Let's talk about motives as well.
Meta did all this to make a chat bot they could sell. Aaron did it because he thought tax payer funded research should be available to everyone.
Profiteering is admirable; helping others is basically terrorism. American values.
Well, the US has always been pioneer in most things. The last 30 years it has been oligarch dystopia building.
"Folks, let me tell you, we are building the most tremendous oligarchic dystopia - the best - nobody builds dystopias like me, believe me! It’s going to have the most luxurious surveillance state, cameras so beautiful, so advanced, they’ll watch you in 4K, maybe even 5K, because we don’t do weak dystopias. And when we’re done, the billionaires - the good ones, my friends - will live like kings, gold elevators everywhere, while the little guys? They'll LOVE it. They’ll say, ‘Sir, thank you for making poverty so exclusive!"
-Trump, probably
... and Trump stole classified documents and refused to return them when he was caught and was reelected and the case was dropped
When Snowden did it he was on the run from the law and ended up being exiled in Russia
When Chelsea Manning did it there was prison time involved
Don't forget Reality Winner, who was given the longest prison sentence ever for leaking classified information about Russian interference in the 2016 election
Not that OP is in any way wrong, or does this in ANY way excuse the monstrous crime the feds and the system as a whole did to a beautiful person like Aaron, who just was trying to fucking help, but there is a totally additional pragmatic lesson to take from the saga:
Aaron Swartz was looking at 36 years because he got all impassioned about “I didn’t do anything WRONG, I won’t take the plea deal.” It only became a life-ending prospect because he wanted to make a point and fight the feds. And when you fight the feds, they fight back.
You CAN be just a person who’s got justice on your side, and fight the feds, and win. Daniel Ellsberg did it. Daniel Bernstein did it. But… offhand, I can’t think of anyone else. And both of them still had powerful friends.
The prosecutor has a history of agreeing to leniency in plea deals then going for incredibly harsh penalties after.
I don't believe a plea deal would have made a difference, unfortunately. A different US AG and I think it would have made a difference.
Well, a different AG and I doubt it would have been remotely the same case, if it even went to actual prosecution in that scenario.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz#Plea_negotiations
Swartz's attorney, Elliot Peters, stated that prosecutors at one point offered a plea deal of four months in prison and pleading guilty to 13 charges, and warned that if Swartz rejected the deal, future deals would be less attractive;[45] and that two days before Swartz's death, that "Swartz would have to spend six months in prison and plead guilty to 13 charges if he wanted to avoid going to trial."[46] Under the six-month deal, after Swartz pled guilty to the 13 charges, the government would have argued for a six-month sentence, and Swartz would have argued for a lesser sentence; the judge would then be free to assign whatever sentence the judge thought appropriate, up to six months.[47] Peters later filed a complaint with the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility, stating that if Swartz didn't plead guilty, Heymann "threatened that he would seek for Mr. Swartz to serve seven years in prison," a difference in duration Peters asserts went "far beyond" the disparity encouraged by the plea-bargain portion of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.[32]
Andy Good, Swartz's initial lawyer, told The Boston Globe: "I told Heymann the kid was a suicide risk. His reaction was a standard reaction in that office, not unique to Steve. He said, 'Fine, we'll lock him up.' I'm not saying they made Aaron kill himself. Aaron might have done this anyway. I'm saying they were aware of the risk, and they were heedless."[48]
Marty Weinberg, who took the case over from Good, said he nearly negotiated a plea bargain in which Swartz would not serve any time. "JSTOR signed off on it," he said, "but MIT would not."[48]
I don't know where you're getting this idea that people can agree to a plea deal and then the prosecution can request harsh penalties anyway. Well, I mean they can, but no one would, because the judge would yell at them and then ignore the request. That's just not how it works.
Edit: Actually, I don't even see how the prosecution in this case could have managed to try to sneak their way into getting the judge to feel like sentencing the Swartz to more than the deal, as they did with Donald Gonczy. The terms of the plea agreement specifically said that the judge could only impose up to six months.
Well, he didnt do anything wrong. And he was killed for saying so. I dont think it is in any way productive to point out that he could have backed down and conform. Conformism is one reason we‘re looking at a worldwide fascist push.
Yeah. It's heartbreaking. The same integrity that led him to be such a visionary with what tiny time he had, also led him not to bend to the system, which then hesitated not an instant to destroy him.
All I'm saying is it's okay to be a visionary and also pick your battles and be strategic. But I'm not trying to say he did wrong. If you have to pick one or the other, sticking to your guns to the end is better than giving up on the visionary stuff when it gets real. A thousand times over.
Edit: And, for some reason I don't really understand, Alexei Navalny gets a pass to me, for going back to Russia when he surely knew he'd probably be killed. I think the difference is that Navalny didn't have a middle path. But... IDK. Maybe he, like Swartz, just thought my "middle path" was a bunch of bullshit, and wanted no part of it.
It really is like a shitty version of Morrowind's "pay a fine for any crime" system.
