Though I'd like to see Oritz fired, and think she's deserving of it, the effort to get her fired is blinding us to a bigger problem and a proper solution. The system was broken long before Oritz and Swartz, but it wasn't until it affected someone we like that we noticed. But we're in a bubble, and the vast majority of Americans do not care who Aaron Swartz is, will not be affected by this tragedy like we were, and in general think that prosecutors need all the tools they can get to put "bad" people in prison.
The American people love tough-on-crime policies, and it's not possible to publicly shame a public official, or get her fired, for doing something that most of the public supports. If we want to make change, we need to move the needle on the public's perception of crime. That's a hard problem, and it's not as easy as signing a petition, but it's a problem we'll never be able to solve if we're blinded by trying to exact vengeance on a prosecutor.
Edited to add: if Oritz were likely to be fired, then I agree it would be a great starting point for a larger movement. But my point is that changing public opinion of tough-on-crime policies is a prerequisite for getting Oritz fired. A prosecutor is not going to be fired for engaging in normal conduct that is loved by the public, even if the outcome in this case was tragic.
Even though getting officials fired is not your preferred method to help jumpstart reform there are no reasons for you to discourage others of doing so.
If you think you have a better axis of attack on this problem, I beg you, please lead an effort on that axis.
If we waited for a consensus on the best manner to proceed before doing anything, noting would ever get done.
To make a comparison relevant to this community, imagine that HN was used to shame others starting businesses that don't use the best consensus methods or ideas. How many good startups would never see the day?
With startups, more than 90% of attempts fail. I'm pretty sure that attempts at changing the system don't have better odds. If we reduce the efforts to a single attempt, there is 90% chances it will fail.
Also, consider that special interests have probably built legal and political walls in the most obvious paths of change. It's worth trying all fronts to find a weakness especially the newer little known ones.
> Even though getting officials fired is not your preferred method to help jumpstart reform there are no reasons for you to discourage others of doing so.
Yes there are, if you think that it's not going to work and that the attempt is discouraging people from looking for solutions that will.
You could make the same comment if someone attempted to prove P!=NP, and someone else said "your proof has a mistake here, and by the way, people have been trying your general approach for decades and it's never yielded anything".
(I do, however, agree that attempts to get officials fired are more likely to succeed than attempts to prove P!=NP.)
Even though getting officials fired is not your preferred method to help jumpstart reform there are no reasons for you to discourage others of doing so.
Exactly. Bottom-up action is strongest when supported by a diversity of tactics. Alice may not like Bob's methodology, and Bob may not like Alice's, but when they expend their energy discouraging each other from doing something they believe in, neither have a shot at advancing their shared cause. Gatekeepers are the undeclared allies of power.
Put your energy into action you believe in, and let the chips fall where they may.
Crowdsourcing the destruction of the career of an out-of-control prosecutor is a repeatable process, and, as Internet forums gain mass, a process that will get easier to apply.
In other words, this is the public perception of crime on the move. You can see this in other areas of discourse, like cannabis legalization, getting rid of red light cameras that have been shown to increase collisions, etc.
Crowds are fickle and fatigue easily. We become indifferent to things which previously affronted us. It is a natural coping mechanism to prevent the monopolization of our limited attention spans.
For example, gun violence has been a constant thing in the US. The crowds get tired of hearing about it and the drive for legislation goes no where. However, when something out of the "ordinary" happens, such as the grievous Newtown murders, the attention of the crowd has been once again achieved. Politicians know this and the ones pushing legislation know they need to act fast before fatigue and indifference kick in, and the ones against the legislation know it's a waiting game.
My point is that the process of crowds demanding the removal of an out of control prosecutor isn't going to get easier (aka more likely to happen) just because it happened this time.
We have a limited window to act based on the attention of the crowd that has resulted form Aaron's suicide. I believe when people say something to the effect of "your missing the point" when removing a specific prosecutor, they are trying to get this point across.
In our limited window of action, we can remove someone specific, or find away to address the more general problem of prosecutorial overreach while we still have the mic. Ideally that more general approach would not depend on the continual outrage of the crowds.
Would that I had more than one upvote to give you.
That petition is a flawed and bloody flag that many seem willing to follow for the moment. The question is, is it possible to take the momentary outrage at this one prosecutor and turn it into a forceful pressure for reform of a system that is deeply and badly broken.
Yea, because it's really great that we have a system where we vote for some person who disappears for two years and doesn't do anything that represents what anyone who for them wanted.
either way it doesn't make a difference if the politician are not accountable and the public is not informed.
What we have now, practically globally, is manipulated oligarchy dressed as democracy.
Here's the thing about petitions: they aren't for convincing the people they're addressed to. They're for rallying the signers. Publicly writing your name down next to a cause triggers several psychological reactions resulting in your being more committed to the cause. Studies have shown that getting someone to sign a petition increases the probability that they will later take further action toward the cause in question.
So they are quite effective. They're just also a little sneaky.
