The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz Page #9

Swartz meets activist Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, and the two begin to date.

[Aaron] We need a massive global public outcry.

[Taren] If there's no massive global public outcry, it won't create any change.

-You know, four people in this city should cause a massive global public outcry.

-You know, we need a petition signer.

Without telling her specifics, he warned her he was involved in something

he called simply "The Bad Thing".

And I had sort of crazy theories, like, that he was having an affair with Elizabeth Warren or something.

I speculated both Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, actually, but...

So, sometime in probably late July, Aaron called me,

and I happened to pick up, and he said, "The Bad Thing" might be in the news tomorrow.

Do you want me to tell you, or do you want to read about it in the news?"

And I said, "Well, I want you to tell me."

Aaron said, "Well, I've been--I've been arrested

for downloading too many academic journal articles, and they want to make an example out of me."

And I was like, "That's it? That's the big fuss? Really? It just doesn't sound like a very big deal."

On July 14, 2011, federal prosecutors indict Swartz on four felony counts.

He gets indicted on the same day that two people in England who are part of LulzSec get arrested,

and a few other real hackers. And Aaron is just someone who kind of looks like a hacker,

enough that they can, you know, put his head on a stake and put it on the gates.

Aaron went to surrender, and they arrested him.

They then strip searched him,

took away his shoelaces, took away his belt, and left him in solitary confinement.

The District of Massachusetts United States Attorney's office released a statement

saying, "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 one million dollars."

He is released on one hundred thousand dollars bail.

The same day, the primary victim in the case, JSTOR,

formally drops all charges against Swartz, and declines to pursue the case.

JSTOR--they weren't our friends; they weren't helpful or friendly to us,

but they also were just kind of like, "We're not part of this."

JSTOR, and their parent company, ITHAKA, also sidestepped requests to talk with this film.

But at the time, they released a statement saying,

"It was the government's decision whether to prosecute, not JSTOR's."

And so it's our belief that, with that, the case will be over.

That we should be able to get Steve Heymann to drop the case, or settle it in some rational way.

And the government refused.

[Narrator] Why?

Well, because I think they wanted to make an example out of Aaron,

and they said they wanted--the reason why they wouldn't

move on requiring a felony conviction and jail time

was that they wanted to use this case as a case for deterrence. They told us that.

[Interviewer] They told you that?

- Yes.

-This was going to be an example?

-Yes.

-He was going to be made an example?

- Yes.

Steve Heymann said that.

Deterring who? There's other people out there running around logging onto JSTOR,

and downloading the articles to make a political statement? I mean, who are they deterring?

It would be easier to understand the Obama administration's

posture of supposedly being for deterrence

if this was an administration that, for instance,

prosecuted arguably the biggest economic crime

that this country has seen in the last hundred years.

The crimes that were committed that led to the financial crisis on Wall Street.

When you start deploying

the non-controversial idea of deterrence

only selectively

you stop making a dispassionate analysis of law-breaking

and you started deciding to deploy law enforcement resources

specifically on the basis of political ideology,

and that's not just undemocratic, it's supposed to be un-American.

Prosecutor Stephen Heymann later reportedly told MIT's outside counsel

that the straw that broke the camel's back

was a press release sent out by an organization Swartz founded called "Demand Progress".

According to the MIT account, Heymann reacted to the short statement of support,

calling it a "wild internet campaign" and a "foolish move"

that moved the case from a human one-on-one level to an institutional level.

That was a poisonous combination: a prosecutor who didn't want to lose face,

who had a political career in the offing, maybe, and didn't want to have this come back and haunt them.

You spend how many tax dollars arresting someone for taking too many books out of the library,

and then got your ass handed to you in court? No way!

I then moved to try to put as much pressure on MIT in various ways to get them

to go to the government, and request the government to stop the prosecution.

[Interviewer] What was MIT's reaction to that?

There doesn't seem to be any reaction from MIT at that point.

MIT doesn't defend Aaron

which, to people inside of the MIT community, seems outrageous,

because MIT is a place that encourages hacking in the biggest sense of the word.

At MIT, the idea of going and running around on roofs and tunnels that you weren't allowed to be in

was not only a rite of passage, it was part of the MIT tour,

and lockpicking was a winter course at MIT.

They had the moral authority to stop it in its tracks.

MIT never stood up and took a position of saying to the Feds, "Don't do this."

"We don't want you to do this. You're overreacting. This is too strong."

...that I'm aware of.

They acted kind of like any corporation would. They sort of--they helped the government,

they didn't help us, unless they felt they had to, and they never tried to stop it.

MIT declined repeated requests to comment,

but they later released a report saying they attempted to maintain a position of neutrality,

and believed Heymann and the U.S. Attorney's office did not care what MIT thought or said about the case.

MIT's behaviour seemed really at odds with the MIT ethos.

You could argue that MIT turned a blind eye, and that was okay for them to do,

but taking that stance--taking that neutral stance, in and of itself--was taking a pro-prosecutor stance.

If you look at Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak,

they started by selling a Blue Box, which was a thing designed to defraud the phone company.

If you look at Bill Gates and Paul Allen,

they initially started their business by using computer time at Harvard,

which was pretty clearly against the rules.

The difference between Aaron and the people I just mentioned

is that Aaron wanted to make the world a better place, he didn't just want to make money.

Swartz continues to be outspoken on a variety of internet issues.

You know, the reason the internet works is because of the competitive marketplace of ideas,

and what we need to be focusing on is getting more information about our government, more accessibility,

more discussion, more debate, but instead it seems like what congress is focused on is shutting things down.

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