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Swartz' death fuels debate over computer crime

This Dec. 8, 2012 photo provided by ThoughtWorks shows Aaron Swartz, in New York. Swartz, a co-founder of Reddit, hanged himself Friday, Jan. 11, 2013, in New York City. In 2011, he was charged with stealing millions of scientific journals from a computer archive at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in an attempt to make them freely available. He had pleaded not guilty, and his federal trial was to begin next month. (AP Photo/ThoughtWorks, Pernille Ironside)

NEW YORK (AP) — Internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz, who was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment Friday, struggled for years against a legal system that he felt had not caught up to the information age. Federal prosecutors had tried unsuccessfully to mount a case against him for publishing reams of court documents that normally cost a fee to download. He helped lead the campaign to defeat a law that would have made it easier to shut down websites accused of violating copyright protections.

In the end, Swartz's family said, that same system helped cause his death by branding as a felon a talented young activist who was more interested in spreading academic information than in the fraud federal prosecutors had charged him with.

The death by suicide of Swartz, 26, was "the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach," his family said in a statement Saturday.

Swartz was only the latest face of a decades-old movement in the computer science world to push more information into the public domain. His case highlights society's uncertain, evolving view of how to treat people who break into computer systems and share data not to enrich themselves, but to make it available to others.

"There's a battle going on right now, a battle to define everything that happens on the Internet in terms of traditional things that the law understands," Swartz said in a 2012 speech about his role in defeating the Internet copyright law known as SOPA. Under the law, he said, "new technology, instead of bringing us greater freedom, would have snuffed out fundamental rights we'd always taken for granted."

Swartz faced years in prison after federal prosecutors alleged that he illegally gained access to millions of academic articles through the academic database JSTOR. He allegedly hid a computer in a computer utility closet at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and downloaded the articles before being caught by campus and local police in 2011.

"The government used the same laws intended to go after digital bank robbers to go after this 26-year-old genius," said Chris Soghoian, a technologist and policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union's speech, privacy and technology project.

Existing laws don't recognize the distinction between two types of computer crimes, Soghoian said: Malicious crimes committed for profit, such as the large-scale theft of bank data or corporate secrets; and cases where hackers break into systems to prove their skillfulness or spread information that they think should be available to the public.

Swartz was an early advocate of freer access to data. He helped create Creative Commons, a system used by Wikipedia and others to encourage information sharing by helping people to set limits about how their work can be shared. He also helped create the website Reddit and RSS, the technology behind blogs, podcasts and other web-based subscription services.

That work put Swartz at the forefront of a vocal, influential community in the computer science field that believes advocates like him should be protected from the full force of laws used to prosecute thieves and gangsters, said Kelly Caine, a professor at Clemson University who studies people's attitudes toward technology and privacy.

"He was doing this not to hurt anybody, not for personal gain, but because he believed that information should be free and open, and he felt it would help a lot of people," she said.

Plenty of people and companies hold an opposing view: That data theft is as harmful as theft of physical property and should always carry the same punishment, said Theodore Claypoole, an attorney who has been involved with Internet and data issues for 25 years and often represent big companies

"There are commercial reasons, and military and governmental reasons" why prosecutors feel they need tools to go after hackers, Claypoole said. He said Swartz's case raises the question of, "Where is the line? What is too much protection for moneyed interests and the holders of intellectual property?"

Elliot Peters, Swartz's attorney, told The Associated Press on Sunday that the case "was horribly overblown" because JSTOR itself believed that Swartz had "the right" to download from the site. Swartz was not formally affiliated with MIT, but was a fellow at nearby Harvard University. MIT maintains an open campus and open computer network, Peters said. He said that made Swartz's accessing the network legal.

JSTOR's attorney, Mary Jo White — formerly the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan — had called the lead Boston prosecutor in the case and asked him to drop it, said Peters, also a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan who is now based in California.

