Second, was the prosecution of Mr. Swartz in any way retaliation for his exercise of his rights as a citizen under the Freedom of Information Act? If so, I recommend that you refer the matter immediately to the Inspector General.
I have shown earlier how, during the period when the Grand Jury was investigating Swartz, Swartz was FOIAing stuff that the prosecutor seems to have subpoeaned as part of a fishing expedition into Swartz. I have also shown that a FOIA response he got in January 2011 suggests he may have been discussed in a (presumably different) grand jury investigation between October 8 and December 10, 2010. And Jason Leopold has also pointed to some interesting coincidences in Swartz' FOIAs.
But there's a series of FOIAs Swartz submitted that almost certainly pissed off the government: he FOIAed tapes that would have had Bradley Manning, describing in his own words, how he was being treated at Quantico.
On December 23, 2010, David House blogged about the treatment Bradley Manning was being subjected to at Quantico (which has since been deemed illegal).
On December 27, Swartz asked for the following in FOIA from the Marine Corps:
Any records related to Bradley Manning or his confinement in Quantico Brig.
In particular, please process as quickly as possible a request for the government-curated audio tapes created in Quantico brig visitation room #2 on December 18 and December 19 2010 from 1:00pm 3:00pm. These tapes may also contain a recording of David M. House; I have permission from David House under the Privacy Act to request these records.
The timeline that ensued is below, with other significant dates included.
Of particular interest? The Secret Service didn't get warrants to investigate Swartz immediately after his initial arrest, in spite of the fact Secret Service Agent Michael Pickett offered to get a warrant on January 7. In fact, Secret Service didn't get warrants until February 9, over a month after his initial arrest. (Update: See this post for more on the delay.)
That's the day Swartz FOIAed the Army Criminal Investigative Service for the tapes on Manning's treatment.
More odd still, the Secret Service didn't immediately use the warrants to obtain the hardware seized in his arrest; the warrant to search his hardware expired and Secret Service eventually got a second one. But Secret Service did search Swartz' home two days after they got that warrant, on February 11two days after he asked ACIS for the tape that would have Manning describing how he was being treated.
Suffice it to say that Swartz was pursuing the same information that got State Department Spokesperson PJ Crowley fired just as USSS intensified its investigation of him.
While I don't think Swartz' pursuit of details on Manning's treatment would be the only reason they would deal with him so harshly, the Obama Administration clearly was dealing harshly with those who were critical of the treatment of Manning.
Update: This post has been updated for accuracy. December 23, 2010: David House blogs about Manning's treatment, effectively fact-checking DOD's claims.
December 27, 2010: Swartz FOIAs the recording of House's visit to Manning, which would have captured Manning describing in his own words how he was being treated.
December 29, 2010: Initial response on Manning brig FOIA.
January 4, 2011: MIT finds Swartz' computer. Secret Service takes over the investigation.
January 6, 2011: Swartz arrested.
January 7, 2011: Twitter administrative subpoena to several WikiLeaks team members revealed.
January 17, 2011: Protest outside of Quantico for Manning.
January 18, 2011: Manning placed on suicide risk.
January 20, 2011: Swartz' Manning brig FOIA transfered to Quantico CO.
February 1, 2011: Quantico tells Swartz Manning brig FOIA needs to go to Army Criminal Investigative Service.
February 9, 2011: Swartz FOIAs ACIS for Manning brig information.
February 9, 2011: Secret Service obtains warrant to search Swartz' hardware and apartment, followed by a warrant to search his office.
February 9, 2011: WSJ reports WikiLeaks investigation cannot prove Assange induced Manning to leak documents.
February 11, 2011: Secret Service searches Swartz' house and office, but not the hardware primarily implicated in the crime purportedly being investigated.
February 22, 2011: Warrants on Swartz' hardware expire.
February 24, 2011: Secret Service obtains new warrant for hardware. Initial response from ACIS to Manning brig FOIA.
February 28, 2011: ACIS responds to Swartz' Manning FOIA, stating,
… the requested documents are part of an ongoing Army court-martial litigation and are not releasable to the public at this time. This request will be closed. Please submit your request at a later time.
On the 28th of February, the US Army's Freedom of Information Act Officer declined to release documents I requested under FOIA/PA because they "are part of an ongoing Army court-martial litigation."
Being part of ongoing litigation is not a valid exemption to the FOIA or the Privacy Act.
