosecutor, defendant and a judge. Prosecutors typically exaggerate their case, defendants typically downplay their side, and the judge is responsible for determining the outcome.
Wasn't she just doing her job? She was brought a high profile case. It involved a notorious internet prodigy who stashed a laptop and wrote a program to download 4M+ articles that otherwise would have cost a ton of money. A quick search revealed prices around $30. $30 * 4M = 120M. What am I missing?
Absolutely not. There is a reason that prosecutors have prosecutorial discretion and this case is it. The prosecutor's job is not to zealously convict anyone they encounter with everything they can convict them with, it is to represent the interests of the people. There is no fathomable way that sending Aaron Swartz to prison for 35 years could possibly do that.
But let's not put all of the blame on the prosecutors. The prosecutors did wrong here, but we allowed it to happen by giving them the authority to do wrong. We are, as we speak, allowing laws to remain on the books that make "crimes" that should be a minor misdemeanor at worst (and not illegal at all at best) into felonies punishable by a sentence of imprisonment longer than the sentences received by many unrepentant criminals who have committed premeditated murder.
These outrageously disproportionate laws are what allowed these prosecutors to abuse their discretion. Get rid of the laws, or cut the penalties by a factor of a thousand, and you get rid of the problem. That should be the goal here. Making an example of these prosecutors is not a bad first step, but actually prohibiting what they did by removing their ability to levy outrageous charges at minor offenders has to be the long-term solution.
Critical thinking skills. Instead, you're repeating a tired emotional appeal to top-down prescribed "morals".
Here is a program to download "4M+" articles:
i=1;while true;do wget http://foo/$i;i=1$i;done
I'll license my Unary Downloader Pro to you for $120MM. Oh wait, you just copied it into your brain and then reverse engineered it even!? You just did $120MM+ worth of damages!
I didn't realize simplicity had anything to do with the severity of a crime. How hard is it to kill someone? How hard is it to download something on Pirate bay? How hard is it to stash a laptop in an unused MIT closet and write code to download 4M articles? Why does it matter how hard one of these things is?
He used the Internet as it was meant to be used. MIT had no security, JSTOR had no security. Issuing a GET request to a web server is not, and should not be a crime.
That's a separate matter entirely. The point being discussed is whether Aaron did in fact violate the law. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone here who believed Aaron deserved the sentence or the prosecution brought upon him, but personally I find it incredible how quick people are to absolve him entirely.
Every persecution of a hacker invariably emphasizes how they created some scary powerful tool in furtherance of their goal. It's the modern day witch hunt. Your average slob thinks "I can't even write a program to download one file, he must have dangerous knowledge and powers". If they knew it was one step beyond rightClick->saveAs, and felt like anybody could do the same with little effort, they would wonder why the plaintiff had failed to secure something so simple if it really were as important as claimed.
But this was not even a copyright case. They accused him of hacking. He had access to wifi network with free access to JSTOR. He scraped JSTOR. They banned his IP. He connected directly to the network (didn't break into anything, didn't hack into anything) and began scraping again. If this was against the law, how could it be anything more than a misdemeanor?
How many other illegal things can I do in this country now? If violating a TOS is hacking, so is sniffing and port scanning and every other imaginable "unusual" activity. This is worse than locking away a phreaker for 50 years -- at least a phreaker may have bypassed technical restrictions. What he "intended" to do with the files is irrelevant. If I put in my website's TOS "You cannot scrape our website!" and Google did, should Google be indicted for wire fraud and a host of other made up charges?
If Hacker News has gotten to the point where they're willing to call a prosecution of 50 years for a "crime" like this the way of the world I really can't imagine you have any heart for this industry anymore. Aaron was one of you.
He didn't kill someone with a knife, he put butter on his toast with a knife. There was literally no crime committed, certainly no crime worthy of federal prosecutors and decades of potential incarceration.