You make lots of good points, especially by stating that getting Oritz fired should not be the end-goal. A larger effort will be needed to start swaying the general population's opinion on tough-on-crime policies.
There are many ways to approach the problem, but every resolution needs a beginning. That is how I view the Oritz initiative: a beginning. I'm sure that other government workers are taking notice and will likely adjust their behavior in the future, even if we can't quantify it. In that sense we've already made progress.
I only wish this effort could have begun under less tragic circumstances.
He could only get the 6 month (rather than 35 years) prison sentence by waiving his right to a fair trial. So exercising his constitutionally guaranteed right would result in a seventy-fold increase in his worst-case outcome.
> He could only get the 6 month (rather than 35 years) prison sentence by waiving his right to a fair trial.
If he willingly engaged in a jury trial and somehow still got convicted, with a strict judge, and a jury that hates him, and an incompetent defense, he still wouldn't get anything approaching a 35-year sentence.
Is it really too much to ask to not use hyperbole for matters as serious as this? You could just as well be saying that the taxpayers are paying for Sandra Fluke to have sex.
Please, please, I'm begging you all: By setting up an echo chamber and inventing your own "facts" and then taking action based on that made-up dream world, you're just as wrong as "the other side".
> he still wouldn't get anything approaching a 35-year sentence.
You don't know that.
As tptacek and an actual computer criminal defense lawyer points out:
Granick: Important to remember much lower burden on prosecution at sentencing; “reasonable” loss claims on “preponderance of evidence”. Net-net: If charged with 13 felonies, you can’t lose on ANY, because even if acquitted on 12, they strike back at sentencing.
From this I conclude the game-theoretic payoff matrix is the message: don't bet on a fair trial, even if you're completely innocent. Prisoner's Dilemma indeed.
You are. You're skipping the most important part of the criminal process: the trial.
* don't bet on a fair trial, even if you're completely innocent. *
Hyperbole, and dangerous exaggeration. The "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard is a very high standard. I've won jury trials where the evidence all supported the prosecution's case (seriously, I had no evidence) but was not sufficient to reach this standard. Federal judges are even stricter at forcing federal prosecutors to satisfy this standard--they'll frequently dismiss the case without even letting the jury deliberate.
If you think jury trials are patently unfair, you need to actually go down to a courtroom and watch the jury trials. You'll learn a lot, and you'll discover that the justice system is not even remotely as lopsided as you think it is...once you get to the trial stage. (But yes, it's definitely lopsided in favor of the prosecution at every stage before trial.
But I didn't say "jury trials are patently unfair" or even that trials in general are impossible to win.
Aaron was weighing a guaranteed felony record and 6 months in prison against 0 (if acquitted on all 13 charges) to 50 years at some unknowable probability.
Clearly the prosecutor wanted him to think that invoking his right to a trial was a "bad bet".
>he still wouldn't get anything approaching a 35-year sentence.
What difference do you think this makes? Even a 1 year sentence will utterly destroy your life. And that's just your life outside. God forbid you get raped or something during that time.
He could have either taken 6 months and the charge, or the maximum sentence. Note: This happens every single day for all types of crimes all around the US.
That's the most terrible thing about it - it happens every day that people are bullied into surrendering their right to fair trial, and nobody cares. With current system, the right for fair trial is mainly for somebody that could afford to spend a million dollar on it or that is famous enough to have public support and donations. For average Joe, once you got charged with a crime, your life is ruined in any case, whatever jury says. And given that prosecutors have much more knowledge of how juries work than you - getting a bargain may be your only chance to be free in next 10 years or so.
I don't find the "other top HN post right now" regarding this, but as I understand it [paraphrasing], nobody told him "hey, you'll probably get 6 months", they only told him "hmm, you can reduce it to 25 years. maybe. if you beg."
"If convicted on these charges, SWARTZ faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1
million."
If they're happy to use the figure when seeking media attention, they have to accept its use when they're in trouble.
Except he wasn't facing 35 years in prison...If he wanted to take the charge he could have, but he was facing 6 months if he wanted to look out for his best interests. The comments here keep making it seem that he was going to realistically do 30+ years in prison which is obviously incorrect.
he wasn't accepting admitting to being a felon so it was very likely he was in fact going to get 35 years in prison for a TOS violation.
Also, the practice of "admit you're guilty, else go to prison for (life|35 years)" is a common practice of totalitarian states used to crush dissenters and activists.
A guilty verdict from a jury is not an automatic maximum sentence. The mostly-mandatory Federal Sentencing Guidelines would have called for an actual sentence of 4-10 months in this case.
In the federal system, broad classes of crimes ("murder", "robbery", "wire fraud") have been assigned maximum sentences. For example, under no conditions can a sentence for wire fraud exceed 20 years (you get to the theoretical max of 35 in this case by adding the other charges, but they in the case everything would likely be folded into wire fraud on sentencing because all of the charges were based on the same conduct).