There are narrow exemptions for certain types of release that interfere with law enforcement activities, but the Army has not claimed these exemptions nor explained why they apply. Furthermore, the normal procedure is to collect the documents and then evaluate them to see whether any portions of them qualify for the exemption. It appears the Army did not collect documents in response to my request at all, so I do not see how it could have evaluated them.
I therefore appeal my request in its entirety.
You are absolutely correct and I want to apologize for sending you the wrong information. This request is being sent to the Initial Denial Office (IDA) today. Please give them a couple of days to receive it.
March 4, 2011; ACIS sends another letter:
Because this request has been denied this request is being sent to the Initial Denial Office (IDA).
March 11, 2011: PJ Crowley criticizes Manning's "ridiculous, counterproductive, and stupid" treatment at event at MIT. Jake Tapper asks Obama about Crowley's comment at press conference.
March 13, 2011: White House forces PJ Crowley to resign for criticizing treatment of Manning.
March 18, 2011: ACIS rejects his request, citing an ongoing investigation.
April 19, 2011: DOD announces Manning will be moved to Leavenworth. http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/01/18/was...o-harshly/
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Carmen Ortiz's Sordid Rap Sheet
By Christian Stork on Jan 17, 2013
The suicide last Friday of information activist, computer hacker and technical wunderkind Aaron Swartz has focused attention on Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, whose overzealous prosecution may have led to his death. Swartz, co-founder of a website later acquired by Reddit as well as a prime developer of the online publishing infrastructure known as Rich Site Summary (RSS), was under federal indictment for logging into JSTORa database of scholarly articles accessible from universities across the countryand downloading its content with the intent to distribute the articles online free of charge.
Despite JSTOR's subsequent securing of the "stolen" content and refusal to press charges, Swartz was arrested by the feds and charged originally with four felony counts under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. On those charges alone, Swartz was facing a possible 35-year sentence and over $1,000,000 in fines. Just three months ago, a "Superseding Indictment" filed in the case by the U.S. attorney's office upped the felony count from four to 13. If convicted, Swartz was looking at possibly over 50 years in prison: a conceivable life sentence.
Ortiz, the politically ambitious U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, spearheaded the prosecution against Swartz. "Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar," Ortiz proclaimed in a 2011 press release. Her point man in the case was Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann, a specialist in computer crime and son of Philip Heymann, the United States Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton administration. Stephen Heymann led the 2010 investigation into Albert Gonzalez, the TJX hacker, in the largest identity fraud case in history. Heymann's office suspected that one of the unindicted co-conspirators named in that criminal complaint"JJ"was Jonathan James, a juvenile hacker who also killed himself two weeks after his house was raided.
The details of the Swartz case are so suggestive of prosecutorial abuse that they have already led to widespread condemnation of Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann. However, what's missing from much of the expressed outrage is recognition that the "bullying" tactics employed by Ms. Ortiz are standard operating procedure for federal prosecutors when pursuing criminal cases.
The Great Heist of Tewksbury
With a population just under 30,000, the town of Tewksbury, Massachusetts, is hardly considered ground zero for federal drug trafficking crimes. Just off Route 38, the town's only major thoroughfare, sits the modest Motel Caswell. With just six reviews on tripadvisor.comone "Poor" and five "Terrible"even defenders of the $57 per night operation admit its shabby digs: "The Motel Caswell isn't the Ritz," its lawyer told a federal courtroom in November 2012. But that didn't stop the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Ms. Ortiz's office from trying to seize its assets .
In 2009, the 69-year-old owner, Russ Caswell, received a letter from the DOJ indicating the government was pursuing a civil forfeiture case against him with the intention of seizing his family's motelit was built in 1955 by Russ's fatherand the surrounding property. Ms. Ortiz's office asserted that the motel had been the site of multiple crimes by its occupants over the years: 15 low-level drug offenses between 1994 and 2008 (out of an estimated 125,000 room rentals). Of those who stayed in the motel from 2001 to 2008, .05% were arrested for drug crimes on the property. Local and state officials in charge of those investigations never accused the Caswells of any wrongdoing.
Nor is the U.S. attorney charging Russ Caswell with a crime. The feds are using a vague but increasingly common procedure known as civil asset forfeiture. In criminal forfeiture, after a person is convicted of a crime the state must prove that the perpetrator's property had a sufficiently strong relationship to the crime to warrant seizure by the government. In civil forfeiture proceedings, the state asserts the property committed the crime, andunder civil lawthe burden of proof is on the defense to demonstrate their property is innocent.
