Aaron Swartz: his death and legacy
On Friday January 11, 2013, well-known online activist and hacker Aaron Swartz committed suicide in New York at the age of 26. An internet legend, Swartz had been active since he was in his early teens, helping to build well-known products such as RSS and Reddit. He was also a founder of Demand Progress.
Swartz's death has quickly led to an outpouring of online remembrances, but also of calls to action. Swartz was indicted on federal charges in 2011 for a mass download of articles from copyrighted academic database JSTOR while on the campus of MIT. His case was set to go to trial this spring.
You can find all of our articles about Aaron Swartz and his legacy here.
The New Yorker launches Strongbox, an anonymous inbox developed by Aaron Swartz
Before his suicide in January, hacktivist Aaron Swartz was working on an ambitious project: an encrypted dead drop system that could receive and protect files from anonymous sources. Wired editor Kevin Poulsen, who met Swartz when his site Reddit was sold to Condé Nast (which owns both Wired and The New Yorker), had asked him to help design a secure and anonymous inbox for investigative reporting. Over the course of a year, Poulsen and Swartz worked out the system with help from security...
US Attorney's Office accused of deliberately withholding evidence in Aaron Swartz trial
Aaron Swartz’s former lawyer in the JSTOR case, Elliot Peters, is accusing federal prosecutor Stephen Heymann of professional misconduct, alleging that he deliberately withheld an email that would have helped suppress illegally-acquired evidence. In a complaint filed January 28th and published by The Huffington Post, Peters accuses the Assistant US Attorney of violating his duty of candor to the court, as well as using an "extreme" plea offer to "coerce" a deal, and requests a formal...
Aaron Swartz to receive posthumous 'Freedom of Information' award for open access advocacy
Internet activist and Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz is slated to receive posthumous recognition in Washington for his efforts promoting free access to taxpayer-funded research.
The James Madison Freedom of Information Award is administered by the American Library Association, and recognizes "individuals who have championed, protected and promoted public access to government information and the public’s right to know national information."
The award will be presented by Rep. Zoe Lofgren...
Attorney General Holder defends Swartz case as 'a good use of prosecutorial discretion'
Attorney General Eric Holder has defended the Justice Department's treatment of Aaron Swartz, saying that it was an example of "a good use of prosecutorial discretion." In a Senate hearing today, John Cornyn (R-TX) asked Holder for a response to his questions about Swartz's prosecution for copying articles from JSTOR — he's previously suggested that the Justice Department overzealously prosecuted Swartz as retaliation for a previous case or to "make an example" of him. In response, Holder...
Petition to fire Aaron Swartz prosecutor reaches threshold for White House response
The White House must reply to an online petition requesting the removal of Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann, who prosecuted Aaron Swartz before his death, after it reached the threshold of 25,000 signatures. The "We the People" online tool raised the number of responses needed to trigger a mandatory reply to 100,000 last month, but the move wasn't retroactive; the Steve Heymann petition was filed just a few days before the change went into place.
Aaron Swartz's battle to free the PACER legal document database
26-year-old Aaron Swartz died tragically this year amidst threats from federal prosecutors over his involvement with downloading texts from the JSTOR academic collection. Ars Technica takes a look at an earlier effort by Swartz to liberate documents from the legal filing database known as PACER. An acronym for Public Access to Court Electronic Records, PACER lets the public pull US court filings — at a cost (it currently runs 10 cents per page, which can add up rather quickly when combing...
House Committee asks Attorney General for briefing on Aaron Swartz prosecution concerns
US Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) already let it be known that he would be looking into whether federal prosecutors had gone overboard in their prosecution of Aaron Swartz, and now he's following through on that promise. In a letter today from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, both Issa and fellow Representative Elijah Cummings asked US Attorney General Eric Holder for a briefing about the decision by federal prosecutors to bring charges against Swartz. "Many...
Memory to myth: tracing Aaron Swartz through the 21st century
I met Aaron Swartz in Cambridge shortly after he’d been indicted for downloading lots of JSTOR articles on MIT’s network in 2011. My Wired colleague Ryan Singel had been writing about his story, and I’d talked a lot with my friends in academia and publishing about the problems of putting scholarship behind a paywall, but that was really the level at which I was approaching it. I was there to have brunch with friends I’d known a long time only through the internet, and I hadn’t known...
How a phone call made Aaron Swartz join the fight against SOPA
On the one-year anniversary of the international SOPA blackout, BuzzFeed published an excerpt from Hacking Politics: How Geeks, Progressives, The Tea Party, Gamers, Anarchists and Suits Teamed Up To Defeat SOPA and Save the Internet, a book that catalogued the fight against the controversial piracy bill. The excerpt, an essay by Aaron Swartz, details how a simple phone call caused the Reddit co-founder to take notice of COICA, a proposal that later formed part of the ill-fated SOPA act. After...
Aaron Swartz memorial evokes strong emotions and political urgency
Aaron Swartz's family funeral was held this week in Chicago, but on Saturday, New York hosted a public memorial. Organizers reported an attendance of just under 900, filling Cooper Union's Great Hall to standing-room capacity, with many more watching the livestream at Democracy Now! Friends, family, and colleagues spoke of Swartz's personal stories and enormous ideals, and urged those in attendance to political action and self-reflection.
"We talk about how extraordinary he was, but...
Senator John Cornyn accuses Eric Holder of prosecuting Aaron Swartz as 'retaliation'
Senator and Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) has written to Attorney General Eric Holder about the case against activist Aaron Swartz, suggesting that the Department of Justice was attempting to "make an example" of him. In an open letter, Cornyn said the case raised several questions about how US Attorney Carmen Ortiz prosecuted Swartz for downloading articles from JSTOR, despite JSTOR's lack of interest in pressing charges. Two US Representatives have raised questions about the Justice...
