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Comment by hudibras | Hacker News Reader

I actually agree with you, but this is exactly the opposite of what the author is saying. Charles Pierce (a long-time Boston politics reporter, not a "tech guy") isn't blaming Ortiz for killing Swartz, he's blaming her and her husband for being disingenuous in their public statements about the prosecution and for the casual way they mention a six-month Federal sentence as if it's nothing.

He also attacks the obviously political motivation behind the prosecution:

  I guarantee you, if Aaron Swartz hadn't killed himself, he'd have been in an Ortiz For Governor campaign commercial one day.

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But that's ridiculous. The only thing that made this case big news was his death.

It's worth reading over old HN threads on the criminal case. The consensus was pretty close to my position now, which is that prosecutorial discretion worked pretty well in determining the charges. That doesn't make the outcome any less sad; nor does raging at the wrong people.

> prosecutorial discretion worked pretty well in determining the charges.

The original charges or the pile of wire fraud charges added at a later time to make for good press? She used her discretion to add piles of charges on him and then claims she didn't want a long prison sentence. At the very least what she said is inconsistent.

I'm not sure I buy that. Aaron Swartz is not exactly Willie Horton. Even if you paint him as a dangerous computer hacker, that doesn't strike me as a particularly convincing political ad.

Imagine the words: "Ortiz has put DANGEROUS HACKERS behind bars!" spoken in dramatic politic ads speaker voice, with the words printed on the screen over a blurred image of jail bars.

That's easily the sort of thing that could be in a political ad. It says not only that she was a good prosecutor, but that she is probably technologically savy as well. I doubt they would bother referring to that particular incident by name (it is often best to be somewhat vague, to keep yourself a hard target to attack).

(This said, I also suspect the politics aspect is more about favors and less about advertising).

I guess so. There may well be some truth to the charge that the case was prosecuted aggressively because it was likely to earn a lot of press. But I think you're right. It seems very unlikely Aaron Swartz was the lynchpin of any grand political strategy.

Oh, I agree there. If it causes trouble in the future for her it will be because of how it turned out, not for how it failed to turn out.

Willie Horton is an inapt comparison for every scenario in which Ortiz would try to capitalize on her record that I can think of. Willie Horton was a spoiler, not a feather.

Well put. At this point, Swartz will be Willie Horton for any of Ortiz's opponents in the hypothetical Democratic primary.

I recognize that, but I think it's wholly beside my point, which is that it would be very hard to make Aaron Swartz and his crimes sound threatening. I don't think MIT computer hackers are what keep voters up at night. It might be true that politics played a role in the case, but it's silly to think this case would have been an important part of anyone's gubernatorial campaign.

Hacker does sound threatening to plenty of folks, thanks to the media. We're not talking graybeards elegant solutions to intricate problems here, we're talking about guys out trying to steal your credit card and to empty your bank account.

I agree it's political, but to get the support of the RIAA/MPAA rather than something to tout directly to the public.

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