Charles Pierce wrote an exceptional blog post on the issue of Aaron Swartz along those lines:
"Which brings me to my second conclusion — Aaron Swartz ran facefirst into a law-enforcement and prosecutorial culture that we have allowed to run amok for far too long. It began with drugs. It intensified with the "war on terror." Preventive detention — though they don't call it that — has been mainstreamed, due process sacrificed to efficiency. Investigation without cause has been normalized in our daily lives, through mandatory drug testing and roadblocks and a dozen other ways we barely think about any more. Personal privacy has been rendered less important than official secrecy in the general scheme of things. We want — nay, demand convictions, and all barriers to them be damned."
"Back when rogue prosecutor Mike Nifong went crazy and ginned up a rape prosecution against several members of the Duke lacrosse team, there was a great deal of horror at how "the system" could have gone so horribly wrong. But it didn't. It just got aimed for once at people with the financial and social wherewithal to fight back. There are minor-league Mike Nifongs in every precinct house and every federal law-enforcement operation and every DA's office and all throughout the branch offices of the Department Of Justice. There are "Duke rape cases" happening every day in alleys and on streetcorners of every city, and on the dusty backroads on the outskirts of nowhere."
"Which brings me to my second conclusion — Aaron Swartz ran facefirst into a law-enforcement and prosecutorial culture that we have allowed to run amok for far too long. It began with drugs. It intensified with the "war on terror." Preventive detention — though they don't call it that — has been mainstreamed, due process sacrificed to efficiency. Investigation without cause has been normalized in our daily lives, through mandatory drug testing and roadblocks and a dozen other ways we barely think about any more. Personal privacy has been rendered less important than official secrecy in the general scheme of things. We want — nay, demand convictions, and all barriers to them be damned."
"Back when rogue prosecutor Mike Nifong went crazy and ginned up a rape prosecution against several members of the Duke lacrosse team, there was a great deal of horror at how "the system" could have gone so horribly wrong. But it didn't. It just got aimed for once at people with the financial and social wherewithal to fight back. There are minor-league Mike Nifongs in every precinct house and every federal law-enforcement operation and every DA's office and all throughout the branch offices of the Department Of Justice. There are "Duke rape cases" happening every day in alleys and on streetcorners of every city, and on the dusty backroads on the outskirts of nowhere."
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Case_Of_Aaron_Swar...