I disagree with your edit. There's definitely a systemic problem, but it's a systemic problem with elected officials. Naming, shaming, and voting them out is the solution.
I agree naming and shaming is a good idea. It puts a name and a face to the story... not just some nebulous "the system is broken." People need a narrative to humanize the situation and it can serve as a warning to other prosecutors.
Yes...as much as hacker-minded people want to think that it's about the data (which I won't argue that it isn't), things happen because of individual stories.
Rosa Parks was not the first person to be denied a seat on a bus. The mishandling of rape cases has been a problem in India for a long time and it took the tragic case of the (so far, anonymous) woman who was brutally gang-raped to spur international furor. And think of the numerous laws named after victims...Megan, and so forth
I was actually thinking about Rosa Parks when I made that comment. The reason that Rosa Parks became a well known civil rights figure was because she was well known and liked, not because she was the first... Just like Aaron
Which just adds to the tragedy of all this. I think Aaron is someone the tech and non-tech community could have backed together, for any reasonable civic cause. His name is already attached to Reddit and all of his other accomplishments make him as much a non-consumer-facing media tech darling as you could hope for.
Federal prosecutors are appointed, not elected, which makes the effort to name and shame them even more tenuous. Trying to fight the culture of overzealous prosecution as a whole would make it more likely that the elected official who appoints them (the president) does a better job.
