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Aaron Swartz

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For the English actor, see Aaron Swartz (actor). For the American actor, see Aaron Schwartz. For the Canadian actor, see Aaron Schwartz (Canadian actor).
Aaron Swartz
Aaron Swartz at a Creative Commons event on December 13, 2008
Born
Aaron H. Swartz[1]

(1986-11-08)November 8, 1986
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
DiedJanuary 11, 2013(2013-01-11) (aged 26)
Brooklyn, New York City, U.S.
Cause of deathSuicide, by hanging
Occupation(s)Software developer, writer, Internet activist
Websiteaaronsw.com
rememberaaronsw.com

Aaron Hillel Swartz (November 8, 1986 – January 11, 2013) was an American computer programmer, writer, political organizer, and Internet activist.

Swartz was involved in the development of the web feed format RSS,[2] the organization Creative Commons[3], the website framework web.py,[4] and the social news site Reddit, in which he was an equal partner after a merger with his Infogami company.[i] Swartz also focused on sociology, civic awareness, and activism.[5][6] In 2010 he became a research fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Research Lab on Institutional Corruption, directed by Lawrence Lessig.[7][8] He founded the online group Demand Progress, known for its campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act, and later worked with the activist groups Rootstrikers and Avaaz. He also was a contributing editor to The Baffler.[9]

On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested by a federal special agent on state breaking-and-entering charges in connection with systematic downloading of academic journal articles from JSTOR.[10][11][12][13] Federal prosecutors eventually charged him with 2 counts of wire fraud and 11 violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,[14] carrying a maximum penalty of up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine plus forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release.[15]

After facing charges for two years, on January 11, 2013, Swartz was found dead in his Crown Heights, Brooklyn apartment where he had hanged himself.[16][17][18]

Life and works

Swartz in 2002 (age 15) with Lawrence Lessig at the launch party for Creative Commons

Swartz was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Susan and Robert Swartz.[19] His father founded a software company, and from an early age, Swartz immersed himself in the study of computers, programming, the Internet, and Internet culture.[20] At age 13, he won the ArsDigita Prize, a competition for young people who create “useful, educational, and collaborative” noncommercial websites. The prize included a trip to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and meetings with Internet notables. At age 14, Swartz was a member of the working group that authored the RSS 1.0 web syndication specification, a lesser-used offshoot of an earlier RSS version.[21] Yahoo! News correspondent Virginia Heffernan said of Swartz, “he agitated without cease—or compensation—for the free-culture movement.”[22] Swartz attended North Shore Country Day School, a small private school in Winnetka, Illinois.[23]

W3C

Swartz served on the RDF Core working group at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C),[24] and authored RFC 3870, defining the RDF/XML Internet media type.[25]

Markdown

Swartz was co-creator, with John Gruber, of Markdown,[26][27] a simplified markup standard derived from HTML, and author of its html2text translator. Markdown remains in widespread use.

Infogami and Reddit

He later attended Stanford University, but he left after a year.[20] Instead he founded the software company Infogami, a startup that was funded by Y Combinator’s first Summer Founders Program.[28]

Through the Y Combinator program, Swartz started the wiki platform Infogami (later used to support the web.py and Open Library sites), but he felt he needed co-founders to proceed. Y-Combinator organizers suggested that Infogami merge with Reddit,[29][30] which it did in November 2005.[29][31] While Reddit initially found it difficult to make money from the project, the site later gained in popularity, with millions of users visiting it each month. In late 2006, after months of negotiations, Reddit was acquired[32] by Condé Nast Publications, owners of Wired magazine.[20] Swartz moved with his company to San Francisco to work on Wired.[20] The move to Wired did not work out well for Swartz as he was fired soon after.[33]

In September 2007, Swartz joined with Simon Carstensen and launched Jottit. In 2010–11, he was a research fellow at Harvard University′s Edmond J. Safra Research Lab on Institutional Corruption.[7][34]

