Remembering Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz was an amazing person. Inspiring and influential. His impact on this generation and future ones can and will be seen in the ways information is shared and the type of digital world we leave to posterity. His voice resonated around the world, with his message that all information should be free, the new education of people can take shape. It was through his mind ideas like Reddit, Think Progress, Creative Commons and a host of government accountability websites were brought into existence or improved upon. He was an incredibly intelligent person and will be missed by millions, some without even a knowledge of who he was or the impact he has made.

This is a copy of the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, though not confirmed to be his lone hand that wrote this, it was signed with his name. It's message is strong, it is needed and it should be heard and carried further.

Guerilla Open Access Manifesto 

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for 
themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries 
in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of 
private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the 
sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier. 

There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought 
valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure 
their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But 
even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. 
Everything up until now will have been lost. 

That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their 
colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? 
Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to 
children in the Global South? It's outrageous and unacceptable. 

"I agree," many say, "but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they 
make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it's perfectly legal — 
there's nothing we can do to stop them." But there is something we can, something that's 
already being done: we can fight back. 

Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been 
given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world 
is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for 
yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords 
with colleagues, filling download requests for friends. 



Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been 
sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by 
the publishers and sharing them with your friends. 

But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or 
piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a 
ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only 
those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy. 

Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate 
require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they 
have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who 
can make copies. 

There is no justice in following unjust laws. It's time to come into the light and, in the 
grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public 
culture. 

We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with 
the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need 
to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific 
journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open 
Access. 

With enough of us, around the world, we'll not just send a strong message opposing the 
privatization of knowledge — we'll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us? 

Aaron Swartz 

July 2008, Eremo, Italy

To quote Tim Berners-Lee proclaimed inventor of the world wide web...




"We’ve lost a fighter. We've lost somebody who put huge energy into righting wrongs. There are people around the world who take it on themselves to just try to fix the world but very few of them do it 24/7 like Aaron. Very few of them are as dedicated. So of the people who are fighting for right, and what he was doing up to the end was fighting for right, we have lost one of our own. … We’ve lost a great person. But also, we've lost somebody who needed to be nurtured, who needed to be protected. I didn’t work with Aaron as closely as many people here, but I got the sense that all who have known him realized that he needed to be protected. He needed to be held carefully in our hands. He needed to be nurtured. So nurturers of the world, everyone who tried to make a place safe to work or a home safe to live, anyone who listens to another, looks after another or feeds another, all parents everywhere — we've lost a child. And there’s nothing worse than that."
Aaron was a genius in his own way and a brilliant mind, one that we sorely need. His perseverance in the fight for the uninhibited sharing of information and knowledge was amazing and his passion for doing all he could to release the grips of censorship, especially in academia. His devotion to the idea that ideas and knowledge should not be hidden away in storerooms and servers but instead freely broadcast is a brave goal.  His idea was to change the world and in his own way he did just that. 

There are multiple sites to look at his life, his work, those that knew him and those that benefitted from his work. Wikipedia, being a model of like mind to Aaron's is an excellent starting point.

As I was doing some reading on the life of Aaron and his mission, his message and his influence into todays tech culture I found this, a documentary of his life, as he lived it, with those he shared it with and his brilliance and his untimely death. 

To watch the movie "The Internet's Own Boy" a documentary of Aaron Swartz and his life, his accomplishments and his impact go here... 

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/internet-own-boy-story-aaron-swartz/

The Ability to kill American Citizens

The ability to condemn a citizen to death without trial is one that will find very little resistance  in the wake of the ever-long battle in the Middle East and the persecution anyone the Government *thinks* is a threat. There does not need to be any proof, there doesn't have to be any trial, it is just this ability to kill and justify it through the rules of engagement or to completely write it off as security measures. This action will not be met with much resistance from the public, as the years of fear programming, hate education and misinformation makes its way to the public eyes through media and a preposterous White House Press Secretary.

The recent release of documents relating to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) openly admits that the government of the United States of America considers itself able to kill its citizens without trial or conviction. These powers they have delegated to themselves stems from the apparent belief that the US Government is above the moral and acceptable practice of allowing a person to defend themselves legally and to submit to the courts a defense of accusations against them.

This request was entered in an attempt to gain information on the drone strikes that killed Anwar Al-Aulaqi; his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi; and Samir Khan in Yemen September 2011. These strikes were carried out by CIA and other Federal departments along with the military and its drone pilots and crews. The claim that any of these three citizens posed a risk or imminent threat, to the US or any of its interests has never before be substantiated by evidence, just the reports and words of officials within the government and its military. Drone strikes being a preferred method of killing in the Middle East by the American government, many foreign people have lost their lives to these machines, the issue America has at the moment is the way to justify killing an American Citizen in contrast to the United States Constitution that has provisions outlined for the rightful trial by jury and knowledge of charges.

"It is a dangerous notion when your government can make you believe its enemies are yours"

This is not the first time the United States government has killed citizens without trial. Two other cases, The Ruby Ridge Shootout and the Attack on the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco Texas stand as the predecessors, along with many other instances, to justifying murder of citizens. These two incidents are all but forgotten to most and the events leading up to both are the same as the drone strikes that killed these 3 American Citizens.

Each of these cases has the same question. Why is a Government allowed to kill citizens and justify it one way or another. If the Constitution stands as the great tool Conservatives say it is, why then has the Government not answered for its trespass of Amendments securing rights of trial?

The Attack on Branch Davidians, more commonly known as the Waco Siege, took place on April 19, 1993 after 51 days of negotiations. Koresh was accused of practicing polygamy and abusing children, but that wasn’t what the Government was concerned with. The ATF had been tipped off by a UPS driver that had made earlier deliveries that some of the packages contained what looked like hand grenade casings. While owning inert grenade casings is not a crime in of itself, the ATF procured a warrant to search the Church and compound for “illegal” weapons.  When the Davidians refused entranced into their compound the ATF and Local Police used a military type vehicle to punch holes into the sides of building and inserted CS gas. Later in the day, after heavy exchanges of gunfire by both sides a fire erupted killing 75 of the remaining women, men and children.

This attack has been debated heavily over the ensuing years and has never satisfied the questions. Does a government have a right to search an individual’s personal property, whether with a warrant or not? Does a government have the right to initiate an attack on a religious compound? Why does this government have a right to kill citizens without trial? Could this event have been avoided?

Similar to The Waco Siege and not too long before another attack on citizens took place; this time ending the lives of a mother and a son, along with a Federal Law Enforcement Officer.  The Ruby Ridge Raid was again perpetrated on the belief in illegality of weapons and the sale of those weapons. So many events leading up to the siege made this a contentious affair.

All of this leads back to the question. Does Government, any Government have the authority and justification to kill its own citizens without trial or conviction? Since the value of life and the difference in opinion on the legal and philosophical view of this matter varies so drastically it cannot be answered by one person, but rather should be self reflected on. Ask yourself the questions: When did it become permitted that any enemy of a government should have the right to stand trial stripped from them? When did it become permissible to kill a man without his knowledge he is even considered a threat? When did our government stop relying on its own form of inter control and instead subject themselves as a higher moral ruler than the natural rights of man? How long will it be before those that I associate with, or even myself, are considered a threat to the government and are snuffed out without standing to our accused?

With this said and with these questions put out to your own reflection I will offer this last statement . I vehemently oppose any form of government the ability or justification to kill a man, anywhere in the world, from any foreign or domestic place, of any creed or color, of any religion or preference without the ability to defend himself in a court of resolutions. I see this as a violation of natural rights and a gross violation of a moral and civil society.