But most defendants convicted of wire fraud (even by a jury) don't serve 20 years. In fact, many first-time offenders don't serve anywhere close to that -- it's usually under a year.
Instead, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines [1] are a mostly-mandatory (there are constitutional reasons why judges are allowed to depart from the Guidelines, but it's rare and requires justification) system to calculate a range that a defendant will actually serve following a jury conviction.
Here, wire fraud is a "level 7" offense.[2] That offense level can be adjusted upward or downward based on other facts of the crime (e.g., was stock fraud involved? add 4). Assuming that Orrin Kerr was right and the total loss was $5,000 or less, there would be no adjustments and so Aaron's offense level would be 7.
Take that to the sentencing chart[3] and you can calculate that if Aaron had no priors he would be in criminal history category I and have an offense level of 7, which would be a sentence of 4-10 months. That's unpleasant, but it's a far cry from being "likely ... to get 35 years."
In fact, if you look at the sentencing chart, the only way for a first-time offender to have a Guidelines range of 35 years is to be above an offense level of 40. It takes serious work to get there: even a wire fraud of more than $300,000,000 in damages won't get you to that offense level. To get an offense level of 40, you're looking at first degree murder.
Familiarize yourself with the sentencing guidelines and you can see what was actually likely. A judge _could_ depart from the guidelines, but sentences significantly above the guidelines for a first-time offender are all but guaranteed to be struck down on appeal.
To take another example of the difference between maximum and actual sentences: the maximum sentence for murder in many states is death, but not everyone convicted of murder gets the death penalty.
Edit: Incidentally, the prosecutor is constitutionally _required_ to inform defendant of the full statutory maximum sentence, even if it's not realistic in a particular case. Failing to do so can be grounds for reversal of a plea or conviction. That doesn't mean the prosecutor has to tell the media, but he/she must tell the defendant.
If these numbers are really all just meaningless and in "reality" he was really only looking at...a year? why is it that nobody, even sources like Lessig, seem to be saying this.
> If these numbers are really all just meaningless and in "reality" he was really only looking at...a year? why is it that nobody, even sources like Lessig, seem to be saying this.
Because it goes in opposition to the worldview they're trying to push...? Everyone has a bias, you, me, Dr. Lessig, aaronsw, the prosecutors, EVERYONE.
It's like when the music/movie industry tries to claim that an illegally copied media file costs them hundreds of thousands in damages.
In this case you could theoretically get to 35+ by taking up all the charges, handing down sequential sentences (as opposed to the more-normal concurrent sentences), and somehow making all of those individual sentences go to the upper range of the permitted scale.
I and a few others have been trying to point out that 35 years in prison was never an actual option for some days now but I think it's kind of gotten lost in the storm...
> I and a few others have been trying to point out that 35 years in prison was never an actual option for some days now but I think it's kind of gotten lost in the storm...
here's what would help. If you are in fact a criminal law attorney and know these things via practice, or if you can point us all to some links of well respected criminal attorneys, without a stake in the case, on the record saying "it's very unlikely he would get more than four years".
Yes, we are all aware of the plea bargain. There have been several discussions about it already; I think most of us are disturbed by the implications of the practice.
I agree with what you are saying but I think many who would sign this petition don't want systematic legal changes for human rights, they want law enforcement to have a free hand to pressure with plea bargaining, profiling, torture, oppressing certain minorities, and generally police state powers to protect "us". What they want is preferential protections to better differentiate us vs. them and for "us" not to be caught in an oppressive legal system. Someone might identify with Aaron but not with a Troy Davis, who was executed in Texas based on false evidence. So maybe a petition makes more sense for such people.
There's also the issue that classifying Ortiz's handling of this case as "prosecutorial abuse" is a subjective opinion that there is a notable segment of the population that will see it as anything but.
Obama could ask her to resign then there would be no need for public justification. I doubt it'll happen though. Doing so wouldn't score enough political points, given it's not a sufficiently mainstream issue, to make it worth Obama's while.
It's way worse than that. Obama's track record on abusing DoJ power against citizens is well established. Indefinite detention. Whistleblower prosecutions. Bradley Manning. The list is not short.
It'd be great to see the president forced to disown Ortiz; perhaps it'd make the rest of the DoJ afraid he wouldn't back them up on their similar adventures. Realistically, though, this is not (yet) a large political threat to Obama.
Yeah, Obama's shiny happy image has enabled the Democrats to get through legislation that would have created an uproar had it been pushed through during the Bush admin. Sad.
> Overall, there is a feeling that Aaron Swartz’ death has to mark the beginning of a change. This petition could be a ticket and an opportunity for the administration to begin such a change, if nothing else, just by firing an overreaching prosecutor. That would be a symbolic action that would still send a message, albeit a weak one, but it would go a long way for many. In contrast, a nonaction from the administration would be a signal that vigilante justice is the only remaining option, which would be unfortunate on many levels.
