[governance] Aaron Swartz prosecutor 'drove another hacker to suicide in 2008 after he named him in a cyber crime case'

Thu Jan 17 10:36:18 EST 2013

  Revealed: Aaron Swartz prosecutor 'drove another hacker to suicide in
  2008 after he named him in a cyber crime case'

  * Jonathan James committed suicide two weeks after Secret Service
    raided his home in a case led by U.S. attorney Stephen Heymann
  * Internet activist Swartz, 26, committed suicide on January 11 at his
    Brooklyn home as he faced 30 years in jail
  * Prosecutors turned down Swartz's lawyer over plea deal on January 9
  * Internet activist faced decades in prison over hacking charges for
    allegedly downloading more than four million academic journals
  * Hundreds of academics post copyright-protected journals for free in
    tribute to Swartz
  * Hacker group Anonymous crash MIT website over prosecution of Swartz,
    described as a 'grotesque miscarriage of justice'

By Helen Pow 
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=&authornamef=Helen+Pow>, 
James Nye 
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=&authornamef=James++Nye> 
and Rachel Quigley 
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=&authornamef=Rachel+Quigley>

*PUBLISHED:* 16:19 GMT, 15 January 2013 | *UPDATED:* 17:32 GMT, 15 
January 2013

The prosecutor who is being accused of acting 'over zealously' in his 
pursuit of online pioneer Aaron Swartz, who killed himself at the 
weekend, played a role in another young hacker's suicide in 2008, it was 
claimed today.

Assistant United States Attorney Stephen Heymann had reportedly been 
insisting on jail time for Swartz and was refusing to negotiate a plea 
deal on the30 years in jail he faced for stealing academic papers.

In 2008, another young hacker also committed suicide after being named 
in a case Heymann was leading.

Jonathan James killed himself aged 24 two weeks after the Secret Service 
raided his house as part of its investigation into the TJX Hacker case - 
which is known as the largest identity hack in history.

aaron swartz jonathan james
aaron swartz jonathan james

Victims: Both Aaron Swartz, left, and Jonathan James killed themselves 
in the middle of cases led by assistant U.S. attorney Stephen Heymann

His friend Christopher Scott was charged with breaching retail networks, 
and James was reportedly the co-conspirator 'J.J.' mentioned in the 
indictment.

James said he had nothing to do with the retail hack but believed that 
the feds would try to pin it on him, according to Buzz Feed. 
<http://www.buzzfeed.com/justinesharrock/internet-activists-prosecutor-linked-to-another-h>

In his suicide note, James said he had no faith in the justice system, 
which he believed were trying to tie him to a crime he did not commit.

'I have no faith in the "justice" system. Perhaps my actions today, and 
this letter, will send a stronger message to the public.

'Either way, I have lost control over this situation, and this is my 
only way to regain control.

'Remember, it's not whether you win or lose, it's whether I win or lose, 
and sitting in jail for 20, ten, or even five years for a crime I didn't 
commit is not me winning. I die free.'

James was the first juvenile put into confinement for a federal cyber 
crime case.

Aaron Swartz was charged last September with wire fraud, computer fraud 
and unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer after he 
allegedly tried to steal millions of scholarly papers from Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology in January 2011.

It is thought that the stress and strain of the looming federal trial 
contributed to the depression which is being blamed for Swartz taking 
his own life on January 11 at his Brooklyn, New York apartment.

Swartz's lawyer had originally approached federal prosecutors in fall 
2012 about a deal and was turned down even though JSTOR - the online 
database Swarts hacked into - declined to pursue charges.

His friends have accused Heymann of contributing to Swartz's suicide, 
with his unwillingness to compromise on his prosecution.

Scroll down to watch video and full statement from family

Remorse: MIT president L Rafael Reif said he was pained to think that 
the school had any role in Swartz's tragic death

Remorse: MIT president L Rafael Reif said he was pained to think that 
the school had any role in Swartz's tragic death

Defiance: Anonymous publicizes the move by hundreds of academics to post 
their copyright-protected articles online for free following the suicide 
of Internet activist Aaron Swartz

Defiance: Anonymous publicizes the move by hundreds of academics to post 
their copyright-protected articles online for free following the suicide 
of Internet activist Aaron Swartz

'Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a 
criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial 
overreach,' his family said in a statement.

'Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. attorney's office 
and at MIT contributed to his death.'

Speaking to Huffington Post 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-stephen-heymann_n_2473278.html>yesterday, 
Swartz's attorney Elliot Peters accused Massachusetts assistant U.S. 
attorney Stephen Heymann of pursuing federal charges against Swartz to 
gain publicity.

