I see that all of your HN story submissions are marked [dead] as soon as you submit them. Do you know why that is happening to you? It started happening to me a couple of days ago without any explanation.
Hey , today it happened as I wrote title and and link but didn't click submit button, by the time it was dead. I clicked "back" in the browser and submitted again , it was dead for 3-4 times and 5th time it got posted.
I think when you want to post new story you should not wait too long (>10 minutes) to click submit button or else it will be dead
I just looked at your submission history again and even the most recent one "Game industry of Finland" on slideshare is marked [dead].
Looking back through your history, the last 129 submissions are all [dead] it changed right between #129 and #130.
Your #130 was "Startup - Bill Watterson, a cartoonist's advice" which got 192 karma points, but starting with #129 "Brilliant Resource on Typography (practicaltypography.com)" posted one day later, everything is marked [dead].
But I recently posted a poll 3 days back which got 70 upvotes and it came on first page (top 10). Surprising is that I can't see [dead] alongside my post when i see my submission history
I found out , problem is our submission rights have been taken , it might be due to reposting and deleting stories, or might be due to posting irrelevant material which is of no relevance to HN community .
Couldn't it be argued that Aaron undid himself? He was not entirely blameless (although I do agree with those who have issues with the way the Government reacted).
Sorry but uhm, didn't he undo himself? Seriously stop saying that someone "undid" him, killed him, or even take the blame for him killing himself.
Yes injustice is all around. A lot of people have been convicted for murders they have not done, later released because of new DNA evidence. These people have been in jail for decades, falsely imprisoned, and while released, their name probably never clean, but hey ...still alive.. Guess they had some sort of outlook.
Aaron was facing charges for something he knew he did was against the law, but he didn't accept the world where that thing he did was against the law.
The legal process isolated him from others because he couldn't discuss the trial with them. Even if he didn't commit suicide because of the prospect of jail time; the situation he was in (limited form of isolation) doesn't help someone with depression.
It's good legal advice not to discuss the trial with someone, as they can be called as witness against you. Even if you don't say anything incriminating to them, it could disrupt their life in a way that you don't want to happen.
The suicide is hardly beside the point.
Please do note that the author is Kevin Poulsen and he writes:
"His jury trial was looming when Swartz took his own life in January, 2013.
MIT faced a firestorm of criticism in the wake of Swartz’s suicide. Critics, including Swartz’s family and prominent MIT alumni, said the institution betrayed its own principles by not advocating for less harsh treatment of Swartz."
I can't see how "undid" would point to anything other than his "not being here". His presence being undone. His life being undone.
If he would have been incarcerated for life, I don't think Kevin would use the word "undid". He would print "Free Aaron" stickers, and getting the word out that this fight should not be over.
Maybe you aren't a native English speaker, so this is a misunderstanding. Despite what it literally means, "to undo" in common English usually just means "screwed over". If he had been convicted and was alive he would still have been "undone" by this video
I'm indeed not. Thanks for clarifying, and it could be, but I still think it has a double meaning. Especially in this context I think It's just insinuating and sensational.
I've actually never seen this wording being used ever, so for me it seemed quite similar to "doing someone". Yes that also means "screwing someone over" but for me, when reading "undid" a quote from the movie Trainspotting came to mind.
"Begbie didn't do drugs either. He just did people" and that involved a knife usually.
/edit: Considering the dictionary's definition I will hereby withdraw my suspect of any intent by the author to suggest that another person or entity was responsible for Aaron's death :)
The uneducated and alienated public is also to blame. Not that they are consciously evil but they are a huge part of the problem anyway. They are those who should have stepped forth and defended Aaron Swartz and set things straight.
I find that it is of little help to look at these big problems in terms of individual intentions. In the end the underlying problems are widespread social circumstances that need to be fixed. The human nature impersonations, the evil people with agendas are just symptoms.
I don't understand why the penalty for his crimes is so severe (Wikipedia: Federal prosecutors later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and 11 violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,[16] carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution and supervised release.[17]).
That seems like a preposterous amount of time, money, and stipulations post-release. What was the federal prosecution's motivation for making an example out of him?
