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Aaron Swartz's Family Blame His Death On Prosecutors, MIT
By
Jen Chung
Published Jan 13, 2013
Modified Jan 13, 2013
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By
Jen Chung
Published Jan 13, 2013
Modified Jan 13, 2013
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Yesterday, it was confirmed that hacker, Reddit building, and Internet activist Aaron Swartz killed himself in New York City. Swartz, who co-authored RSS 1.0 authentication when he was 14, helped get Reddit off the ground in its early days and worked on building Creative Commons. He had been facing federal charges of illegally downloading millions of journals from the online journal archive JSTOR. While Swartz had publicly described his depression, his family blamed his suicide on the criminal case: "Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach."
Swartz, 26, was found dead on Friday morning in his Crown Heights apartment. According to the Daily News, "His girlfriend, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, found Swartz’s body hanging from a belt just inside his bedroom window, sources said."
His friend Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing wrote yesterday, "This morning, a lot of people are speculating that Aaron killed himself because he was worried about doing time. That might be so.... But Aaron was also a person who'd had problems with depression for many years. He'd written about the subject publicly, and talked about it with his friends." Swartz was facing up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine for allegedly breaking into a utility closet at MIT and setting up a laptop to tap into networks for the academic journals.
Swartz's family's full statement blasts the feds and MIT (JSTOR dropped its complaint against him):
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.
Another friend, Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig, wrote on his Tumblr page, "If what the government alleged was true — and I say “if” because I am not revealing what Aaron said to me then — then what he did was wrong. And if not legally wrong, then at least morally wrong. The causes that Aaron fought for are my causes too. But as much as I respect those who disagree with me about this, these means are not mine." However, he added:
Aaron had literally done nothing in his life “to make money.” He was fortunate Reddit turned out as it did, but from his work building the RSS standard, to his work architecting Creative Commons, to his work liberating public records, to his work building a free public library, to his work supporting Change Congress/FixCongressFirst/Rootstrikers, and then Demand Progress, Aaron was always and only working for (at least his conception of) the public good. He was brilliant, and funny. A kid genius. A soul, a conscience, the source of a question I have asked myself a million times: What would Aaron think? That person is gone today, driven to the edge by what a decent society would only call bullying. I get wrong. But I also get proportionality. And if you don’t get both, you don’t deserve to have the power of the United States government behind you.
For remember, we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House — and where even those brought to “justice” never even have to admit any wrongdoing, let alone be labeled “felons.”
In that world, the question this government needs to answer is 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, and so that was the reason he was facing a million dollar trial in April — his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge. And so as wrong and misguided and fucking sad as this is, I get how the prospect of this fight, defenseless, made it make sense to this brilliant but troubled boy to end it.
Fifty years in jail, charges our government. Somehow, we need to get beyond the “I’m right so I’m right to nuke you” ethics that dominates our time. That begins with one word: Shame.
Swartz's funeral will be held in Illinois on Tuesday.
Tagged
aaron swartz
hacker
internet activist
jstor
lawsuit
mit
rss
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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