This is a silly article. There are actually steps that happen before the firing of an official, most notably an investigation. But this article reads as: "We got 25,000 signatures, if the President doesn't ax her then people will resort to armed revolt"
(I'll skip the debate on whether it's good for a government to be directed by the popularity of an online petition, unless people favor the country renamed to 'The United States of Bieber')
The main point is that action in government is slow. And for good reason. If people want to hold onto the fantasy that when a bunch of people get angry, the government will take drastic action...then fine...but people who really want to see change should be prepared to accept that the original problem (the case against Swartz) may not be satisfactory dealt with, but that attitudes change and reform can eventually happen, as long as the people who care continue to speak up and apply pressure.
In Lawrence Lessig's essay titled "Prosecutor as Bully", he writes the following in his last paragraph:
Somehow, we need to get beyond the "I'm right so I'm right to nuke you" ethics that dominates our time.
If that's the case, threatening "vigilante justice" based on 25,000 signatures would seem to indicate those who want to see action against the prosecutors have failed to learn that lesson and are only interested in continuing the downward spiral.
Let's try to eliminate the equivocating, shall we? One the one hand, we have someone who was being threatened with being imprisoned for half his life, for doing something that couldn't have possibly merited that kind of retribution. On the other hand, we have a person being threatened with being removed from an position of power so that she (hopefully) can't abuse power over others again. She most likely will be able to get another job, and more importantly, won't have to live most of her life behind bars.
Yeah I love how people keep acting like "oh, his life was ruined so now you need to ruin hers?" NO, we need to make her not have the power to ruin more lives. If because of this, her and her millionaire husband manage to rationalize this as their lives being ruined while not caring about the kid's death they are responsible for than that really tells one everything they would need to know about the content of their character.
Maybe it's worth hearing Aaron's own words to understand the folly of attacking this one person:
When you’re upset with someone, all you want to do is change the way they’re acting. But you can’t control what’s inside a person’s head. Yelling at them isn’t going to make them come around, it’s just going to make them more defiant, like the GM workers who keyed the cars they made.
No, you can’t force other people to change. You can, however, change just about everything else. And usually, that’s enough.
-- http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/nummi
You want to fix how she behaves. Instead, change everything else. Change the system she operated in. There's a way to do that without violence, either physical or "cyber".
You won't find me in disagreement with a campaign to change or repeal the CFAA and similar laws. But I think you mistake the point of attempts to remove these prosecutors. It isn't about them as individuals, it's about them as symbols of the broken system they represent. I would not be surprised to learn that the average prosecutor would have done exactly what these ones did, but that's the issue. You can't be a saint while working in a factory whose product is human imprisonment. We need to shut down the factory and turn it back into a justice system, and in the meantime disgorging a high profile offender can serve as a warning to the others -- that seems like something prosecutors should be able to relate to.
Don't you think their goal was to make the next politically-motivated hacktivist think twice before unleashing hell on some university, business or individual?
If you want to go and double down on his mistake, fine. Just don't expect a different response from the government when you do so.
Or, perhaps, instead of promoting "vigilante justice", you could make a rational argument and campaign with your local representatives to get these overly generalized laws and overly punitives sentencing guidelines changed.
He was never in danger of being locked away for half his life even on the revised trumped-up charges. Please read http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5063435 as it's a well-sourced comment, unlike mine.
I would suggest that asking that someone be removed from a position of power that they are to all appearances misusing; is not vigilante justice.
In point of fact, it is the proper procedure to ask that someone who has abused the public trust and shown a lack of judgment be removed from a position that requires trustworthiness and judgment.
Vigilante justice would be hacking into her personal files and threatening her life; asking her boss to fire her is the furthest you can get from that.
Speaking of which; if anyone is thinking about acting directly against Ms. Ortiz or Mr. Heymann, I would discourage that as strongly as possible; it would be counterproductive as well as criminal.
My comment is not in response to the petition itself, but into the threats that are going around with respect to actual vigilante justice as described in the original article and by the original comment.
Just a - friendly - reminder that the field that such ethics operate on isn't always symmetrical. At the other end of every "I'm right so I nuke you" you will find some "I'm right but they nuke me", and if you're looking for a rational explanation why rational people may consider "vigilante justice", you'll probably find it there.
"There are actually steps that happen before the firing of an official, most notably an investigation."
Actually, if she's a political appointee, she can be fired at any time.
My recollection is the head prosecutors of each office are considered political appointees, but the assistant prosecutors are not. This has come up before.
I could be completely wrong in this recollection, however :)
> The main point is that action in government is slow. And for good reason. If people want to hold onto the fantasy that when a bunch of people get angry, the government will take drastic action...then fine...
Sandy Hook was one month ago and the President is having a big news conference tomorrow about the administrations response re: gun violence. Is that "slow"? "drastic action"? something else?
It's 25 dead children who were completely innocent of any crime. It's an incident in a long line of incidents over many decades in which many innocent people were killed.
I think you need to calibrate your moral barometer a bit better.