It's also the journalists, too. Anytime you see a story about someone's punishment for the crime and it includes the words "cumulative" or "up to" you know all they did was start adding up random numbers from every little charge. Sentencing doesn't work that way and at that point you need to just ignore the story.
I'd be willing to accept your statement at face value. Are there any good indicators for laymen what likely punishments he would have been facing if he would have continued to trial and lost?
What sort of crimes typically have similar actual and enforced punishments? I'm wondering where on the scale it gets slotted. Is it between assault and shoplifting or grand theft and kidnapping?
Setencing is hard. Prosecutors have the incentive to put as many charges on them as possible, to get a guilty plea, but not all of them make it through, so it's hard to know what is going to happen until the defendant goes to trial. This goes for all sorts of crimes (most of them, in fact).
You don't know what's going to be the final result until the defendant is actually sentenced. Of course this is all dependent upon the jurisdiction, but in most judges have significant leeway in the sentencing.
> Are there any good indicators for laymen what likely punishments he would have been facing if he would have continued to trial and lost?
For federal crimes, sentencing is generally governed by the federal sentencing guidelines. [1] The application is conceptually simple -- there are guidelines for determining the offense level for each base crime, guidelines for grouping offenses (some of which just keep the most serious, some of which start with the most serious and increase based on other offenses), and guidelines for adjustments to the offense level for various factors such as actual harms inflicted, the defendants criminal history, the defendants acceptance of responsibility, and so forth, and finally guidelines to translate offense level into sentence. But the details are quite involved.
Perhaps the most important thing to note, in the federal guidelines, is that in most cases, where multiple convictions are handed down for offenses involve the same victim and the same act or transaction, or different acts or transaction as part of the same plan or scheme, the offense level is set by the single most serious count alone -- charging multiple counts of the same charge basically just increase the chance of getting a conviction.
For state offenses, sentencing is handled by state-specific rules.
I can't even begin to fathom what you could be talking about, unless you're talking about some "three strikes" circumstance, which is in fact unrelated because Aaron didn't have two strikes.
So stealing three gallons total? I guess I'm not clear here. The idea is that I steal a gallon of milk, am convicted, punished, then three months later steal another gallon, repeat, and the third time (three more months later) I potentially face the three strikes rule, right? (Ignoring that stealing milk probably doesn't trigger the three-strikes rule being non-violent; also the 'three months' is just to suggest "some time has passed since conviction").
I think if each criminal act resulted in a separate conviction, then three strikes can apply. But I think if you go on a milk theft spree (over some period of time keep stealing a gallon of milk from a bunch of different stores), when they catch you, you would likely be charged with multiple counts of milk theft and get "Strike 1" for the conviction. (also ignoring that stealing milk probably doesn't trigger the three-strikes rule.)
Because the federal three strikes law only applies to serious violent felonies, and only if there are two or more prior federal or state felonies, at least one of which must be a serious violent felony as well and the other of which can be a serious drug crime.
As far as I know, only California has a three strikes law that can apply to non-violent felonies, and I don't know of any three strikes law that applies to convictions on multiple counts for the same conduct.
When you see stuff like "man gets life for possessing an unregistered firearm" (at least outside of California), you need to read the fine print and look for the prior murder or armed robbery convictions.
I disagree with three strikes laws even when structured to only apply to violent felonies, but they're totally irrelevant to this discussion.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The only way he didn't face 35 years of prison time is if he was prepared to plea guilty despite believing firmly and with sound reason that he was not a criminal.
As I've argued elsewhere [1], "A prosecutor forcing someone to admit guilt by threatening a life-destroying cruel and unusual punishment if they do not admit it - why, that is the very essence of using torture to extract a confession!"
No, this is not in fact how it worked. Swartz's own lawyer wrote up the range of possible sentences presuming Swartz refused to plead out, ranging from "no custodial sentence at all" (his lawyer's own expectation) to 7 years on the outside, if the prosecutors carried out all their threats and the court sided with them entirely and Swartz had been convicted on all counts.
