I met him online in 2000, and then over the last half dozen years I saw him in person several times. Sometimes one-on-one, sometimes at conferences.

So we were friends, but we were not close friends.

Aaron was quiet and introspective. He was an active listener.

He was very smart but never made me feel bad for not being as smart as him. He was patient in explaining things to me. He was creative -- in talking with him, I'd usually get a great idea I had not considered.

He was kind and thoughtful. He thought about the consequences of whatever we were talking about. He had a subversive side, but it had a purpose.

Despite being outspoken, he was introverted -- most of our interactions were because I wrote to him. He had great follow through. Always wrote back.

I gladly did favors for him whenever I could. Not because he ever asked me for help, but because talking with him inspired me and made me want to help any way I could.

I am still inspired by him. I feel that my life is better having met him, and it makes me sad that he left this world so soon.

That's a tricky question.

He thought, and many would agree, JSTOR unfairly restricts other people's academic work, rather than it being freely available. If it was it would promote academic discourse globally one would think, as well as remove it from the control of elite institutions.

JSTOR is a collection of academic journals and articles. Swartz was found to be downloading a great swathe of the content by using MIT guest access as a cover and writing a programme which allowed him to download multiple times.

When it was discovered, the law used to prosecute him was draconian and he faced up to 35 years in prison and $1 million fine. After a plea bargain was rejected Swartz was found dead after hanging himself. He was just 26.

To put into context the importance of Aaron Swartz, he was an open access campaigner and former programming prodigy and activist who is responsible for Reddit existing and the web feed RSS amongst other things. He counted Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creater of the world wide web, as a friend.

He wrote: “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. … We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. … We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.”

The law he was being prosecuted under, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, was contentiously applied in his case. Other cases have dealt with serious financial crimes, or illicit pornographic material for example. Swartz stood to gain nothing financially from it, rather releasing the information so it would be freely available.

What crimes did he commit? Running afoul a heavily draconian act.

What crimes were committed against him? He faced the prospect of decades in jail and ultimately it cost him his life.

I know which I'd consider to be the bigger crime.

tl;dr: It would have been "easy" enough, but he assumed no one would come after him during the time the computer was downloading files.

Right, so I think there are several parts to understand Aaron's situation before going on to the actual tracing of his location. Aaron was targeting JSTOR articles, which means he needed to have access to the JSTOR archive.

He wasn't actually hacking anything, and if he was he could have indeed been much more anonymous about his whereabouts and actions. Anyone on the MIT network can access JSTOR automatically, and MIT has a very open network. Therefore, MIT was a great location for his purposes.

Digital tracing:

Aaron took as many precautions as he could within the internet given his situation. MIT assigns wireless I.P. addresses dynamically, so he did not have a static I.P. that could be routed to him in the long term. MIT doesn't keep track of internet packets or packet contents so once he removed himself from campus there would be no record linking him to the deed. He changed his MAC address (the fingerprint of a computer, so to speak) so that also couldn't be linked to him.

So right now you're thinking, wait a moment how did they find him?

The key here is that while the internet "transaction" is still going, the dynamic I.P. that he was assigned belongs to a specific router on the MIT network, and therefore someone who has his I.P., if helped by MIT IS&T, can locate the room from where it is happening. This is where he committed the "mistake".

Physical tracing:

Aaron indeed assumed no one would come for him. He knew the MIT network was open. He knew no one at MIT would notice or trace him for his actions. What he didn't expect was JSTOR to detect his article downloads and ask MIT to shut down the source. MIT located the router that was linked to the computer Aaron was using and found the computer itself. Then, I believe it was the police, got involved and set up cameras to catch the person when they returned to the scene.

He was caught coming back to the computer.

He did not clear his computer history or take precautions within his computer. In my honest opinion of the events; he did not believe he was wrong in what he was doing. Because of this, he did not take even more precautions.

So let's pretend we were committing his "crime" as a crime:

Here's an example of what he could have done if he had indeed thought about "clearing the crime scene". Buy a new computer, put no personal information on it, put an ssh client on the computer and accept a single username and password. Set this up on the MIT network and wipe your prints. Then, set up an anonymous tunnel to use a dynamic I.P. from another country (if the tunnel is a trusted source from a country that doesn't adhere to US copyright laws, they would not be able to trace the original sender). Now he can do all of this from the comfort of his own home, without ever coming back to the "crime scene" and placing himself at risk.

In this situation, they find the computer with no data, maybe set up a camera to try to find the returning perpetrator but he never comes back. Eventually, they remove the computer from the network but can find no way to trace the controlling I.P. We post the articles on a torrent site to rebel against the injustices of JSTOR. Story is over, and is never released to the public.

Since the question is tagged open science, I will answer accordingly.

