Prosecutor in Aaron Swartz 'hacking' case comes under fire

Carmen Ortiz was being talked about last month as the next Massachusetts governor. Now she's being investigated for threatening the late Aaron Swartz with decades in prison.

A politically ambitious Justice Department official who oversaw the criminal case against Aaron Swartz has come under fire for alleged prosecutorial abuses that led the 26-year-old online activist to take his own life.

Carmen Ortiz, 57, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts who was selected by President Obama, compared the online activist -- accused of downloading a large number of academic papers -- to a common criminal in a 2011 press release. "Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar," Ortiz said at the time. Last fall, her office slapped Swartz with 10 additional charges that carried a maximum penalty of 50 years in prison.

"He was killed by the government," Swartz's father, Robert, said at his son's funeral in Highland Park, Ill., today, according to a report in the Chicago Sun Times.

Last Wednesday, less than three months before the criminal trial was set to begin, Ortiz's office formally rejected a deal that would have kept Swartz out of prison. Two days later, Swartz killed himself.

"He was being made into a highly visible lesson," says Harvey Silverglate, a Cambridge, Mass., attorney who first met Swartz in 2001 and spoke with him after his arrest. "He was enhancing the careers of a group of career prosecutors and a very ambitious -- politically-ambitious -- U.S. attorney who loves to have her name in lights."

Ortiz' spokeswoman did not respond to questions from CNET today. The spokeswoman, Christina Sterling, had said earlier this week: "We want to respect the privacy of the family and do not feel it is appropriate to comment on the case at this time."

Replies Silverglate, the defense attorney and author of the book "Three Felonies a Day:" "It nearly made me puke. Out of deference to the family they weren't going to respond to the charges? It wasn't 'out of deference to the family.' It was out of deference to their careers."

Swartz was accused of 13 felony counts relating to connecting a computer to MIT's network without authorization and retrieving over four million academic journal articles from the JSTOR database (he was allowed to access JSTOR, but not to perform a bulk download). The advocacy group Demand Progress, which Swartz had helped to create and which helped to defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act a year ago, likened it to "trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library." (Swartz also sold a company he founded called Infogami to Reddit and was one of the co-creators of the RSS standard for syndicating content.)

If Swartz had stolen a $100 hard drive with the JSTOR articles, it would have been a misdemeanor offense that would have yielded probation or community service. But the sweeping nature of federal computer crime laws allowed Ortiz and Assistant U.S. AttorneyStephen Heymann, who wanted a high-profile computer crime conviction, to pursue felony charges. Heymann threatened the diminutive free culture activist with over 30 years in prison as recently as last week.

The Boston U.S. Attorney's office was looking for "some juicy looking computer crime cases and Aaron's case, sadly for Aaron, fit the bill," Elliot Peters, Swartz's attorney at the Keker & Van Nest law firm, told the Huffington Post. Heymann, Peters says, thought the Swartz case "was going to receive press and he was going to be a tough guy and read his name in the newspaper."

Heymann was also the Boston office's point person in a second investigation that spurred another young hacker to kill himself. In 2008, 24-year-old Jonathan James committed suicideafter being named a suspect in a federal cybercrime investigation. His suicide note said: "I have no faith in the 'justice' system. Perhaps my actions today, and this letter, will send a stronger message to the public."

"The charges were ridiculous and trumped-up"

Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide two days after federal prosecutors rejected his attorney's proposal for no prison time.

(Credit: Fred Benson/ Creative Commons: Flickr)

Ortiz has now found herself in an unusual -- and uncomfortable -- position: as the target of an investigation instead of the initiator of one.

An online petition asking President Obama to remove her from office has garnered 35,000 signatures. The threshold at the time for triggering an official White House response, which has not yet happened, was 25,000. (A separate petitionasking for the removal of prosecutor Stephen Heymann has attracted only 4,000 signatures so far.)

