Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Sunshining the Donations of Aaron Swartz's Prosecutor


Even if I weren't facing a privacy misdemeanor charge and the zealous prosecution by San Francisco's district attorney George Gascon, I would still have great concern over the suicide of web activist and transparency advocate Aaron Swartz, pictured, due in part to the judicial hounding of him by federal prosecutor Carmen Ortiz.



Swartz had allegedly obtained scholarly articles and shared them for free on the web. With the full backing and vast resources of the Department of Justice, Ortiz, pictured, charged him with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and harming a protected computer in July 2011.

On January 11, Swartz tragically took his own life at the age of 26.

Here's my small contribution to bringing some justice to Swartz's life and legacy. I am sunshining the political donations of Ortiz, such as they are.
 
At the federal level, according to the Political Money Line, she has made no contributions to national candidates or PACs.


8/31/2006   Ortiz, Carmen 
[Redacted], MA 02186
Attorney
Department of Justice
Reilly, Thomas F. $250.00





In Massachusetts, a search of the Office of Campaign and Political Finance database reveals Ortiz has donated a total of $950 from 2002 through 2006 to the political campaigns of Thomas F. Reilly when he ran for state attorney general and the governor's office. Her most recent donation is shown above.

Not much, I admit, but still I feel it's important to remember one crucial lesson of Swartz's lifetime of advocacy and that is to make information transparent and that is what I am doing with Ortiz's donations.

Finally, I've signed the petition to the White House to remove Ortiz from her federal prosecutor's job. If there is any justice in this matter, she will soon no longer be a prosecutor.

1 comment:

Rusty Mills said...

I agree with you 100%, Michael. This Ortiz pig should be removed from her position.

Here's an article on the subject that should make all of us upset about the direction this nation has been travelling for a long time:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/the-death-of-aaron-swartz/267224/