I regarded him as a whistle-blower The JSTOR case was pure insanity: indicted for downloading scientific publications with the intent to distribute them.

Shouldn't such an indictment outrage everyone? Isn't it part of MIT goals - and any scientist - to create and distribute scientific knowledge to anyone?

This underlines pretty well the insanity of the current paid-access system to research articles. To what extent does paid access to research articles slow down research? lists and details some of its negative effects, which are quite obvious anyway. How come public research's results are not public as well? This blows my mind. And his too, literally.

Unfortunately, the public outrage that stemmed from the JSTOR case wasn't enough to dismantle the current paid-access system. But it contributed to the public awareness.

Related: Posthumously pardon Aaron Swartz.

He was involved early on at Reddit (his company was bought a few months after Reddit was founded by Alexis and Steve), which has in 7 years basically become "the front page of the Internet". Reddit's success contributed to the continuation of Y Combinator as an ongoing institution, leading to ~300 startups being funded and helped along the path to becoming Dropbox, AirBnB, etc.

He was involved in early RSS stuff (co-authored the RSS 1.0 spec), and wrote web.py, and some other interesting software.

He wrote a variety of interesting blog posts.

He downloaded a bunch of scientific material from JSTOR, which JSTOR didn't really mind enough to push for prosecution, which brought him into a US Attorney's destructive focus. If you believe in copyright limitations at all, publicly-funded scientific research publications seem like one of the most beneficial to publish freely. After all, copyright and patents are there to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, not due to any inherent property ownership under common law.

People who knew him personally say he was a good friend and overall great person.

I don’t think that’s an appropriate framing.

The feds went after Swartz. MIT did not stand in their way, and definitely did not use their resources to support Swartz. I think that, on reflection, they should have done so. However, I think it’s unfair to cast MIT as evil. I don’t even know that I’d call the feds the worst actors here. The worst actors are the for-profit publishers who made tons of money off of research done in the public interest, and often with public dollars.

What happened to Swartz was a tragedy, as was the outcome. I hope and believe that it would go down differently today. However, I also have seen zero evidence that anyone at MIT threw Swartz under the bus. Remember, Swartz did misuse an account given to him by MIT, and his actions violated the letter of the law. That does not excuse the zealousness with which he was pursued, but let’s not oversimplify what happened here.

Our society has a tendency to paint suicide victims (especially males) in a heroic light, and I think this is problematic. We romanticize suicide victims as taking a justified and even noble action in the face of unreasonable or insurmountable circumstances. I worry that this depiction is damaging because it makes taking one's own life a viable exit strategy. Suicide is a tragic act, for the victim and for those who are left behind to mourn. My condolences to all those whose hearts are aching right now.

Aaron Swartz made a number of significant contributions to the internet, and electronic knowledge sharing in general. His death, and the events leading up to same were tragic. He was a loved son, brother, partner, and friend. A beloved and respected colleague. He was a man who followed his convictions, and these convictions (allegedly) led him to break the law. At the end, he was an extremely promising man who made a tragic mistake.

Requiescat in pace.

Aaron Swartz was an extremely intelligent person who was a computer programmer. whose life was ended way too short. In 2011, he was arrested by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) police on state breaking-and-entering charges, after connecting a computer to the MIT network in an unmarked and unlocked closet, and setting it to download academic journals from JSTOR using a guest user account issued to him by MIT.

They later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release. Swartz declined a plea bargain under which he would have served six months in federal prison. Two days after the prosecution rejected a counter-offer by Swartz, he was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment, where he died by suicide. In 2013, Swartz was inducted posthumously into the Internet Hall of Fame.

SOURCE:

To be sure, I have only met him. Didn't get a chance to friend him, which is kind of a regret in itself but anyways.

He was very, very sharp and I think this was because he really used to listen very thoughtfully to what other people said, as Adam Rifkin mentions above.

I met him twice at the same conference a few years back. He was a bit away from the crowd and not too social although most people did know him at the event.

In all honesty, MIT should feel a little ashamed for their contribution to his demise, he was one of those people who was not a show off (sometimes you have people touting their skills or otherwise) and was absolutely dedicated to what he wanted to do.

Chilling!!!

Its great to see the determination in his eyes,to change the world.

Yeahh.!! TO change the government,TO live the freedom and TO take the responsibility himself!! TO battle past the challenges and acheive what one wants to!!

I am talking about AARON SWARTZ,the leading geek wunderkind of his generation!!

Couldn't believe his story!!

Swartz was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivist. He was a child prodigy,a co-designer of tools – like RSS and Markdown and of services like Reddit – that shaped the evolution of the web. He was also the kid-yes a kid- who wrote most of the code underpinning Creative Commons, an inspired system that uses copyright law to give ordinary people control over how their digital creations can be used by others.