Once again: Swartz's own lawyer wrote that he believed it unlikely that Swartz would do any time in prison even if he was convicted after pleading not guilty.
The "35 years" thing is entirely fictional. Popehat has a fantastic blog post on why this fiction exists and how it is misunderstood.
To accept the plea bargain, he would have to waive his right to a trial. (Edit: he would also have to admit he was guilty of the crime.) If he was innocent, there was no incentive for him to accept 6 months in prison in exchange for his rights.
Sure there was: 6 months vs. up to 35 years. Even if I'm not guilty, as a pragmatist, that's a trade you can't refuse unless there is ROCK SOLID evidence that you're innocent of everything.
That's an argument for letting the prosecutor get away with putting any innocent person in jail, as long as a harsher sentence is threatened for the nonexistent crime.
There was no way Swartz was getting 35 years even if he was convicted of everything. And the prosecutor piled on every charge he thought he had a chance at. Knuckling under and serving 6 months quietly isn't too appealing. And the alternative was lots of publicity for the cause, a good chance to change precedent in IP cases, and the possibility of serving some time as a martyr.
Swartz didn't want to serve any jail time. IIRC, as a political activist he didn't want to have a conviction on his record as it might hinder his efforts (or possible future aspirations of holding a public office).
That's the issue, though. Prosecutors now have an incentive to stack as many charges as possible on a defendant for precisely this reason. To me, this is a bad thing, and not justice.
Plea bargaining is a bad system and open to abuse. However, it's incorrect to say Aaron Schwartz was faced with 35 years in jail.
I've always wondered if the felony conviction aspect of the punishment wasn't just as unacceptable to him. It would prevent any political ambitions in the US, I believe.
Isn't the entire point of civil disobedience to admit you are guilty of the crime and then go on the fight the fact that it's a crime in the first place? Otherwise you are not some heroic freedom fighter, only a coward who took the easy way out.
The main thing that confuses people is grouping. Prosecutors charge a large number of counts because they don't want to lose a conviction by being imprecise in characterizing the specific set of acts out of an overall course of conduct that was illegal. If you add up all the counts you get some big number, but the sentencing guidelines (3D1.2) clearly state: "All counts involving substantially the same harm shall be grouped together into a single Group."
I think the sentencing guidelines are ridiculous (look at that big list of meaningless factors in the sushi chef example!), but its much more sensible to calculate a guideline range than to add up the theoretical maximum sentences.
I remember when his death hit the news, my twitter timeline was full of hash-tags and posts and links. I didn't even knew the guy, then I decided to browse wikipedia and see who he is. I was impressed to say the least.
It's too bad that many activists, who want clearly an open, just and more socially enabled world, have a psyche that is so fragile. But apparently the two things are correlated: If you are sensitive, you might very well be fragile.
Now given the fact that tampering 40.000 criminal cases[1] give you 3 to 5 years, I don't see how publishing MIT documents can be so dangerous for the society.
I wonder how we can create a social system that has incentives for sensitive people to become leaders. I think, the insensitivity that is necessary to become a leader is one of, or even the most fatal flaws of all types of societies we have come up so far.
I never thought this approach, but you are correct. Sensitive people are true believers and thus much harder to corrupt.
I don't have the faintest idea on how we could achieve this on our televised democracy, but I'd be interested on reading other's opinion on the matter.
So did MIT and JSTOR get away with further third-party redaction to this set of documents? It was reported in earlier articles by this author regarding the FOIA lawsuit that they were attempting to do so, but I didn't see any mention of the result in this article.
Some one had to take an extreme step like this to push for open access of government funded research.. I wish he has this kind of support when he was alive.
This is MIT. There is no security there by design. Swartz is guilty of what?
RMS - " Hackers typically had little respect for the silly rules that administrators like to impose, so they looked for ways around. For instance, when computers at MIT started to have "security" (that is, restrictions on what users could do), some hackers found clever ways to bypass the security, partly so they could use the computers freely, and partly just for the sake of cleverness (hacking does not need to be useful). However, only some hackers did this—many were occupied with other kinds of cleverness, such as placing some amusing object on top of MIT's great dome (), finding a way to do a certain computation with only 5 instructions when the shortest known program required 6, writing a program to print numbers in roman numerals, or writing a program to understand questions in English.