Swartz was also the creator of the web.py Web application framework.[35]

Activism

In 2008 Swartz founded Watchdog.net, “the good government site with teeth,” to aggregate and visualize data about politicians.[36]

Swartz was a co-founder of Demand Progress,[34] an advocacy group that organizes people online to “take action by contacting Congress and other leaders, funding pressure tactics, and spreading the word” about civil liberties, government reform, and other issues.[37]

Author Cory Doctorow, in his novel, Homeland, “dr[ew] on advice from Swartz in setting out how his protagonist could use the information now available about voters to create a grass-roots anti-establishment political campaign.”[38] In an afterword to the novel, Swartz himself wrote, “These [political hacktivist] tools can be used by anyone motivated and talented enough.… Now it’s up to you to change the system.… Let me know if I can help.”[38]

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

Swartz in 2012 protesting against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

Swartz was involved with a campaign to prevent the passing of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which sought to combat Internet copyright violations but was criticized on the basis that it would have made it easier for the U.S. government to shut down web sites accused of violating copyright.[39]

Following the defeat of the bill, Swartz was the keynote speaker at the F2C:Freedom to Connect 2012 event in Washington, D.C., on May 21, 2012. His speech was titled “How We Stopped SOPA” and he informed the audience:

This bill … shut down whole websites. Essentially, it stopped Americans from communicating entirely with certain groups.…

I called all my friends, and we stayed up all night setting up a website for this new group, Demand Progress, with an online petition opposing this noxious bill…. We [got] … 300,000 signers…. We met with the staff of members of Congress and pleaded with them…. And then it passed unanimously.…

And then, suddenly, the process stopped. Senator Ron Wyden … put a hold on the bill.[40][41]

He added, “We won this fight because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom.”[40][41] He was referring to a series of protests against the bill by numerous websites that was described by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as the biggest in Internet history, with over 115,000 sites altering their webpages.[42] Swartz also presented on this topic at an event organized by ThoughtWorks.[43]

Wikipedia

Swartz at 2009 Boston Wikipedia Meetup

Swartz volunteered as an editor at Wikipedia, and in 2006, he ran for the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Directors, but he was unsuccessful. Also in 2006, Swartz wrote an analysis of how Wikipedia articles are written, and concluded that the bulk of the actual content comes from tens of thousands of occasional contributors, or "outsiders", each of whom may not make many other contributions to the site, while a core group of 500 to 1,000 regular editors tend to correct spelling and other formatting errors.[44] According to Swartz: "The formatters aid the contributors, not the other way around."[44][45]

His conclusions, based on the analysis of edit histories of several randomly selected articles, contradicted the opinion of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who believed the core group of regular editors were providing most of the content while thousands of others contributed to formatting issues. Swartz came to his conclusions by counting the total number of characters added by an editor to a particular article—while Wales counted the total number of edits. Swartz's analysis is described on his blog post and was part of his bid to be elected to Wikimedia's Board of Directors.[44]

Library of Congress

Around 2006, Swartz acquired the Library of Congress's complete bibliographic dataset: the library charged fees to access this, but as a government document, it was not copyright-protected within the USA. By posting the data on Open Library, Swartz made it freely available.[46] The Library of Congress project, unlike the PACER or JSTOR cases, was met with approval by the Copyright Office.[47]

Wikileaks

On December 27, 2010, Swartz filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to learn about the treatment of Bradley Manning, alleged source for Wikileaks.[48][49] On January 21, 2013, Russia Today reported that Wikileaks had released a statement (via Twitter) claiming that Swartz “assisted Wikileaks” and had been in contact with Julian Assange in 2010-11.[50]

Investigations and prosecution

PACER

In 2008, Swartz downloaded and released 2.7 million documents from the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) database of federal court documents managed by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. PACER has more than 500 million documents, so this represents less than 1 percent of the entire database.[51]

