U.S. Attorney Issues Statement On Aaron Swartz Case

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Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts has issued a statement on the Aaron Swartz case.

As a parent and a sister, I can only imagine the pain felt by the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, and I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy to everyone who knew and loved this young man. I know that there is little I can say to abate the anger felt by those who believe that this office's prosecution of Mr. Swartz was unwarranted and somehow led to the tragic result of him taking his own life.

I must, however, make clear that this office's conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably. The prosecutors recognized that there was no evidence against Mr. Swartz indicating that he committed his acts for personal financial gain, and they recognized that his conduct - while a violation of the law - did not warrant the severe punishments authorized by Congress and called for by the Sentencing Guidelines in appropriate cases. That is why in the discussions with his counsel about a resolution of the case this office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct - a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting. While at the same time, his defense counsel would have been free to recommend a sentence of probation. Ultimately, any sentence imposed would have been up to the judge. At no time did this office ever seek - or ever tell Mr. Swartz's attorneys that it intended to seek - maximum penalties under the law.
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Six months in a low security facility. Right. They known damn right that they would have sought maximum penalties to "set an example."
 
Just trying to sound sympathetic and covering their asses. I doubt anyone would even believe that's what they were gonna do.
 
Neither MIT nor JSTOR were pursuing the case. Why did the gov't latch on to this guy then? Because he pissed them off previously. Nice attempt at sugar coating the situation though
 
If he would have just used his Schwartz instead of his Swartz, the whole thing would have had a drastically different feeling. I blame George Lucas.
 
Anyone who has watch Law and Order knows that they would have used the maximum sentence as leverage.
 
So, when the law works, it's bad. But, when it doesn't, it's bad, too?

RIAA breaks the law and gets away with it. That's bad because they don't pursue the matter. This guy breaks the law and doesn't get away with it. That's bad because they do pursue him?

Technically, the law was broken. Doesn't matter if you agree with it or not - the law was broken. The lawyers go after him, as per their job. Then, people bitch? Ok. Double standard, there. Yes, very oversimplified, but true.

If this case was the thing that made him commit suicide, there was a lot more going on... He was unstable, other negative things going on, something.
 
So the moral of the story remains: "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime".

Fucking selfish coward.
 
Ur_Mom said:
So, when the law works, it's bad. But, when it doesn't, it's bad, too?

RIAA breaks the law and gets away with it. That's bad because they don't pursue the matter. This guy breaks the law and doesn't get away with it. That's bad because they do pursue him?

Technically, the law was broken. Doesn't matter if you agree with it or not - the law was broken. The lawyers go after him, as per their job. Then, people bitch? Ok. Double standard, there. Yes, very oversimplified, but true.

If this case was the thing that made him commit suicide, there was a lot more going on... He was unstable, other negative things going on, something.
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He was unstable. He was manic depressive with a history of mental health disorder.
 
Ur_Mom said:
So, when the law works, it's bad. But, when it doesn't, it's bad, too?

RIAA breaks the law and gets away with it. That's bad because they don't pursue the matter. This guy breaks the law and doesn't get away with it. That's bad because they do pursue him?

Technically, the law was broken. Doesn't matter if you agree with it or not - the law was broken. The lawyers go after him, as per their job. Then, people bitch? Ok. Double standard, there. Yes, very oversimplified, but true.

If this case was the thing that made him commit suicide, there was a lot more going on... He was unstable, other negative things going on, something.
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I don't know if someone else here has mentioned it already, or maybe I'm wrong, but the prosecutors are insistent that he was to be tried for fraud, which would only work if there was actual money that JSTOR and MIT was 'defrauded' of. Their case would only hold water if they held the belief that 'potential sales' = 'lost sales'.
 
Ur_Mom said:
So, when the law works, it's bad. But, when it doesn't, it's bad, too?

RIAA breaks the law and gets away with it. That's bad because they don't pursue the matter. This guy breaks the law and doesn't get away with it. That's bad because they do pursue him?

Technically, the law was broken. Doesn't matter if you agree with it or not - the law was broken. The lawyers go after him, as per their job. Then, people bitch? Ok. Double standard, there. Yes, very oversimplified, but true.

If this case was the thing that made him commit suicide, there was a lot more going on... He was unstable, other negative things going on, something.
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This isn't really true.
Aaron was accessing JSTOR documents, which he was legally entitled and enabled to access.
He was duplicating and relocating those public-domain documents, which he was legally entitled and enabled to do.

He was not legally bound to any federal data-use law.
What he did do was circumvent MIT's data-use policy, which would have been a civil matter.

His criminal action may have been "breaking into" a closet to install a computer which ran scripts to perform completely legal tasks.
 
I like how the lawyers are describing what they "might" have done, now that the guy is dead.

