Aaron Swartz - one of Reddit cofounders , commits suicide in New York City

http://www.infowars.com/obamas-kill-list-critic-found-dead-in-new-york-city/

( Kill List critic found dead in presumed suicide  - interesting....... )

Obama’s ‘kill list’ critic found dead in New York City

Press TV
Jan 13, 2013

Prominent American blogger and computer prodigy Aaron Swartz, who spoke against US President Barack Obama’s “kill list” and cyber attacks against Iran, has been found dead in New York.

Police found the body of the 26-year-old in his apartment in New York City borough of Brooklyn on Friday, said a spokeswoman for the city’s chief medical examiner.

Brooklyn’s chief medical examiner ruled the death a suicide by hanging, but no further detail is available about the mysterious death.

Last year, Swartz openly criticized the US and the Israeli regime for launching joint cyber attacks against Iran.

The blogger was also vocal in criticizing Obama’s so-called kill list and other policies.

Obama has been reportedly approving the names put on the “kill lists” used in the targeted killing operations carried out by US assassination drones.

Every week or so, more than 100 members of the US national security team gather via secure video teleconference run by the Pentagon and go over the biographies of suspects in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan, and “nominate” those who should be targeted in the attacks.

Obama is then provided with the identities of those put on the “kill list” and signs off on every strike in Yemen and Somalia as well as the risky strikes in Pakistan.

Swartz was also widely credited for co-authoring the specifications for the Web feed format RSS 1.0 (Rich Site Summary) which he worked on at age 14.

RSS is designed to deliver content from sites that change constantly, such as news pages, to users.

Swartz was critical of monopoly of information by corporate cartels and believed that information should be shared and available for the benefit of society.

“Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves,” he wrote in an online “manifesto” in 2008.

Based on that belief, the computer prodigy founded the nonprofit group DemandProgress.

The group launched a successful campaign to block a 2011 bill that the US House of Representatives called the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Had it been approved, the bill would have allowed court orders to restrain access to some websites considered to be involved in illegal sharing of intellectual property.

DemandProgress argued that the thwarted Stop Online Piracy Act would have broadly authorized the US government to censor and restrict legitimate Web communication.

and...









http://gothamist.com/2013/01/12/aaron_swartz_famous_hacker_and_redd.php?utm_source=Gothamist+Daily&utm_campaign=fb8fe44493-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email

Aaron Swartz, Famous Hacker And Reddit Builder, Dies At 26

Photograph by Sage Ross on Flickr

Aaron Swartz, who co-authored the RSS 1.0 authentication when he 14 and was an early employee of Reddit, died yesterday. The 26-year-old committed suicide in New York City, according to his uncle who spoke to The Tech. Swartz's attorney confirmed the news to The Tech, "The tragic and heartbreaking information you received is, regrettably, true."

Cory Doctrow has a remembrance of Swartz on Boing Boing:

I met Aaron when he was 14 or 15. He was working on XML stuff (he co-wrote the RSS specification when he was 14) and came to San Francisco often, and would stay with Lisa Rein, a friend of mine who was also an XML person and who took care of him and assured his parents he had adult supervision. In so many ways, he was an adult, even then, with a kind of intense, fast intellect that really made me feel like he was part and parcel of the Internet society, like he belonged in the place where your thoughts are what matter, and not who you are or how old you are...

I introduced him to Larry Lessig, and he was active in the original Creative Commons technical team, and became very involved in technology-freedom issues. Aaron had powerful, deeply felt ideals, but he was also always an impressionable young man, someone who often found himself moved by new passions. He always seemed somehow in search of mentors, and none of those mentors ever seemed to match the impossible standards he held them (and himself) to....

Aaron accomplished some incredible things in his life. He was one of the early builders of Reddit (someone always turns up to point out that he was technically not a co-founder, but he was close enough as makes no damn), got bought by Wired/Conde Nast, engineered his own dismissal and got cashed out, and then became a full-time, uncompromising, reckless and delightful shit-disturber.

In 2011, Swartz was indicted for illegally downloading 4.8 million journals from the online journal archive JSTOR. (Swartz sneaked into a MIT network closet to plant his laptop there.)

Doctorow wrote, "This morning, a lot of people are speculating that Aaron killed himself because he was worried about doing time. That might be so.... But Aaron was also a person who'd had problems with depression for many years. He'd written about the subject publicly, and talked about it with his friends."

Daring Fireball's John Gruber says, "Aaron was a friend and a brilliant mind. He was my only beta tester for Markdown back in 2004, and frequently offered keen feedback on my work here at DF. He had an enormous intellect — again, a brilliant mind — but also an enormous capacity for empathy. He was a great person. I’m dumbfounded and heartbroken. Good thoughts and best wishes to his family and those who were truly close to him." And Reddit users are discussing his death and here's him speaking about SOPA:

In a 2002 post on his website titled "If I get hit by a truck...", Swartz has instructions for his digital estate—"I ask that the contents of all my hard drives be made publicly available from aaronsw.com."

If someone you know exhibits warning signs of suicide: do not leave the person alone, remove any firearms, alcohol, drugs or sharp objects that could be used in a suicide attempt, and call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or take the person to an emergency room or seek help from a medical or mental health professional.

Update: According to the Post, police are investigating whether Swartz passed away after hanging himself in his Crown Heights apartment, although a cause of death hasn't officially been given yet.

http://maxkeiser.com/2013/01/12/internet-activist-aaron-swartz-26-commits-suicide-in-new-york/

Internet activist, Aaron Swartz, 26, commits suicide in New York City

Posted on January 12, 2013 by stacyherbert| 23 Comments

Stacy Summary: I remember first hearing about Aaron Swartz on Democracy Now! which covered his arrest by FBI for downloading public domain documents from MIT. They were on his computer and had not yet been shared. Anyway, he was facing 25 years on 13 felony counts.

• RIP, Aaron Swartz (by his friend, Cory Doctorow)
• Reddit co-founder, mass downloader of scholarly work, faces 13 felonies
• Feds go overboard in prosecuting information activist: Violate website terms of use and you too could be a felon.

UPDATE:

• Background on the story from Techdirt: US Government Ups Felony Count In JSTOR/Aaron Swartz Case From Four To Thirteen
• This from CNET: If convicted, Swartz faced a maximum of $4 million in fines and more than 50 years in prison after the government increased the number of felony counts against Swartz to 13 from 4.
• This from Lawrence Lessig, a close friend of Aaron’s: Prosecutor as Bully

Earlier, Lessig tweeted: Aaron Swartz “is gone today, driven to the edge by what a decent society would call bullying.”

UPDATE 2:

Aaron’s mother writing at Ycombinator:

Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts. Aaron has been depressed about his case/upcoming trial, but we had no idea what he was going through was this painful.

Aaron was a terrific young man. He contributed a lot to the world in his short life and I regret the loss of all the things he had yet to accomplish. As you can imagine, we all miss him dearly. The grief is unfathomable.