Well, i was responding to the notion that there is nobility in this particular use of the shield of anonymity.
I just happen to disagree that this is a noble use of anonymity.
And, yeah, if you're going to break the law in an act of intentional protest, yeah, i hope they have the strength of conviction to own up to what it is that they're doing. Otherwise it is sort of a cowardly act of opportunity.
The thing that distinguishes aaron swartz's case is that every one thinks it is insane that he was being threatened with jail time, and it isn't reasonable for him, or anyone else (save for the prosecutors) to consider 35 years in prison a proportional response for his circumstances and actions.
Attacking government websites solely for the purpose of defacing them, out of protest or not, is moving out of the grey area that aaron swartz was operating in (this information is supposed to be public anyway, and he had a means to scrape them), into intentional vandalism (even if you think they are a legit cause).
Anonymity in such a circumstance, again, is just a shield for people who are breaking the law. I'm not saying anonymity is a bad thing, or that we shouldn't have it, but imo, this is more an abuse of anonymity than a use.
P.S. Aaron Swartz is a lamentable and reprehensible aberration, but it is an aberration. Larry Lessig certainly agrees with Swartz's objectives (just not the means). Nobody is leading a crusade against Lessig, or trying to murder, injure or incarcerate him for what he believes, or the actions he takes to further his aims. That's persecution. Abortion providers are persecuted. Information activists are not persecuted.
"just a shield for people who are breaking the law."
I would (naturally) call someone who disagrees with me, and acts on it, "abusive" too (or opportunistic, for example) even if he or she thought they were acting morally; moral arguements are hollow when the morality is what's being argued over. I'm not exactly disagreeing with you, just trying to say that moral judgement might be moot (except to one's self of course).
That said, we do seem to disagree on the definition of persecution. I do think people who believe in free access to knowledge, and who act on those moral principals, including pursuing transparency and accountability, are "persecuted"... Case(s) in point: Bradley Manning, Assange, and every other whistle-blower in history. I've said it elsewhere too, but to repeat myself: it does not feel like a safe time to develop network software, and even simple things that geeks do can easily be considered threatening or criminal. No, we're not talking holocaust or even abortionist-level persecution, but geeks still get treated differently. Ex: the very real possibility of 35 years for a nonviolent, technically simple, and arguably moral, scripted download indicates how discriminating IT laws are. As others have noted, murderers get less in most states. (15 to 25 years, typically, before time off for good behavior.) It didn't happen to me personally, but it's still pretty close to home and I guess I'm just not as convinced it's an aberration.
I suspect that I'm not making myself clear enough.
I don't disagree with you that computer crimes are prosecuted in a crazy way and that it's unclear that the legal community has a technical proficiency adequate to make the sorts of fine grained judgements necessary to identify "good guys" from "bad guys" (and all of the myriad shades of grey) so they tend just to throw the book at people. This is less a persecution than it is a lack of understanding imo.
Regardless of all of that, what I am saying is that the sort of crime that Aaron Swartz was accused of is not the same sort of crime that defacing a government website is.
As a consequence the nature of the protest that Aaron Swartz engaged in versus whoever has hit this particular site are materially different.
So when people say that Aaron Swartz was persecuted, I am sympathetic, but I genuinely think that things got crazy out of hand and under other circumstances would not have (which is why MIT's role in this is one worth identifying and engaging with).
On the other hand, if someone were to say that going after the guys who hit the ussc.gov site is persecution? That's not persecution. That's going after someone who's trying to commit a crime and actual inconvenience (however negligible it is) to others.
"This is less a persecution than it is a lack of understanding imo."
The same could be said of the sentiment that AIDs is "God's way of punishing homosexuals"... The people "throwing the book" at geeks are coming from the same place, as you have said (lack of understanding), IMHO as the Westboro Baptist's who I would consider "persecutive" of homosexuals.
"I am saying is that the sort of crime that Aaron Swartz was accused of is not the same sort of crime that defacing a government website is."
"if someone were to say that going after the guys who hit the ussc.gov site is persecution? That's not persecution."
I felt that way a few years ago watching the start of the hactivism stuff, and I would have said it was pretty cut-and-dry vandalism then. Today I find it harder to view this as strictly vandalism in light of the larger developing context, only the most recent of which is Aaron Swartz killing himself (to name, sadly, even only the latest suicide); Aaron's case in particular stands out to me as walking the line between vandalism, copyright infringement, and information/civil rights activism, blurring the distinction (to me at least). The lack of understanding, as you put it, touches all these categories and when I compare the mandatory minimums in the CFAA to the lack of interest in banking and financial crimes, for example, it feels a lot like persecution, even if it's also (in part) vandalism.
I'm not trying to be argumentative, just following my train of thought all the way to the station...
I just happen to disagree that this is a noble use of anonymity.
And, yeah, if you're going to break the law in an act of intentional protest, yeah, i hope they have the strength of conviction to own up to what it is that they're doing. Otherwise it is sort of a cowardly act of opportunity.
The thing that distinguishes aaron swartz's case is that every one thinks it is insane that he was being threatened with jail time, and it isn't reasonable for him, or anyone else (save for the prosecutors) to consider 35 years in prison a proportional response for his circumstances and actions.
Attacking government websites solely for the purpose of defacing them, out of protest or not, is moving out of the grey area that aaron swartz was operating in (this information is supposed to be public anyway, and he had a means to scrape them), into intentional vandalism (even if you think they are a legit cause).
Anonymity in such a circumstance, again, is just a shield for people who are breaking the law. I'm not saying anonymity is a bad thing, or that we shouldn't have it, but imo, this is more an abuse of anonymity than a use.
P.S. Aaron Swartz is a lamentable and reprehensible aberration, but it is an aberration. Larry Lessig certainly agrees with Swartz's objectives (just not the means). Nobody is leading a crusade against Lessig, or trying to murder, injure or incarcerate him for what he believes, or the actions he takes to further his aims. That's persecution. Abortion providers are persecuted. Information activists are not persecuted.