The Huffington Post characterized his actions this way: “Swartz downloaded public court documents from the PACER system in an effort to make them available outside of the expensive service. The move drew the attention of the FBI, which ultimately decided not to press charges as the documents, were, in fact, public.” [52]

PACER was charging 8 cents per page for information that Carl Malamud, who founded the nonprofit group Public.Resource.Org, contended should be free, because government-produced documents are not covered by copyright.[53][54] The fees were “plowed back to the courts to finance technology, but the system [ran] a budget surplus of some $150 million, according to court reports,” reported The New York Times.[53] PACER used technology that was “designed in the bygone days of screechy telephone modems … put[ting] the nation’s legal system behind a wall of cash and kludge.”[53] Malamud appealed to fellow activists, urging them to visit one of 17 libraries conducting a free trial of the PACER system, download court documents, and send them to him for public distribution.[53]

After reading Malamud’s call for action,[53] Swartz used a Perl computer script running on Amazon cloud servers to download the documents, using credentials belonging to a Sacramento library.[55] From September 4 to 20, 2008, it accessed approximately 18 million documents and uploaded them to a cloud computing service.[54] He released the documents, amounting to 19.9 million pages, to Malamud’s organization.[54]

On September 29, 2008,[53] the GPO suspended the free trial, “pending an evaluation” of the program.[53][54] Swartz’s actions were subsequently investigated by the FBI.[53][54] The case was closed after two months with no charges filed.[54] Swartz learned the details of the investigation as a result of filing a FOIA request with the FBI and described their response as the “usual mess of confusions that shows the FBI’s lack of sense of humor.”[54] PACER still charges per page, but customers using Firefox have the option of saving the documents for free public access with a plug-in called RECAP.[56]

At a 2013 memorial for Swartz at the Internet Archive, his collaborator Carl Malamud recalled their work with PACER:

When we brought in 20 million pages of … court documents from behind their … PACER pay wall, we found [them] infested with privacy violations: names of minor children, names of informants ….
We sent our results to the Chief Judges of 31 District Courts … and they redacted those documents and … yelled at the lawyers that filed them and the Judicial Conference changed their privacy rules.[57]

JSTOR

JSTOR is a digital repository that archives content from journal articles, manuscripts, GIS systems, and scanned plant specimens and disseminates it online.[58] Swartz was a research fellow at Harvard University, which provided him with a JSTOR account. Additionally, visitors to MIT’s “open campus” were authorized to access JSTOR through its network.[59]

According to state and federal authorities, over the course of a few weeks in late 2010 and early 2011 Swartz downloaded a large number[ii] of academic journal articles from JSTOR through MIT’s computer network.[11][14] The authorities say Swartz downloaded the documents through a laptop connected to a networking switch in a controlled-access wiring closet.[60][61][62][63] According to Slate’s crime correspondent, Columbia Journalism Review editor Justin Peters, the door to the closet was kept unlocked.[64]

On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested near the Harvard campus[12][65] by two MIT police officers and a U.S. Secret Service agent on state charges of breaking and entering a building with intent to commit a felony.[10][63][66] State prosecutors dismissed the charges eleven months later, after Swartz was indicted in federal court.[11]

According to attorney Harvey Silverglate, lawyers familiar with the case told him the Middlesex County District Attorney had planned to resolve Swartz’s trespassing case with a “stern warning” and “continuance without a finding.”[67][68] As he explained to CNET’s Declan McCullagh

Under such a disposition, the charge is held in abeyance (“continued”) without any verdict (“without a finding”). The defendant is on probation for a period of a few months up to maybe a couple of years at the most; if the defendant does not get into further legal trouble, the charge is dismissed, and the defendant has no criminal record. This is what the lawyers expected to happen when Swartz was arrested.[67]

“Tragedy intervened,” Silverglate wrote in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, “when [United States Attorney Carmen] Ortiz’s office took over the case to send ‘a message.’”[68]