He downloaded a bunch of files using a publicly accessible computer network, from a web site that was available without authentication from that network. He didn't crack any passwords or encryption schemes, he didn't access any material he was supposed to pay for without paying, he simply didn't do anything to warrant the type of prosecution that was launched against him.
The article below explains a lot. What Aaron Swartz did was rude, not illegal.
That's the wrong way to look at it. The process had wiped him out financially and almost certainly damaged his mental state. It doesn't matter if you're acquitted if you are punished before the trial even begins.
Again, it doesn't matter if it's extremely easy to run someone over with a car or whether it's easy for a computer programmer to bypass download limits and sneak a laptop into a closet at MIT with a spoofed MAC. Simplicity has nothing to do with it.
What is wrong with you? You keep posting this article wanting it to say what you think it says, but it doesn't. Maybe you should read it. Better yet, read the actual indictments which are linked on that page.
* Computer Fraud (7 counts, for each time he 'deceived' JSTOR) "the defendent, knowingly and with intent to defraud, accessed a protected computer -- namely, a computer on MIT's network and a computer on JSTOR's network -- without authorization and in excess of authorized access"
* Unlawfully Obtaining Information from a Protected Computer (12 counts??? These weren't even protected computers!)
* Recklessly Damaging a Protected Computer (because he downloading the files fast enough to impact other users)
* Wire Fraud (because he was logged in as a guest on MIT's network and downloading JSTOR articles)
They throw in details like him using a mailinator email as if it's illegal to do that. It's ridiculous. You're ridiculous for trying to justify it.
And yes, all of these charges are basically 'hacking' charges. He was not charged with copyright infringement or anything of that nature.
Nothing is wrong with me, I'm just shocked at the amount of hero worship going around and complete ignorance of the facts of the case. He didn't just break the TOS and he wasn't charged with "hacking" as you keep referring to it. He was charged with several crimes.
Without even getting into the morality of Aaron's actions (though I think you're a pretty shit person if you don't support them), it's pretty clear that the actions of the prosecutor did contribute to Aaron's death. This means that if the prosecutor didn't take those actions, or took different actions, Aaron would still be alive. Therefore, the prosecutor's actions caused Aaron's death. This is simply an objective fact, independent of any moral framework. The fact that the prosecutor's actions were taken as a part of her "doing her job" doesn't change that they caused Aaron's death. If you agree that it is immoral to cause somebody's death (or at the very least that it was immoral to cause Aaron's death in this case), then the prosecutor's actions were immoral. If her actions are a part of her job, then her job is immoral (and maybe the entire ‘justice’ system needs to be smashed). As for the argument that the prosecutor couldn't possibly have foreseen that her actions would have caused Aaron's death (which I imagine you or somebody else would make): of course she could have. People kill themselves because of shit like this all the time, and you don't have to be an empathic genius to understand how the pressure of facing possibly 30+ years in prison could drive someone to suicide.
Not to mention that he intended to distribute the articles for free, turning this into a billion dollar case. I am 100% for open access, but the public and current law isn't. People blaming prosecutors are looking for a scapegoat where there just isn't one.
| Not to mention that he intended to distribute
| the articles for free, turning this into a
| billion dollar case
No where does it mention this in their case against him. Calling it a 'billion dollar case' is over-stating the fact. Especially since JSTOR withdrew their complaint against him and recommended that the US government back off.
The people that he supposedly hurt said that they don't care, and to leave him alone. Attempting to use the 'harm' to them as justification makes no sense.
> The people that he supposedly hurt said that they don't care, and to leave him alone
From the perspective of the state, that matters only as far as the details of "Can I still get the evidence needed without victim's support" and "How should I prioritize this case from here?"
Often going through with a prosecution is just a further hassle for the victim (a process of "re-victimization"). In real life sometimes the trial would reveal further unpleasant things about the victim to public view. Maybe the victim wants to take care of it themself. Maybe they genuinely don't want any consequence to befall the suspect.
