Feds Used Aaron Swartz's Political Manifesto Against Him. The prosecution of Aaron Swartz was motivated, in part, by the 2008 “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” the internet activist had penned advocating for civil disobedience against copyright law, Swartz’s attorney confirmed Friday.
The revelation underscores that the hacking charges against the former director of Demand Progress were bolstered by the 26-year-old’s philosophy of a world unhindered by copyright law, a world in which he said it was a “moral imperative” to unshackle the “privatization of knowledge.” The Huffington Post first revealed the matter Friday, citing anonymous sources familiar with a closed-door briefing between the Justice Department and members and staff of the House Oversight Committee. Swartz, who had also written about his own depression, was found dead at his Brooklyn apartment last month after committing suicide. His attorney, Elliot Peters, said prosecutors were “very focused” on the manifesto Swartz penned from Italy. U.S. Aaron Swartz Prosecutors Weighed 'Guerilla' Manifesto, Justice Official Tells Congressional Committee.
A Justice Department representative told congressional staffers during a recent briefing on the computer fraud prosecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz that Swartz's "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto" played a role in the prosecution, sources told The Huffington Post.
Swartz's 2008 manifesto said sharing information was a "moral imperative" and advocated for "civil disobedience" against copyright laws pushed by corporations "blinded by greed" that led to the "privatization of knowledge. " "We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive," Swartz wrote in the manifesto.
"We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. Details of FBI Probe into Internet Activist Aaron Swartz Released. According to the Bureau, the Government Printing Office (GPO) realized the computer system that hosted the PACER database was compromised, and a single user session was being used to download millions of pages from the digital archive.
Only seventeen libraries were authorized to access the files at that time, but it was believed that Swartz figured out a way to get in from outside those locations, and continually download documents without using the proper channels. Aaron Swartz’s FBI File. Aaron Swartz When I heard the news of Aaron Swartz’s suicide I was deeply saddened or more accurately profoundly irritated.
Why had the government – or should I say U.S Attorney Carmen Ortiz – wasted so much time and resources destroying someone over such an inconsequential act? Aaron Swartz and how a martyr makes a law. I'm Rep Zoe Lofgren, Here is a Modified Draft Version of Aaron's Law Reflecting the Internet’s Input : IAmA. “The Red Wire” by Jason Kirk – Aaron’s Law: Chipping Away At The Wall : Online Gambling News. January 30, 2013 American legislators at all levels of government pass laws in record numbers these days, but they never seem to address the right issues.
Many American computer crime laws, for instance, haven’t been updated since the days before the internet became ubiquitous. Often the only established case law deals with technology that’s long since become obsolete, meaning the cutting edge is always on the verge of legal uncertainty. Computer crime isn’t the only area of law that faces this problem, but it is an excellent example because it so flatly fails to keep pace with a world that changes more quickly with every passing year. This becomes a problem when individual laws fall into such a state of disrepair because they’re rarely fixed. Aaron Swartz, JSTOR: MIT can honor the Internet activist by fighting to make academic journals open to everyone. Photo by Doc Searls/Flickr Beginning in the fall of 2010, Aaron Swartz repeatedly logged on to MIT’s campus network and used an automated script to download nearly 5 million articles from JSTOR, one of the largest digital archives of scholarly journals in the world.
When they discovered Swartz’s actions, both JSTOR and MIT faced a choice—should they help prosecute Swartz as a nefarious hacker, or should they forgive him for skirting the law while pursuing his activism? Farhad Manjoo is a technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal and the author of True Enough. Follow Last summer, after he agreed to return the articles he’d downloaded, JSTOR dropped its civil case against Swartz. Abelson has said that he will release his report in a few weeks’ time. Making academic articles available to everyone is one of the most direct ways for MIT to fulfill its public-spirited mission to expand the world’s access to knowledge. MIT could stop the whole business with a few bold steps. He hasn’t. The Swartz suicide and the sick culture of the DOJ. Published: 10:54 am Wed, January 23, 2013 By Harvey A.
Silverglate Some lawyers are joking when they refer to the Moakley Courthouse as “the House of Pain.” I’m not. In memory of Aaron Swartz: Stealing is not stealing. I didn't know Aaron Swartz.
He was one of those people I had run across once or been introduced to, but I've always been better at remembering Roman generals than people I've actually met. Now, like millions of others who have learned about who he was and what happened to him, I'm not merely saddened by his suicide -- I'm angered by it. In particular, I take issue with this statement from Carmen Ortiz, the federal prosecutor who felt the 26-year-old Swartz should do 35 years in prison for copying files from a computer: "Stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar.