Reached at home, the prosecutor, Stephen Heymann, referred all questions to the spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Boston, Christina Dilorio-Sterling. She did not immediately respond to an email and phone message seeking comment.

Swartz's trial was set to begin in April, with an early hearing scheduled for later this month. He was charged with two sets of crimes: fraud, for downloading the articles illegally from JSTOR; and hacking into MIT's computer network without authorization, Peters said.

Peters said Swartz "obviously was not committing fraud" because "it was public research that should be freely available;" and that Swartz had the right to download from JSTOR, so he could not have gained unauthorized access.

As of Wednesday, the government took the position that any guilty plea by Swartz must include guilty pleas for all 13 charges and the possibility of jail time, Peters said. Otherwise the government would take the case to trial and seek a sentence of at least seven years.

JSTOR, one alleged victim, agreed with Peters that those terms were excessive, Peters said. JSTOR came over to Swartz's side after "he gave the stuff back to JSTOR, paid them to compensate for any inconveniences and apologized," Peters said.

MIT, the other party that Swartz allegedly wronged, was slower to react. The university eventually took a neutral stance on the prosecution, Peters said. But he said MIT got federal law enforcement authorities involved in the case early and began releasing information to them voluntarily, without being issued a subpoena that would have forced it to do so.

Swartz's father, Bob, is an intellectual property consultant to MIT's computer lab, Peters said. He said the elder Swartz was outraged by the university's handling of the matter, believing that it deviated from MIT's usual procedures.

In a statement emailed to the university community Sunday, MIT President L. Rafael Reif said he had appointed a professor to review the university's involvement in Swartz's case.

"Now is a time for everyone involved to reflect on their actions, and that includes all of us at MIT," Reif said in the letter.

Claypoole, the legal expert, said there will always be people like Swartz who believe in the free flow of information and are willing to "put their thumb in the eye of the powers that be."

"We've been fighting this battle for many years now and we're going to continue to fight it for a long time," he said.

For Swartz's family, the matter was clearer-cut, said Peters, his lawyer.

"Our consistent response was, this case should be resolved in a way that doesn't destroy Aaron's life and takes into account who he really is, and what he was doing."

___

Wagner reported from Washington.

Analysis: When families of murder victims speak out

This is a group nobody wants to be part of.

Few can understand the anguish that families and close friends of murder victims bear. They find ways to cope to make it to the next day. Some take the unnerving step to air their private agonies and speak for their dead.

There have been all too many recent examples. Kevin and Marina Krim left New York to be with family after their nanny allegedly killed their 6-year-old daughter, Lucia "Lulu", and 2-year-old son, Leo, then attempted suicide. The Krims have not granted any interviews: They weren't ready, a family member explained. But as they return in a cross-country drive with their 4-year-old daughter, Nessie, they are posting remembrances on the Facebook page of the Lulu & Leo Fund, which seeks to raise money for youth art and science programs. "On the road, we've been listening to our Lulu and Leo Playlist," reads one update. "I want to wish our daughter Nessie a huge happy birthday," reads another. "Marina and I couldn't be more proud of her."

Robbie Parker, the father of six-year-old Emilie who was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary …Robbie Parker, whose 6-year-old daughter Emilie Parker died in the Newtown, Conn., massacre, did more than thank the public for their outpouring. "It is a horrific tragedy, and I want everyone to know that our hearts and prayers go out to them. This includes the family of the shooter," he said in a press conference. "I cannot imagine how hard this experience is for you. Our love and support goes out to you as well."

Others speak out in pursuit of justice. Sybrina Fulton, the mother of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, said last year of her exhaustive media schedule, "I am doing this for a purpose. I know the purpose I am doing it for, and it pushes me forward, giving me the force to go ahead and put my clothes on and do it." Roxanna Green, whose daughter Christina-Taylor was the youngest victim in the 2011 Tucson spree shooting that left six dead, wrote a book. After the Newtown shootings, however, she chose to appear in a Mayors Against Illegal Guns ad.