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, a California Republican, said he haslaunched an investigation into Ortiz's prosecution of Swartz. It's a bipartisan sentiment: Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat and former Internet entrepreneur, told the Hill that: "The charges were ridiculous and trumped-up. It's absurd that he was made a scapegoat."

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat whose district includes the heart of Silicon Valley, published draft legislation today (PDF) called "Aaron's Law" that would no longer make it a crime to violate terms of service agreements.

Ortiz had been a rising star in the Democratic Party: a law-and-order Hispanic prosecutor who had won high-profile convictions including Salvatore DiMasi, the former Massachusetts House speaker. The Boston Globe named her "Bostonian of the Year" in 2011 and reported last month that Ortiz was a potential gubernatorial candidate.

Swartz's friends and family have, in the days since his death, argued that Ortiz, Heymann, and assistant U.S. attorney Scott Garland employed tactics should have been reserved for serious criminals, not an activist who merely downloaded more articles than JSTOR would have preferred. A Swartz family statement posted at RememberAaronSW.com says: "The U.S. attorney's office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims."

Larry Lessig, the Harvard law professor who spoke at Swartz's funeral today along with Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, said in a blog post that even though Swartz had no intention of profiting from any downloaded journal articles, "our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 terrorists red-handed."

Alex Stamos, who the defense had planned to call as an expert witness on computer intrusion,said: "I know a criminal hack when I see it, and Aaron's downloading of journal articles from an unlocked closet is not an offense worth 35 years in jail." Law professor Tim Wu added that Ortiz's "legal authority to take down Swartz was shaky" after a federal appeals court ruling last year.

It's true that Swartz would not have faced 50 years in prison; that was, after all, the maximum sentence for his supposed felonies, not the minimum one. But Ortiz and her staff were intent on requiring that he plead guilty to multiple felonies and serve significant time behind bars.

Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society and former criminal defense attorney, elaborated on why Swartz was so reluctant to plead guilty:

 There was great practical risk to Aaron from pleading to any felony. Felons have trouble getting jobs, aren't allowed to vote (though that right may be restored) and cannot own firearms (though Aaron wasn't the type for that, anyway). More particularly, the court is not constrained to sentence as the government suggests. Rather, the probation department drafts an advisory sentencing report recommending a sentence based on the guidelines. The judge tends to rely heavily on that "neutral" report in sentencing... If he plead guilty to a felony, he could have been sentenced to as many as 5 years, despite the government's agreement not to argue for more. Each additional conviction would increase the cap by 5 years, though the guidelines calculation would remain the same. No wonder he didn't want to plead to 13 felonies. Also, Aaron would have had to swear under oath that he committed a crime, something he did not actually believe.

JSTOR has said since 2011 that it had no interest in pursuing criminal charges, and added last weekend that it "regretted" having been drawn into "this sad event." MIT, which reportedly did encourage Ortiz to pursue the case, is now conducting an internal investigation.

Last Wednesday, two days before Swartz took his life, JSTOR said it was making its archives of more than 1,200 different academic journals free for the public to read.

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Feds: MegaUpload was not entrapped

Entrapment is one of MegaUpload's claims in its legal battle against the U.S. government. The feds are now saying this claim is "baseless."

"Megaupload's allegations are baseless, as even a cursory review of Megaupload's pleading and the search warrant materials at issue disproves the allegation that the government misled the court as part of a conspiracy to entrap Megaupload," the government wrote in a Friday filing (PDF).

MegaUpload, which was founded by Kim DotCom, is the highest-profile service to be accused of criminal copyright violations by the U.S. government -- and the case is being watched closely around the globe.

DotCom's saga has played out over the past year after he was arrested on allegations of criminal copyright violation, conspiracy, money laundering, and wire fraud. U.S. federal officials accused DotCom of pocketing millions of dollars in illegal profits from criminal file sharing and downloading that has reportedly cost the film industry more than $600 million in damages.

