Because our law is made by the hands of ultimately fallible beings. We are inevitably going to make mistakes. This is the reason we have legislative bodies. They are a guard against our own lack of omnipotence.
Have you actually read anything about this case? Some facts include:
a) He was threatened with 35 years in prison for downloading journal articles from MIT. Both MIT and JStor (the wronged parties) were against this heavy handed prosecution.
b) Aaron was not convicted because he chose to kill himself while the prosecution was ongoing. The prosecution wanted him to serve six months in a federal prison; Swartz refused this plea deal. Aaron killed himself shortly after the prosecution declined his offer.
c) This style of prosecution (ie - go to court and risk 35 years in prison vs plead guilty and spend six months) goes against justice.
Aaron was a good friend of mine, I know quite a bit about this case.
a) No he wasn't, this is a common misconception by people who don't understand how the US court system works.
b) Aaron had a good deal, the indisputable breaking-and-entering charge would probably have gotten him more than 6 months. (Clarification: Aarons state charges were dropped to make way for the more serious federal charges, so in the end he didn't even get charged for the breaking-and-entering.)
c) Again, read up on the US court system.
You're disrespecting his memory by using him as a weapon for your misguided crusade.
a) Even if we want to bicker about the exact time, can we agree that he was facing a possible 5 years? That's ten times longer than what the prosecutors thought an appropriate punishment (the 6 month offered plea).
b) Not for a college-class first time offender into an unlocked network closet, especially given the institution. That would have been handled at the local level, and would have most likely ended up in probation.
c) Yes, this case was business as usual for the US "justice" system. That doesn't make it right.
If Aaron was a good friend of yours, then you probably do have some different insight. Please share it here instead of repeating the same tired he-got-what-he-deserved FUD.
Aaron's attorney at the time of his suicide wrote a summary of the case shortly after Aaron died. His attorney believed that given the nature of the crime (particularly: nonremunerative) and Aaron's first-time offender status, he was unlikely to serve a custodial sentence even if he was convicted. You can reach a similar conclusion by looking at the federal sentencing guidelines and seeing where the probation cutoff is.
This isn't bickering; the C.W. about Swartz is indeed that he was facing decades in prison. He was not.
I agree with the overwhelming majority of everyone that a custodial sentence for Swartz' actions would have been a miscarriage of justice. But the distinctions being made in this thread are not minor ones.
The prosecution thought he would get well over six months in prison, so beliefs clearly differ.
From a security mindset, you must surely know that if something can happen, then you must consider it. The statistical "expected outcome" of the sentence is irrelevant when it's the variance that's so crushing.
I'll give you that "decades" is an emotional exaggeration the other way. But unless you can bound that maximum at less than three years, then I would still call it "bickering". Anything in that range is life altering, and distinguishing between personality-ending and life-ending isn't particularly meaningful when they have a similar effect on the defendant.
You can look at sentences for comparable crimes with remunerative intent. For instance: Stephen Watt got 2 years for being instrumental to a massive credit card theft operation.
Another question you could ask is, is there an expert in criminal law who has made a case for Swartz actually facing 3+ years in prison?
a) Sure, he was facing a possible "5 years" (most likely much less) and was well aware of that.
b) Debatable, a prison sentence of a few years definitely wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary
c) You make it sound like there's something wrong with deals by prosecution, I don't think so. The deals don't hurt anybody and offer an easy way out.
Aaron knew what he was doing, he made a conscious decision to do it. I believe Aaron also knew that he'd get in trouble for doing this, what he was doing was civil disobedience. Orin Kerr describes this fairly well in his article http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-agains...
I replied to your top-level comment, but I'll just emphasize here, that Kerr himself does not agree with your assessment that "there really doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the law here".
He also doesn't agree with your opinion that there's nothing wrong with the way prosecutors use plea bargaining.
He does argue that Aaron knowingly broke the law and should have faced some consequences, but probably not felony charges.
Really, you should read Kerr more carefully before linking to him.
And with that, you lose a great deal of credibility. It goes against your claim to have a great deal of knowledge about this case.
> The deals don't hurt anybody and offer an easy way out
With this, you lose a great deal of reputation you might have as a moral person, since you seem to think that extortionate behavior is acceptable, particularly from those with overwhelming power, such as the USG prosecutors. True, you are in good company, as the US justice system largely agrees with you that they have the right to extort; but that doesn't justify your position so much as emphasize that theirs, and yours, is evil.