But the responsibility of the state is to society at large. A prosecutor wouldn't refuse to charge a serial rapist that they had enough evidence for even without the victim's support, because of the risk to society if the serial rapist were allowed to go free.
While Aaron was charged with far different things, he had shown a propensity for flouting the law on this particular topic, and escalating each addition time he did so, so it's not really that surprising that the D.A. would decide to continue with the case, especially given that they still had some of the other 'victims' supporting the prosecution.
I say this all as a proponent of Open Access (certainly would have been nice while I was in college instead of having to use my university's proxy servers all the time). But the D.A. doesn't get to decide which laws are on the books and which aren't (as others have mentioned, this is how white people were mysteriously never charged of racial crimes in the Jim Crow-era South).
JSTOR only withdrew their complaint cause he got caught. If Aaron succeed they certainly wouldn't have dropped it. My point is his intent was certainly criminal in terms of billions of dollars in the eyes of the law and public, even if they aren't in mine and most of HN.
I think I have a reasonable amount of distance, not being in the same situation, but I would probably do the same thing (albeit with different timing), and I would consider it: 1) the rational decision; and 2) the fault of the U.S. federal government, and indirectly the American public for its fetish for jailing people. I don't have any interest in spending decades in prison, and I would commit suicide to avoid it, if I did not think there was another way of avoiding it. And I think that would be a rational decision, at least for my own personal utility function. So I wasn't at all surprised when I saw this news, though I was saddened: I would've given it about 1/3 each odds if you asked me in 2011, whether somehow charges would be dismissed/reduced, whether he'd commit suicide, or whether he'd end up as a hacker cause célèbre in prison. I do agree that we don't know with any degree of certainty what Swartz's own reasons were.
I think it's tricky to appeal to the irrational pessimism of depression without actual evidence that, in a given case, it was irrational. Depression can trick you into incorrectly thinking that a situation has no way out, but that's only relevant if, viewed rationally by someone not suffering from depression, there actually is a way out. In that case, treatment can solve the problem. But treatment can only dispel pseudo-dead-ends where the "depression was speaking", so to speak, which weren't really dead ends; it can't manufacture a way out of actual dead ends, like impending lengthy imprisonment.
You conjecture that death might be preferable to decades of incarceration. Sure, if that's an accurate assessment of the options.
But Aaron was still months from being tried or (if found guilty) sentenced. Even being sentenced doesn't mean serving the sentence is a certainty, after potential appeals, suspensions, pardons.
We can see from Aaron's writings (including those long after the prosecution began) that he was endeavoring to "think better", to improve himself, and to "invent new options" rather than just accepting the tradeoffs presented to him.
The choice to exit the situation, by ending life itself, isn't quite consistent with those other expressed perceptions and preferences. (Perhaps those other expressions were themselves simply products of passing moods, or a calculated facade, but we have to assign them about as much credibility, as expressions of Aaron's rational thinking, as his suicide itself.)
Such inconsistency suggests to me that the suicide decision was the result of an irrational and possibly transient mood problem, and an erroneous assessment of likely future legal/incarceration outcomes.
(If some deep, emotional portion of the decisionmaking machinery goes wrong, and 'chooses' death, then subsequent painting-in of all the reasons that death is or might be a reasonable course can be an expression of choice-supportive biases. And we, as outsiders running little simulations of what we might do in similar situations, can suffer the same bias, along the lines of: "A smart guy killed himself, he must have had good reasons. I'll keep thinking until I find them.")
There could of course be other factors that outsiders don't know: other personal or health issues, things that made even the "beats this federal rap" future seem less appealing. But legal persecution and the potential for imprisonment aren't, before trial and given Aaron's other writings, a rational basis or sufficient explanation for early final exit. A recurrent or chronic mood problem is a sufficient explanation.
Maybe it's because I love life so much that I don't think I would choose suicide over prison. Even if you get sent to prison, that doesn't mean you will be there your entire life. You can still appeal, work towards getting out faster. You can still educate yourself in prison, stay active.