One of the reasons DotCom claims he was entrapped by the U.S. government is because he complied with a federal search warrant targeting five file-sharing services using MegaUpload's infrastructure in 2010, according to Wired. These file-sharing services, including Movies-Links.tv, Planetmoviez.com, and Ninjavideo.net, were accused of being movie-pirating sites.

MegaUpload reportedly gave the authorities a database of 39 pirated movies, which allowed the feds to raid the sites' operators and seize their assets. Even though DotCom cooperated with the government, the feds then used this same database as evidence in its case against MegaUpload. Apparently, DotCom never deleted the allegedly pirated movies from MegaUpload's servers, which the government said proved he was aware of pirated material on the platform.

In a January 2 court filing (PDF), DotCom's lawyer Ira Rothken wrote that "MegaUpload had every reason to retain those files in good faith because the government had sought and obtained MegaUpload's cooperation in retrieving those files and warned that alerting users to the existence of the warrant and the government's interest in the files could compromise the investigation."

However, the feds filing from Friday said this claim is meritless and that the government never told DotCom to keep the files. The feds also said that more than 2,000 users uploaded the 39 pirated movies because the material wasn't deleted from MegaUpload's servers.

Currently, DotCom and his company managers are free on bail in New Zealand while waiting for an extradition hearing. The hearing will determine whether they will be extradited to the U.S. to stand trial. The earliest the hearing will be scheduled is July 2013.

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Apple is done, say teens

Future adults allegedly believe, according to research, that Apple isn't cool any more. They're more impressed by Samsung's Galaxy and Microsoft's Surface.

When you want to know what's cool, you ask a teenager.

You have to ask her nicely or she will scowl you into oblivion or patronize you into a painful purgatory.

So I'd like to prepare you for some of this difficulty.

Teens have decided that Apple is, like, so over. If you want to be a veritable cooleratus, you want to be seen with a Samsung Galaxy phone in your hand or a Microsoft Surface laptoppy tabletstuck under your arm.

This definitive information comes to me courtesy of research performed by Buzz Marketing, as well as three 14-year-olds who tried to rob me of my orange Puma sneakers.

When they saw I had an iPhone, they couldn't even be bothered to take the sneakers. (I exaggerate slightly about this last element.)

As Forbes reports it, one of the sources of this deep technical disturbance is the self-obsession of those older people known as parents.

They have allegedly tended to toss older Apple products at their children, while buying themselves the latest iPhones.

Inevitably, this has caused a touch of pouty resentment among their offspring, who are forced to explain to their friends that possession of a smaller screen is not in any way their own fault.

Buzz Marketing's Tina Wells told Forbes: "Teens are telling us Apple is done. Apple has done a great job of embracing Gen X and older (Millennials), but I don't think they are connecting with Millennial kids."

This will surely explain why Microsoft had large numbers of Glee-ful teens dancing away in the launch ad for the Surface.

It may not explain so well why the Surface hasn't yet sold in limitless numbers.

Still, it's Apple's greatest challenge to maintain cachet as its products appear in so many more hands of so many more vintages.

Teens want to believe that they have the inside track and that everyone else is worth nothing more than a snort. Why, they'll even allegedly drug their parents' milkshakes in order to get online.When your logo gets seen too often, it can become a symbol of the establishment, rather than the renegade that teens are often desperate to embrace.

They have great faith in their ability to unearth the novel and decry the status quo. TheiPhone 5 was, for them, a little too staid.

As, it transpired this week, is Facebook.

But, as they learn only a little later, their feelings can't be trusted. Their greatest emotional stability lies in its fickleness.

Which, of course, ought to give hope to brands that haven't been in teens' minds for a long time.

I'm thinking of you, Nokia.

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White House shoots down petition to build Death Star

The White House has rejected a proposal to build a Death Star, saying that in addition to its prohibitive construction costs, the current administration does not advocate destroying other planets.

