From: Cari Machet <[email protected]> To: rysiek <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, January 7, 2014 10:29 AM Subject: Re: Swartz, Weev & radical libertarian lexicon (Re: Jacob Appelbaum in Germany - Aaron Swartz)
On 1/7/14, Adam Back <[email protected]> wrote: [deletia] >>took it to the next level including >> physical >> intrusion & hiding equipment. But MIT (and to a lesser extent JSTOR) let >> him down badly as did some of his academic friends and its tragic that he >> was a victim of some extremely over reaching imbalanced law the CFAA [3], >> aggressively prosecuted by self-agrandizing politically motivated, and >> almost legally immune deeply flawed US federal prosecution and plea bargain >> system, >yes but i think from my understanding it wasnt the amount of prison >time or the money but the fact that he wld have to plead guilty to 13 >felony counts - he would not get to serve in the government ... vote >etc From personal experience, I can shed light on the issue of voting as a felon. Contrary to what many people seem to think, most states seem to allow 'felons' to vote, eventually. (Some while they are in jail or prison; some immediately when they are released; some when they are off parole.) In my own case, the state of Washington's Constitution says that only felons guilty of "infamous crimes" lose their right to vote, and Washington state law defines an "infamous crime" as a crime punishable by one or more years incarceration in the _state_ penitentiary. Since my 'crime' was Federal, not state, it did not satisfy this condition, so I was not even prohibited from voting while I was in prison. (Though I never tried to vote while I was in prison; And, though, I did not learn that they didn't understand this fact until my release in late December 2009). I sent many emails to the Secretary of State of Washington stating this obvious position in early 2010, and they responded by repeatedly stating the contrary, commonly-thought position. They were never able to openly acknowledge I was right, although by my release from prison in March 2012, I checked their website and saw that they had corrected their prior, incorrect position. Jim "Al Capone" Bell