"I've found…I'm responsible for the action of people I don't even know, I've never even met, and for the most part I have no control over them," Mr. Caswell told WBUR Boston. "And when they do something wrong, the government wants to steal my property for the actions of those people, which to me makes absolutely no sense. It's more like we're in Russia or Venezuela or something."
According to the sworn testimony of a DEA agent operating out of Boston, it was his job to comb through news stories for properties that might be subject to forfeiture. When he finds a likely candidate, he goes to the Registry of Deeds, determines the value of the property in question, and refers it to the U.S. attorney for seizure. It is DEA policy to reject anything with less than $50,000 equity.
In other cases, that DEA agent testified, the property is brought to his attention by local police departments. He could not recall whether Mr. Caswell's case was brought by local authorities or picked by his own research. Christina DiIorio-Sterling, a spokesperson for Ms. Ortiz's office, maintained in an interview that local police brought the case to DEA. But if Tewksbury's Finest suspected crime was occurring on specific property, why not initiate an investigation themselves? Why simply hand a case like that over to the feds?
Through a policy known as equitable sharing, "the federal government has the discretion to dispense 80%" of the proceeds of liquidated seized assets "with the local authorities [that] cooperate," Larry Salzmanattorney for Mr. Caswelltold WhoWhatWhy in an interview. He maintains this provision creates a perverse incentive to initiate such proceedings, even when the investigating authorities have no reason to suspect criminal wrongdoing. "It's obvious it turns the American idea of innocent until proven guilty on its head."
When asked about the possibility of an 80% haul that Tewksbury PD stood to gain from the liquidation of Mr. Caswell's property, Ms. Sterling responded that such processes are referred all the way up through the Department of Justice (DOJ), before any arrangement with local authorities is negotiated: "The equitable sharing process is a lengthy one."
Mr. Caswell's family-owned and -operated property was worth approximately $1.5 million with no mortgagemaking it a perfect target. Without a bank involved, the likelihood of the Caswells' mounting a drawn-out legal defense was miniscule. Through a spokeswoman, Ms. Ortiz's office released a statement at the time of trial on why they were choosing to pursue Mr. Caswell:
"The government believed that this was an important case…because of the deterrent message it sends to others who may turn a blind eye to crime occurring at their place of business."
Mr. Salzman doesn't buy the message of deterrence. He asserts that just up the street, a Motel 6, Walmart and Home Depot all operate with similarin many cases higherrates of drug crimes on their properties, referencing numbers obtained from the Tewksbury Police Department. An investigation by the Lowell Sun confirms this:
A review of Police Department arrest logs from 2007 through 2012 shows that despite a relatively high number of drug arrests at the Motel Caswell property in recent years, more suspects have been busted on drug-related charges at nearby addresses.
During the examined six-year time period, police made 19 drug arrests at the Motel Caswell at 450 Main St., five fewer than at the property where Walmart is located at 333 Main St. Twenty-six drug arrests were made at each of the properties located at 85 Main St. [Home Depot & Applebees] and 95 Main St. [Motel 6 & IHOP]
But those corporations have extensive financial and legal resources, and would put up much more of a fight than a small business owned and operated by a single family. Before a public interest law firm took on his case, Mr. Caswell had already spent over $100,000 and was near bankruptcy.
Ms. Sterling maintains that Ms. Ortiz's office has no discretion in which properties are targeted. They simply act as the lawyers for other agencies of the federal government, in this case the DEA.
The Kingpins of Patronage
In March 2012, former Massachusetts Probation Commissioner John J. O'Brien was indicted by a federal grand jury under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). With two of his former deputies and alleged co-conspirators, he was charged with "one count of racketeering conspiracy and 10 counts of mail fraud," according to The Patriot Ledger. Each of the 11 counts carries a sentence of up to 20 years.
The lengthy indictment alleges that the three ran a hiring system for the Massachusetts Probation Department that gave preference to friends and family members of certain legislators and politically connected prospects. Those aforementioned counts of mail fraud consisted of "sending rejection letters to applicants they knew from the start they weren't going to actually consider." By this standard, any boss who ever hired a friend's childyet sent letters to other applicants in which he claimed they were considered before being rejected, as per standard hiring procedurehas committed mail fraud.