Today's official statement came in response to a petition posted in November to the White House's We The People platform that called for the administration to begin construction of a moon-size military battlestation armed with a planet-destroying superlaser by 2016. The petition, which attracted well more than the minimum 25,000 signatures necessary for a response from the White House, suggested such a project could give the nation's economy a much-needed boost:

 By focusing our defense resources into a space-superiority platform and weapon system such as a Death Star, the government can spur job creation in the fields of construction, engineering, space exploration, and more, and strengthen our national defense.

However, in a playful, "Star Wars"-inspired response titled "This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For," Paul Shawcross, the chief of the science and space branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget, explains that construction of the universe's ultimate weapon would cost $850 quadrillion ($850,000,000,000,000,000). The administration also said it was reluctant to spend such an uncountable amount on "a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship."

Shawcross also points out that the U.S. is a participant in the International Space Station ("that's no moon, it's a Space Station!" he writes):

 Yes, we already have a giant, football field-sized International Space Station in orbit around the Earth that's helping us learn how humans can live and thrive in space for long durations. The Space Station has six astronauts -- American, Russian, and Canadian -- living in it right now, conducting research, learning how to live and work in space over long periods of time, routinely welcoming visiting spacecraft and repairing onboard garbage mashers, etc. We've also got two robot science labs -- one wielding a laser -- roving around Mars, looking at whether life ever existed on the Red Planet.

Shawcross also points out that exploration of space is no longer a government-exclusive industry and that private companies are already ferrying cargo into space under NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office (aka C3PO). He also offered a reminder of some of the space-exploration projects currently under way or on the drawing board.

 Even though the United States doesn't have anything that can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, we've got wo spacecraft leaving the solar system and we're building aprobe that will fly to the exterior layers of the sun. We are discovering hundreds of new planets in other star systems and building a much more powerful successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that will see back to the early days of the universe. 

Shawcross closes the administration's response with a serious note encouraging students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, or math-related fields and highlighting the science fairs and White House astronomy sessions initiated by the Obama Administration.

"If you do pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field, the Force will be with us!" Shwacross writes. "Remember, the Death Star's power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force."

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Chrome 24 brings math formatting, better offline abilities

Alongside the perpetual effort to speed up JavaScript, Google's newest browser gets MathML support, offline data storage with IndexedDB, and security fixes.

Google released the stable version of Chrome 24today, adding support for IndexedDB for apps that work better offline, mathematics formulas formatted with MathML, and faster JavaScript.

The new version also comes with a range of security fixes, including two $1,000 bounties and one $4,000 bounty paid to people who found high-severity vulnerabilities. Because Chrome automatically downloads updates by default in part to patch holes as fast as possible, people just need to restart the browser to update it.

IndexedDB, under development for years, is geared to store data for use even if a Web site or Web app is working with no network connection. It's used for offline Gmail and Google Docs, for example.

Math markup language makes it easier for the browser to display formulas like the quadratic equation -- not something everyone needs, but as with accents and currency symbols, something very useful to a particular subset.

Another feature, built into Chrome 24 but disabled by default, is support for CSS custom filters, a technology that makes some graphical elements programmable. Adobe developed the technology as part of its effort to build into Web standards some of the features in its Flash Player software.Faster JavaScript is hardly news these days -- all browser makers are constantly working to wring the last bit of performance out of the Web's prime programming language. There's more, though: "We recently made some server-side changes to Google Cloud Print so that Chrome's printer selection dialog loads twice as fast. We've also been working on reducing the browser's startup time and setting up automated tests to catch any code changes that would slow Chrome down," said Google programmer and compiler expert Toon Verwaest in a blog post from when Chrome 24 hit beta in November.

Adobe's CSS custom filter technology arrives in Chrome 24 -- though disabled by default. It permits programmable graphics effects, such as this swoopy transformation to a text and graphics box. The text is still selectable.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

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Eyes-on: Samsung's Youm flexible-display tech at CES 2013

Samsung debuted its Youm flexible-display technology at CES' closing keynote, and the tech is nothing short of eye-popping.

