On the case, I know a lot of technical people are responding that this case overreach on the prosecutor's side. I wish people would look at this from both sides. How does she know that Aaron was truly innocent? I bet she had expert witnesses on her side saying that Aaron was doing something illegal and excessive. Everyone is saying that he had access to download those files. But the prosecutor is looking at all of his seemingly suspicious behavior. 4 million downloads through a custom script. He walked into the computer closet to hard-wire in.
If you are looking at the Aaron case abstractly and comparing his behavior with other cases. I bet the prosecutor thought they had something with the case against Aaron. He certainly wasn't entirely innocent. He didn't download 4-5 documents through a browser like a typical user.
I grew up knowing exactly what it's like to be bullied and severely beaten for being different, and the only thing different about me was that I was modestly intelligent and interested in computers. I'd be surprised if I was alone in my experiences among the HN crowd, but I was definitely alone in my small town. [I feel like even mentioning this is some kind of egregious faux pas.] Thank goodness for BBSes and IRC.
Not to diminish the suffering and needs of more visible and more historically persecuted minorities, but you'd think all the attention given to the "accepted" minorities would get people to generalize to accepting differences of any kind.
It's condescending to say people aren't looking at both sides. You are actually now arguing that either she was incompetent because she picked bad expert witnesses or she had bad judgement in how hard she prosecuted. After she had all the facts in front of her, she threatened him with 35 years for it.
As someone else posted above, if he had stole the hard drive with the 4 million documents on it, it wouldn't be a felony.
I didn't say that or imply it. On the other side. I have heard that Aaron had access to the documents. I have heard that MIT is an open access type of campus. I have heard things that claim that the prosecutor's case was in error. But, I have heard little about the validity of the case. I guess that the prosecutors reviewed the CFAA laws and other similar cases.
I am saying that the case should have proceeded forward. I would have liked have heard from both sides. Others say she should be fired and that the case was invalid.
Put differently: if a prosecutor chooses not to pursue particularly stupid applications of a law, that's better than the opposite, so we should work to make sure our public prosecutors are as reasonable as possible. But that's a very weak kind of protection. Having very broad criminal laws where we rely on the wisdom of prosecutors not to charge the "bad" applications leaves defendants with basically no procedural protections, since not being charged when you violated the law as written isn't any kind of legal right.