Enacted in 1970 to enable prosecutors to convict leaders of criminal organizations who order subordinates to commit crimes but who are never themselves at the crime scene, RICO statutes have most widely been applied to drug cartels, the Mafia, and terrorist organizations. The logic is simple: if a mob kingpin orders a hit on someone, he has a strong First Amendment case that he isn't at fault for the murder. Under RICO, the government only needs to prove a relationship between murderer and kingpin within an ongoing criminal organization.
Mr. O'Brien and his codefendants are also under indictment for violating state campaign finance laws. But those are charges being brought by the Attorney General of Massachusetts, Martha Coakley, and are unrelated to the federal indictments issued by Ms. Ortiz's office.
It is the job of prosecutors to bring malefactors to justice with tools appropriate to the alleged offenses for example, RICO vs. the Mafia or al-Qaeda. But excessive prosecutorial zeal that regularly aims the biggest guns in the government's arsenal at the smallest fry can only undermine public support for the justice system itself. In cases like that of John J. O'Brien and Aaron Swartz, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz's penchant for bringing disproportionate charges intended for serious criminals against defendants who pose little or no threat to the public's well-being suggests either puritanical vengeance or brazen self-promotion.
Speaking While Brown (and Bearded)
Now consider the case of Tarek Mehanna, a Massachusetts pharmacist sentenced to 17 years in prison after being convicted in 2012 of supporting al-Qaeda and conspiring to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Ms. Ortiz's office claimed in the indictment that Mehanna travelled to Yemen with the intent of joining a terrorist training camp although he never found one.
Upon returning to the U.S., prosecutors allege, Mehanna translated documents written by members of al-Qaeda and posted YouTube videos in support of suicide bombings. The 2010 Supreme Court case Holder v. Humanitarian Law held that "protected speech can be a criminal act if it occurs at the direction of a terrorist organization." Mehanna was eventually found guilty, although no causal relationship was established between his controversial advocacy against American foreign policy and direction by a designated member of al-Qaeda.
Although her office failed to win the 25-year minimum sentence she had requested, Ms. Ortiz said that Mehanna "faced the consequences of his actions, for conspiring to support terrorists, for conspiring to kill Americans overseas, and for lying to the FBI."
At his sentencing hearing, Mr. Mehanna claimed he was being persecuted for not cooperating with the FBI, which had pressured him to join its sprawling, thousands-strong network of paid informants and provocateurs (the prime source of most federal terrorism indictments since 9/11):
As I was walking to my car I was approached by two federal agents. They said that I had a choice to make: I could do things the easy way, or I could do them the hard way. The "easy " way, as they explained, was that I would become an informant for the government, and if I did so I would never see the inside of a courtroom or a prison cell. As for the hard way, this is it. Here I am, having spent the majority of the four years since then in a solitary cell the size of a small closet, in which I am locked down for 23 hours each day. The FBI and these prosecutors worked very hard and the government spent millions of tax dollars to put me in that cell, keep me there, put me on trial, and finally to have me stand here before you today to be sentenced to even more time in a cell.
As I pointed out in an article discussing the assassination by drone strike of American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, legal precedent holds that independent political speechno matter how heinous and suggestiveis protected unless it passes the Brandenburg test of inciting imminent lawless behavior. According to this reading of the law, whether Mehanna simply agreed with al-Qaeda's message and promoted his own views in that vein or was deliberately ordered to do so by al-Qaeda members, he was still engaging in constitutionally protected speech.
But the Holder interpretation establishes that coordination between a designated terrorist organization and an individual, even to the point of providing that organization with advice to lay down arms and pursue non-violence, constitutes material support for terrorism. This was the precedent cited in finding that Mr. Mehanna was conspiring with terrorist organizations by virtue of his advocacy.
One can debate whether or not that's an appropriate legal restriction on free speech, and how the Holder ruling can be reconciled with Brandenburg. What shouldn't be up for debate is the practice of threatening defendants with draconian outcomesbankruptcy, 25 years in prisonto leverage guilty pleas to lesser crimes or on-going cooperation with the government.
For Carmen Ortiz, Russ Caswell was like the weakest kid on the block who was wearing something she, or the agencies her office represents, coveted. In the cases of Aaron Swartz, Tarek Mehanna and John O'Brien, Ms. Ortiz's fervency seems to have stemmed from the publicity such cases were sure to generate. All the defendants insisted on their innocence and fought the charges. The jury's still out on O'Brien and Caswell, but Swartz and Mehanna have paid the price for their defiance.