Sure.....try to implicate HIS attorney for not explaining to him he was going to get off "light".
Also try to pass it off as "of course the judge would decide the sentence"......

No one ever mans-up in these things.
 
They probably don't get too many nice easy cases, so they milk them for all they are worth. Meanwhile, the tough cases that are significant are too much work to even bother with.

I guess the guy was pretty privileged his whole life and had a tough time getting used to the not-so-nice element of the world's problems... life, there's a lawyer for that :rolleyes:
 
either way he thought he was above the law and he was mistaken and god rest his soul decided to take the easy way out...
 
PrincessDie said:
So the moral of the story remains: "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime".

Fucking selfish coward.
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This.

Everyone is like OMG poor guy had to kill himself because the government was after him. Just NO. That dude was a quitter. I don't care what his IQ was or that he created the worst internet discussion forum UI the world has ever seen. At the end of the day Aaron Swartz didn't have the balls to deal with life. No sympathy here. Suicide just let's other people sort out your mess for you. Fucking selfish coward indeed.
 
maxius said:
either way he thought he was above the law and he was mistaken and god rest his soul decided to take the easy way out...
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Only if I lived in a world where I could think death in any form is easy. Also, you must of not read the thread.
 
bloodhawke83 said:
it was free, how can you steal free stuff?
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what he accessed was not free period RTFA why would .gov go after someone if shit was free and open on the internet. he hacked into mit's systems and copied scholarly articles.
 
MasonD said:
Only if I lived in a world where I could think death in any form is easy. Also, you must of not read the thread.
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he couldn't deal with the real world implications of what he did or the real world period and ended his life aka the easy easy out
 
Thuleman said:
Fucking selfish coward indeed.
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True, he should've shot up a building to prove he wasn't so selfish by only taking his own life. Just kidding, I can think of ten thousand ways other people in this world are worse. Like people insulting dead people. Doesn't get much lower than that in my opinion.
 
MasonD said:
I can think of ten thousand ways other people in this world are worse. Like people insulting dead people. Doesn't get much lower than that in my opinion.
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Because clearly ...., dead people care. :rolleyes:
 
maxius said:
what he accessed was not free period RTFA why would .gov go after someone if shit was free and open on the internet. he hacked into mit's systems and copied scholarly articles.
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You're wrong and you apparently don't understand what JSTOR is.
 
Thuleman said:
Because clearly ...., dead people care. :rolleyes:
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Let me know when one of your family members dies and I'm come insult them to your face and make a :rolleyes: while I'm at it. Maybe you'll understand why it makes someone a POS then.


:rolleyes:
 
JSTOR (pronounced JAY-stor;[3] short for Journal Storage) is a digital library founded in 1995. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now also includes books and primary sources, and current issues of journals.[4] It provides full-text searches of more than a thousand journals. More than 7,000 institutions in more than 150 countries have access to JSTOR. Most access is by subscription, but some old public domain content is freely available to anyone, and in 2012 JSTOR launched a program providing limited no-cost access to old articles for individual scholars and researchers who register
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google is hard.
 
MasonD said:
Let me know when one of your family members dies and I'm come insult them to your face and make a :rolleyes: while I'm at it. Maybe you'll understand why it makes someone a POS then.


:rolleyes:
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What makes someone a POS is quitting and letting everyone else around you to sort out the mess you created. Responsible adults sort out their problems and move on. This Aaron Swartz guy wasn't capable of it and quit. You couldn't pay me to respect someone like that.
 
There is this article: http://act.demandprogress.org/act/aaron_justice/?referring_akid=1969.2065568.dgUUFS&source=typ-tw

Basically, because it was a victimless crime, it should go unpunished? Yes, I get the law is flawed, but that was the law that was passed by our government. Don't like it? Work to get it fixed. Don't commit the crimes and then decide to do something about it after you get caught. Justice for Aaron? Ok....

I don't agree with suicide, I would never do it. But, I don't see it as the 'easy way out'. It is a solution to where you don't have to do anything else, and it takes all the future work out of it, but I see it as being anything close to 'easy'.
 
I think he just figured out that the world is a far darker place than he thought.

The realization that the government of the nation of your birth is not going to sit idly by and allow public domain knowledge to actually devolve on the public...it is a fucking bummer, seriously.
 
Thuleman said:
What makes someone a POS is quitting and letting everyone else around you to sort out the mess you created. Responsible adults sort out their problems and move on. This Aaron Swartz guy wasn't capable of it and quit. You couldn't pay me to respect someone like that.
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Like I said, let me know when something bad happens to someone in your family. I'll gladly find faults with them and explain to you why they sucked hard and their life wasn't worth shit anyway.