Here's a likely controversial statement: I am much more worried about the effects of prosecutorial overreach on our society than I am about gun violence.
We are rapidly developing a "criminalized culture" to which the easy and popular response to everything is "put them in jail". Sandy Hook was a horrible tragedy, to be sure, but in my mind, our growing population of prisoners is a much more concerning problem.
Violence as a cause of death has continued to drop in the US. It is no longer in the top 15 ways people die in the US[1]. The worst year for massacres in the US was 1929 and worst occurred in 1927 (45 dead by explosive).
Yet suicide is in the top 10 and mental illness is under funded. Risk factors are what the President should concentrate on, not the incident of the moment. A President coming up to the podium and announcing a serious attempt at dealing with mental illness in this country would fix more problems than something that is declining without the President's attention.
Prohibition era violence may have created more massacres, but they were much smaller. And the people killed were much less likely to be innocent bystanders.
September 11 and Oklahoma are listed in a different category (terrorism). I guess I should have used the matching terminology better and said "mass shooting".
Prohibition era violence had a whole lot of bystanders killed. 1929 had the most in number according to Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has done a lot of research in the area.
He also point out that although there was a rise in mass shootings from 1960 to 1990, a decline started in 2000.
I should also point out that neither incident you cited had guns involved.
The Bath School disaster, which you referred to, may have had a gun involved, but was very much not a mass shooting.
There may have been a decline in mass shootings since 2000, but in the last several years there has been a cluster. Whether this is an anomaly or a trend is too early to tell.
I agree that Prohibition era violence had a whole lot of bystanders killed. But compared to the number of gangsters killed, the proportion was much lower than the massacres that I pointed to. For example in 9/11, hijackers and armed military personnel were under 2.5% of the fatalities.
Yeah, I got caught in and edit to point out that the highest school killing was not a gun incident. The highest mass shooting at a school was Virginia Tech.
My point, is that gun violence is not increasing, instead it is decreasing despite the media attention. If the media and people would look at actual risk factors in our world, we would be a lot better off. Mental illness is such a thing.
GGP commment made an unqualified statement "action in government is slow" adding that the idea of "drastic action" was a "fantasy". I countered by noting that in the present day the government is moving very fast on at least one particular issue. We will know tomorrow whether the action is drastic. Full stop.
How many mass murders has it taken to get to this point? How is that "drastic" or "very fast"? Oh, wait, there's a commission that might "recommend" we re-enact legislation that expired a few years ago? How is that "drastic"? How is that "very fast"?
As the GGP said, what's gonna happen first is an investigation and a review. Why the need to jump to "vigilante justice"?
The end result of "vigilante justice" is going to be more young people squandering their careers and futures, creating further justification for harsh sentencing and prosecution of "hacktivists", and probably just more work and demand for the very people they are trying to unseat.
Blowing this situation out of proportion and encouraging rash behavior is not going to solve the underlying problems.
Mass murders may be flashy, but they are not a large problem. They only feel large. Immediate fast response here is a political tool to push policies that have little to do with stopping school shootings, not a governance tool. (Evidence: almost no proposed policies show any evidence that they could have prevented this shooting, even if they were magically 100% effective; for instance, "more background checks" doesn't prevent someone from stealing a gun obtained by somebody else, as in this case, and so on.)
Prosecutor overreach is a much more widespread problem, though absolute quantification is difficult. It isn't hard to rate it as a much bigger problem than mass murders, because mass murders are a very, very small problem right now. It may not rate next to our other problems we face right now, though.
(If saying mass murders aren't a big problem right now bothers you, let me also make this observation, which is that non-mass murders are also a much bigger problem than mass murders. Just the murders that can be directly traced to our War on Drugs, many of which also hit school-aged children, is a much larger problem than mass murder right now. Murders in Chicago alone is a significantly larger problem than mass murders.)
Regulations mandating safer showers and bathtubs would save more lives, and far more hospital visits, than getting rid of all of the assault weapons in the USA.
As for prosecutorial overreach, I believe that it is part of the reason why the USA has a higher portion of its population in prison than ANY other country in the world. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat... if you don't believe me. And our "justice" system is not race neutral. South Africa under apartheid did not imprison as high a portion of its black population as the US does now. In major cities about 80% of black males have a criminal record. This contributes to their difficulty in getting jobs. Which in turn contributes to the economic circumstances that perpetuate these shocking statistics.
We are living in a post-civilized society, insofar as civilization implies city-rooted social order. We live in the era of continent-scaled nation-states.
Am I the only one embarrassed by the blatant errors in that petition? The first sentence is a run-on grammatical non sequitor. The rest of the petition conveys a muddled thought process that seems blinded by outrage. Did the author even bother to proofread that thing before submitting it?
There are plenty of other reasons to pass on this petition. That said, this displays less polish and thought than an email I typically send to my boss. I wouldn't blame the White House for ignoring a plea that reads more like a teenager's facebook rant. It certainly appears to have involved the same level of critical thinking.
