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- Aaron Swartz called me in early May 2011 — I was an editor at Wired then covering privacy, crime, and security – asking if he could give me some information under embargo.
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user-inactivated · 4325 days ago · link ·
Six months and a felony conviction. Felony convictions carry a heavy stigma, making it hard to get a job or rent an apartment. In some states you lose the right to vote. Given who he was and what he was charged for it probably wouldn't have hurt him much professionally, but it still would have been more than just six months in prison.
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The four to five years of supervised release afterwards would probably be the most harmful to him. It's not at all unlikely that someone convicted of 'computer crimes' would be prevented from using computers or the internet for that entire time. For someone like Aaron Swartz, I imagine that would be a fate worse than death.