Although the conduct of Ms. Ortiz's office may seem disproportionately harsh, this is unfortunately par for the course. Rather than a procedure dictated from Washington, U.S. attorneys and local D.A.'s enjoy broad discretion in the charges they press. Thanks to tough-on-crime laws and mandatory-minimum sentencing, prosecutors are able to extortif they so choosea quick end to the proceedings and a headline-worthy admission of guilt. To single out the conduct of Carmen Ortiz as an anomaly of America's system of mass incarceration would be to misunderstand its character. She is a symptom of the entire disease.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture."
- Aaron Swartz
In the memorial service, Aaron's partner Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman was demanding the audience gathered there for a self-introspection: she was asking "if you're in the tech sector, why are you there? What do you really believe in? If you believe that technology is making the world a better place, why do you believe that? Do you really understand what makes the world a bad place to begin with?" She was rephrasing what Swartz had told while addressing a gathering at Washington DC in last May explaining how the resistance against SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) was carried on: he said, "new technology, instead of bringing us greater freedom, would have snuffed out our fundamental rights we'd always taken for granted" (How We Stopped SOPA May 2012). He confesses initially in his keynote address about how he had failed to sense the seriousness of the issue when his friend Peter was telling him about such an act and demanding that it needs to be opposed: his first reaction was: why should I waste my life fighting for such a little issue like copyright when several grave matters concerning life and health are already there. But then he gives a second thought, rethinks further and reformulates the issue: rather being a mere copyright related issue from which one can move forward, it was a bill that was fundamentally regulating the right to connect. He was realizing how in the arena of technology the fundamental rights and the civilian freedoms are being snuffed out without even hinting that such a modification is taking place which would alter the life across the world.
Swartz was invoking the grand tradition of civil disobedience in order to counter the challenge of technocapitalism which is claiming its ownership over knowledge and creativity produced and cumulated from innumerable nodes of being. He was not just proposing and advocating a resistance but was actually performing it: in his own terms, he was "liberating the information (that had been) locked up" (Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, July 2008).
Locking up the knowledge into secured archives with special privileged access is an enterprise generating huge profit: confreres of technocapitalism are gearing up with immense interest to tap it as much as they can by bringing up technological as well as legal barricades. As Swartz had identified, "The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage ... is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations" (Manifesto). It is a worldwide phenomenon, one being recently reported from India as well. Three publishers- Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Routledge had sued a petty photocopy shop and the Ratan Tata Library under Delhi University for issuing course packs for its students. Course packs are the sets of photocopied materials consisting of book chapters, journal articles, orders and such academic materials prescribed in the syllabus of a specific course in a particular semester. Section 52 of the Indian Copy Right Act clearly provides that "certain acts [should] not be [considered as] infringement of copyright" and lists out the cases- those for "private use, including research" (52 (i)) and "the reproduction of any work- i. by a teacher or pupil in the course of instruction" (52 (h) (i)). Despite this provision the publishers could get an order from the Delhi High Court to stop the system of course packs. The clever terminological moves made by publishers by equating photocopies of reading materials of a course in a university with pirate copies in order to invoke copyright laws is symptomatic: the court mentions the publishers arguing that the photocopy center "in a most unauthorized and illegal manner is reproducing and issuing the publications of the plaintiffs publications, by bringing out a compilation called as "Course Pack'" (CS(OS) 2439/2012 High Court of Delhi, p. 2). Further it refers the "Course Packs" as the "infringing/pirated copies" so that the act of photocopying the course readings gets placed as the act of piracy. University from its founding moments is an institution for production and dispersal of knowledge, and here two of the reputed university presses have become agents of market seeking inflated compensation for damages of six million rupees. When the rules of the game are altered in technocapitalism, what was perfectly legal becomes illegal, what was being carried out outside the discourse of legality becomes a prohibited and sinful act. Altered legal discourses attempt to dictate the notions of ethics and morality in terms of profit. In the new vocabulary such an act is "called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral -- it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy" (Manifesto).