Indictment and prosecution

On July 19, 2011, a federal grand jury indictment was unsealed, charging Swartz with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer.[14][69] According to the indictment, Swartz surreptitiously attached a laptop to MIT’s computer network, which ran a script named “keepgrabbing.py”,[13][14] allowing him to “rapidly download an extraordinary volume of articles from JSTOR.”[14][70] Prosecutors in the case said Swartz acted with the intention of making the papers available on P2P file-sharing sites.[14][60]

Swartz surrendered to authorities, pleading not guilty on all counts, and was released on $100,000 unsecured bail.[71] After his arrest, JSTOR released a statement saying that though it considered Swartz’s access to be a “significant misuse” committed in an “unauthorized fashion,” it would not pursue civil litigation against him,[61][71] while MIT did not comment on the proceedings.[72]

The New York Times wrote of the case: “A respected Harvard researcher who also is an Internet folk hero has been arrested in Boston on charges related to computer hacking, which are based on allegations that he downloaded articles that he was entitled to get free.”[73]

David Segal of Demand Progress, a group Swartz co-founded,[74] said, “This makes no sense. It’s like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library.”[39][67][75] Segal later said his comments referred to general principles and not to the specifics of the allegations against Swartz. “I know him as a person who cares deeply about matters of ethics and government,” said Segal, “I don’t know about the matter of what has been alleged.”[73]

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Stephen Heymann and Scott Garland were the lead prosecutors, working under the supervision of U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz.[14][62][76] The case was brought under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which was passed in 1986 to enhance the government’s ability to prosecute hackers who accessed computers to steal information or to disrupt or destroy computer functionality.[77] “[I]f convicted on these charges,” said Ortiz, “Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million.”[15]

Later, the prosecution filed a superseding indictment.[14] If convicted at trial, Swartz remained at risk of being sentenced to the prison term and fine Ortiz announced after the initial indictment.[78][79] George Washington University Professor Orin Kerr, writing on the legal blog Volokh Conspiracy, opined that the risk of a maximum sentence in Swartz’s case was not high.[80]

On January 12, 2013, Alex Stamos, a computer forensics investigator employed by the Swartz legal defense team, posted an online summary of the expert testimony he had been prepared to present in the JSTOR case, had Swartz lived to see trial. He wrote

If I had taken the stand as planned and had been asked by the prosecutor whether Aaron’s actions were “wrong,” I would probably have replied that what Aaron did would better be described as “inconsiderate.” In the same way it is inconsiderate … to check out every book at the library needed for a History 101 paper. It is inconsiderate to download lots of files on shared wifi … but none of these actions should lead to a young person being hounded for years and haunted by the possibility of a 35-year sentence.[81]

Plea negotiations

Swartz’s attorney, Elliot Peters, said prosecutors told him, 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.”[82]

Andy Good, Swartz’s initial lawyer, told The Boston Globe, “The thing that galls me is that 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.”[83]

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.”[84]

Shortly before Swartz’s death, JSTOR announced that it would make “more than 4.5 million articles” available to the public for free.[85] The service was capped at three articles every two weeks, readable online only, with some downloadable for a fee.[86][87]

After his death, Ortiz’s office dismissed the charges against Swartz.[88][89] She said, “This office’s conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case.… [T]his office sought an appropriate sentence that matched the alleged conduct—a sentence that we would recommend to the judge of six months in a low security setting.… At no time did this office ever seek—or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek—maximum penalties under the law.”[90][91]

Prosecutory rationale and response

U.S. Attorney Ortiz asserted after the 2011 indictment that “stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars.”[15]

Tim Wu, professor at the Columbia Law School wrote in the The New Yorker, “The prosecutors forgot that, as public officials, their job isn’t to try and win at all costs but to use the awesome power of criminal law to protect the public from actual harm.”[92]

