Unfortunately, the United States Attorney’s office and Boston FBI is not in tune with following the rule of law and there’s nothing anyone can or will do to stop it.

Official corruption and high crime in government is the new normal in America and every time the Justice Department “meets” a sunlight specialist – someone as ethical and honorable as Aaron Swartz, their job is to silence them by any means necessary. Their monopoly on crime and using the Courts to complete crime trumps the law.

Most Americans do not know that it is a privilege, not a right to report official corruption and high crime in government with the expectation that it will be objectively investigated. And, if you are not politically connected, you will be subjected to retaliation and/or selective prosecution by Federal law enforcement and the Courts.

You write, “We can honor Aaron’s life in the best way by doing what he did at his amazing best. We can work to expand an open Net and society, and to make “liberty” a word that means something again.”

I have just completed a follow up to my “Victim Impact Statement,” which I sent to the judge assigned to the case of former Special Counsel Scott Bloch. If you would like to see how the FBI and DOJ operate, send for it. My pleadings will give you some idea of what happened to Aaron Swartz and why.

dougkinan@yahoo.com

I plan to make up a sign that says, “Who Killed Aaron Swartz?” And I’m cribbing my little EFF card to set up handouts for folks on their rights and obligations in case people come talk to us from across the street.

Three generations of activists in my family since we came to this country.

I was taught if the energy expended outstrips what they are seemingly trying to achieve, look for another end.

So I don’t think this is about JSTOR, who isn’t pissed at Aaron, or about MIT either. I used to run the campus-wide software licensing program at MIT when I was on staff, and they likely didn’t drop their stuff because the library subscription vendors are putting the screws to them over Aaron’s shenanigans, and they can’t afford to lose access to unique research datastores for the students/researchers/faculty — I couldn’t guarantee it but I can easily imagine it.

But what I can imagine is that the feds were waiting for Aaron to jaywalk so they could throw the book at him, because he’s capable of this:

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/426857/aaron-swartz-hacks-the-attention-economy/
“This is what used to be called public relations, right? Propaganda. The difference now is that groups of everyday citizens can do it. I think that’s a big part of what we saw with the fight over SOPA. It was not about legal strategy or lobbyists. It was about how do we use these techniques to get people’s attention? Wikipedia went dark for a day, Tumblr asked all their bloggers to phone Congress—I think they had over 86,000 calls that one day. There was a guy who built a tool that would automatically dial each member of Congress and the head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). If you wanted to inform everybody of your position, he could do it with a couple of clicks. What’s different about this fight is that a whole community took up the banner and tried to raise attention, and that it’s all organized over the Internet.”

It’s the immune system of the status quo. They almost don’t even think about it, do they? They identify threats and neutralize them. It’s SOP.

My grandfather saw the feds put the screws to folks like Eugene Debs.

My dad worked with MLK and the SCLC, after a youth spent organizing with unions during the red scare.

The player’s names change but the dance is the same.

I’ve always felt a little like a coward because I grew up seeing so many people die and end up with ruined lives — I grew up with an ambition to be influential but never famous. Everyone I knew with their head up above the crowd ended up dead or mangled beyond recognition, back in the 60s. Summer of love, my ass. There were other things going on for some of us.

But I still ended up doing what I ended up doing. Because I can’t help seeing the change that has to be done.

Used to be we’d say “Don’t mourn, organize.” But hey, it’s modern times — multitask.

I was suckered in by a pack of Trolls into responding and in my defense Twitter banned me. I was even defending attacks on media presenters.

I was prior generating genuine content that people found interesting (no it wasn’t porn etc)

Because my interest was primarily politics I did follow hashtag streams for obvious reasons. I wasn’t a business and always had pure intent.

If you are running a business set up a few accounts, one for followers.

One for promotional info but don’t send out a gazillion tweets as people wont read it.

One disposable account for abusing trolls attacking you.

Always lead any potential customer away from Twitter over to your website and other media because Twitter don’t respect any contribution you may make.

When the trolls come switch to another account and let them have it as Twitter just delete their own content drivers

Twitter are listening to trolls Twitter self reporting algorithm because they are too dumb to work out they are cannibalizing their best & brightest contributors.

Have an exit strategy

If not, well, that’s it for Twitter. No immediately, but once that kind of commercially driven censorship sets in, it’ll be game over with all the smartest users racing for the exits and a descent into myspace irrelevance.