Free Talk Live

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has launched an internal probe of the events leading up to the suicide of internet activist Aaron Swartz, who was facing federal charges for allegedly hacking into the school's journal archives.

Furor over Swartz' death has reached the White House in the form of a petition asking for the removal of U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz who pressed the case against Swartz.

“Prosecutors destroy a life.” That could be a headline in every newspaper every day in a land where the answer to every problem (and many nonproblems) is police and prisons. When 26-year-old Internet prodigy and freedom of information activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide on January 11, the tragedy was the direct result of US attorneys deciding to throw criminal charges at him for violating a website’s “terms of services” while accessing publicly subsidized academic research.

A blogger has published once-classified FBI files that show how the agency tracked and collected information on internet activist Aaron Swartz.

Swartz, who killed himself in January aged 26, had previously requested his files and posted them on his blog, but some new documents and redactions are included in the files published by Firedoglake blogger Daniel Wright.

David Epstein's daughter was over 18 at the start of the three year relationship. No matter how offensive it may be to some, this is a victimless crime. This statist waterboy (who has blogged for Huffington Post when not teaching political science at Columbia University) was embracing a freedom outside of the law of the land. This shows an inbred hypocrisy. A guy sleeping with his adult daughter is not scary. Knowing he supports a system with his mouth that he doesn't with his zipper is. Maybe being a victim of the government will be his wake up call.

"I am sorry to report that Thomas Szasz, the great libertarian critic of coercive psychiatry, the "therapeutic state," and the war on drugs, died over the weekend at his home in Manlius, New York. He was 92"

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"In addition to opposing involuntary psychiatric treatment and the insanity defense, Szasz objected to medically sanctioned state interference in what ought to be private decisions, ranging from drug use to suicide. "

SANFORD, Fla.— A man who defied officials for more than 13 years by refusing to remove airplane parts and other junk from his yard was sentenced to three years in prison.

Alan Wayne Davis, 49, had been placed on house arrest in September after serving nearly a year in prison for illegal dumping and creating and maintaining a public nuisance.

On Monday, a judge sentenced Davis to three years in prison for violations of his house arrest, including failing to return home from work on time and keeping part of a World War II fighter plane in his yard.

The move to shut down and regulate the Internet under a new government-controlled system has accelerated into high gear with the announcement that the government’s cybersecurity strategy revolves around issuing Internet users with ID “tokens” without which they will not be able to visit websites, the latest salvo against web freedom which, in combination with Senator Joe Lieberman’s ‘kill switch’ bill, will serve to eviscerate the free Internet as we know it.

Sherry Peel Jackson, the former IRS agent featured in Aaron Russo's documentary "America: Freedom to Fascism," who ended up in federal prison in early 2008 for challenging the legitimacy of the federal income tax, is having a party this August in Georgia to celebrate her freedom and the launch of her new life.

A Syrian air force colonel has become the country's first senior military officer to defect in his aircraft, seeking asylum in Jordan after making an emergency landing in his MiG-21 fighter jet.