On January 15, 2013, GWU’s Orin Kerr wrote, on Volokh Conspiracy, “The charges brought here were pretty much what any good federal prosecutor would have charged.”[80][93][94] James Boyle, professor of law at Duke University, replied in a January 18 column in The Huffington Post: “I think that [this part] of Orin’s argument is—very uncharacteristically—rather one-sided.  I think that … he tends … to minimize or ignore facts.”[95] On January 20, Kerr, again writing on Volokh Conspiracy, proposed a revision of the CFAA, including the elimination of penalties for merely exceeding authorized access.[96]

John Dean (former White House counsel) commented on the legal blog justia.com, “These are not people who are conscientiously and fairly upholding our federal laws. Rather, they are typically authoritarian personalities who get their jollies from shamelessly beating up on unfortunate people like Aaron Swartz.”[97]

Jennifer Granick, Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, both defended Swartz and challenged the scope of the law under which he was prosecuted.[98][99]

Death, funeral and memorial gatherings

External videos
video icon Aaron Swartz Memorial at The Great Hall of Cooper Union, (transcript)
video icon Aaron Swartz Memorial at the Internet Archive, (partial transcript)
video icon DC Memorial: Darryl Issa , Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, Alan Grayson

On the morning of January 11, 2013, Swartz was found dead in his Crown Heights, Brooklyn apartment by his partner.[100][101] A spokeswoman for New York’s Medical Examiner reported that he had hanged himself.[72][100][101][102] No suicide note was found.[103]

Swartz’s family and partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, created a memorial website on which they issued a statement, saying, “He used his prodigious skills as a programmer and technologist not to enrich himself but to make the Internet and the world a fairer, better place.”[19]

Days before Swartz’s funeral, he was eulogized by his friend and sometime attorney, Lawrence Lessig, who called Swartz’s prosecution an abuse of proportionality.

[The U.S.] government needs to [say] why it was so necessary that Aaron Swartz be labeled a “felon.” For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept.[104]

On the same day, in another eulogy for Swartz, author Cory Doctorow wrote, “Aaron had an unbeatable combination of political insight, technical skill, and intelligence about people and issues. I think he could have revolutionized American (and worldwide) politics. His legacy may still yet do so.”[105]

Swartz’s funeral services were held on January 15, 2013, at Central Avenue Synagogue in Highland Park, Illinois. Tim Berners-Lee, co-creator of the World Wide Web, delivered a eulogy at the service.[16][106][107][108]

The same day, The Wall Street Journal published a story based in part on an interview with Stinebrickner-Kauffman.[109] She told the Journal that Swartz lacked the money to pay for a trial and “it was too hard for him to … make that part of his life go public” by asking for help. He was also distressed, she said, because two of his friends had just been subpoenaed and because he no longer believed that MIT would try to stop the prosecution.[109]

On January 19, hundreds attended a memorial at the Great Hall at Cooper Union. Speakers included Ben Wikler, Open Source advocate Doc Searls, Creative Commons’ Glenn Otis Brown, journalist Quinn Norton, OK Go singer Damian Kulash, Yale Professor emeritus Edward Tufte, Givewell’s Holden Karnofsky, author Tom Chiarella (also reading for David Foster Wallace), Roy Singham of ThoughtWorks, David Isenberg of Freedom to Connect, David Segal of Demand Progress, and Swartz’s partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman.[110][111][112]

On January 24, there was a memorial at San Francisco’s Internet Archive with speakers including Journalist Danny O’Brien, Aaron’s partner Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, Lisa Rein, EFF senior technologist Seth Schoen, Peter Eckersley, O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Reilly, Molly Shaffer van Houweling, Alex Stamos, Internet law attorney Cindy Cohn, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, and public domain advocate Carl Malamud.[113]

On February 4, a memorial was held in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill.[114][115][116][117] Speakers included Senator Ron Wyden and Representatives Darrell Issa, Alan Grayson and Jared Polis.[116][117] Other lawmakers in attendence included Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representatives Zoe Lofgren and Jan Schakowsky.[116][117] “Stick it to the man,” said Issa. “Access to information is a human right.”[117]

Aftermath

Family response and criticism

Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy, it is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death.