In other words, instead of laying down/giving up/killing myself, I would like to think I would fight my oppressors and protect my rights to be alive and happy by whatever means necessary.
Someone mentioned victim-blaming, and perhaps this has transformed into a discussion of suicide "victims" in general rather than Swartzs specific case. I mean no disrespect to the memory of Aaron Swartz, but I do feel compelled to say that given the choice of (a) killing yourself or (b) not killing yourself, one of these choices illuminate your personal fortitude and character.
I can see that argument, but I guess I just don't think I'd personally make that decision in the case of lengthy imprisonment. It's probably a laudable one, but my interest in not spending decades in a claustrophobic situation without freedom, subject to what seem like fairly frightening possibilities (high prevalence of prison rape, etc.) would likely outweigh my desire to live an inspiring life as a prison activist. I think the fact that you can't change your mind later is what frightens me about it in particular. If, a few years in, it's so horrible that I really would rather be dead, it's too late to do anything about it at that point; once you go in, there really is no escape.
In just about any other case I would agree with your assessment of the choice, though. Most seemingly hopeless situations are really not hopeless.
Remember, studies show that even people not suffering from depression significantly overestimate how much specific severe future events will affect their life satisfaction, good or bad. (Winning a lottery, losing a limb, achieving a life goal, being imprisoned, etc.) It'd be a shame to take an irreversible final step, because of a relatively simple and well-understood short-term bias.
The idea of a long prison sentence is certainly a frightening thought. Weighing that against the idea of not existing and never existing again. There are very few situations I can imagine where death would be preferable than enduring. Being tortured with no chance for escape comes to mind and I can imagine I would welcome death to escape the agony.
Perhaps personally I am angry at Aaron for giving up, and this makes me selfish.
I guess I can understand people wanting to find someone to blame, because putting the blame on someone you love, in this case Aaron, is a lot harder. We would rather sympathize with his situation and forgive him for his actions. He was only human after all.
This seems like a very ignorant post that completely overlooks the realities of suffering from depression (and other mental disorders). Stating that you 'love life so much' just goes to highlight how little you seem to understand what you speak of and how little you've bothered to inform yourself.
anatoli, I think flipper28 was responding to _delirium's statement that suicide would be a "rational decision" for him/her in this situation based on a calculation of utilities. This is, as we know, not the usual way that people determine to commit suicide.
>> He killed himself. Nobody else is responsible for that extraordinary action. We can only speculate on his exact reasoning for doing it, but I would suspect a man in that state of mind may not be acting completely rationally and just wanted to escape but sadly could not find a way out other than ending his own life.
Okay, I'll bite. Here's a hypothetical situation for you: Say I kidnap you and take you to a remote island or anywhere where you have almost no chance of escape. Now I offer you a deal - You can either commit suicide now, or I am going to torture you slowly over the next 10 years (or 35 yrs to make the parallel with Aaron). You only get one chance to commit suicide, I will take away that option once I start torturing you.
Under the above (admittedly hypothetical, but you see the parallels to Aaron's, don't you?), what would be your "rational" choice? Would you consider your _solely_ responsible for the decision if you chose the suicide option?
Sure, he was in a tough situation, and I'll admit I don't know the entire backstory of what led up to this man's suicide(although there is no shortage of information on the HN front page as of late), but there is nobody that can be held responsible for his suicide other than himself.
He was an extremely dedicated political activist. I'm pretty sure that was a big reason for of his decision to end his life, and to end it on the 2nd anniversary of his arrest. His suicide has brought more attention to this case and corruption in the justice system than he probably would have been able to do if he were still alive. Of course he was struggling with depression and who knows what other problems, but his death seems strategically planned.
Agreed. With him in jail for decades, this was probably the biggest action he could have ever done for the rest of his live. This man had devoted his life to progress and may have very well sacrificed himself for it, given the date of his suicide. If only more of us had a fraction of this courage to stand against the enemies of progress and freedom.