What makes someone a POS is quitting and letting everyone else around you to sort out the mess you created.
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No, that makes them weak, not a POS. A POS is someone like the POS that just killed all those kids and didn't just kill himself. What mess? His funeral? That happens with every family. Everything is case closed now because of his death. As for his death, no one makes it out alive.

Responsible adults sort out their problems and move on.
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So you insult the guy because he was not mentally healthy? Smh...get a life.

This Aaron Swartz guy wasn't capable of it and quit. You couldn't pay me to respect someone like that.
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You couldn't pay me to respect someone that thinks like you. The dead paid their price and people insulting the dead are straight up POS's in my book.
 
Thuleman said:
What makes someone a POS is quitting and letting everyone else around you to sort out the mess you created. Responsible adults sort out their problems and move on. This Aaron Swartz guy wasn't capable of it and quit. You couldn't pay me to respect someone like that.
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you should stop posting, you look like an insensitive jackass who hasn't experienced real loss. do everybody a favor including yourself, and shut the fuck up.
 
Thuleman said:
What makes someone a POS is quitting and letting everyone else around you to sort out the mess you created. Responsible adults sort out their problems and move on. This Aaron Swartz guy wasn't capable of it and quit. You couldn't pay me to respect someone like that.
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umm, he apparently was running out of money to fight this.

so he kinda did do the right thing in killing himself.
 
Thuleman said:
This.

Everyone is like OMG poor guy had to kill himself because the government was after him. Just NO. That dude was a quitter. I don't care what his IQ was or that he created the worst internet discussion forum UI the world has ever seen. At the end of the day Aaron Swartz didn't have the balls to deal with life. No sympathy here. Suicide just let's other people sort out your mess for you. Fucking selfish coward indeed.
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He was mentally unstable and is manic depressive. While I'd agree with you regarding the average Jane and Joe, Aaron had a condition and he was driven to the brink.
 
Although our copyright laws are flawed and in need of fundamental repair the government should never have the right to pick and choose which laws they enforce ... people should use the Aaron Swartz case to help drive for much needed reforms, not ask the government to selectively enforce the laws
 
Ur_Mom said:
There is this article: http://act.demandprogress.org/act/aaron_justice/?referring_akid=1969.2065568.dgUUFS&source=typ-tw

Basically, because it was a victimless crime, it should go unpunished?
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No it's about the lack of common sense and overreach on the part of the prosecution. The case against Swartz was barely worse than checking out more books than authorized at the library. Yet the prosecution was going after jail time and a relatively large fine. There aren't even any financial damages to be had here since the data was returned.

In addition, there would be some understanding if the prosector was always this harsh. However, that's not the case.

GlaxoSmithKline

In October, 2010, how Ms Ortiz led the pursuit of a settlement with GlaxoSmithKline became apparent (look here.) The company was accused of selling drugs that were not what they appeared to be, apparently because the wrong drugs were put in labelled containers. Obviously, taking one drug, like Paxil, GSK's anti-depressant which has a number of known adverse effects, including suicide risk for adolescents and children as noted above, when a patient is supposed to be taking a wholly different drug could lead to patient harm. At that time, Ms Ortiz said, "We will not tolerate corporate attempts to profit at the expense of the ill and needy in our society -- or those who cut corners that result in potentially dangerous consequences to consumers." Again, while the settlement involved a guilty plea by a GSK subsidiary, again no individual corporate executive who had authority over the drug manufacturing was arrested or accused, much less suffered any negative consequences.
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So on one hand we have a company that's selling a drug product that's not what it is supposed to be which led to someone actually being harmed. Did anyone suffer through any jail time? Nope. Yet the kid who downloaded too many publicly available documents needs to spend millions or take a plea for 6 months in jail?

The main reason the federal prosecutors went after him was because of his work fighting SOPA, which means they were going for retaliation, not justice and that's the problem here.
 
Azhar said:
He was mentally unstable and is manic depressive. While I'd agree with you regarding the average Jane and Joe, Aaron had a condition and he was driven to the brink.
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the fact is their are paid and free treatment options available that he obviously did not take or anyone around him bother looking into. its not that hard to help someone that has a mental condition a simple call or a drop by to say hey whats up... most likely could of did him a lot of good instead out society tends to shut out people with such disabilities.
 
Azhar said:
He was unstable. He was manic depressive with a history of mental health disorder.
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He was. Ironically he also had a distinct sense of social justice. He'd done a lot of things for the benefit of society as a whole. The greed, selfishness, corruption, the typical range of behaviors driven by the emotions present in more balanced and stable minds played small roles in his thought processes and decisions. This kind of behavior and drive is because of upbringing, intelligence, and years of severe depression. I know this, I understand this, because I also have bi-polar and have dealt with severe depression for over a decade. Social justice, moral justice, is something one becomes acutely aware of from extensive experience with clinical depression. Hell, Abraham Lincoln is believed to have had bipolar. The way that man thought through things, how he genuinely cared and empathized with all parties, that's the product of years of depression, it's a thought process Aaron had, that I have.