In India, where the rape-murder of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student has spurred global protests, the victim's father and brother have issued a rare plea to publicize her name, in a country where rape cases rarely get convictions and naming victims is illegal. "My daughter didn't do anything wrong; she died while protecting herself," the father said in an interview with a British newspaper. "I am proud of her. Revealing her name will give courage to other women who have survived these attacks. They will find strength from my daughter."

What it takes to speak out
Dan Levey understands this impulse. He is the executive director for the Parents of Murdered Children, a nonprofit founded in 1978by Robert and Charlotte Hullinger, whose daughter was attacked by her ex-boyfriend. "For many survivors, it's about honoring our loved ones and telling their stories of who they were," Levey tells Yahoo. "When survivors choose to speak out, it's not only therapeutic for them or their families and friends. I think it somehow resonates—or I hope it does—with the public that 'this is horrific. Look at what these people are going through.'" The media can be an ally in tracking killers, but the focus can be too lopsided. "We can name the perpetrators, but can we name the victims? Often, we can't," Levey points out.

Joanne Cacciatore, an Arizona State University professor who studies traumatic loss and child death, says families speak out for the same reason they reach out to friends, support groups and other networks. "They take it public so that they can connect to people," she explains to Yahoo. Even if they're not ready to speak directly, as in the case of the Krims, outlets like social media can help when emails, phone calls and media requests overwhelm families.

"Human beings are probably more connected than ever through tragedy," Cacciatore says. There's the instinct for empathy, to remember the dead and help the survivors in what she calls a communal mourning process. For crimes that become national tragedies, especially child killings, people also want to hear from victims' families in order to address their own vulnerability. "Information helps people feel like they're in control."

The crusade
Roxanna Green, mother of the youngest victim of the Tucson, Ariz. shooting, says she visited …More than a year ago, Green told the Arizona Republic that she preferred to think that her daughter died in a car accident. She and her husband, John, like the Krims, started the Christina-Taylor Green Memorial Foundation to remember their daughter in a "positive way," and stayed out of politics. After a year of spree shootings in Colorado, Wisconsin and finally Connecticut, she stopped thinking her child was lost, but murdered. Greene told the newspaper, "I'm angry now. ... I'm going to take every opportunity to speak out."

Green follows an all-too-familiar path of grieving families who seek to right a wrong. "It goes from grief to action," Cacciatore says. Support networks like POMC or activist groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving emerge. "America's Most Wanted" came into being after the murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh.

That desire for tragedy to change a society for the better crosses cultural boundaries. The case in India has highlighted a culture of unequal gender treatment, where selective abortions have led to skewed sex ratios and women are burned for insufficient dowry. "If possible it would be nice to have some sort of law in her name," the victim's father told a British news program. "If a hospital or something nice can be named after her, too, at least something good could have come out of all of this—or it's just all pointless." Levey understands this sentiment first-hand. He had been in his last semester studying criminal justice, with goals of becoming a juvenile probation officer, when his brother—40-year-old Howard Levey—was carjacked and shot to death. Going through the system led Levey to advocate for victims. It's a choice that can unsettle some. Some people have asked him, "'You're still doing the victims' rights thing, Dan?' It doesn't define me, but it's certainly part of who I am," he says. "I would hope the public understands, it never goes away. It's not a movie with a beginning or an end. ... It's a new normal."

"Death-avoidance culture"
In India, a young woman who died after being gang-raped and beaten …Another compelling reason families speak out is that they know, somehow, the window to do so is short.

"We're mesmerized" following a national tragedy, Cacciatore explains. "The public tends to be willing to talk about it and confront it for a certain period of time." Yet one of the most common complaints from bereaved parents is that few want to talk about their children after a few months. "There's a not-funny joke in our support group [that] they're lepers," Cacciatore says.

