hacker commits suicide due to agressive persecution of the state

This sort of story hits home, I had a friend who killed himself for similar reasons, but in the end, those who were held responsible took no responsibility at all, in fact, blaming the deceased even after he had past.

When I read stories like this, it makes me so infuriated that there is no response to this 'legal psychological battering'. These bastards are murderers in my eyes.

If you can do the crime, you can do the time.
Plus you cant just let people out of jail if they are suicidal, murderers and rapists will be claiming they are suicidal to avoid jail. They should be put in a jail with padded walls and a straight jacket.

This kinda reminds me of the case of Gary McKinnon.

He is a Scottish computer hacker who hacked into the CIA databases looking for secret UFO files. The US played this up as the "biggest computer hack of all time" when really he used some extremely simple and basic methods to get in to a pathetically loosely secured system.

The US tried to extradite him there to face a potential 70 *bleep*ING YEARS in jail. Mckinnon confessed to breaking in to the system and leaving a message reading "Your security is crap" but he also claims the US fabricated multiple charges against him which were actually unrelated to his activity as a crude way of levering the UK into an extradition. Believe who you want. But apparently the UK foreign secretary didnt believe the US either. The thig is the US painted him as some supercapable mega hacker. When actually he was a nerd with aspergers syndrome who got lucky with some lax and neglegant security. I think having him in custody the UK authorities realised this quite early on.

But 70 years? Im glad the UK foreign secretary blocked his extradition. The support for him in the UK is pretty universal. Even Obama seems to see sense in this situation saying he and David Cameron are working towards an "Appropriate sollution".

Yes he broke the law bla bla bla. But 70 years? Aswith the story above that sentancing is so unbeleavably harsh that it just destroys the credability of those attempting prosecution. Hopefully he wont ever be extradited.

If the US govornment had any tact what-so-ever they would have tried to employ him rather than create a with hunt. Lot of shite. I'd quite like to know what he found. He has refused to talk about it. Dont blame him.

quote person_47

I don't think the two cases are really similar at all.

Well, i dont really want to debate the exact nature of and or definition of the similarities.

Two "amatuer" hackers with mental instability hacking into govornment institutions to gain access to secret information who were both caught, laimed fabricated evidence/charges with imposed sentances threatened which to me at least seem extremely harsh which then led to the issue of potential suicide...

If you dont see similarities there then i dont know how to help ya. I have noticed people on this site get confused between the phrases "Absolutely identical in every way" and "This kinda reminds me of".

I do agree about why he kept quiet though. As i said, dont blame him.

EDIT: Oh and the fact that he probably didnt find anything either. As i said he wasnt exactly a master hacker "Matrix" style and unless UFO's are secret CIA drones then there probably wasnt anything to find.

Read the other links. It was an expected 6 month sentence. All he had to do was plead guilty.

http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Mass-lawyer-Told-prosecutor-Swartz-suicidal-4192214.php

quote person_47

Read the other links. It was an expected 6 month sentence.

How does that degrade the similarities in any way ?

EDIT: Woops, appologies Person_47. Just realised that this was not in response to me.

However noticed something else, what do you mean he died a coward? Just because he killed himself or due to the exact circumstances?

I was struck for this young guy because of one line he wrote: "I have no faith in the 'justice' system". I feel a great and very deep deal of sympathy with this.

Guy got f**ked on a Robin Hood esque quest for freedom of information and rightful distribution of funding. Its not like he was doing it for pure personal gain.

quote Zero

Well guess what, he accomplished a hell of a lot more in his life than you ever will no doubt.

Do you even know why he downloaded the academic articles?

What? Why am I personally being attacked here? You don't know me or anything about me. As far as my personal accomplishments go I've got lists and guess what, my list will continue to grow. Know why? Cause I'm not dead.

Although, come to think of it... if you think stealing from a school and killing yourself is a lifetime worth of accomplishments then you're pretty pathetic yourself.

Also, I read the article, it doesn't matter why he did it. He did it, he's a criminal. He stole and released (or planned to release) academic articles that the school chose not to make public. For all you know some of those were research studies and he might have totally screwed some researchers. Either way, doesn't matter, he did do it and there's no question.

quote KR_1250

However noticed something else, what do you mean he died a coward? Just because he killed himself or due to the exact circumstances?

Killed himself. No respect for that. I know a couple suicides, didn't attend the funerals. Suicide is a cowards way out of a bad situation. The situation does make me respect him less though, 6 months for a guilty plea isn't that bad. I know people who smoke pot once in a while who have been arrested for longer for less and they manned up and took it.