He was only 26! Even in the worst case that he unfortunately spent the maximum of 30 year in prison (probably without a computer) he would be out at 56.
Some people did important thighs after incarceration or unjust persecution:
I realize the next comment may come off as insensitive, but I don't hear people focusing on the key question:
Kids were bullied generations ago, yet it is only recently that bullying and suicide became a national crisis. What changed? Are bullies more aggressive than they were back then, or are more kids deciding that suicide is the answer, or were suicides related to bullying not reported?
Suicides in general were not reported very widely. It wasn't that long ago that a suicide was considered deeply shameful for the entire family, so they were usually kept quiet in the same way that an adulterous affair was.
It's still par for the course, at least where I live, for media to use the code "Police say there were no suspicious circumstances" instead of baldly reporting the fact of a suicide.
Suicide is still a taboo for many people. Reporting a death as a suicide is still problematic for some people. Not that long ago the common practice was to record deaths as accidental or misadventure rather than suicide unless it was unequivocally suicide.
Reported rates were lower because of this.
Newspapers understood better their responsibility to be careful about reporting suicide; the Werther effect is real and has killed people.
Children's rights are a relatively recent phenomenon. Bullying used to be seen as character forming or as an unstoppable part of childhood.
The extreme end of bullying is more severe now. And bullies have access to technology which extends the bullying from the school to the bullied person's wider life.
tl;dr yes, there is more awareness, and more reporting, and the bullying is worse, and more children choosing suicide.
They have more ways to extend the torment of bullying beyond school grounds, e.g. on the internet. Imagine going home, looking for an escape from the bullying, only to be harassed further on the various social media sites, messaging protocols.
> We can only speculate on his exact reasoning for doing it, but I would suspect a man in that state of mind may not be acting completely rationally and just wanted to escape but sadly could not find a way out other than ending his own life.
Very few people are saying that the prosecution alone caused his death, as if an attorney broke into his apartment and killed Aaron. People are unhappy because they think the prosecution went too far, and to a man whose depression may leave him acting irrationally,mad you say, that could have been the major trigger
Actually, at least to read comments here - many are saying or implying that. Over the last few days, I've read many comments that ignore and/or gloss over any underlying depression and state, almost as unequivocal fact, that the actions of the US Attorney and her Assistant Attorney are precisely and solely to blame for driving him to suicide. I've seen calls to sue them personally, consider what it would get to have them charged with manslaughter, calls to remove them, to sue MIT, to sue JSTOR, to sue law enforcement officials for following valid warrants, etc, issued by the court and US Attorneys.
In the work that pretty much started the discipline of suicidology and one of the most important books in sociology, Émile Durkheim's 1897 "Suicide", it is made clear that the environment you are in does matter. Alghough the text is highly flawed (biases, sexism, logical faults here and there), but the basic idea prevails.
Up till that point, it didn't occur to people (as it does not seem to occur to you) that something as intimate as committing suicide might be deeply linked to more social factors.
People are right to point fingers, the context that one is in influences the decisions they make, the options that they think they have.
I think danah boyd has the best take on this. Can we say that prosecution caused Aaron's suicide, in the same sense as one billiard ball sets another in motion? Of course not.
But what should disturb us is that the business and government elites of our society are very alarmed at what is going on with the internet. And they're used to crushing people in their path. The War on Drugs has completely normalized these tactics: insane sentences, extrajudicial harassment, you name it.
Someone like Aaron, who had no time for the concerns of business or government when believed an issue of justice was at stake, put himself right in their crosshairs.
Take the suicide out of it and you still have an overzealous prosecutor who carried on long after the people who kicked the case off by reporting the incident dropped the charges.
Whether or not A led to B is not important relative to that fact.
I think it's kind of ridiculous that everyone is pointing fingers at "everyone else" other than the man responsible for the suicide, Aaron Swartz himself.