Successive editions of the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)—which sets a psychological standard—have shortened the "normal" grieving period from a year to two weeks in thelatest edition. According to that, the Newtown families should have resolved acute symptoms of grief by Dec. 28, calculates Cacciatore (who has launched a protest against the change).

Sorrow doesn't have a timeline. Nor does loss efface someone's existence. A family of five that loses two children is still a family of five. A birthday or anniversary that comes around is still, to that family, an occasion to remember.

"It's our own denial of death," Cacciatore says. "It's our own inability to confront death." Living in what she calls a "death-avoidance culture" makes us insensitive to how someone's passing affects us all. "When we avoid it, we avoid the great lessons."

Mali Islamists counter-attack, threaten France

Quote:
This is one thing that gets me where it hurts..This holier then thou people.

How dare these cardinal and catholic leader say anything against someone else. I guess we just swept the boys under the rug. They never harmed a child, did they!

I was born and raised Catholic. While I was taken my Catecism classes things were alright. I noticed that at the end of class, the priest would point out one boy or girl to help him. Finally, it was my turn. I am seventy years old, and the horror of what happened that day has never left my mind. I was told, of course, not to mention it to anyone because if I did, I could not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. When I got home,I immediately told my mother what had happened. Later, when my father came home, she told me to tell him. When I did, he went into a rage and gave me the worst beating I had ever had, (for lying about the priest) About five years ago, I called the Archdiocese of Fall River and told them about the incident and subsequent incidents that had occured until I finally pushed the priest back, punched him, and knocked him over the pew. They actually sent a women out to interview me from Fall River who had a meeting in Washington D.C. She stopped by on her way back to Massachusetts. After about two hours, she said that she had a solution. She gave me one of her business cards, told me that she would enter me into a physcho ward and that the Archdiocese of Fall River would pick up the tap as soon as I was cured. She opened the door and I told her to get out because the air was beginning to smell. However, with all the lives that they have ruined, (In the name of GOD) they still have the Gall to judge others. I LOVE GOD, and I believe in Jesus, but the Vatican is the biggest Mafia organization in the world because they commit the crimes that become a very slow and agonizing death for their victims. The Bible teaches LOVE, the churches (All denominations teach Hate, Greed, and Deception.

I mention all denominations because I wanted my children to learn about GOD and one day a church bus stopped by and offered to pick up my children and take them to church on Sunday. My ex wife and I agreed. Every so often, the bus minister would stop by and ask if he could take our daughter with him as he was picking up treats for the kids and wanted her to show him what kids liked. About a year went by and the bus minister was transferred to an undisclosed church in a different town. I finally found out from my daughter that he would pick up four or five girls, take them shopping and then he took them to his house where they all stripped down. The rest is obvious. Back home I drove cab. One of my female passengers took my cab one day and she was apparently upset. After asking her what was wrong, she finally told me. She was depressed, so she went to a Rabbi, even though she was not Jewish. She trusted him. After talking with him for awhile, she noticed that he was behind her soothing her shoulders. She said that before to long, he was doing much more.

They all seem to have the right to ruin people's lives, but when, they are about to be caught they are mysteriously whisked off to another city, town, or state to continue their depraved habit, however they seem to have the right to deny others their rights. If two men or two women truly have love in their hearts they will pass that love onto their children. It is true that they cannot produce children of their own, however they can adopt children that have no love and probably give them a better understanding of love then a lot of us could. I believe that everyone has the right to choose their own lifestyle as long as they have no malice in mind.

There is a passage in the Bible that mentions affections and kissing on the lips. Man and man. Woman and woman. I have never understood that. If you are a man and you try to kiss me on the lips, you will get a fat lip very quickly, as I won't do it. However I won't critisize those that do. I apologize for seamingly ranting on, but this is one subject that makes me sick. There are thousands of people just like me that will never get justice because the churches are just to big to fight.

GOD BLESS YOU

~Mike~

http://www.countryvalues65.com