Meanwhile, another group of hackers at MIT found a different solution to the problem of computer security: they designed the Incompatible Timesharing System without security "features". In the hacker's paradise, the glory days of the Artificial Intelligence Lab, there was no security breaking, because there was no security to break. It was there, in that environment, that I learned to be a hacker, though I had shown the inclination previously. We had plenty of other domains in which to be playfully clever, without building artificial security obstacles which then had to be overcome. "
I think everyone who graffiti'd the closet should come forward and beg to be forgiven for their breaking and entering too and MIT and the Secret Service can throw the book at them.
83 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadA video didn't undo Aaron Swartz.
People undid Aaron Swartz. People with agendas and without compassion using a system of justice stacked in their favor.
I see that all of your HN story submissions are marked [dead] as soon as you submit them. Do you know why that is happening to you? It started happening to me a couple of days ago without any explanation.
Looking back through your history, the last 129 submissions are all [dead] it changed right between #129 and #130.
Your #130 was "Startup - Bill Watterson, a cartoonist's advice" which got 192 karma points, but starting with #129 "Brilliant Resource on Typography (practicaltypography.com)" posted one day later, everything is marked [dead].
Yes injustice is all around. A lot of people have been convicted for murders they have not done, later released because of new DNA evidence. These people have been in jail for decades, falsely imprisoned, and while released, their name probably never clean, but hey ...still alive.. Guess they had some sort of outlook.
Aaron was facing charges for something he knew he did was against the law, but he didn't accept the world where that thing he did was against the law.
So he took his own life.
"His jury trial was looming when Swartz took his own life in January, 2013.
MIT faced a firestorm of criticism in the wake of Swartz’s suicide. Critics, including Swartz’s family and prominent MIT alumni, said the institution betrayed its own principles by not advocating for less harsh treatment of Swartz."
I can't see how "undid" would point to anything other than his "not being here". His presence being undone. His life being undone. If he would have been incarcerated for life, I don't think Kevin would use the word "undid". He would print "Free Aaron" stickers, and getting the word out that this fight should not be over.
I've actually never seen this wording being used ever, so for me it seemed quite similar to "doing someone". Yes that also means "screwing someone over" but for me, when reading "undid" a quote from the movie Trainspotting came to mind.
"Begbie didn't do drugs either. He just did people" and that involved a knife usually.
/edit: Considering the dictionary's definition I will hereby withdraw my suspect of any intent by the author to suggest that another person or entity was responsible for Aaron's death :)
The uneducated and alienated public is also to blame. Not that they are consciously evil but they are a huge part of the problem anyway. They are those who should have stepped forth and defended Aaron Swartz and set things straight.
I find that it is of little help to look at these big problems in terms of individual intentions. In the end the underlying problems are widespread social circumstances that need to be fixed. The human nature impersonations, the evil people with agendas are just symptoms.
That seems like a preposterous amount of time, money, and stipulations post-release. What was the federal prosecution's motivation for making an example out of him?
ii) US justice system is a machine. Roll over and give up, or they're going to crush you like a bug.
Edit: English
What sort of crimes typically have similar actual and enforced punishments? I'm wondering where on the scale it gets slotted. Is it between assault and shoplifting or grand theft and kidnapping?
For federal crimes, sentencing is generally governed by the federal sentencing guidelines. [1] The application is conceptually simple -- there are guidelines for determining the offense level for each base crime, guidelines for grouping offenses (some of which just keep the most serious, some of which start with the most serious and increase based on other offenses), and guidelines for adjustments to the offense level for various factors such as actual harms inflicted, the defendants criminal history, the defendants acceptance of responsibility, and so forth, and finally guidelines to translate offense level into sentence. But the details are quite involved.
Perhaps the most important thing to note, in the federal guidelines, is that in most cases, where multiple convictions are handed down for offenses involve the same victim and the same act or transaction, or different acts or transaction as part of the same plan or scheme, the offense level is set by the single most serious count alone -- charging multiple counts of the same charge basically just increase the chance of getting a conviction.