Statement by family and partner of Aaron Swartz[118]

On January 12, Swartz’s family and partner issued a statement, criticizing the prosecutors and MIT.[118]

Speaking at his son’s funeral, Robert Swartz, an intellectual property consultant to MIT’s Media Lab, said, “[Aaron] was killed by the government, and MIT betrayed all of its basic principles.”[119]

After Mitch Kapor posted the statement on Twitter, Carmen Ortiz’s husband, Tom Dolan, replied, criticizing the Swartz family: “Truly incredible that in their own son’s obit they blame others for his death and make no mention of the 6-month offer.”[120] This comment triggered a backlash of criticisms including one from Charlie Pierce, political blogger for Esquire: “The glibness with which her husband and her defenders toss off a ‘mere’ six months in federal prison, low-security or not, is a further indication that something is seriously out of whack with the way our prosecutors think these days.”[121]

In the press

The Huffington Post reported that “Ortiz has faced significant backlash for pursuing the case against Swartz, including a petition to the White House to have her fired.”[122] Other news outlets have reported similarly.[123][124][125]

MSNBC contributor Chris Hayes criticized the prosecutors, saying “at the time of his death Aaron was being prosecuted by the federal government and threatened with up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines for the crime of—and I’m not exaggerating here—downloading too many free articles from the online database of scholarly work JSTOR.”[126] A week later, writing in The Times, David Aaronovitch took an opposite view, pointing out that JSTOR was the product of philanthropy: a way of providing public access to academic journals while affording compensation to academic publishers for their intellectual property rights. He decried the “reckless” behavior of a generation which “cannot be persuaded—yet—that copyright matters” and was “unaware of its own power.”[127]

The Associated Press reported that Swartz’s 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.”[39]

Chris Soghoian, a technologist and policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “Existing laws don’t recognise the distinction between two types of computer crimes: 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.”[39]

Kelly Caine, a professor at Clemson University who studies people’s attitudes toward technology and privacy, said Swartz “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.”[39]

Reuters news agency called Swartz “an online icon” who “help[ed] to make a virtual mountain of information freely available to the public, including an estimated 19 million pages of federal court documents.”[128]

Open Access

In 2002, Swartz stated that when he died he wanted all the contents of his hard drives made publicly available.[129]

A long-time supporter of Open Access, Swartz once wrote

The world’s entire scientific … heritage … is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations.
… The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it.[130]

Supporters of Swartz responded to news of his death with an effort called #pdftribute[131] to promote Open Access.[132][133] Scholars posted links to their works, accompanied by the hashtag #PDFtribute.[134]

Swartz's death prompted calls for more open access to scholarly data. Jennifer Chan wrote an opinion piece for U.S. News & World Report arguing that “bringing knowledge to the public should be the central mission of academia.”[135] Slate’s Farhad Manjoo made a similar proposal in his article, “How MIT Can Honor Aaron Swartz: Fight to make academic journals open to everyone.”[136]

Attacks, hacks and hoaxes

Two days after Swartz’s death, members of Anonymous hacked two websites on the MIT domain, replacing them with tributes to Swartz that called on members of the Internet community to use his death as a rallying moment for the open access movement. The banner included a list of demands for improvements in the US copyright system, along with a 2008 essay by Swartz, Guerilla Open Access Manifesto.[137][138][139]

On the night of January 18–19, 2013, MIT’s e-mail system was taken out of action for ten hours.[140]

On January 22, e-mail sent to MIT was redirected by hackers Aush0k and TibitXimer to the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology. All other traffic to MIT was redirected to a computer at Harvard University that was publishing a statement headed “R.I.P Aaron Swartz.”[141] It contained text from a 2009 posting by Swartz,[142] accompanied by a chiptunes version of The Star-Spangled Banner. MIT regained control after about seven hours.[143]

