I haven’t really followed the sad case of Aaron Swartz particularly closely. For those of you who have been following it even less closely, Mr. Swartz was a computer programmer, one of the founders of the social news site Reddit, and involved in developing RSS, the protocol by which many of you are probably reading this post. He was also an intellectual property activist and his activities in that area lead to his arrest and prosecution for various crimes including breaking and entering, wire fraud, and other crimes stemming from his systematic downloading of academic journal articles from JSTOR. Early this year he took his own life. Some, including the legal scholar Lawrence Lessig, have claimed that he was hounded by the authorities to his death. You can read some of the details here.
Mr. Swartz’s lawyers haven’t given up:
The U.S. Attorney’s Office is fighting to keep the names of those involved in the federal prosecution against Internet activist Aaron Swartz under court seal, arguing prosecutors have been victims of hacking and death threats.
Threatening emails have been sent to U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz and prosecutor Stephen Heymann, according to court documents, which said Heymann’s Facebook account was hacked and Heymann’s father, a Harvard professor, received a postcard with his photo in a guillotine.
Glenn Reynolds calls this “the 21st century substitute for tar and feathers.” I can understand the reluctance of those involved in the prosecution to have their names made public but keeping them secret sounds uncomfortably like the Star Chamber to me.
I think Reynolds is wrong. The lawyer or lawyers prosecuting a case are public since they are required to sign the court documents. The attorneys signing the court documents are responsible for their content, not any of the attorneys that were consulted. Internal consultation should be protected work product.
Come on, keeping things secret from the people is the SOP for all recent Administrations, and the current one is slightly less forthcoming than the North Korean regime. If they think you need to know something, they’ll tell you.