WikiLeaks claims Aaron Swartz was an ally and possible source, breaking anonymity
Aaron Swartz died a week ago. A public memorial service in New York City will be held later today. You may have read much about Swartz's life in the interim, including his work at a young age on Reddit and the RSS specification, his political activism, and the overzealous prosecution that may have contributed to his suicide. But you probably haven't heard the story WikiLeaks just outlined on its Twitter account. According to these tweets, Aaron Swartz had at one time aided Wikileaks in some...
After Aaron: how an antiquated law enables the government's war on hackers, activists, and you
Photo Credit: Daniel J. Sieradski
One day back in the early 1970s, two young computer miscreants named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak exploited a hole in AT&T’s phone system to prank call the Pope. The call — made using a homemade device called a “blue box” which made free calls by emulating the tones in AT&T’s switching system — was more than just a prank. It was part of a history of irreverent tinkering that would eventually lead to the creation of the Apple I, and the founding...
Aaron Swartz's embattled prosecuting attorney releases first statement, says conduct was 'appropriate'
US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz is breaking the silence on her office’s prosecution of Aaron Swartz. After extending her sympathy to those affected by Swartz's death, Ortiz acknowledges that there was no evidence that the 25 year-old's efforts to mass-download public journal articles from the JSTOR repository was for personal financial gain. The prosecutor then disputes claims that her office was pursuing a hefty penalty for the hacker and open access advocate, saying "this office sought an...
Rep. Darrell Issa investigating whether prosecutors 'threw the book' at Aaron Swartz
US Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) has said he is investigating whether prosecutors were overzealous in going after Aaron Swartz, the online activist and Reddit co-founder who committed suicide last week and was set to stand trial for copying articles from the JSTOR database. Issa told The Huffington Post that while the investigation was ongoing, overprosecution may have been a problem for Swartz and others, even if actual crimes had been committed. "If someone is genuinely guilty of...
Anonymous keeps Westboro Baptist Church from picketing Aaron Swartz funeral
The Westboro Baptist Church had plans to stage a protest at the funeral of revered online activist Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide last week at the age of 26, but those plans were apparently derailed by Anonymous' threat to retaliate. As the Atlantic reports, Anonymous countered the church's planned picketing by organizing "Operation Angel," an online movement that called upon Swartz sympathizers to protect his funeral with a human shield. It's unclear if #opangel was directly responsible...
Congresswoman proposes amendment to anti-hacking law in the wake of Aaron Swartz's death
Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California has appeared on Reddit to propose "Aaron's Law," a new bill that seeks to amend the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the broad anti-hacking legislation used by prosecutors in their case against recently-deceased information activist Aaron Swartz. The proposal represents the first significant response from a member of Congress in the aftermath of Swartz's suicide, which many — including his family and copyright reform advocate Lawrence Lessig — have at...
Swartz suicide puts the focus on over-aggressive prosecutor
The family of Aaron Swartz pulled no punches in their comments after the 26-year-old's suicide, blaming a "criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach." Assistant United States Attorney Stephen Heymann is one of the individuals that's been named in particular — and it turns out Swartz isn't the first subject of a Heymann investigation that's taken his own life. Buzzfeed reports that in 2008 Jonathan James also committed suicide two weeks after having his home...
Anonymous replaces MIT websites with Aaron Swartz memorial, calls for copyright reform
Agents of the formless hacktivist collective Anonymous have left a political message on at least two of MIT's websites in memory of recently-deceased information activist Aaron Swartz. In stark red-on-black formatting, the message calls Aaron's prosecution "a gross miscarriage of justice" that "highlights the injustice of U.S. computer crime laws, particularly their punishment regimes, and the highly-questionable justice of pre-trial bargaining." The authors go on to demand the reform of...
MIT announces internal investigation into its role in Aaron Swartz's prosecution
On Sunday, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a statement on the untimely death of digital activist and pioneer Aaron Swartz, offering condolences to his friends and family and announcing an investigation into the university's role in his prosecution. "I will not attempt to summarize here the complex events of the past two years," writes MIT president L. Rafael Reif. "Now is a time for everyone involved to reflect on their actions, and that includes all of us at MIT."
The...
Academics share copyrighted journal articles on Twitter to honor Aaron Swartz
This morning, hundreds of links to copyright-protected journal articles have appeared on Twitter in remembrance of Aaron Swartz, posted by members of the academic community. The call to the protest appears to have started on Reddit, where researcher Micah Allen said, "a fitting tribute to Aaron might be a mass protest uploading of copyright-protected research articles. Dump them on Gdocs, tweet the link. Think of the great blu-ray encoding protest but on a bigger scale for research articles."...
Aaron Swartz's family releases statement, blames overreaching prosecutors for his untimely death
The family of famed Reddit co-founder and political activist Aaron Swartz has released a statement following the 26-year-old's suicide on Friday. Remembering Aaron for his "insatiable curiosity, creativity, and brilliance," the family goes on to say that the federal government's overzealous prosecution contributed to his death.
The government had called for a 35-year sentence after Swartz allegedly used a Python script to offload a large quantity of JSTOR documents from an unlocked...
Hacker and Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz dies
Aaron Swartz, the 26-year-old who helped build internet institutions like Reddit and Creative Commons, committed suicide in New York yesterday. The news was confirmed by MIT newspaper The Tech, which received word from both Swartz's uncle and attorney. In addition to his work with Reddit, Swartz also co-authored the very first RSS specification and was involved as an activist through his work as founder of Demand Progress. In 2011 he was charged with stealing 4.8 million documents from the...
