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by danso
4892 days ago
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Yes, I am using "benign" in the sense of it being harmless. Bt that's just my opinion. When I listened to the memorial, Aaron's friends said he wanted to change the world, but that his actions on JSTOR were essentially harmless, especially since the entity who is most liable for maintaining rights to the archive declined to press charges. So my perception here is that the emotional weight of Aaron's case is based on how the prosecutors played hardball for what amounted to a petty crime. This is why I'm having a hard time understanding Wikileaks' motive here: do they not think the "official" story is compelling enough? It seems that claiming that Aaron had an unspecified relationship with Wikileaks only muddies up the water...people seem plenty pissed that he got the book thrown at him for "hacking", and the spotlight on the DoJ does not seem to be lessening. |
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2. There are also many competing opinions on which reforms would be appropriate or sufficient in the wake of what was done to Aaron Swartz.
3. It's not surprising, nor is it inappropriate, that Wikileaks would be advocating for more sweeping reforms and adjustments in how we look at the application of judicial force in these situations.
Remember that it is a core contention of Wikileaks that the channeling of power within and across organisations and the loci of that power and decision-making are at the moment dangerously obscure to the public. Of course they would be looking for signs of that in this case.
To the extent that there is evidence for ulterior agendas, it's important. Lack of evidence makes it, as you say, murky -- people see what they want to see. But it's also true that you can't find what you're not looking for.
To put it another way: There are conspiracy theories but there are also conspiracies, and systemic mal-alignments of purpose. Formulating conspiracy theories without evidence is the opposite of helpful. But identifying unforeseen patterns of collaboration can help us reason defensively about situations we, as a public, will never have adequate information of.