Doc Searls who had met Swartz for the first time when he was twelve tries to elaborate the things using the computing metaphor: he identifies two spaces: kernel space and user space. Techies tend to avoid the user space and will limit their work to the kernel space: kernel space defines the limits and pays them their salary: It is a mammoth machine out there regulating the technology for its own needs is converting the kernel space into user space on which techies think they don't have any say: what Aaron challenging was the fundamental ethics that operated at this conversion: he was actively participating in the kernel space, yet he thought that it is his responsibility to see how kernel space becomes a user space and how the rules of the games were altered. Profit is in the kernel space as well as (and much more) in the conversion while politics, the question of justice is in user space. There are codes that regulate, archive and preserve the systemic structure of the kernel space which are variously being called copy right laws, intellectual property rights or patent laws. There is a frame of market which converts the kernel space into user space generating profit. This product of this particular conversion dictates the codes regulating how kernel space is formed and how user space is put into use. When the former or the later proposes any alterations in the rules of the game of this conversion, it is strictly being resisted and any effort in that direction is rendered as cyber crime, theft, even terrorism. The last option is not an imaginative possibility, for one can see its rhetoric was being invoked by the US Attorney who was massively overcharging in Aaron's case where he was being haunted by a possibility of 35 years of sentence.
Run Your Ad Here
It was the state machinery which was overenthusiastic in fixing Aaron and making a cyber-terrorist of him. Neither Jstor, from which Aaron had downloaded files, nor MIT, which is known for its legacy of support for open sources, where they were downloaded, were pushing the case further. Given the legacy of MIT, its administrators' decision to involve the Federal law enforcement in the case should make the concerned to remember the ideals for which the institute had stood for: the decision was the crime against the institutional ethics and integrity. Fundamentally Aaron's death was not a suicide; it was a state killing: killing needn't mean merely stabbing; making one's life unlivable is also an act of killing.
There is a story that Bernard Stiegler retells in the first volume of Technics and Time: it is a pre-Platonic tragic Greek myth recounted in Plato's Protagoras. It tells how, when it was decided to create living creatures, Gods charged Prometheus and Epimetheus with the task of equipping them and allotting suitable powers (dunameis) to each species. Epimetheus, which means "forgetfulness", "thinking backward", "hindsight", "reflection" (and Heidegger reminds that "memory thinks back to what is thought", where by this backward movement- reflection, being central to thinking), requests Prometheus to allow him to carry on the task himself and says, "when I have done it, you can review it". To each species he gave qualities to balance out the interplay of the species; but when at last he came to the human, Epimetheus found that he had forgotten to reserve any dunameis: the day had come when man too had to emerge from within the earth. Therefore Prometheus, being at a loss to provide any means of survival for man due the fault that had been committed, stole from Hephaestus and Athena the gift of skill in the arts together with fire and bestowed them on man. This skill, tekhne", technic, consequently elaborated into technology, constitutes the human. It is here the zootechnological relation of man to matter emerges. So to be human is to inherit the fault of Epimetheus (and of Prometheus as well- an originary double fault- of forgetting and of stealing, which Stiegler calls as a default of origin: "there will have been nothing at the origin but the fault, a fault that is nothing but the de-fault of origin or the origin as de-fault") and to be inextricably bound to technics.
With technology fundamentally constituting the human through a convergence of promethean and epimethean moments- of foresights and hindsights, its prohibition is a de-humanising act by itself. One should be aware of the attempts to snuff out one's fundamental right to live as a human being. Swartz was one of those activists who were creating such awareness and resisting such attempts.
References:
Steigler, Bernard. Technics and Time-1: The Fault of Epimetheus. Trans. Richard Beardsworth and George Collins. California: Stanford UP, 1998.
Swartz, Aaron. Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. Italy: July 2008, accessed on 24 Jan 2013.
Swartz, Aaron. How We Stopped SOPA. Washington DC: May 2012, accessed on 24 Jan 2013
The Chancellor, Master and Scholars of the University of Oxford and others Vs. Rameshwari Photocopy Services and ANR. No CS(OS) 2439/2012. High Court of Delhi, 14 August 2012.
Shreesha Udupa is a writer, researcher who lives in Mangalore, India. He is currently a research student at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
01.28.13 - 12:17 PM A Line Has Been Crossed: Anonymous Hacks DOJ
by Abby Zimet
Launching "Operation Last Resort," Anonymous twice hacked the Justice Department's Sentencing Commission this weekend to protest the death of Aaron Swartz and a legal system "wielded less and less to uphold justice, and more and more to exercise control (and) power." The group threatened to release Justice Department data if the government fails to reform flawed cyber crime laws that allow almost unfettered prosecutorial power, and then turned the website into a videogame and Guy Fawkes mask proclaiming, "We do not forgive. We do not forget."
