geekosystem

Thanks for the heads up. It looks like this one is well on its way to hitting that number before the deadline.

Is it fair?

Well lets see, brilliant kid skirts the rules in a manner that in most situations would get them a hand slap and a “don’t ever come back”, hard ass prosecutor whose name was mostly derived from being responsible for bringing down a number of ‘names’ in the political world decides this is a case that warrants taking the most hard line approach, to the point where one wonders if she would have done so if the defendant had been someone less prominent.

I think more than fair that now that it’s blown up in her face, maybe she should have to face the same sort of scrutiny she was making Aaron deal with.

If it can be confirmed that he was offered the plea-bargain with a 6-month sentence, then the complaints about vindictive prosecution seem a lot less valid. But there are still unanswered questions. When was this deal offered? Why were charges that could add up to 35 years piled on to begin with? (And why was the case moved from state to Federal court to begin with?) Were there any other conditions attached to the deal, other than simply pleading guilty to a lesser charge?

sick of hearing about this guy.

Except in this case the person (psst, it’s also a her) having their feet held to the fire is the ‘higher up’. THEY are the one who makes the decision on whether to run with a charge or not and how heavy to lean.

That’s what being the Federal District Authority means. They make the calls.

So essentially you have no clue what you are talking about and just wanted to spout off to pretend like you were paying attention.

it seems to only apply from petitions created now and moving forward, not previous petitions, like this one.

Prosecutors are not wrong for prosecuting someone who breaks the law. That is the very definition of their job. Just because someone decided to take the coward’s way out over it does not remotely make it the prosecutor’s fault.

Really? Less vindictive? Offering up a deal when the people that were supposedly stolen from dropped the case and asked her not to pursue? How is that not vindictive when you don’t listen to that and decide to after a kid and give him time for downloading Academic Articles of all things? Really?

If you jaywalk, the penalty should be in line with the crime. It should not be in line with going on a shooting spree in the middle of a shopping mall.

If you circumvent a service’s ‘bandwidth meter’ to download articles you already have permission to access, using a publicly accessible network, the penalty of that crime should be in line with the severity of that, not with hacking into a secured private network to steal.

No, prosecutors are not wrong for prosecuting law breakers. But they ARE wrong when they are over zealous in their prosecution to the point of lunacy. Had Aaron been any other person but a ‘high level name’ that Ortiz felt she could have banked some political power from getting a conviction on, he would have been given a slap on the wrist and at most told to not come back to MIT.

There are two ways to set up any system of governance. The ‘fire and forget’ method where the only people being served are the people running the show (see: Authoritarianism) and the ‘always needs some guidance’ method where there are always going to be problems and rough spots but by and large the worst abuses are tempered by the fact that the people being governed have a voice in the process (see: Democracy).

The first requires little to no effort on the part of the governed, but results in little actual justice. The second requires constant monitoring and course correction, but has a far greater potential for justice.

Barring the Second Coming or equivalent event, I believe mankind will never have access to the level of omniscient and omnipotent power required for a perfect system of governance. What we’ve got is the best I’ve seen, which is why I feel it’s important to keep active in speaking out when things like this happen. Because if you aren’t always cleaning house, crap starts to pile up.

I think that at least some of this issue lies in the laws by which unauthorized data hacking is considered a federal crime i.e. Between the persecutor and the federal government, and technically in no way dependent on the the will of persecuted party.

Names like Rosa Parks come to mind when you say things like that, you may want to reconsider your exact stance on this matter.

Yes. They are cowards. Bullying sucks, but nothing justifies suicide. Forgive me for being too logical and not letting irrational emotion guide my actions. I’m not a democrat.

Well I would discourage assigning motives, but you may be right that Aaron didn’t deserve as harsh a punishment as he may have been set to receive… Nonetheless, this is not an offense worth firing Ortiz over. A little overzealousness may be bad. If it causes someone to go way overboard and do something everybody regrets, it doesn’t make it any more than it is: simple overzealousness. In the same vein, perhaps the most Ortiz deserves is a slap on the wrist, and maybe some probation. Or maybe the fact that the overreacting public is tearing her reputation apart should be more than enough punishment.

Anything you had to say of value was pretty much blown away by your douchebag remark concerning suicide.

However, I don’t consider pushing to put someone in prison for 35 years for essentially overly aggressively downloading or even using that as a threat into pushing them into accepting a plea bargain that involved prison time even in the same league of doing ‘something everyone regrets’ as the downloading.

That’s regardless of whether or not anyone died. Especially, as I said, someone who didn’t have as high a profile name as Aaron would haven’t been on her radar.

Yes, it’s the democrat comment that pissed me off. Not the offensive remarks concerning people who have committed suicide.

Well that’s what I think of democrats. It seemed like a valid comparison to me, whether it’s related to the conversation at hand or not.

Let’s see so instead of going after real criminals Carmen Ortiz is now using her powers to defend her political image

An entitled spoiled lawyer with too much power

Guess Americans are finally starting to see what affirmative action gets you

You disagree with me, so nothing I say will be of value to you, however, insensitivity is not the same as invalidity. I’ll say again, because you’re playing right into your stereotype. Like Democrats, you seem to believe anything that might offend someone is wrong, and that is just not true.

Also, I was referring to the suicide as the thing everybody regrets. Ortiz was merely overzealous, but Swartz jumped off the deep end and overreacted. Ortiz’s offense was small, but Swartz’s bad decision made everything a lot more serious.

If that was unclear, let me provide an example. Let’s say you won’t buy a child a toy, and in his tantrum, the child hits his head on the wall for instance, giving him a bruise. Even though you weren’t wrong, the child still got hurt. That doesn’t make it your fault. It makes the child wrong for misbehaving.

Now don’t get me wrong, Ortiz may very well have been somewhat in the wrong, and she may well deserve a punishment, but demanding her job and destroying her reputation is a little much for a tragedy that was mostly the victim’s own fault.

Sorry Jack, the worthlessness of your opinion has nothing to do with whether I disagree or agree with the point you are attempting and failing horribly at making, it has to do with your apparent inability to think any deeper than a flat surface.

Labeling victims of bullies as cowards if they happen to succumb to depression or other factors and commit suicide is a symptom of your shallow personality, as is your other insistence on labeling people rather than dealing with them as actual individuals.

The mere fact that you keep attempting to re-frame the discussion into a platform you feel better suited to your argument using flawed and idiotic analogies rather than actually discussing what happened demonstrates the reality that you ran out of anything insightful or intelligent to say about this long ago.

And no, I’m not ‘getting you wrong’. The pure absurdity of likening someone being pushed to the point where they feel taking their life is a better alternative to going on to a child getting a bruise speaks for itself.

You either have no grasp on what you are actually talking about or are unwilling/incapable of actually discussing this seriously, so don’t expect any further replies from me.

But as history has shown, a. Despite being illegal, some forms of civil disobedience are not wrong. and b. The law is not alway right.

Speaking of being entitled and spoiled. That’s just the kind of person she was prosecuting.

OK, just wanted to make sure you didn’t have a problem with all forms of civil disobedience, thanks for clarifying your position.