This isn't something I expect people to understand on their own, so I'll explain the kind of thought processes that go on and what's behind them. One poster here claims his suicide was selfish. That somehow his decision to end his life, to cease existence, has greater negative affect on someone other than himself. Ridiculous.

What matters is the thought process, the reasoning, behind his decision. I can't know with certainty what it was, but the manner in which clinical depression alters how one perceives the world is something that can only be fully understood through experience. I have that experience. I don't find myself wondering much about why he committed suicide as I would probably do the same thing in his place for reasons both rational and emotional. First though, background.

The thing about bipolar and clinical depression is that it's not like the depression most people have experience with. It's not primarily psychological. It's deep, dark, a biochecmical deficiency in the brain. If someone gets cut, they bleed, their mind can't think the wound away. The most they can do is ignore the pain, and even then endorphins aid that process. The wound will bleed until it's treated. The difference between that and bipolar is that the treatments for bipolar are almost a crapshoot. Medical science is still quite primitive in how it treats mental disorders. They don't measure how ones mind behaves chemically and then prescribe treatment. They don't precisely target the deficiencies that cause instability. They don't even truly understand what goes on in the mind which causes bipolar. They just try one medicine after the other in varying dosages to see which ones improve the overall state of mind. Primitive.

So, why did he commit suicide. It's nothing so simple as 'he felt depressed'. The yearn for death from clinical depression is real but intelligence, an above average intelligence, both enables and promotes relying on reason and logic to make decisions as emotion is something that one realizes even in balanced minds is an imperfect and flawed method for decision making and in the case of someone with bipolar foolish at best. So, when faced with the prospect of having his life ruined from overzealous prosecutors who define their success by how thoroughly they can fuck over a persons life he had to consider that this would be a financial burden requiring funding that would be better served elsewhere He'd take into account that throughout this process there's the very real possibility that he'd be unable to continue doing the things that made his life meaningful, that kept the desire for death in check. He may have rationally concluded that years in prison would cause so much stress, deny him access to the things he used to cope with depression, that suicide was almost inevitable with prolonged incarceration. One becomes quite familiar with their mental limits and what could break them dealing with clinical depression for years.

So, instead of allowing himself to be a drain on further progress in the area of social justice he devoted his life to, to avoid the less than favorable conditions in prison likely to result in suicide from taking place, to essentially tell people who would go to lengths to counter efforts aimed at benefiting society and mankind as a whole to go fuck themselves, he committed suicide. Did he 'feel terrible' throughout the entire ordeal? I would think so. But he'd felt that way before, he'd dealt with this for years, he'd come to terms with it knew from experience that he could do things to cope with it until things rebounded. The catalyst here wasn't his depression. He didn't feel entitled to be beyond the law. It was that the law was not serving justice, was not enabling social justice, and the price being asked of him was to be denied the things that allowed him to feel any joy in life, the things that enabled him to stave off the desire to end his life. This is a price few should ever have to pay and few will ever understand how severe and steep a price it is.

What would it take for you to consider suicide? Lose your legs? Completely paralyzed? Chronic pain with no relief? How about not being able to enjoy any aspect of life for an untold amount of years, perhaps for the rest of you life? Do you realize that clinical depression is so severe you can't even enjoy sex? What should peak in a height of chemical bliss is instead met with a sigh of despair. That last part a bit too much for some of you? Maybe you should consider that's one of the reasons people with depression feel unable to openly discuss how they feel, what they experience. People just don't want to hear about this, it makes them uncomfortable, and who are you that they should even care? Aaron Schwartz understood all of this, and as a result he dedicated his time and effort to caring for the well-being of others. This world is a lesser place without him.
 
maxius said:
the fact is their are paid and free treatment options available that he obviously did not take or anyone around him bother looking into. its not that hard to help someone that has a mental condition a simple call or a drop by to say hey whats up... most likely could of did him a lot of good instead out society tends to shut out people with such disabilities.
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If it was that easy there'd be a fuck lot less mass shootings going on. Mentally ill people will sometimes avoid treatment out of sheer paranoia. Nobody wants to be drugged up with mind altering drugs. Even friends and relatives cannot force a mentally ill patent to get treatment.

It's not that black and white.
 
LastQuestion said:
He was. Ironically he also had a distinct sense of social justice.
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That he did, but it wasn't because of his ability to work around his mental disability. His ability to battle social injustice (behind his monitor, no less) is a result of his mental condition. Some mentally ill patents are a very paranoid bunch and will fight the system no matter how conspiratorial or real their targets are.
 
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