I know some people are pointing the finger, but not everyone is.
While I wouldn't draw the link between the prosecution and suicide as others do, in reflection after a death it is possible to look at the person's work in the last few years and say "Why yes, there does seem to be some bullshit going on here, lets use this opportunity to draw attention to it."
Just because some people do assign blame, it doesn't mean the rest of us should let those wrongly blamed off the hook for anything other than that which they were wrongly blamed.
While discussing this now, people run the risk of appearing to assign blame even when they're not. But discussing the case a month after now, they'll run the risk of nobody really giving a shit. Next month people will say "He's dead, its over, move on."
If you can make the case that there is a clear causality then the prosecutor could be held partially accountable, if not legally at least morally. There is a precedent, somebody committed suicide allegedly as a result of a bullying act and the bullier was hold accountable and got jail sentence.
I think partial causality between his suicide and the act of bullying is probable/possible in this case, it should of course be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in the court of law and not in the court of public opinion. What I struggle with though is : should the prosecutor be held accountable or the system she represents, meaning : was she acting very differently than any other prosecutor would have, in the same situation?
While I am completely against the prosecution in this case, I think the reality is that there's no way you are going to make the prosecutors legally accountable. Maybe in civil court. I think the difference legally between bullying, as you describe, and what the prosecutors did, is that the prosecutors could argue they were doing a job they swore an oath to perform. Nevertheless, I don't know what the possibilities are but I hope there are civil ramifications for the prosecution and hopefully reforms and positions to be filled.
Actually, Lessig's response did call out Swartz personally. I'd honestly recommend reading that and then avoiding the rest unless you want to attend his funeral or something.
Different people react differently to pressure. No one is advocating charging the US Attorney with murder or manslaughter but it's worth looking whether their actions were appropriate or not.
The author of this filing is making an argument before the court, not chiding Swartz personally. More importantly: I'm unclear on whether its author is US Attorney Carmen Ortiz or her deputy AUSA Stephen Heymann. I believe the distinction is meaningful; Heymann would have been responsible for the superseding indictment and the overall prosecution strategy; the former is a political appointee who may be supporting her deputies just like anyone else in her position would be doing.
Heymann is a nationally recognized authority in the prosecution of computer crimes, and if he's responsible for the overall strategy used by the prosecution, it's him most of all you'd want to see accountable; not just because removing Ortiz (which will for what it's worth never happen) wouldn't remove him, but also because he's the key national influencer in cybercrime prosecution, not Ortiz.
I lived this situation when I was around 14. My father was an executive in a firm that was being investigated for fraud. Most of my father's peers (using the term lightly) went to jail (and rightfully so), but the prosecution could never find anything on my father.
Despite that fact, our family had to endure 6 years of constant threats, extortion attempts and harassment for crimes that were never committed- I've had a few heart to heart conversations with my father and am convinced that he never committed a crime. As a result, the situation put my father into a depression and just destroyed his spirit, something I'm still trying to help him restore 20 years later. The (us attorney) prosecution was responsible for the attacks, but it was always at the behest of the share holders.
I believe the MIT owns the lion's share of the responsibility in the situation. The burden of these charges can be completely overwhelming. I just wish that Aaron understood the situation he was getting himself into. Some people seemingly handle these situations well (Julian Assange?), but most of us would buckle under the constant pressure. I think he may have felt that MIT would eventually come to their senses and have some compassion for his plight.
> Some people seemingly handle these situations well (Julian Assange?)
Julian Assange knew that he'd be pursued to the point of death, both legally and illegally (assassination) by various governments around the world. He knew exactly what he was getting into when he started Wikileaks.
And so he did so fully aware of the potential consequences, which so far haven't actually been as bad as one would have expected. (By now, one would have expected him to have been "finished off" by one of the many governments he's pissed off.)
I am glad to see more attention paid to Heymann's role in this affair. His career and professional history deserves far more scrutiny than has been paid thus far.
