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Communications The Internet Privacy Security

Chelsea Manning Archivist Excludes Hacktivist Jailed By Carmen Ortiz From Aaron Swartz Day (huffingtonpost.com) 124

New submitter Danngggg writes: As you may recall from Slashdot last year, alleged Anonymous hacktivist Martin Gottesfeld has been imprisoned without bail since federal agents arrested him on board a Disney Cruise ship in February of 2016 to face hacking charges brought by controversial former U.S. attorney Carmen Ortiz. Though he's the only activist after Aaron Swartz to face a felony CFAA indictment from Ortiz, apparently Aaron Swartz Day organizer and Chelsea Manning archivist Lisa Rein don't want to include Gottesfeld in the festivities this year. So, he has taken to Huffington Post to argue that his story should be told this November 4th and, perhaps with a sense of irony, to publish some potentially scandalous Signal messages allegedly sent by Rein to his wife revealing what seems to be disdain for hacking in general and Anonymous in particular. Indeed, Rein seems to borrow from the movie Mean Girls in her contemptuous rejection of Mrs. Gottesfeld's appeals on behalf of her embattled husband. What does the Slashdot crowd have to say about whether Gottesfeld's story belongs at Aaron Swartz Day as well as Rein's alleged attitude towards his significant other?

"One might think that my voice would be welcomed at Aaron Swartz Day given all that the late internet/freedom of information activist and I share in common," writes Gottesfeld. "For starters, we were both indicted under the same controversial federal law, the CFAA, by the same Boston U.S. Attorney's Office and indeed under the tenure of the same notorious U.S. Attorney, Carmen Ortiz. Both of us have been persecuted for doing the moral thing; Aaron for trying to make taxpayer-funded research available to the general public and me for stopping the torture of an innocent child."

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Chelsea Manning Archivist Excludes Hacktivist Jailed By Carmen Ortiz From Aaron Swartz Day

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03, 2017 @10:14PM (#55487253)

    The summary is awful. It drops all of these vague names, without explaining who any of these people are, what they've done, and why they're relevant. I'm not going to google all of these names. The summary should tell us who they are.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      Ditto, Googling Martin Gottesfield suggests he arranged a DDoS of a hospital "for protest" which affected their ability to see patients and perform research. Pretty big difference from Aaron Swartz was involved in.
    • by schnell ( 163007 ) <me AT schnell DOT net> on Saturday November 04, 2017 @12:13AM (#55487607) Homepage

      Here would be a good few places for a Slashdot "editor" to start:

      • What is "Aaron Swartz Day?" I have heard of Aaron Swartz but I've never heard of his "day" before. What is it? I even clicked through to the website and still can't figure out what it is.
      • What is a "Chelsea Manning Archivist?"
      • Why do they have a vote on who is included in "Aaron Swartz Day?"
      • I see who indicted him and that they are clearly "controversial" and "notorious," but why? What got him in trouble? Did he do the same thing as Chelsea Manning? Does it benefit the general public in the same way?
      • Is this a big deal? Is somebody being excluded from a major event that has wide-ranging impacts or is this someone just wanting to glom onto an event celebrating someone else? Or is it even an event that anyone cares about?
      • Can someone explain the "torture of an innocent child" thing? Did he actually use a computer to stop a child from being tortured? There's no context given here.
      • "Mean Girls?" Why? What?
      • Also, WHAAAAAAAAAT?
      • by stephanruby ( 542433 ) on Saturday November 04, 2017 @10:43AM (#55488825)

        Aaron Swartz was a guy who made digital scientific journals accessible to the public by routing the requests through his University. Aaron Swartz was then arrested and told by a prosecutor that he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison thanks to a new crazy hacking law that had been recently enacted. So then Aaron Swartz killed himself a few days afterward.

        Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradly Manning, hopefully, you know who that is) was pardoned by President Obama as one of his last act in office. Chelsea and some other person decided to create a day to celebrate the sacrifice and the injustice that occurred to Aaron Swartz. To my knowledge, there is no trademark on Aaron Swartz. "Aaron Swartz Day" is just a construct. Anybody is free to create their own day and call it whatever they want. But Chelsea Manning may have an easier time promoting that day because she's already pretty famous (or infamous) with the community that thinks that Aaron Swartz was treated unfairly.

        Then there is this guy, Gottesfeld, who organized and led a Denial Of Service attack with 4chan against the external network of a Boston hospital during one of its major fundraising drive. His reasoning was that the critical infrastructure would be on an internal network and wouldn't be affected by a Denial of Service attack, but that the fundraising efforts of the hospital would get stalled because of that and that perhaps, the Boston hospital would bow to his pressure, stop the psychological treatment of a child and return her to her parents.

        The reason he hated the hospital in question is because with the help of a judge, the hospital forcefully removed a sick child, Justina Pelletier, from her parents and the hospital thought that the parents were (the mother especially was) inducing the symptoms in the child. For a more neutral opinion on that original case, please see this: http://www.harpocratesspeaks.c... [harpocratesspeaks.com]

        • Oops, I hit the submit button prematurely. Hopefully, I was able to explain the gist of the story.

          Basically, I am with Chelsea Manning on that one because I have no idea if Gottesfeld is a hero or not. Part of the problem is that the hospital can't release any information about the child in question because of HIPAA restrictions and the parents are free to tell their side of the story without the hospital being able to defend itself.