The screens, which were shown off here as just a concept, promise to change what kind of form factors are possible for companies that make smartphones and tablets.

Samsung brought out a handful of demo units around 5-inches in size to show press, including a phonelike device with a screen that wraps around the side edges and could therefore display information like text messages and other alerts without a user needing to view the entire screen. A similar design puts the wraparounds on the bottom, while another concept (shown off in a video) rolled out like a scroll.

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Behind the scenes, Samsung is making use of OLED to give the screens what it says are deeper blacks and a higher overall contrast ratio with better power efficiency than traditional LCD displays.

During a brief viewing of the technology following the presentation, Samsung showed a small group of reporters a close-up of the screens, which were displaying still images and videos. Touch interactions with the tech were not shown off (since the displays were not hooked up to CPUs), but Samsung was keen to demo the possible form factors, from a screen bent like a question mark to more simple designs that form a small curl on the edges.

Samsung did not provide a price or release date for Youm.

Samsung's approach (which the company teased last month) differs from competitor Nokia, which made waves in October 2011 with its "kinetic interface" technology. Nokia showed off a flexible screen that controlled aspects of the phone hardware depending on how users twisted the screen. So far, Samsung appears to be more interested in using its own technology to turn parts of the phone that would otherwise go unused to additional areas to display information and add interactivity.

This is not the first time Samsung has unveiled flexible-display technology at CES. The company demoed flexible, transparent displays at the same show in 2011, also with the intent to bring them to future devices. The newer models come in larger form factors and with higher pixel displays.

Updated at 1:05 p.m. PT with additional background.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

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Intel at CES: throwing down the gauntlet with Nvidia

LAS VEGAS—Intel swaggered into their CES press briefing like an aging gunfighter ready to take on the cocky young gun. You know, John Wayne versus Clint Eastwood style.

Pundits and analysts have wondered whether Intel can handle the new competition from ARM-based systems. The many companies building many different implementations of ARM, some suggested, would result in a “death by a thousand tiny cuts.” But Intel is showing some renewed fighting spirit here at CES 2013.

Intel VP of mobile, Mike Bell, opened up by touting the performance and battery life accomplishments of its current Medfield line of mobile processors. The chief target of Intel’s bragging was Nvdia’s Tegra 3 mobile processor, which was mentioned more than once during the briefing.

He then moved on to point out its 140-plus design wins for the company’s Ultrabook standard. It’s an impressive number on the surface, though Intel’s actual sales have beenless than stellar. After that initial stage setting, Intel dove into the meat of the matter: a bevy of new, and sort-of-new, processors.

Tweaking Atom for emerging markets

First up on Intel’s list is the new Atom Z2420 CPU with XMM 6265, code-named Lexington. The dual-core, 1.2GHz chip is designed to run in smartphones for customers in emerging markets, including Africa, parts of Asia and South America. The Z2420 supports HDPSA 3G-plus and HD video encoding and decoding. The design supports 1.3-megapixel front-facing and 5-megapixel rear-facing cameras capable of up to shooting 7 frames per second in burst mode.

As with most Atom processors, Lexington integrates a PowerVR GPU, the SGX 540. This is the same GPU used in Medfield, and is an aging GPU design by current standards. It won’t stand up well to more recent graphics processors, but the target (emerging) market may not care much.

Intel showed a reference design phone that is about the same size as the original iPhone, with a 3.5-inch screen. Acer, Safaricom and Lava will be building phones based on Lexington.

Intel also hinted at future Atom plans, including Clover Trail Plus, which will offer twice the performance of Medfield and should have a much needed update to the graphics core.

