U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz, lead prosecutor in the government’s case against influential programmer and Internet activist Aaron Swartz, on Wednesday evening released her first statement since Swartz’s death and since dropping all charges against him. Swartz, who committed suicide at age 26 and was found dead January 11, was in 2011 charged with 13 felony counts including computer fraud and wire fraud after downloading 4.8 million scholarly articles from online subscription catalog JSTOR between late 2010 and early 2011, using a jury-rigged computer plugged into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s campus network.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=165487