16 January 2013 - Aaron Swartz 2

Some have proposed that U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz should be fired because her office caused Aaron Swartz’s suicide by charging him with crimes worth decades in prison when he did nothing more than download too many scholarly papers which he individually had a right to—and furthermore, he did it as a work of activism to promote a freer world. Of course Carmen Ortiz is merely the boss of the office, not the line prosecutor in the case, and in any event U.S. Attorneys operate under an incentive system that rewards extreme aggression, which is what you want when you’re working against organized crime and major fraud as they should be. Her misdeed is a little more serious than his, so to make the punishment fit the crime under her own operating rules, I propose she be prosecuted for homicide.