He said Heymann was looking for 'some juicy looking computer crime cases 
and Aaron's case, sadly for Aaron, fit the bill. He thought he was going 
to receive press and he was going to be a tough guy and read his name in 
the newspaper.'

Peters said Heymann was threatening Swartz with potentially longer 
prison sentences if Swartz didn't accept his plea deal offers.

'He was very intransigent,' Peters said of Heymann. 'It was his 
philosophy that as you got closer to trial the plea offers only got 
worse. But the offer he was making was so unreasonable that having it 
get worse didn't concern me much.'

Heymann did not respond to requests for comment.

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A petition has been put up online demanding that Heymann be fired 
because of his 'overzealous prosecution of an allegedly minor and 
non-violent electronic crime led to the suicide of Aaron Swartz'.

Heymann and colleague Carmen Ortiz filed to dismiss the charges against 
Mr Swartz in a Boston court yesterday.

The three-line notice says the case is being dismissed because of 
Swartz's death. Such filings are routine when a defendant dies before trial.

The Massachusetts U.S. attorney's office told MailOnline that they would 
not discuss the case out of respect for the family's privacy.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology's president spoke of his sadness 
over Swartz's suicide and said there would be 'thorough analysis' into 
the school's role in the federal case against the 26-year-old computer 
programmer.

MIT president L. Rafael Reif said: 'I want to express very clearly that 
I and all of us at MIT are extremely saddened by the death of this 
promising young man, who touched the lives of so many.

'It pains me to think that MIT played any role in a series of events 
that have ended in tragedy.'

      'A GROTESQUE MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE': ANONYMOUS HACKS MIT WEBSITE
      IN SUPPORT OF
      AARON SWARTZ

Anonymous crashed MIT's website on Sunday evening in a defiant move over 
the prosecution of Swartz which the hacker group described as 'a 
grotesque miscarriage of justice'.

The entire university network reportedly faltered after the move by 
Anonymous.

According to the wrap.com 
<http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/anonymous-hackers-down-mit-website-after-aaron-swartz-suicide-72871>, 
the red and black message which appeared in place of the site, read: 
'Whether or not the government contributed to his suicide, the 
government's prosecution of Swartz was a grotesque miscarriage of 
justice, a distorted and perverse shadow of the justice that Aaron died 
fighting for - freeing the publicly-funded scientific literature from a 
publishing system that makes it inaccessible to most of those who paid 
for it -  enabling the collective betterment of the world through the 
facilitation of sharing - an ideal that we should all support.'

Kimberly Allen, media relations manager at MIT, could not be reached for 
comment by MailOnline.

The statement came as hundreds of academics posted links to 
copyright-protected journals online in tribute to Internet activist Swartz.

The movement appears to have started on Swartz's own site Reddit and was 
echoed by Anonymous on Twitter, who wrote: 'Please share: Academics 
posting their papers online in tribute to Aaron Swartz using hashtag 
#pdftribute #ICYMI.'

The 26-year-old's funeral is to be held on Tuesday at the Central Avenue 
Synagogue in his home town of Highland Park, Illinois.

Even officials at JSTOR - an archive of academic journals to which 
universities, including MIT, pay large amounts of money for access- 
slammed the harsh tactics of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston.

Prosecutors had released incriminating images which allegedly showed 
Swartz illegally downloading material from JSTOR in 2011.

Cameras were installed after investigators at MIT began to suspect that 
someone was illegally downloading material - which they traced to a 
basement wiring closet where a laptop and external hard drive were found 
hooked up directly to a network.

The laptop and the hard drive were hidden from view by a cardboard box.

Swartz can be seen entering the closet three days in a row. Using his 
white bicycle helmet as a mask on January 6, 2011, Swartz attempts to 
cover his face from the cameras as he tries to retrieve the computer 
equipment that he left weeks before.

Aaron Swartz covers his face with his bicycle helmet as he enters a 
small electrical closet at the MIT to retrieve his computer hardware

Aaron Swartz covers his face with his bicycle helmet as he enters a 
small electrical closet at the MIT to retrieve his computer hardware

Aaron Swartz was caught soon afterwards this video was recorded on 
January 6th 2011 with a laptop and a hard drive that contained secured 
and lucrative academic journals that had been hacked

Aaron Swartz was caught soon afterwards this video was recorded on 
January 6th 2011 with a laptop and a hard drive that contained secured 
and lucrative academic journals that had been hacked

At 2.11 pm, Swartz was ID'd on a bicycle on Massachusetts Avenue by an 
MIT police officer, according to his report.

That report states that when he encountered Captain Albert Pierce of the 
MIT Police Department, Swartz jumped off his bike and ran down Lee Street.

He made it approximately 400 feet before being handcuffed and charged 
with breaking and entering.