> The deals don't hurt anybody and offer an easy way out.
What is wrong with some of you Americans?
How can you have as a part of justice system a deal where you can say "Ok. Let's pretend that I did this thing and you don't have to actually prove it and you won't try to convince anyone that I did this other more horrid thing you accuse me of. And who cares about the truth?"
Plea bargaining exists in Germany as well (under the rubric of "confession agreements").
I think plea bargaining is a red herring. Plea bargains are a necessity: jarring as it is for us to consider this, most felony† defendants are in fact guilty, as a simple consequence of how policing works. It doesn't appear that way to us intuitively, because we only hear about the interesting cases.
That's not a defense of US criminal procedure! We have a terrible, back-breaking policy flaw: sentences are much too onerous, as a result of several decades of "war on crime" legislation from the 70's, 80's, and 90's.
Even if the numbers make guilt look more likely, we cannot create policy with the assumption of guilt. We subscribe to a principle of innocent until proven guilty, plain and simple.
This principle is an essential safeguard, critical for the preservation of order in a democracy.
As I have said before in this thread. Don't rob Peter to pay Paul. It is simply illogical and counter productive.
No doubt a functioning court system is also extremely critical.
We just need to think about it like a bug in the software. In the end it is up to social innovators to correct this deficiency. There is a solution to this problem.
EXTRA --
There is the argument that this does not apply to illegal combatants or immediate threats to national security. Obviously that is another problematic and complicated position that my have policy bleeding into this case.
It is an unfortunate problem with the current judiciary system. Pleas do avoid trail and as I understand it when things go to trail the penalties are substantially harsher.
So in many ways it can become the best bet... even for an innocent person.
> The deals don't hurt anybody and offer an easy way out.
Plea bargaining is a system that leads the state to extort guilty pleas out of innocent people. If you think it doesn't hurt anybody, quite frankly you have no idea what you're talking about.
If you'd like to learn more, here's a well-known paper on the subject:
If sentencing guidelines were ratcheted sharply downwards, plea bargaining wouldn't have an extortative effect, because prosecutors wouldn't have the latitude to pursue outlandish sentences.
However, if plea bargaining was outlawed but sentencing guidelines remained as they are now, sentencing and criminal procedure would remain unjust for the majority of defendants, who are ultimately guilty but don't deserve outlandish sentences.
Both policy changes are very unlikely, but for different reasons.
Plea bargaining won't be outlawed or curtailed because doing so would require allocating a huge amount of money to the court system, which is already overtaxed. Preempting an argument nobody has made: that's not "their problem, not ours", because what we'd really be talking about is years and years of delayed trials during which people will be held in confinement anyways. Look at China for an example of a system that has that problem in a big way.
Sentences won't be ratcheted down because there's never a political upside for doing that. That's obviously tragic.
A few years in prison for breaking and entering a maintenance closet on a college campus for a first time offender is ordinary?
Wow, I guess the hacks that happen at MIT do carry quite the risk then. I can only imagine how many decades people would have gotten if they were caught putting the Lunar Module on the Great Dome.
The law was going to give him prison time and mark him as a felon for life for the crime of downloading academic papers with the intent of making them available to the public. It continued to pursue this even after JSTOR had asked the attorneys to back down, hounding him incessantly even after informed that he was psychologically ill.
The tragic thing about this is that anyone affiliated with an academic institution already most likely has free JSTOR access and those who do not can find a large number of significant papers on sites like gen.lib.rus.ec, visit a local university library, email someone with access to the paper or can do any number of other things.
You probably mean 6 months or less, because that was the prosecution offer. And yeah, I think that was actually a pretty good deal. Although I would agree that in a perfect world the material he took would already have been public.
I think you are grossly underplaying the consequences of that plea deal. Six months (or less) in federal prison would still have him labeled as a "convict" and he would have lost numerous civil rights (voting being one) as a result. Needless to say, he would have to carry that label for the rest of his days as a US citizen. From what I understand, Aaron did not want to carry that cross, more so since he considered himself innocent. Hence, in protest, he took his own life. I am neither condoning nor criticizing his action and his final decision, as I am in no position to do that. However, I strongly doubt it was as simple or straightforward as you'd like it to appear. If you are a friend of Aaron's and you have come out publicly (on HN) as one, perhaps you could explain the reasoning and motivations better than most of us. Why not do that, instead of oversimplifying the whole situation?