In 2011 he successfully led a campaign to prevent the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill introduced to Congress that would have effectively legalized censorship on the Internet.

In June 2013, Swartz was inducted posthumously into the Internet Hall of Fame.

The Internet’s Own Boy -Do look at the documentary of Aaron Swartz(The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz | full movie (2014))

Here's is a video showing his insights upon Free Internet and his campaign against copyright protection(SOPA)

Believe!! That’s why he is a hero!

That the same system America built to provide its citizens a process to obtain justice; can be used as a weapon against you if the person(s) wielding it are ignorant relative to the concept of nuance. Aaron was ultimately indicted for downloading massive amounts of information from MIT’s JSTOR network using a computer set up in a closet. He was charged with 2 wire fraud counts and 11 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA, 1986) violations. Did he “break the law” by using a Guest User account issued to him by MIT to download articles from their network? Maybe.

The bigger question is why was such malicious prosecution of that or many other cyber crimes necessary? Aaron was looking at $1m in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture and supervised released. For downloading articles from a school server.

What do you learn from that? Force your way into someone’s computer? 35 years and everything you own. Force your way into someone’s body? 5 years in the State Aaron was arrested in. Something’s wrong with that picture, huh?

By whose definition?

Guilty, as in, did he do what the basic report said he did? Yeah. He set up a computer in a utility closet at MIT and connected to their internal network using a guest user account granted to him. Then he started downloading massive amounts of educational articles for open-access to others. You can argue the case from a legal standpoint and say he violated the CFAA (1986). They charged him with 11 counts of wire fraud, as well. Basically, as much as possible to make something stick, and by extension, make an example of Aaron. I don’t think the level of prosecution in that case to such an aggressive extent was warranted. It ended up causing Aaron’s death.

So, sure. I guess you could say “Legally” Aaron was really guilty. But, what’s legal isn’t always right.

If not you, who? If not now, when?

I met Aaron in person at the Berkmen Center for Law, Technology and Society at Harvard, at their Thursday bloggers group. It was just a bunch of us from the community with blogs back around 2005-ish, and we had sort of a meetup. It took me a while to realize that this kid, Aaron, was this ace dude I knew from the net aaronsw, who I’d known of for a decade and corresponded with for a few years. Because, hey, the kid in front of me was, what, in his early 20s, with this sort of pixie baby face?

Somehow I’d missed the memo.

I had kind of been that kid in my early 20s — not so much the ace programmer, but the organizer, and the person who saw social patterns having to do with society and technology emerging from the dharma, as it were. Having grown up with my dad, a union organizer and then a Unitarian Universalist minister who was an organizer for the civil rights movement and worked night security for the SCLC for the summer marches for Dr King, who was reading Marshall McLuhan in the 50s, and quoting Eric Hoffer and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in the same paragraph of a sermon, I had sort of a broad education.

My dad was a first generation ACLU member. I was second generation ACLU, first generation EFF. I help found the Association for Community Networks, and was an early organizer for public interest Internet. I was the first person “blogging” at DigitalDivide, meaningful broadband when it was mostly US-only and giving advice to international interests. Arguably the fight I led as head of Oregon Public Networking after the debut of the 97 Telecom Act to keep community networks able to provide ISP services to rural, poor, elderly, and other at-need populations as a tax-exempt function was the first volley in the net neutrality fight. The model (and some code and tools) of organizing and fundraising tools from OPN that was used by the Dean Campaign changed politics forever. And then there’s the Tor Project.

But I wasn’t as high profile as Aaron and most organizers aren’t. You could go through a list of the Berkman Fellows, for example, and find a bunch, all worthy. You could go through the Ashoka folks, and dozens of other programs. The thing about Aaron and some other folks is that they were very good with media. It made them good at tweaking certain government programs and very good at organizing lightening requirements like the SOPA/PIPA shut down.

It also made him a target.

Frankly, and this is terribly cruel — but most of us work a bit more sub rosa, because we prefer to have a longer, fruitful output to dying young and leaving a pretty corpse. What Aaron took on was very high risk. I lived through the 60s when I saw my father’s contemporaries fall to the whispering campaigns of government — the sort of thing Trump pulls on Hillary Clinton and that the enemies of King and RFK did to them and caused lone wolves (theoretically) to decide to take them out with assassin’s bullets.

People remember Dr King’s assassination but hardly anyone remembers that two months later Bobby Kennedy was the lead candidate for the Democratic Party coming into the Democratic Convention of 1968 when he got shot, and the entire white south breathed a sigh of relief that they no longer had a pro-civil rights Democrat leading the ticket.

We have a history of right wing terrorism and assassination, and extra-judicial and judicial/LEO harassment and intimidation in this country people would rather forget. And Aaron is just a recent iteration of that tradition.

