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Exclusive: Aaron Swartz's Partner, Expert Witness Say Prosecutors Unfairly Targeted Activist. 1 of 2

3,208 views · Published 17 January 2013 · 10:00 · Indexed 10 October 2026

Channel: Democracy Now! · 2013 · News & Politics

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DemocracyNow.org - Outrage is growing over the U.S. Justice Department's prosecution of the 26-year-old who committed suicide last week just weeks before he was to go on trial. Pioneering computer programmer and cyber activist Aaron Swartz was facing up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted for using computers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to download millions of academic articles provided by the nonprofit research service JSTOR. As the chief prosecutor Carmen Ortiz defends her actions, we speak to Swartz's partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, and computer security consultant Alex Stamos, who would have been the chief expert witness at Swartz's trial. We invited representatives from the U.S. Attorneys office and MIT to join us, but they declined.

Watch Part 2 of this interview: http://youtu.be/SIIFB7XoUTo

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