" [ Also on InfoWorld: Today we are all Aaron Swartz | Get the latest insight on the tech news that matters from InfoWorld's Tech Watch blog. | Cut straight to the key news for technology development and IT management with our once-a-day summary of the top tech news. Subscribe to the InfoWorld Daily newsletter. ] Aaron's Army. Do not think for a moment that Aaron's work on JSTOR was the random act of a lone hacker, some kind of crazy, spur-of-the-moment bulk download.
JSTOR had long come in for withering criticism from the net. Larry Lessig called JSTOR a moral outrage in a talk and I suppose I have to confess he was quoting me. We weren't the only ones fanning those flames. Sequestering knowledge behind pay walls—making scientific journals only available to a few kids fortunate enough to be at fancy universities and charging $20 an article for the remaining 99% of us—was a festering wound.
It offended many people. It embarrassed many who wrote those articles that their work had become somebody's profit margin, a members-only country club of knowledge. Many of us helped fan those flames. Linus Torvalds - Google+ - I haven't bothered to mention the whole sad Aaron Swartz… Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz. Aaron Swartz. Aaron Hillel Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer and Internet hacktivist who was involved in the development of the web feed format RSS[3] and the Markdown publishing format,[4] the organization Creative Commons,[5] the website framework web.py[6] and the social news site, Reddit, in which he became a partner after its merger with his company, Infogami.
[i] He committed suicide while under federal indictment for data-theft, a prosecution that was characterized by his family as being "the product of a criminal-justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach".[7] Swartz's work also focused on sociology, civic awareness and activism.[8][9] He helped launch the Progressive Change Campaign Committee in 2009 to learn more about effective online activism. Swartz declined a plea bargain under which he would have served six months in federal prison.
Life and works[edit] W3C[edit] The Impact of "Aaron's Law" on Aaron Swartz's Case. Prosecutor in Aaron Swartz 'hacking' case comes under fire. A politically ambitious Justice Department official who oversaw the criminal case against Aaron Swartz has come under fire for alleged prosecutorial abuses that led the 26-year-old online activist to take his own life . Carmen Ortiz, 57, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts who was selected by President Obama, compared the online activist -- accused of downloading a large number of academic papers -- to a common criminal in a 2011 press release. "Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar," Ortiz said at the time.
Last fall, her office slapped Swartz with 10 additional charges that carried a maximum penalty of 50 years in prison. "He was killed by the government," Swartz's father, Robert, said at his son's funeral in Highland Park, Ill., today, according to a report in the Chicago Sun Times. Last Wednesday, less than three months before the criminal trial was set to begin, Ortiz's office formally rejected a deal that would have kept Swartz out of prison. Rep. After Aaron: how an antiquated law enables the government's war on hackers, activists, and you. 18inShare Jump To Close Photo Credit: Daniel J. Internet Activist's Prosecutor Linked To Another Hacker's Death. Tom Dolan, Husband Of Aaron Swartz's Prosecutor, Defends Her On Twitter. When Internet activist Aaron Swartz was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment on Friday after an apparent suicide, friends, family and those who never knew him offered their condolences for the deceased 26-year-old.
Even MIT, an institution that has been criticized for not doing enough to ease pressure from federal prosecutors who charged Swartz with allegedly stealing millions of online scholarly articles, said in a statement that "[w]ith this tragedy, his family and his friends suffered an inexpressible loss, and we offer our most profound condolences. " But Tom Dolan, husband of U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, took a different approach on Twitter that some are calling insensitive. Late Monday night, the former executive at IBM began tweeting in defense of his wife -- by criticizing Swartz's grieving family. @mkapor Truly incredible that in their own son's obit they blame others for his death and make no mention of the 6-month offer.— Tom Dolan (@tomjdolan) January 15, 2013 h/t @YourAnonNews. Carmen Ortiz's Husband Criticizes Swartz Family For Suggesting Prosecution Of Their Son Contributed To His Suicide.
As we've stated over and over again, it's a bit simplistic to place the "blame" for Aaron Swartz's suicide on the federal prosecutors, led by US Attorney Carmen Ortiz and her assistant Stephen Heymann. It is still quite reasonable to question their activities, but suicide is a complex thing and going all the way there may be going too far. Still, you can understand why Swartz's family did, in fact, directly call out the US Attorneys given their hardline position on the case, and the stress that created for Swartz.