[gayprogrammer]

Woah you are REALLY optimistic about law enforcement agencies wanting to focus on real criminals.

But Barrett Brown is not the first or only example.

Aaron Swartz is the only example I need to understand what to expect from the various US law enforcement agencies.

[ryanlol]

Barrett Brown intentionally did everything in his power (including, but not limited to publicly threatening named FBI agents and their families) to get targeted by LE, and succeeded.

Swartz? Swartz knowingly did several obviously illegal things (breaking-and-entering?) and then acted shocked when he got charged.

His actions may have been morally defensible, but not legally. Law enforcement did their job there.

[nyolfen]

it's kind of hilarious that it takes a case as transparently self-serving as aaron swartz to calcify a population as privileged and inured to the justice system as programmers to go "woah hey this shit might be kind of fucked up!!!"

[ternaryoperator]

Aaron S. was not at all the first time programmers recognized the problem and acted on it. Perhaps it was the first time that you became aware of the issue. But there were large-scale campaigns as far back as Robert Morris's worm in 1988. Even then, programmers were rightly concerned with unfair punishment for hacking and were outspoken about their concern. Similarly, with the Randal Schwartz in 1995, and many times since.