          In essence, that's why there was a gag order by the judge in the first plac

        • The problem for Gottesfeld is that the headline “Hacked A Children’s Hospital” has such terrible optics that most people will not read past it to the details of the story. This is undoubtedly why the Swartz Day organizers didn’t want to include him in the observance.

          • Yes, that's it. Taking someone's child away is taboo (even if you say you know better than the parents and that's why you're taking that child away) and there was a knee-jerk reaction against that. But attacking a hospital is also taboo (even if the guy assumed it wouldn't cause any harm, I don't think he could have known that for sure) and there was a knee-jerk counter-reaction against his reaction.

            If you ask me, he should have approached the pro-Aaron Schwartz community by asking for due process, not nece

        • > Chelsea Manning was pardoned by President Obama

          Her sentence was commuted by Obama, big difference from a pardon.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I've read the summary several times, and I have no idea what it's about. It's very muddled and all over the place.

    • by Desler ( 1608317 )

      Some guy is attention whoring that he doesn’t get special mention on a day meant to celebrate someone else.

      • And he is right if other people in comparable situations will be mentioned as well.
        • by Desler ( 1608317 )

          No he’s not. He’s not owed being mentioned at all.

    • I'm glad it wasn't just me. I had to reread the title 3x before I had a vague idea what the hell it was even trying to say.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    Maybe because Gottesfield is trying to latch on to somebody else's publicity.

  • She's evil . . . (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Friday November 03, 2017 @10:26PM (#55487307)

    Let's be frank. Carmen Ortiz is evil. I mean, like, Uzbek Evil.

    She is a frightening Clintonista who should have no contact with any government agencies.

    The Democratic Party will re-emerge . . . after they purge the Clintonistas who are still ruling.

    It will be a pleasant experience to see the Democrats return to being a party for the common people, and rethink their base values.

    Bernie Sanders gave them a kick, but it is up to them to follow through.

    • Be honest.......do you really think the Democrat party will be 'clean' after purging Clintonistas?
      Do you think it was ever a party of the common people?
    • It will be a pleasant experience to see the Democrats return to being a party for the common people, and rethink their base values.

      If you look at the Labour Party in the UK after the Blairites got purged it was taken over by identitarian types who think the common people are sexist racists oppressors who need to be replaced with morally pure third worlders who'll vote for them. And old school Marxists like Corbyn.

      I could see something similar happening to the Democrats in the US.

    • Not gonna happen. They purged the Berniebots from their party. It's all corporate interests now, with a heaping helping of identity politics. Instead of learning from the Trump election, they've blamed it all on the dirty foreigners and are not going to make any changes. They still deplore the working class and wish to replace them with a flood of immigrants, legal or illegal.
  • ...which automatically means "Nothing here but whining." How the hell did this make it onto the front page?
  • by Anonymous Coward

    A title with 5 different people???

    #1 Chelsea Manning
    #2 [Unnamed] Archivist
    #3 [Unnamed] Hacktivist
    #4 Carmen Ortiz
    #5 Aaron Swartz

    And the primary actor in this story isn't named, its person #2!!

    So the headline should read: "Lisa Rein does not include Martin Gottesfeld for a remembrance day she's organizing".

    And so what? So why doesn't he organize his own remembrance day? Instead of trying to attach his name to Rein's Aaron day?? At least that way the Slashdot headline would be simpler! Nothing stopping him doi

  • wha? (Score:5, Funny)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Friday November 03, 2017 @11:07PM (#55487435) Journal

    The headline is utter word salad.

    I guess Slashdot has finally gone with the AI story generation for real.

    • by mishehu ( 712452 )
      I was going to go with "All green of skin... 800 centuries ago, their bodily fluids include the birth of half-breeds. For the fundamental truth self-determination of the cosmos, for dark is the suede that mows like a harvest.", if you ACK ACK my ACK ACK.
  • by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Saturday November 04, 2017 @07:23AM (#55488323) Homepage Journal

    Chelsea Manning archivist Lisa Rein don't want to include Gottesfeld

    I doesn't even know who her are.

  • by spth ( 5126797 ) on Saturday November 04, 2017 @07:59AM (#55488389)

    Apparently, there is a sick girl (Justina Pelletier, J). She got differnet diagnoyses from Tufts University School of Medicine (T), and Boston Children's Hospital (B).
    Parents wanted to have her treated according to diagnosis from T, but Massachusetts Department of Children and Families requested removing her from her parents custody and have her treated according to diagnosis from B. The case went to court, first ruling agreed with the request, second ruling a year later didn't. So J got separated from her parentes and trated according to diagnosis from B for a year, then was with her parents again (and, I assume treated according to diagnosis from T).
    A lot of people apparently had strong opinions on this matter, including Martin Gottesfeld.

    Martin Gottesfeld did a DDOS attack on the website of B during an online donation drive. He was initally prosecuted for it by Carmen Ortiz' office, which also prosecuted Aaron Swartz. Carmen Ortiz stepped down from office in January 2017, the Martin Gottesfeld case will probably go on trial in January 2018.

    Some more details, and lots and lots of opinions can be found on the web.

    Philipp

  • by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Saturday November 04, 2017 @09:01AM (#55488533) Homepage Journal

    Let's hope he becomes a former submitter really quickly.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      You notice that this "submitter" is only a "submitter" and not a "commenter"? All this person's submissions are about Martin Gottesfeld, and all of them do a terrible job explaining just what the hell they're about.

      If someone's paying some PR firm to splatter this dogshit onto Slashdot and other aggregators, they should fire that firm. They're doing a terrible job. (Save your money, Martin.)

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