"More importantly: I'm unclear on whether its author is US Attorney Carmen Ortiz or her deputy AUSA Stephen Heymann"
Ortiz would have gotten all the positive, "tough on crime...saved us from big bad person...," press so let her get the other side. The buck stops at her, it's not like this wasn't a famous case, that she was unaware of it.
However, if MIT (the "victim") had publicly said to forget it, USDOJ, politically, would have found it almost impossible to continue the trial and waste considerable resources.
I gave my support to this one because it's actually well-written (free from obvious grammatical errors in the first sentence) and targets exactly the right person.
While I have mixed feelings about the idea of governments pardoning people who should never have been prosecuted in the first place (think of Turing -- why should the government get to absolve themselves of their misdeeds so easily?), this petition might be more likely to get a real response than ones calling for the reprimand or firing of high-level government employees.
I thought the idea with Turing's pardon was that pardoning him implies that he did something wrong which is clearly not the case. What do you think about this argument?
There is that implication as well. There is also the implication (Turing again being used as the example) that only a famous person who contributed greatly to society is worthy of "forgiveness", and the government doesn't need to bother acknowledging that other "regular people" harmed under the same unjust law.
I mean, they're allowed to respond by saying "No comment" or, more likely, a totally white-washed PR report extolling the virtues of a marginally related task force or agency that seems to completely miss the point.
They responded to the petition for Obama to resign and to allow secession...the response may be whitewashed (or, rather, not to people's liking), but it at least puts the case in the spotlight again. And for those who think Ortiz's political career should carry this baggage, it becomes harder for her to disassociate her history from this.
The secession petitions are even more ridiculous when you realise that it only takes 25,000 signatures to get a response (Louisiana, the least populous state on the list, has a population of a little over 4.5 million according to Wikipedia) and the signers didn't even have to be a resident of the state calling for secession.
It seems like its picking up, judging by coming back and forth every couple hours. Deadline still far away, BUT seriously this Administration is a joke even bigger than Bush so do not expect Washington to go along with it and actually do something.
Recently they replied to Piers Morgan deportation petition [1] that we should not forget about the first when talking about the second amendment... the problem is that US Supreme ruled multiple times US Constitution does not apply to non-citizens. So their response seriously is a waste of someone times and our tax dollars.
On the other hand, issues on less important matter will get very deep and thorough response, including youtube videos! [2]
Come to think that this guy and his Administration will run the country for another 4 years, I really do not know what to expect this soil will look like...
"With MIT President Emeritus Charles M. Vest currently serving as a Trustee of JSTOR parent Ithaka as well as a Trustee of The MIT Corporation, one might have expected MIT to issue a statement similar to the let's-put-this-behind-us one JSTOR made on the Swartz case back in 2011."
I had been wondering if JSTOR was really as hands-off as they made themselves out to be. This suggests at least one financial incentive MIT might have had for cooperating on this case.
> MIT President Emeritus Charles M. Vest currently serving as a Trustee of JSTOR parent Ithaka
I've met him a few times in the past: From what little interaction I've had, I find it hard to believe his attitude was "Teach that meddling kid a lesson!!1!". I'd also wonder if "trustee" borders on an ex-officio designation. (I forget his latest gig... NAS? Something like that.) Of course I could be wrong, but my money would be elsewhere.
Wait a minute? your telling me the system built to protect Americans are bullies who just force you to admit your guilty? say it ain't so.
It's unfortunate that no one talks about how normal. Speaking as someone who has small dealings with our system I can honestly say they are not your friend. They will lie to your parents, lie to your spouse and lie to your neighbors in hopes of making you sign a guilty plea. They Press will spin it's own story to make a buck or two. Now you ask where's the truth? (I don't have the answer to that)
I really doubt that much will change over this, as the (cynical) reason that the US Attorney General went after Swartz is because he wanted to make American's quite clear that he won't tolerate this behavior.