"Anonymous has observed for some time now the trajectory of justice in the United States with growing concern. We have marked the departure of this system from the noble ideals in which it was born and enshrined. We have seen the erosion of due process, the dilution of constitutional rights, the usurpation of the rightful authority of courts by the discretion of prosecutors. We have seen how the law is wielded less and less to uphold justice, and more and more to exercise control, authority and power in the interests of oppression or personal gain."
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.â€
Buckminster Fuller
Last week, I awoke to find Aaron with me. He was sitting next to my bed, grinning his cheekiest grin, holding my hand.
For a few minutes, I savored a sweet uncertainty: Were the last few weeks all a nightmare, and Aaron was still with me? Or was I awaking inside a dream state, and in the real world Aaron was actually dead?
Then Aaron started trying to read a book to me, but he was having trouble deciphering the sentences. He said he was forgetting how to read for lack of practice. It became clear then that he was dream Aaron real Aaron would never forget how to read. And that meant that everything I remembered about him killing himself must have been true in real life.
So I asked him why. Why did you do it? What was going through your mind when you killed yourself? I would have done anything for you. Anything at all, if you'd just told me what you needed.
"I'm dream Aaron," he replied, after a long pause. "It's not my job to tell you why. You see, as dream Aaron, I can't tell you anything you don't already know."
As sadness enveloped me, I forced myself awake from the dream nightmare, only to confront the real-life nightmare. I will never have all the answers I crave. But I do have answers that no one else has. And that is why I'm writing this blog post.
*********
I believe that Aaron's death was not caused by depression.
I say this with the understanding that many other people would not have made the same choice that Aaron made, even under the same pressures he faced.
I say this not in any way to understate the pain he was in nor, for that matter, the pain that clinically depressed people are in.
I say this despite the fact that early on in our relationship, I had read and discussed with him his infamous blog post about suicide written years before so I was not unaware that he had struggled with mental health in the past.
I say this because over the last 20 months of his life, Aaron spent more time with me than with anyone else in the world. For much of the last 8 months of his life, we lived together, commuted together, and worked in the same office and I was never worried he was depressed until the last 24 hours of his life.
I say this because, since his suicide, as I've tried to grapple with what happened, I've been learning. I've researched clinical depression and associated disorders. I've read their symptoms, and at least until the last 24 hours of his life, Aaron didn't fit them.
And that makes it hard to read, in so many articles, that "Aaron struggled with depression" as though the prosecution was just one factor among many, as though, perhaps, he might have committed suicide on January 11 without it.
Depression is characterized by low energy and inactivity, withdrawal and isolation, feelings of low self-worth, trouble concentrating and remembering detail, and an inability to take pleasure in everyday life. Not all depressed people feel all of these things all the time, but those are the recipe. And, indeed, Aaron's blog post about his own depression years before had alluded to many of these things.
But let me tell you about the Aaron I knewthe Aaron Swartz of 2011, 2012, and the first few days of 2013.
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The Aaron I knew was active. He worked out most days until he got the flu two weeks before he died. Just a few weeks before that, when I was out of town for the weekend, he had surprised me by taking himself on a day-long hike outside of New York. He came back glowing that evening, describing how he had scrambled up a steep rocky "shortcut" with some other hikers watching (and in the process lost his Kindle down a crevice).
The Aaron I knew was sociable and excited to spend time with his favorite people, right up to the very end. He had plans and ambitions huge ones. On January 9, two days before he died, he spent hours deep in conversation with our Australian friend Sam about the new organization Aaron was in the early stages of building. Sam asked him whether he had support, and Aaron replied that everyone who was competent enough to support him was, in fact, supporting him classic Aaron pessimistic arrogance, but also a reminder that he knew his friends were standing with him. Sam gave Aaron a quick overview of Australian politics; Aaron expressed astonishment at how easy it would be to "take over Australia", but concluded that a country of only 20 million probably wouldn't be worth it.
Self-esteem, needless to say, was definitely not Aaron's problem.
The Aaron I knew had no trouble concentrating or remembering detail. Up through the week before he died, he was devouring all the scientific literature he could find on drug addiction and effective interventions. Not, to be clear, because he had any drug issues himself (he almost never even drank alcohol), but for a consulting project he was working on for Givewell, his favorite charity. He related to me with deep intellectual excitement his conversations with the top experts in the field, the interventions that had shown the most promise at combating alcoholism, his developing theories about what types of policy changes might be most politically feasible. We debated the cultural constructs that allow our society to treat almost indistinguishable chemicals as differently as we treat heroin and morphine.
