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I
just watched this excellent, recently released documentary about
Aaron Swartz, the brilliant young internet programmer and political
activist hounded to his death by the US "justice" system.
The
film makes a very convincing case that the US authorities chose to
make an example of Swartz to nullify the threat they believed he
posed to their own traditional bases of power – not least their
control over information.
They
were scared of his open-access agenda, freeing up information –
from court documents to academic articles – that served the public
good. The US security states thrives in the dark and Swartz was all
about shining a bright light into its corners. Every time he did so,
even in the arcane, stuffy worlds of the courts and academia, he
found examples of abuses and corruption.
Justice
officials took a small incident – his efforts to download academic
papers in the JSTOR database to make them accessible to a wider
audience – and tried to equate it to cyber-terrorism. Last year, as
a trial approached in which he faced a potential jail sentence of
more than three decades, he committed suicide.
Swartz
was a true visionary of the digital age. And the film about him is
far more fascinating than I can convey in this short space.
---Jonathon
Cook, journalist
The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
The
film follows the story of programming prodigy and information
activist Aaron Swartz.
From Swartz's help in the development of the basic internet protocol RSS to his co-founding of Reddit, his fingerprints are all over the internet. But it was Swartz's groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing combined with his aggressive approach to information access that ensnared him in a two-year legal nightmare.
It was a battle that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26. Aaron's story touched a nerve with people far beyond the online communities in which he was a celebrity.
This film is a personal story about what we lose when we are tone deaf about technology and its relationship to our civil liberties.
From Swartz's help in the development of the basic internet protocol RSS to his co-founding of Reddit, his fingerprints are all over the internet. But it was Swartz's groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing combined with his aggressive approach to information access that ensnared him in a two-year legal nightmare.
It was a battle that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26. Aaron's story touched a nerve with people far beyond the online communities in which he was a celebrity.
This film is a personal story about what we lose when we are tone deaf about technology and its relationship to our civil liberties.
Not only did they make an example of him, but Noam Chomsky, that hero of the left, didn't lift a finger to do more than he did. He has clout with MIT and choose to not intervene on behalf of this young man. Almost at the end of his life, with nothing really left to loose, but made a choice to remain safe and secure in the privilege of his position instead of fighting one last battle of worth.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shameful act on Chomsky's part.
I understand no one is perfect; however, shouldn't these paragons of virtue be held to a higher level of accountability?
Another such case is fellow queer Greenwald claiming to have no knowledge or interest in knowing that the man who financed his venture with the Intercept was responsible for funding the revolution in the Ukraine. Does no one else feel that this reeks of a case of do as I say not as i do? People just seem to want to ignore this aspect of Greenwald's professional life and I do not understand why.
In that spirit I find nothing wrong with right wing pundits questioning such luminaries as David Suzuki and Noam Chomsky. Why shouldn't Chomsky reveal where he's invested all the money he's earned from his speaking tours and why is he so hostile to living in a cabin in the woods? Why does no one question Suzuki's constant raising the issue regarding overpopulation? Yet, fails to explain why he's got 5 offspring and why he didn't choice to have a vasectomy after his second kid. There's also the question about all the real estate he seems to own and the companies he's in bed with.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.secretsofthefed.com/was-aaron-swartz-killed-by-an-mit-satanic-child-porn-ring/