Keep in mind that part of our Judicial system does is create fear so you won't commit the same crime. Sadly that's all he was after here, fear. :(
Unfortunately it will take thousands more deaths before our leaders start listening. It's too Bad America isn't 'We The People' any longer... :(
Which also means he most likely never saw it. In any case I've been involved with, it typically takes at least a couple of days after the court filing for a document to filter through the other attorney to the party.
how do people feel about MIT's negligence of making an active decision on the matter; thereby passively contributing to fed's attempt to make the case?
> The e-mail that Defendant Swartz's supplemental memorandum cites as paramount to his fifth motion to suppress [evidence against him] is relevant, but not nearly as important as he tries to make it out to be
I'm sorry, "chided"? This is just a legal argument. It's what happens in court proceedings. And it's pretty tame. It's not personal, and while it names "Defendant Swartz", what it really means is his attorneys since they are the ones that submitted the memo. There is no malice in this statement at all. This headline is sensationalist.
Yes, Swartz was bullied by the government. This is not an example of it, and it's a shameful attempt at shifting blame for a tragedy.
I find it surprising they get involved with this. I'd assume they get involved in matters of national security, if they suspect him to be part of criminal organization of some sort or to be a spy.
Or maybe somebody who is very influential asked them to...
I don't like conspiration theories but their involvement with this sounds off to me and deserves at least clarification.
The Secret Service was established to fight counterfeiting and had been a branch of the Treasury Dept until recently. Fraud and cybercrime are among the things they cover and not all of these crimes are movie worthy
The Secret Service was originally created to fight counterfeiting, not protect government officials. And they are also currently tasked with investigating financial crime and major fraud in addition to protecting high-ranking government officials. I'm guessing the fraud charges brought them in on this case.
Crazy that they're talking about Swartz's laptop in that email. Is the government so blind as to think that he would actually have all of those documents on his computer? I wonder what the laws are surrounding content kept in the cloud. Is that "possession"?
This is currently the top story on Hacker News. Instead of dealing with the fact that someone's depression caused them to commit suicide, they are casting about for blame.
That's not a very healthy way to deal with this situation. But I realize what you are all doing: you are trying to use his horrible death as a political statement to further your causes (something about making academic papers free and accessible, nothing to die over, especially if you have to deal with the cops).
If you can't do the time, or deal with the repercussions without killing yourself, don't do the crime. Also I find the reaction on Hacker News disgustingly trying to use this to further their narrow agenda.
So to respond to the title of this top thread: who cares if he was chided?? No reason to kill yourself! Give me a break! Show the man some respect.
Suicide is the catalyst, but it is not the reason for the protest. The reason is that no U.S. citizen should face 30 years in prison, $1,000,000 in fines, and a trial that would lead to financial ruin (no matter the outcome) for making publicly funded documents public. This reads like something that would happen in China, not here.
I agree that ultimately Aaron is ultimately responsible for his own suicide. Just as surely as the attorney is responsible for bullying, threatening, and overzealous, selective prosecution.
Oh stop. 30+ years for downloading and distributing scientific articles that were paid for by public funds is cruel and unusual punishment. With your attitude, if the law on the books was to punish Rosa Parks with the death penalty than that's what she deserved and she shouldn't have "done the crime if she couldn't do the time." Come one, what pedantic gibberish.
Sure, he was in a tough situation, and I'll admit I don't know the entire backstory of what led up to this man's suicide(although there is no shortage of information on the HN front page as of late), but there is nobody that can be held responsible for his suicide other than himself.
It is self-evident that this man was well-respected in the online community.
He killed himself. Nobody else is responsible for that extraordinary action. We can only speculate on his exact reasoning for doing it, but I would suspect a man in that state of mind may not be acting completely rationally and just wanted to escape but sadly could not find a way out other than ending his own life.
Let's celebrate his life and accomplishments and stop trying to find people to blame.