The Aaron I knew had profound capacity for pleasure in everyday life. He did, of course, have problems with eating within the range of normal symptoms associated with his ulcerative colitis. But when he found truly great food or for that matter, truly great anything he reveled in it. He had a finely honed aesthetic sense. He could get deeper, truer joy out of a perfect corn muffin, a brilliantly constructed narrative arc from Robert Caro's LBJ biography, a beautiful font, than anyone I've ever met.
And maybe most impressively, he sustained all of these qualities for almost two years, in the face of an ongoing ordeal that threatened to ruin his life.
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Aaron was human: He wasn't happy every moment, and I'd be the first to say he could be a real pain to live with sometimes. Aaron could be moody and introverted. Aaron was often in substantial physical pain from his stomach. Aaron was hard on himself (and equally hard on others). And Aaron obviously, at the end, was suicidal.
But I say it again: Aaron's death was not caused by depression. This is an important point, because many people are arguing that it was, and that the appropriate response to his death is better treatment for depression, better detection of suicidal tendencies. This country absolutely needs these things Aaron would have been the first to agree but we need them because they're the right thing to do, not because of what happened to Aaron.
I don't know exactly why Aaron killed himself. I don't know exactly what was going through his mind. If I had known those things on January 11, if I had even known the right questions to ask, maybe I could have stopped him. Since January 11, I think about it every hour of every day.
But as dream Aaron reminded me, I can only know what I already know. And with the knowledge I have from watching, listening, asking, next to him on the bed, over meals, talking on the subway, from our adjacent desks at the office where we worked on separate projects from our lives together, I believe that Aaron's death was not caused by depression.
I believe Aaron's death was caused by exhaustion, by fear, and by uncertainty. I believe that Aaron's death was caused by a persecution and a prosecution that had already wound on for 2 years (what happened to our right to a speedy trial?) and had already drained all of his financial resources. I believe that Aaron's death was caused by a criminal justice system that prioritizes power over mercy, vengeance over justice; a system that punishes innocent people for trying to prove their innocence instead of accepting plea deals that mark them as criminals in perpetuity; a system where incentives and power structures align for prosecutors to destroy the life of an innovator like Aaron in the pursuit of their own ambitions.
Ask yourself this: If on January 10, Steve Heymann and Carmen Ortiz at the Massachusetts US Attorney's office had called Aaron's lawyer and said they'd realized their mistake and that they were dropping all charges or even for that matter that they were ready to offer a reasonable plea deal that wouldn't have marked Aaron as a felon for the rest of his life would Aaron have killed himself on January 11?
The answer is unquestionably no.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
02.06.13 - 10:05 PM Oops We Did It Again: Anonymous Hacks the Federal Reserve
by Abby Zimet
Proclaiming, "Now we have your attention America," Anonymous on Monday breached the Federal Reserve's Emergency Communications System, used to communicate with bankers during natural disasters or other emergencies, and posted a trove of data that included 4,600 banking executives' credentials - a dump one admirer called "a spearphishing bonanza." A Federal Reserve spokesman confirmed "information was obtained by exploiting a temporary vulnerability in a website vendor product." The action was viewed as part of Anonymous' Operation Last Resort, aimed at pressuring federal officials to reform cyber laws in the wake of the prosecution and suicide of Aaron Swartz. No word yet on reforms widely viewed as overdue.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.â€
Buckminster Fuller
US science to be open to all Government mandates that taxpayer-funded research be freely available within 12 months. Richard Van Noorden 26 February 2013 The rumours have been buzzing around Capitol Hill since before last year?s election, and last week, supporters of open-access publication in the United States got most of what they wanted. The White House declared that government-funded research would be made free for all to read, rather than kept behind paywalls. However, those hoping that the government would require papers to be free from the time of publication were disappointed. In a 22 February memo, John Holdren, director of the White House?s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), gave federal agencies until 22 August to produce plans for making the data and papers from the research they fund more accessible to the public. The move, he says, would ?accelerate scientific breakthroughs and innovation? and boost economic growth. Agencies should aim to make research papers free by 12 months after publication ? a concession to publishers, who say that a year?s delay is needed to maintain their revenue from subscriptions. full: http://www.nature.com/news/us-science-to...ll-1.12512<http://www.nature.com/news/us-science-to-be-open-to-all-1.12512>
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