Bay Trail : the 22-nanometer Atom

Tablets and convertible laptops running Intel’s latest Atom Z2760 processor are just now shipping, with roughly ten products currently available. Clover Trail’s somewhat sluggish start didn’t prevent Intel from touting the next-gen Bay Trail processor. This successor to Clover Trail will be built with Intel’s current 22nm manufacturing process, the same used with Ivy Bridge and Haswell.

NEC’s new 15-inch Ultrabook is barely a half-inch thick.

Intel says Bay Trail will include quad-core designs, and will be shipping by “the 2013 holiday season”, but it didn’t divulge many other details. Bay Trail will be a full SoC (system-on-chip) design. Rumors from leaked Intel documents also suggest that Bay Trail will implement a “burst” mode, boosting clock frequencies for individual cores for short intervals, similar to the Turbo Boost feature in Intel’s Core CPU products for PCs.

It’s also believed that Bay Trail will implement Intel’s own graphic core, with Intel no longer relying on PowerVR for tablet-class processors. Intel did state that Bay Trail would run both Windows 8 and a highly-tuned version of Android.

The new, new Ivy Bridge

While Intel readies its next generation Haswell CPU, PC manufacturers are clamoring for more immediate solutions to battery life. Current third generation, ultra-low voltage Core CPUs (Ivy Bridge) have a rated design power of 15 to 17 watts. Intel announced at Intel Developer Forum in September, 2012, that Haswell would run at a more sedate 10W.

The Haswell reference design's keyboard dock has its own battery included

However, Intel’s Bell announced a new line of Ivy Bridge processors with power ratings of just 7 watts. Bell once again brought up Nvidia’s Tegra 3, noting that the new laptops and tablets using the new 7W Ivy Bridge processors offered relatively better performance, better compatibility and longer battery life than similarly-equipped Tegra 3 tablets. According to one Intel source, the new Ivy Bridge CPUs have more aggressive power tuning to achieve the power goals, but are “still pretty fast.”

The Yoga 11S is one of the first systems announced to use the new 7W Ivy Bridge CPU.

One Intel design win is Lenovo’s IdeaPad Yoga 11S, announced earlier here at CES. Lenovo suggests that Yoga 11S will offer a battery life in excess of six hours. Intel also touted an upcoming Acer design that’s just 10mm thick, roughly 20 percent thinner and lighter than Acer’s current Core i5-basedIconia W700. The new Aspire will weigh just 800 grams (1-3/4 pounds). Bell also showed off a new NEC 15-inch Ultrabook with a maximum thickness of 12.8mm.

Haswell is coming

Intel showed off a convertible laptop reference design at CES 2013. The design includes a fully detachable tablet, with batteries built into both the keyboard dock and the tablet. When docked, Intel declared that battery life would be 13 hours, allowing users to “leave the power brick at home.” The tablet alone would run for up to ten hours on one charge.

Intel’s reference design for a hybrid laptop includes one-button, one-handed detachment of the tablet/display.

Tuning Ivy Bridge for better power efficiency seems like a smart move, but I have to wonder if it also hints at problems with Haswell development or manufacturing. Showing off the Haswell hybrid laptop reference design may help assuage those concerns.

But the reference design offers some clever touches. You can detach the tablet with one hand by pressing a button that pulls back the latches, allowing you to just lift up the display from the dock. Also, the LCD is a 13-inch panel, but when you detach the tablet, it reverts to an 11-inch mode. This allows the bezel-less display to be held by the sides without obscuring the visible surface. The tablet alone weighs 850 grams, well under two pounds.

Intel is hoping the new reference design will allow system builders to create Ultrabook-class convertible laptops at lower price points— as low as $599—which should make Ultrabooks more affordable to more people.

Bottom line: the sleeping giant wakes up

It’s not yet clear whether Intel can fight this new war on all fronts, but after the CES 2013 briefing, it’s obvious that Intel is now taking the threat seriously. Focusing one of highest visibility ARM developers, Nvidia, gives Intel a clear target, though other ARM licensees are also building ever more efficient and higher performing products.

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