When Aaron died, on the day his parents had his memorial service in the midwest, a number of his friends and I walked down to the Federal Courthouse in Boston. It was a bitter cold day, and the wind was whipping off the bay. I made a kinetic sculpture out of black briars and scraps of white tulle. I went into the desk, I made sure we were not breaking any laws and where we could legally be, and we set up with the “memorial tree” and a pack of origami paper. On Twitter, I asked people to send me prayers, memories, haiku to fold into paper cranes which I tied to the branches of the tree. The shrouds of tulle and the colorful birds whipped in the winter wind, and tears chapped our cheeks. We had one sign — it read: “WHO KILLED AARON SWARTZ?” We didn’t march, we didn’t yell, we just sat with the memorial tree, as I folded cranes as the verses and prayers and such came in over Twitter.

Every lawyer and officer walked by us to go in the front doors. No one bothered us. Some stopped and watched and took their hats off for a minute. They understood. This is not US and THEM. This is us and some of them. Please always remember that.

There are hundreds, thousands, probably many many thousands, of “Aarons” out there today. You could be one of them. Most of them use Tor, TAILS, and Signal, and other similar tools when they communicate — and even better, meet in groups of people they trust in small quiet places. Because they love their country and they fear some of the people in their government.

And they think we can always do better, and want to be part of that.

I would be more concerned with the purchase of GitHub by Microsoft, on this account.

RedHat is a software support group that's been traded since 1999.

10 years gone: The VA Linux Systems IPO

(Also talks about RedHat, six months prior)

Part of the core philosophy of FOSS is that people should be able to sell services. Companies like these have set that model for a long time — in a pretty conventional capitalist model.

Go looking for Eric Raymond's interviews around the VA Linux IPO, when he did a tech press tour talking about what a great thing it was (and his new flute, lol).

But Microsoft is much more a competitor with many of the projects hosted on GitHub. There are just a tangle of potential conflicts of interest and headaches there.

So? Already, some of the community is trying to create alternatives and migrate out. Because, we are not serfs. We are makers.

It will work itself out. As the saying goes, “You can't stop the signal.”

I just became a fan of aaron swart after watching a documentary movie on him. His achievements were tremendous and the things he done to the internet ,helping the whole world without getting noticed made him immortal .
Despite of his miserable condition some weeks before his death he helped a kid to gain popularity as the kid developed something which could somehow help patients of pancreatic cancer. After the death of aaron when the kid was called in an news channel he told the news that how aaron helped him by making his work popular by using his skills. Hearing this tears started rolling from my eyes and somehow i developed a kind of respect for these type of hackers who live to help people knowing the fact that it could cost them theie lives.

We should learn from the sad experience of Aaron Swartz what, exactly, we are willing to do in pursuit of one’s goals and the penalties one should be willing to accept. In his particular case, it seems as if his mass downloading of JSTOR articles was profoundly ill-thought, with no attention paid to the potential criminal penalties that he might incur and the consequences his future plans might suffer. In the end, it seems that the realization that, even if he avoided significant jail time, his plans for a political life would be made impossible, pushed him over into suicide.

There are many, many things worthy of protest. One should do one’s best to be aware of the consequences of this protest, and be aware of them. What happened in the case of Swartz, influenced by his friends and colleagues to take a particular course of action that cost him dearly, should taken by all as a warning.

Well I am not the one who should answer this question because I came to know about Aaron after he died in early 2013. But as the wave about his death and the anger against the prosecutorial methods began to spread in the supports of open web, I read about him more and more. The documentary on the life and death of Aaron named "Internet's own boy" by Brian Knappenberger made me dig more about Aaron.

He worked against SOPA and PIPA extensively, and as a result of Aaron and his team's efforts they got attention of the white house. SOPA and PIPA, the laws created to kill the freedom of the internet were killed by this the same freedom. Well when all this was happening I was not present physically or even virtually for their support. And I will regret for that whole lifetime.

I didn't know much about his work as a reddit co-founder. Well he is hacker but the way he hacked was not conventional. He used to find the hack the laws which were originated just to make the freedom disappear.

The documentary on his life The Internet's Own Boy has interviews of the people who worked closely with Aaron. I think this documentary is the best answer for your question.

Swartz broke into MIT. Edward Snowden worked for the NSA and stole top secret national security information from the military agency.

On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) police on state breaking-and-entering charges, after connecting a computer to the MIT network in an unmarked and unlocked closet, and setting it to download academic journal articles systematically from JSTOR using a guest user account issued to him by MIT.Federal prosecutors, led by Carmen Ortiz, later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release. Swartz declined a plea bargain under which he would have served six months in federal prison.Two days after the prosecution rejected a counter-offer by Swartz, he was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment. In 2013, Swartz was inducted posthumously into the Internet Hall of Fame.