In the early hours of January 26, the United States Sentencing Commission website, ussc.gov, was hacked by Anonymous.[144][145] The home page was replaced with an embedded YouTube video, Anonymous Operation Last Resort.[146][147]

On February 23, the MIT campus was put on lockdown for several hours after Cambridge police received an IP relay service message reporting that a gunman was on campus,[148][149][150] seeking revenge for Swartz's death.[148][149] The MIT newspaper The Tech reported that "Police radio traffic suggested that the gunman had a long rifle and body armor, was hiding in the bathroom, and that he was going after MIT President L. Rafael Reif and school staff in retaliation for the death of Aaron Swartz."[148] After authorities conducted a thorough search, state police spokesman David Procopio branded the report of a gunman barricaded on campus a "hoax."[150][151]

Twitter postings alerted the MIT community about the matter long before the university sent out its first text message alerts.[150][151] Cambridge police first tweeted about "a possible person with a gun" at 7:28 am.[150] One person posted a picture to her Twitter account showing police vehicles blockading a main street on campus.[151] Another reported that while MIT police were investigating since at least 7:30am, the first public alert did not go out until 8:47am; 'Not so timely,' he observed.[151] Acknowledging a lengthy delay between the time the threat came in and the time students were notified, MIT campus Chief of Police John DiFava said, “I have to look into it and find out the reason for the lag.”[150]

MIT investigation

MIT maintains an "open campus" policy along with an "open computer network."[152][153] In the wake of Swartz's death, MIT appointed professor Hal Abelson to lead an internal investigation of the school's choices and role in the prosecution.[154][155] As part of the investigation, MIT has created a website where members of the MIT community can pose questions or make comments.[156]

In his Slate article, Manjoo said, "If MIT truly wants to atone for joining the federal case against Swartz … it should pledge to spend its money, prestige, and moral authority to launch a multiuniversity campaign to free every scholarly article from behind pay-wall archives like JSTOR."[136]

Petition to the White House

See also: Carmen Ortiz and Stephen Heymann

After Swartz's death, more than 50,000 people signed an online petition[157] to the White House calling for the removal of U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, "for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz."[158] A similar petition[159] has been submitted for prosecutor Stephen Heymann.[160][161]

Congress

Several members of the U.S. House of Representatives—Republican Darrell Issa and Democrats Jared Polis and Zoe Lofgren—all on the House Judiciary Committee, have raised questions regarding the government’s handling of the case.

Polis called the charges against Swartz “ridiculous and trumped up,” while referring to Swartz as a “martyr.”[162] Speaking at a February 4 memorial for Swartz on Capitol Hill, Issa opined

Ultimately, knowledge belongs to all the people of the world... Aaron understood that … Our copyright laws were created for the purpose of promoting useful works, not hiding them.

As in the House, concerns in the Senate have been raised by members of both parties. Massachusetts Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren issued a statement saying “[Aaron’s] advocacy for Internet freedom, social justice, and Wall Street reform demonstrated … the power of his ideas ….”[163] Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder,[164] questioned, “On what basis did the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts conclude that her office’s conduct was ‘appropriate’?” and “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?”[165][166][167]

House Oversight Committee investigation

Issa, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, announced that he is investigating the Justice Department’s actions in prosecuting Swartz’s case.[162] In a statement to the Huffington Post, Issa praised Swartz’s work toward “open government and free access to the people.” Issa’s investigation has garnered some bipartisan support.[163]

On January 28, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Issa and ranking member Elijah Cummings published a letter to Attorney General Holder, questioning whether prosecutors intentionally added felony counts to increase the amount of time Swartz faced in prison.[168] Indeed, the former 4 felony counts on July 14, 2011, jumped to 13 counts on Sept. 12, 2012.[169] Their letter read, in part

It appears that prosecutors increased the felony counts by providing specific dates for each action, turning each marked date into its own felony charge, and significantly increasing Mr. Swartz’s maximum criminal exposure to up to 50 years imprisonment and $1 million in fines.[169]