According to an indictment last July, Swartz's laptop had been using 
MIT's network to rapidly download articles from JSTOR.

The indictment describes these events as the final phase of Swartz's 
three-month JSTOR downloading operation, bringing his total count of 
acquired articles to 4.8 million. MIT valued that information at 
$50,000, according to the Cambridge Police incident report.

Aaron Swartz was found hanging from his belt near his bedroom window, 
sources in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York said. The death was 
pronounced as a suicide by the city's medical examiner

Swartz's intention, the indictment claimed, was to upload all of the 
documents to a peer-to-peer file-sharing site, where anyone could access 
them for free.

Before his suicide Swartz faced up to 35-years in prison and was out on 
$100,000 bail.

His legal team still were holding out hope for a crucial hearing which 
they hoped could still halt proceedings of 13-felony counts against him.

Swartz's friend Larry Lessig, a Harvard University professor and 
internet law expert, blamed the federal prosecutor, who he called a 
'bully,' on his blog 
<http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully>and said 
that Swartz had been 'driven to the edge' by the government's aggressive 
and disproportionate handling of the case.

Intimidated: The family of Aaron Swartz, left, and his partner Taren 
Stinebricker-Kaufmann, right, blame MIT and federal prosecutors for his 
death
Intimidated: The family of Aaron Swartz, left, and his partner Taren 
Stinebricker-Kaufmann, right, blame MIT and federal prosecutors for his 
death

Intimidated: The family of Aaron Swartz, left, and his partner Taren 
Stinebricker-Kaufmann, right, blame MIT and federal prosecutors for his 
death

'Our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 
terrorists red-handed,' Lessig wrote.

In the statement, Swartz' family described him as 'extraordinary and 
irreplaceable.'

They said his 'insatiable curiosity, creativity, and brilliance; his 
reflexive empathy and capacity for selfless, boundless love; his refusal 
to accept injustice as inevitable' made the world and their lives 'far 
brighter.'

The online activist and co-founder of the popular social media site 
Reddit took his life just weeks before going on trial for the federal 
hacking charges.

The news of Swartz's untimely death was confirmed to MIT's The Tech by 
both his uncle and his lawyer on Saturday morning.

Tragic end: Aaron Swartz, a programmer and Internet activist who 
co-founded a company that would eventually grow into Reddit, committed 
suicide Friday in New York City

Tragic end: Aaron Swartz, a programmer and Internet activist who 
co-founded a company that would eventually grow into Reddit, committed 
suicide Friday in New York City

Swartz's uncle, Michael Wolf, told the New York Times 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/technology/aaron-swartz-internet-activist-dies-at-26.html?hp&_r=0>that 
the programmer's body was discovered by his girlfriend at his home in 
the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn at around 9.30am. He left no 
suicide note.

Swartz was a gifted programmer who helped develop the RSS at the age of 
14. He then went on to start a company that would eventually merge with 
Reddit, as well as Demand Progress, a political action group that 
campaigns against internet censorship.

In the past, Swartz hinted at a battle with depression, according to 
Gawker 
<http://gawker.com/5975410/reddit-cofounder-digital-activist-aaron-swartz-dead-from-suicide-at-26?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_twitter&utm_source=gawker_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow>.

In a 2007 speech, the internet advocate described himself as being 
'miserable' after moving to San Francisco when his company was purchased 
by the publishing giant Conde Nast.

'I couldn't stand San Francisco. I couldn't stand office life,' he said 
at the time. 'I took a long Christmas vacation. I got sick. I thought of 
suicide. I ran from the police. And when I got back on Monday morning, I 
was asked to resign.'

In a blog post from later that year, Swartz went into further detail 
regarding his bout with depression.

'Your face falls. Perhaps you cry. You feel worthless. You wonder 
whether it's worth going on,' he wrote.

'Everything you think about seems bleak - the things you've done, the 
things you hope to do, the people around you.

'You want to lie in bed and keep the lights off. Depressed mood is like 
that, only it doesn't come for any reason and it doesn't go for any 
either. Go outside and get some fresh air or cuddle with a loved one and 
you don't feel any better, only more upset at being unable to feel the 
joy that everyone else seems to feel. Everything gets colored by the 
sadness.'

Big business: Reddit was later sold to the publishing giant Conde Nast, 
but in 2011 it became operationally independent again

Big business: Reddit was later sold to the publishing giant Conde Nast, 
but in 2011 it became operationally independent again

In September 2012, Swartz was charged with 13 counts of felony hacking 
stemming from his July 2011 arrest and subsequent indictment by the 
Department of Justice for allegedly stealing MIT papers from JSTOR.

Two years earlier, Swartz allegedly connected a laptop to MIT's systems 
through a basement network wiring cupboard.