I say this only to help in the future: (Life Pro Tip style)
Do your writing/editing in a separate app/editor window, and then copy/paste it in. This applies to important emails as well, to prevent hitting send before your final draft is done.
I was in the midst of changing the tense; I should have written it in emacs and then copied it into the form once I was happy with it. So it goes.
I'm actually wondering whether a more considered phrasing would have done worse.
As it is the main goal of putting the headline into Barack Obama's eyeballs has been reached, and Ms. Ortiz knows that her boss is making the political calculation of whether she is a liability or an asset.
Unfortunately this will come no where near close to the President's eyeballs. It will be reviewed and responded to by some low level staff group who has been tasked to wade thru all of the petitions (and nonsense like the Death Star) which get 25k votes.
> Unfortunately this will come no where near close to the President's eyeballs.
I'm not so sure. Obama must have been aware of the protests over SOPA last year, because it was a major news item. Swartz' death is almost as big a news item; certainly the UK media have given it significant coverage[1].
I would imagine that Obama is aware at least of roughly who Swartz was and why people are angry, and so are most other US politicians. And we all saw how quickly they caved on SOPA.
So the alternative is to do nothing? Which is better? At least this gets some momentum going, hopefully being picked up by press, maybe even them questioning the president about it at some later interview.
Doing nothing means nothing will get done. This is probably exactly what the government would like you to do.
"The people rose up and caused a sea change in Washington" ~ Aaron Swartz
From all accounts I've heard, he's pretty focused on the details. And the petitions site is one of the few direct feedback channels from the electorate to him. That said he is a busy man who will delegate the research to others. If he does decide that telling her to resign will get him in the good graces of an important constituency; things will probably happen rather quickly.
Given the flood of news stories on Aaron's death over the weekend, it's a pretty sure bet the issue is on the radar of some mid-to-high level staffers. At the edges, to be certain, but there's an awareness of it, I'm sure.
"There is also an ongoing petition to fire assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Heymann, also connected with the events that led to the tragic suicide of prodigy Aaron Swartz. That petition has yet to reach its goal." https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-...
Am I the only one that finds these petitions pointless? They marginalize any real activism down to just some signatures by loosely-connected individuals and really just provide a forum for speaking to your elected officials - something they're supposed to be there for anyway - in a format that has none of the financial "umph" that lobbyists bring.
They aren't inherently totally pointless. If they reach the 25,000 "signatures" required to trigger a response, that becomes somewhat of a news item more likely to spill into the mainstream news, thus drawing some attention to whatever the issue is, which is always somewhat helpful.
But certainly they are less effective than real protest, or real physical letters sent to lawmakers, so if done in lieu of those things then that's a problem.
I suspect that the data driven Obama administration has full capability to estimate the likelihood of citizens rioting, and determined that providing a "lazy" outlet for frustration would undermine real protest.
It's like how facebook lets you complain about some horrible injustice, which makes you feel like you've done something even though you've done next to nothing.
Very worried.
Especially since I see it happening to me too. When we went to war in Iraq, I was out in the streets marching and holding protest signs. So was almost everyone I know. If we declared war on Iran, would the same happen? My bet is you'd see lots of complaining on facebook, and a petition to not go to war. Maybe emailed letters to representatives in congress. But actual street protests? No way, we can just let anonymous annoy some people for us.
I think these are actually one of the few things that can be done, showing the government, that there are many people unhappy about this case out there, and that something has to be changed.
It's true, that these petitions are not big deals, but usually things don't change rapidly, it's a process, and cutting the arms that hurt us is it's first step. Obviously, most probably they won't get cut, but at least they won't get promoted, for God's sake.
This petition could be a ticket and an opportunity for the administration to begin such a change...
Yeah, because we all know how well Obama's "change" went. How's gitmo going? What about those executive orders? Seen any drones in the Middle East or northern Africa lately? Surely there is no more cronyism in the White House or Justice Department. I realize not every promise can be kept, but I've never regretted a vote like I did the vote for him (not that I ever would have voted for McCain).
The point is this administration has shown it could care less about change. Don't expect anything, much less anything positive, to come of this.
I'm not sure what this petition is trying to accomplish. Do you think, should the President fire Ms Ortiz, she would be replaced by someone completely different? Her actions are a reflection of the entire justice system; the person who replaces her will continue with the same bullying, "String 'em up in Town Square"-style tactics as she did. Everything will continue as it has been, but now the affluent, Bay-area 20-somethings who were originally so outraged will kick up their feet and go back to not caring about the justice system because they think they effected some sort of change.
I was so surprised with the HN community's response. So many people saw that Aaron had committed suicide and thought, with their ninja-rockstar-hacker intelligence, that we should go on a witch-hunt and burn Ms Ortiz at the stake. Doesn't that seem like the worst possible thing to do in a time when we have very little facts?
I'm not seeing much to remove Heymann or Garland. There's another petition for Heymann, but that's not getting near as much traction as the Ortiz one, even when I've seen numerous commenters claim he was the one behind the case.