For state offenses, sentencing is handled by state-specific rules.
[1] http://www.ussc.gov/Guidelines/2013_Guidelines/index.cfm
So let's not use the "it was just to pressure him" defense.
Restating: people, in the same country as Aaron, have been sentenced to same or worse sentences, even for lighter stuff.
Plus, the Obama administration raised maximum sentences for hacking count to 20 years (up from 10).
As far as I know, only California has a three strikes law that can apply to non-violent felonies, and I don't know of any three strikes law that applies to convictions on multiple counts for the same conduct.
When you see stuff like "man gets life for possessing an unregistered firearm" (at least outside of California), you need to read the fine print and look for the prior murder or armed robbery convictions.
I disagree with three strikes laws even when structured to only apply to violent felonies, but they're totally irrelevant to this discussion.
As I've argued elsewhere [1], "A prosecutor forcing someone to admit guilt by threatening a life-destroying cruel and unusual punishment if they do not admit it - why, that is the very essence of using torture to extract a confession!"
[1] http://quandyfactory.com/blog/103
Many of the counts would have been grouped under the guidelines.
Once again: Swartz's own lawyer wrote that he believed it unlikely that Swartz would do any time in prison even if he was convicted after pleading not guilty.
The "35 years" thing is entirely fictional. Popehat has a fantastic blog post on why this fiction exists and how it is misunderstood.
There was no way Swartz was getting 35 years even if he was convicted of everything. And the prosecutor piled on every charge he thought he had a chance at. Knuckling under and serving 6 months quietly isn't too appealing. And the alternative was lots of publicity for the cause, a good chance to change precedent in IP cases, and the possibility of serving some time as a martyr.
I've always wondered if the felony conviction aspect of the punishment wasn't just as unacceptable to him. It would prevent any political ambitions in the US, I believe.
http://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence...
The main thing that confuses people is grouping. Prosecutors charge a large number of counts because they don't want to lose a conviction by being imprecise in characterizing the specific set of acts out of an overall course of conduct that was illegal. If you add up all the counts you get some big number, but the sentencing guidelines (3D1.2) clearly state: "All counts involving substantially the same harm shall be grouped together into a single Group."
I think the sentencing guidelines are ridiculous (look at that big list of meaningless factors in the sushi chef example!), but its much more sensible to calculate a guideline range than to add up the theoretical maximum sentences.
note the filename of the pic in the article: swartz-double.jpg
MIT trains hackers for a living, since before this guy was born.
It's too bad that many activists, who want clearly an open, just and more socially enabled world, have a psyche that is so fragile. But apparently the two things are correlated: If you are sensitive, you might very well be fragile.
Now given the fact that tampering 40.000 criminal cases[1] give you 3 to 5 years, I don't see how publishing MIT documents can be so dangerous for the society.
[1] http://filmingcops.com/corrupt-government-chemist-tampered-w...
I don't have the faintest idea on how we could achieve this on our televised democracy, but I'd be interested on reading other's opinion on the matter.
RMS - " Hackers typically had little respect for the silly rules that administrators like to impose, so they looked for ways around. For instance, when computers at MIT started to have "security" (that is, restrictions on what users could do), some hackers found clever ways to bypass the security, partly so they could use the computers freely, and partly just for the sake of cleverness (hacking does not need to be useful). However, only some hackers did this—many were occupied with other kinds of cleverness, such as placing some amusing object on top of MIT's great dome (), finding a way to do a certain computation with only 5 instructions when the shortest known program required 6, writing a program to print numbers in roman numerals, or writing a program to understand questions in English.
Meanwhile, another group of hackers at MIT found a different solution to the problem of computer security: they designed the Incompatible Timesharing System without security "features". In the hacker's paradise, the glory days of the Artificial Intelligence Lab, there was no security breaking, because there was no security to break. It was there, in that environment, that I learned to be a hacker, though I had shown the inclination previously. We had plenty of other domains in which to be playfully clever, without building artificial security obstacles which then had to be overcome. "
/s