He registered as a guest under the fictitious name, Gary Host - a 
hacking in-joke in which the first initial and last name spell 'ghost.'

He then used a software program to 'rapidly download an extraordinary 
volume of articles from JSTOR,' according to the indictment.

In the following months, MIT and JSTOR tried to block the recurring and 
massive downloads, on occasion denying all MIT users access to JSTOR.

But Swartz allegedly got around it, in part, by disguising the computer 
source of the demands for data.

In November and December, Swartz is said to have made 2 million 
downloads from JSTOR, 100 times the number made during the same period 
by all legitimate JSTOR users at MIT.

Whiz kid: At age 14, Swartz co-authored an early version of RSS and 
later he started Infogami, a company that would eventually merge with 
Reddit

Whiz kid: At age 14, Swartz, right, co-authored an early version of RSS 
and later he started Infogami, a company that would eventually merge 
with Reddit

It is alleged that on January 6, Swartz went to the wiring closet to 
remove the laptop, attempting to shield his identity by holding a bike 
helmet in front of his face and seeing his way through its ventilation 
holes.

He fled when MIT police tried to question him that day, it is claimed.

The Internet wunderkind pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, 
but spent the next several months struggling to come up with the money 
to cover legal fees and continue his fight against the Justice 
Department, the site ZDnet 
<http://www.zdnet.com/hacker-activist-aaron-swartz-commits-suicide-7000009725/>reported. 

Ironically, Swartz's suicide came just two days after JSTOR announced 
that ii will be releasing more than 4.5 million articles to the public.

'Our goal is for everyone around the world to be able to use the content 
we have put online and are preserving,' JSTOR Managing Director Laura 
Brown said in a statement.

On Saturday, Swartz's mother has posted a statement on the site YCombinator:

'Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. Aaron has been 
depressed about his case/upcoming trial, but we had no idea what he was 
going through was this painful.

Legal troubles: In 2011, the Reddit co-founder was arrested and charged 
with hacking into MIT's JSTOR online journal archive and stealing more 
than four million academic papers

Legal troubles: In 2011, the Reddit co-founder was arrested and charged 
with hacking into MIT's JSTOR online journal archive and stealing more 
than four million academic papers

'Aaron was a terrific young man. He contributed a lot to the world in 
his short life and I regret the loss of all the things he had yet to 
accomplish. As you can imagine, we all miss him dearly. The grief is 
unfathomable.'

Swartz's friend Cory Doctorow, of Boing Boing, published a touching 
tribute in his honor early  a tribute early Saturday morning after 
learning of his death.

'I'm so sorry for Aaron, and sorry about Aaron. My sincere condolences 
to his parents, whom I never met, but who loved their brilliant, 
magnificently weird son and made sure he always had chaperonage when he 
went abroad on his adventures,' he wrote in part.

'We have all lost someone today who had more work to do, and who made 
the world a better place when he did it.'

In his piece, Doctorow speculated that it is possible that what drove 
his friend to suicide is the prospect of incarceration, and all that 
comes with it.

'Imprisonment is one of my most visceral terrors, and it's at least 
credible that fear of losing his liberty, of being subjected to violence 
(and perhaps sexual violence) in prison, was what drove Aaron to take 
this step,' he wrote.

      'AARON'S DEATH IS NOT JUST A PERSONAL TRAGEDY': FAMILY CLAIM
      'EXTRAORDINARY' WEB PIONEER WAS BULLIED BY AUTHORITIES

Our beloved brother, son, friend, and partner Aaron Swartz hanged 
himself on Friday in his Brooklyn apartment. We are in shock, and have 
not yet come to terms with his passing.

Aaron's insatiable curiosity, creativity, and brilliance; his reflexive 
empathy and capacity for selfless, boundless love; his refusal to accept 
injustice as inevitable - these gifts made the world, and our lives, far 
brighter. We're grateful for our time with him, to those who loved him 
and stood with him, and to all of those who continue his work for a 
better world.

Aaron's commitment to social justice was profound, and defined his life. 
He was instrumental to the defeat of an Internet censorship bill; he 
fought for a more democratic, open, and accountable political system; 
and he helped to create, build, and preserve a dizzying range of 
scholarly projects that extended the scope and accessibility of human 
knowledge. 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. His deeply humane writing touched minds 
and hearts across generations and continents. He earned the friendship 
of thousands and the respect and support of millions more.

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. The US Attorney's 
office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying 
potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had 
no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron 
and its own community's most cherished principles.

Today, we grieve for the extraordinary and irreplaceable man that we 
have lost.

Read more: 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2262831/Revealed-Aaron-Swartz-prosecutor-drove-hacker-suicide-2008-named-cyber-crime-case.html#ixzz2I9qhWtwV 

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