What's going on with these petitions is exactly the tactic politicians use to calm the populace down when they're screaming for something to be done after a scandal or catastrophe. Removing Ortiz would give everyone the vengeance they desire but it wouldn't do a damn thing because the people qualified to replace her are all just like her.
That's a good point regarding the petition, which is why direct action against these people should not be limited to signing the petition.
Indeed, they should be harried out of their professional and private lives as thoroughly and relentlessly as they drove Swartz to suicide. Their lives should be made not worth living.
Ms Ortiz was making Swartz "an example" by throwing the kitchen sink at him so nobody else thinks about "hacking".
The ones among us who signed the petition want to make AG Ortiz "an example" by asking for her head in a platter, so prosecutors think twice before using these tactics.
Let me point out every prosecutor threatens the accused. Whether you were caught stealing gold or chewing gum.
I doubt this "prosecutor" even knew the details of the "crime" or cared. I doubt she was ever briefed on the details of Aaron's life or cared too hear it. That's what she has assistants for.
And that's the problem with the system. Prosecutors don't take time (except on TV) to learn about the accused. They just go straight for the throat. Be dammed the circumstances.
It's not enough to go after one prosecutor. Change the system.
I think this whole petition is a mistaken diversion. This issue is bigger than Ms. Ortiz. The fact is that she was only doing her job in the way that the Congress and the Administration very much expected her to do. Take this up with those who gave her the weapons: the laws she was using and the common procedures she was using. Take it up with those who very much wanted those weapons ready and used to silence an activist.
I seem to recall a story about a Pepsi employee who made a bad decision that cost Pepsi over 10 million dollars. The CEO called him into his office, and the employee shuffled in saying, "I guess you are gonna fire me now." To which the CEO Exclaimed, "Fire You?! I Just Spent 10 million dollars educating you!"
They generally do not improve from moral/character flaws like being a power-seeking career-ambitious-to-the-exclusion-of-all-else asshole political climber.
Why is there not this type of outpouring of rage and internet hate the last few days for someone who is seriously being railroaded: Bradley Manning.
This is a person who has been locked up into solitary for months now and is being treated very inhumanely. Is it because he hasn't written any Python libraries and isn't visible in Silicon Valley?
You are making a logical argument, but change doesn't come from logic. What you should change should come from logic, but the impetus -- the will -- comes from emotion. People need to be stirred up in order to act. That is human nature. And when the cause of that is a tragedy it breaks our hearts, but that is why we must work to make it so that this does not happen again.
So argue that we should help Bradley Manning, or the inner city victims of the drug war, or children starving in Africa. But argue it somewhere else at some other time. Right now we have a cause. There are a large number of good people who want to fix this now. Let them. Help them. Because this needs to be fixed, and having a singular cause gives us focus. It puts success in reach, more than it is at any other time. You are not helping by distracting people with other serious problems -- all you are doing is making it less likely that anything gets done, by disheartening everyone with the scope of the problems we face.
We do not have to fix every problem in the world at the same time. Now is the time to fix this one.
I think this is describing exactly why I feel like a grumpy cynical jerk about this right now. The internet loves it causes. It loves to pontificate on forums and sign petitions to change things, just as long as these changes don't involve anything more than clicking buttons and typing things from laptops while sitting on the couch.
I'd rather people calmly review the facts about the people and things involved with the situation rather than do the standard internet mob thing and call for heads to roll and people to be fired. Wait to learn the details rather than rely on emotions before you get angry.
I think people pretty well understand the facts here. We have understood them for a long time. Current law makes everyone a criminal. Prosecutors threaten young people with excessive sentences to coerce them into plea bargains. None of this is new information. What we have lacked before is the will to do what is necessary to fix it.
And if you have an idea how to do that, let's hear it. Because "heads will roll" is not wholly without merit in these situations, but neither is it inherently the best possible solution. So if you can suggest something better then let's hear it.
Better suggestion: Find out first if the 30 year sentence was actually chosen to be handed down, or had to be put in place due to the way the law is currently written. If it is the latter demand the law be fixed, not the person who's job it is to enforce the law.
The trouble is that it's both. The law should never have allowed a sentence that ridiculous for the act Swartz allegedly committed, but prosecutors also choose what to charge. So we do need to fix the laws to prevent excessively aggressive prosecutors from having anything that outrageous to charge minor offenders with. I would even admit that that is the more important achievement.
But we still need to do something about excessively aggressive prosecutors too, because they can still do plenty of damage with knives and guns even after we take away their nuclear weapons.
And unlike normal whistleblowers, he wasn't even aware of the contents of the vast majority of classified material he exfiltrated.
Even at the level of "oh those are just diplomatic cables", those cables could just as easily have been "we need to focus on these nuclear weapons assemblies in Fooistan next" and tip off Islamist elements as to where to find their first dirty bomb, as of gossip about Berlusconi.