On February 20, Boston University's WBUR reported that Ortiz is expected to testify at an upcoming Oversight Committee hearing about her office's handling of the Swartz case.[170]

U.S. Associate Deputy Attorney General Steven Reich conducted a briefing[171][172] for congressional staffers involved in the investigation.[171][172][173] Reportedly, some staff who attended Reich's briefing left it with the impression that prosecutors believed Swartz had to be jailed for a felony with at least a short prison sentence in order to justify having filed the case against him in the first place.[171][172][173] Reich reportedly said that Swartz’s “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto” played a role in prosecutorial decision-making.[171][172][173]

Amendment to Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

Main article: Aaron's Law

Zoe Lofgren has introduced a bill, Aaron's Law, to exclude terms of service violations from the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and from the wire fraud statute.[174] Lawrence Lessig wrote of the bill, “This is a critically important change... The CFAA was the hook for the government’s bullying... This law would remove that hook. In a single line: no longer would it be a felony to breach a contract.”[175] The ACLU has called for reform of the CFAA "to remove the dangerously broad criminalization of online activity".[176] The EFF also has a campaign to reform CFAA.[177] Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig's inaugural Chair lecture as the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School was entitled Aaron's Laws: Law and Justice in a Digital Age; Lessig dedicated the lecture to Swartz.[178][179][180]

Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act

The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) is a bill that would mandate earlier public release of taxpayer-funded research. FASTR has been described "The Other Aaron's Law".[181]

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) introduced the Senate version, while the bill was introduced to the House by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Mike Doyle (D-Penn.) and Kevin Yoder (R-Kans.) Sen. Wyden wrote of the bill: "The FASTR act provides that access because taxpayer funded research should never be hidden behind a paywall." [182]

Publications

  • Swartz, Aaron; Hendler, James (2001), "The Semantic Web: A Network of Content for the Digital City", Proceedings of the Second Annual Digital Cities Workshop, Kyoto, JP: Blogspace {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help).
  • Swartz, Aaron (2002). "MusicBrainz: A Semantic Web Service" (PDF). IEEE Intelligent Systems. 17 (1). UMBC: 76–77. doi:10.1109/5254.988466. ISSN 1541-1672. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  • Gruber, John; Swartz, Aaron (2004), Markdown definition, Daring Fireball {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help).
  • Swartz, Aaron (July 2008). "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto".
  • Swartz, Aaron (2009). Building Progammable Web Sites. Santa Clara, Cal.: Morgan & Claypool. ISBN 1598299204. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Swartz, Aaron (Interviewee) (2009?). We can change the world (Video). YouTube. {{cite AV media}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  • Swartz, Aaron (Speaker) (May 21, 2012). Keynote address at Freedom To Connect 2012: How We Stopped SOPA (Video). D.C.: YouTube.

Notes

^ Swartz is regularly attributed as a co-founder of Reddit, but the title is the source of controversy. After the merger of Infogami and Reddit, Swartz was an equal owner of parent company Not a Bug, Inc. along with Reddit co-founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. Swartz was referred to as "co-founder" in the press, by investor/advisor Paul Graham (who recommended the merger), and in early comments by Ohanian.[183] By mid-2011, when Wired wrote a piece on Swartz's court case, Ohanian said he preferred to describe Swartz as a 'co-owner' rather than co-founder.[31] Wired used the latter title, commenting: "For lack of an accurate term for someone who joins a company early—but after launch—and who gets paid largely in equity, we use the term co-founder in this story."[31]
^ The MIT network administration office told MIT police that "approximately 70 gigabytes of data had been downloaded, 98% of which was from JSTOR."[11] The first federal indictment alleged "approximately 4.8 million articles", "1.7 million" of which "were made available by independent publishers for purchase through JSTOR's Publisher Sales Service."[14] The subsequent DOJ press release alleged "over four million articles". The superseding indictment removed the estimates and instead characterized the amount as "a major portion of the total archive in which JSTOR had invested."[14]

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