Soldiers go to war knowing they can be killed. That doesn't mean when the enemy kills US soldiers, we should just shrug and say "well, they knew the risks, who cares?", does it?
No, I meant what I've written. If 6 months was an "amazing" deal, then 9 months or a year would be good a good deal and I absolutely disagree with that.
There are some serious problems with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which was seriously abused in this case. Members of Congress have recognized this and tried to reform the law because of the abuse.
I don't think technological illiteracy plays a large part here, Aaron exploited a flaw in JSTORs ratelimiting system and continued doing so after being blocked several times by JSTOR administration. After that didn't work out he broke into a server cabinet at MIT.
The choice between "100% OK" and 30 years in jail is a false dichotomy. Nobody says Aaron Swartz was a saint without any flaw, and one can easily find many ways in which in hindsight one could suggest better action, especially if one doesn't actually have to act on their own advice. But that he was a fallible human being is not the same as accepting the treatment he's got from the US government. He was trying to fix an injustice and he was not harming anyone. Prosecutors have enough power and discretion to accommodate that if they wanted. They didn't want.
30 years in jail is a false dichotomy and people need to quit parroting that in relation to this case, it was never ever in any way going to be close to that.
Well, 30 years maybe a bit exaggerated, but multiple years in jail were well on the agenda if Swartz would not take the plea agreement, as the facts of the case were against him and the jury probably would not (and would be instructed not to) relate to his motives and why he did it. Then it would come to the sentencing and as the feds were determined to make an example of him... it would be hard to expect much leniency, especially given the fact that Swartz probably didn't think what he did was wrong (even if how he did it may be against he law) so he would not get the "regret" leniency too. So maybe not 30 years, but multiple years still, which is very harsh and can ruin one's life.
P.S. btw, please look up what "dichotomy" is. You can not have dichotomy of one thing, at least in the meaning of the word we're dealing with here.
To this, I can only add that there are a lot of bad laws and even more, much more, bad prosecutions, so sounding like every prosecution is right and if you don't like it, just don't break the law, is not only sounding mean and morally obtuse, but also very uninformed.
Sorry but serving six months jail time (and most likely less) for repeatedly breaking and entering is perfectly reasonable to me and not obtuse whatsoever.
Most on HN are outraged with this type of sentencing because it's someone they liked, but if it was anyone else it would be perfectly acceptable.
Did you spend time in federal prison? Are you dealing with convicted felon status? You seem to be awfully quick recommending people to sit in jail and accept the life of a convicted felon. It's either you recommend it from experience of it not being a big deal, or it is the obtuseness.
Essentially he was exploiting a vulnerability in JSTOR to mass download court documents, what if he was downloading credit cards instead? Or some sort of corporate secrets?
(Sure, credit cards and court documents are very very different. But the act here is the crime, not what he gains from it)
> Essentially he was exploiting a vulnerability in JSTOR to mass download court documents
He was downloading academic articles, not court documents. You're mixing up the JSTOR download and the time he pulled down PACER documents. He did have legitimate access to the JSTOR documents, but was bypassing rate limiting. In the process, he did do some things that were illegal, but nothing that honestly justified the Feds charging him with CFAA or wire fraud charges filed, nor anything that justified a felony conviction. What he was doing wasn't the sort of crime those laws were written to address and that they were intended to stop. The Feds. abused the ambiguities in poorly written laws to charge him.
> what if he was downloading credit cards instead? Or some sort of corporate secrets?
What if he was raping women? Or committing genocide?
> But the act here is the crime, not what he gains from it
Downloading scientific journals is not the same "act" as committing credit card fraud. It is an outrageous defect in the law that it doesn't adequately distinguish them.
Wow. You claim to know a lot about the case, but you don't even realize that JSTOR holds scientific papers, not court documents.
Swartz had previously downloaded court documents from a service called PACER. An FBI investigation was opened, but closed with no charges being filed; he was not prosecuted for that.
My issue is not the crime but the intention of the individual and whether or not his behaviour was fundamentally prosocial and/or in the national interest.
We have constitutions and laws specifically to product/advance those interests. If that is the standard by which we judge actions, then it change how we should view the case.
This debate has fueled technological literacy among the general population/legislative/judicial. Much like the fappening is doing for crypto/personal_security (Re: Android/Apple announcements). It further underlines the critical role that technology plays in our civil life.