Only if it's followed up with a petition to "return all taxpayer money wasted on egoic pranks".
There was always a way forward to achieving Aaron's goals that didn't involve sneaking around. Whether he was right or wrong, he knew on some level that what he was doing was, at the very least, inappropriate and potentially harmful. If not, then why attempt to hide his face? If not, why even do it at all?
It's a sad and unfortunate fact that Aaron didn't found Demand Progress before he decided to do what he did. It's a sad and unfortunate fact that he will never have his day in court, or the opportunity to plead for mercy by showing that he'd learned his lesson and founded Demand Progress in an effort to take a better, more rational path to achieving his goals.
And it's a sad and unfortunate fact that we are wasting time on silly petitions that single out individuals rather than investing all that time and effort into changing the laws they were using against Aaron so that this kind of abuse never happens again. Instead, a bunch of young people are going to go out and do rash and ill considered things in the defense of someone who did a rash and ill considered thing and likely end up facing a similar, if not worse fate than he did.
It's a sad and unfortunate thing that, despite all of the collective intelligence on this and many other forums, there are very few adults willing to stand up and say "don't do rash and ill considered things unless you are willing to deal with the consequences".
Young people are prone to making bad choices, we should neither encourage them, nor seek to punish them disproportionately.
> Only if it's followed up with a petition to "return all taxpayer money wasted on egoic pranks".
If someone keys your car, and you spend $5,000,000 tracking them down to punish them, it doesn't mean they've wasted $5,000,000 of your money. It means you're a moron.
Yes, but you're in control of your own stupidity. My tax dollars, which I have no control over, went into this particular witch-hunt. Asking for a refund is not out of the question - even though I know it's never going to happen, the idea is to send the message that I do not approve.
>>sad and unfortunate fact that we are wasting time on silly petitions that single out individuals rather than
>>investing all that time and effort into changing the laws
Please elaborate on your track record in "investing time and effort into changing laws".
Let these silly 30,000+ petition voters to learn from an expert.
Ortiz was nominated to her position by Obama in 2009. She resides in Milton, MA where it just so happens Gov Patrick, Obama's close personal friend also resides.
She's well-connected and a double diversity quota. She's going nowhere.
From looking the petition page, this petition may have been grandfathered-in. (It says "SIGNATURES NEEDED BY FEBRUARY 11, 2013 TO REACH GOAL OF 25,000: 0")
It's a sad day when the mob campaigns to end the career of someone who's simply doing there job, rather than causing change to the actual law that defines how they do the job.
But this particular prosecutor was just a bully, right? Who had it out for Aaron out of personal hate, perhaps the Illuminati are involved also?
The only other reasoning is she was just doing her job and prosecuting a man who broke the actual law, and showed traits of an activist who could be a repeat offender, and was trying to deter him from getting into more serious trouble in the future.
A suspended sentence and a felony doesn't seem too bad if she was deterring him from something that could see him in jail 10 years with a plea bargain.
No mob is trying to "end the career" of some mid-level public servant for whimsical reasons.
The United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts is not someone just "doing their job", it is a very high-level position appointed to serve the public interest. What people want is to prevent this person from abusing the power entrusted in them any further.
It is a shame that the petition to pardon Swartz has 1/10th of the signatures that the petition to fire Ortiz has. Let's advocate for a government that forgives (alleged) crimes as strongly as we advocate for a government that punishes people like Ortiz.
He can't even be pardoned; the charges were dropped. Even if the charges were somehow still in effect, the proper thing to do would be to have the charges dropped entirely. A pardon implies guilt, it simply commutes the sentence of the convicted.
What if she gets fired and kills herself? Will they go after us?
It's a never ending war. We're all trying to punish people to give the exemple. Us trying to fire Ortiz is similar to Ortiz trying to prosecute Aaron Swartz.
> Us trying to fire Ortiz is similar to Ortiz trying to prosecute Aaron Swart
This is a democratic country. We get to campaign to replace our elected officials, and even the appointed ones too. It's our civic duty.
Do you seriously think that's anything like a government official abusing their power in an attempt to imprison a highly-regarded citizen for years and years for downloading bulk articles from the university library?
This witch hunt is incredibly disturbing. Not only do these petitions blatantly exclude some fundamental principles of government and society, but they distracts greatly from where our focus should lie.
The American people love tough-on-crime policies, and it's not possible to publicly shame a public official, or get her fired, for doing something that most of the public supports. If we want to make change, we need to move the needle on the public's perception of crime. That's a hard problem, and it's not as easy as signing a petition, but it's a problem we'll never be able to solve if we're blinded by trying to exact vengeance on a prosecutor.
Edited to add: if Oritz were likely to be fired, then I agree it would be a great starting point for a larger movement. But my point is that changing public opinion of tough-on-crime policies is a prerequisite for getting Oritz fired. A prosecutor is not going to be fired for engaging in normal conduct that is loved by the public, even if the outcome in this case was tragic.