Remembering Aaron Swartz

• Aaron Swartz, who helped to start the social news site Reddit, co-authored the RSS 1.0 specification, founded the Internet advocacy group Demand Progress and was, in the words of BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow, "a full-time, uncompromising, reckless and delightful shit-disturber," died Friday. He was 26.

  Swartz reportedly hanged himself, a tragedy for friends and colleagues like Micah L. Sifry, who eulogizes Swartz as a troubled, trouble-making crusader for democracy. His death provoked reactions from all over the web, including from:

  Lawrence Lessig

  Cory Doctorow

  Jason Scott

  Karl Fogel

  Derek Willis

  Dan Kennedy

  Kathy Gill

  Danah Boyd

  Susie Bright

  Chris Hayes

  David Weinberger

  Jeff Jarvis

  Nadim Kobeissi

  Timothy B. Lee

  Alex Stamos

  David Moore

  Quinn Norton

  Glenn Greenwald

  James Grimmelman

  Rick Perlstein

  The Electronic Frontier Foundation

  Danny Sullivan

  Joey Devilla

  Tim Berners-Lee

  Alyssa Rosenberg

  Declan McCullagh

  Brewster Kahle.

• Swartz's family and partner accused law enforcement of playing a role in his death, writing it was "the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death."

  DNAinfo spoke to Swartz's neighbors in Brooklyn. The Wall Street Journal reported on the latest developments in the legal case Swartz had been facing. Patterico.com published some critical comments from Swartz's lawyer. The president of MIT ordered that computer science and electrical engineering professor Hal Abelson lead a review of MIT's role in the Swartz case. The MIT website was targeted last night in what some online users associated with Anonymous called a reaction to Swartz's death. Many other supporters of Swartz's work began a #pdftribute effort to post links to copyright-protected research articles, as Cnet noted, as Slate wondered about the effect on the open access movement. JSTOR issued a statement about his death -- only last week it had announced that it would be making its journals free to the public on a limited basis. On We the People, petitions were started to "Remove United States District Attorney Carmen Ortiz from office for overreach in the case of Aaron Swartz" and to posthumously pardon him.

That's no moon, that's a petition response

• The White House gave a tongue-in-cheek response to a petition demanding that the U.S. government construct a Death Star, moon-sized weapon of planetary destruction from Star Wars.

  In the answer titled "This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For," Paul Shawcross, chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget, declares that "the Administration does not support blowing up planets." The plan would add to the deficit, he explained, adding: "Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?"

  The White House also responded to a petition seeking Obama's impeachment, those seeking secession for various states, and those seeking deportation for those demanding secession.

  Macon Phillips from the White House Office of Digital Strategy highlighted a Redditor's comment in response to the Death Star answer: "This is the first time in my 65 years I felt a connection to the @WhiteHouse."

  Asked whether the White House would also respond to an Open Access petition, he replied, "respond to petitions that cross the threshold, we will."

Public records, online data, and privacy

• As the debate rolls on over a map published by a newspaper that names gun owners in Westchester County, your First POST editor suggests that our current definition of "public record" is obsolete:

  While "public equals online" is uncomplicated where "public record" is concerned, the inverse is also true. Online equals public. That can be more complex. Online does not mean "public" as in "public record," as in it's-in-a-cabinet-somewhere, fill-out-this-form-and-the-city-clerk-will-get-back-to-you-next-year-maybe public. Online public means "I can find it on Google" public. When it comes to budget data, what Congress is doing or who's pumping money into elections, that's an automatic improvement. But when the Journal-News posted online a map with the names and addresses of all gun owners in Westchester County, N.Y., public-record public became, suddenly and without warning, online public. This was a concern because the records were not about public officials, but private citizens. If people like that even exist anymore.

• David Carr writes about the wisdom of publishing public data in the wake of the Journal News case. A Republican state senator in New York blamed the newspaper's map for a break-in.

The Internet in civic life

• Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Over the last two years, some of the most serious-minded people focused on how to use the Internet to get more people involved in the care of their cities have been working on Change By Us, an online platform where visitors can propose ideas like a community garden or a neighborhood cleanup, find volunteers, and solicit support from foundations or the city.

  The platform's creators have struggled to bring people to the site, and have made promises to change the system in order to receive continued support. Plus subscribers get a detailed look at the problems facing the project.

Around the web

• The Department of Homeland Security warned Internet users to disable Java after reports of a security flaw, though Oracle says the flaw has since been fixed.

• The White House continued to post photos last week showing Obama meeting with female advisers, as New York Times White House Bureau Chief David Leonhardt noted.

• The Campaign Finance Institute released a report on 2012 campaign donations and found that 69 percent of Obama's small donors had started with a small contribution and that his itemized donors averaged more than five contributions each.

• Michael McDonald, associate professor at George Mason University, studied turnout among voters who cast their ballot in different ways, such as through early voting or voting from overseas.

• Kevin Curry, program director of the CFA Brigade for Code for America, tweeted Friday: "#cfabrigade captains in action: @GovInTrenches in Chicago teams up w/ @CodeForBoston to connect @newurbanmechs w/ open source flu shot app. Power of @codeforamerica's #cfabrigade network: @mayortommenino's @newurbanmechs redeploys @tomkompare's flushot app http://flushot.newurbanmechanics.org. After Hugh Jackman remarked during last night's Golden Globes that he hadn't gotten a flu shot, Chris Keller, a data journalist for South California public radio tweeted," Just so happens that Hugh Jackman can use this map to find where to get a flu shot in Los Angeles and Orange counties: http://projects.scpr.org/static/maps/flu-clinics/"

• No Labels is holding a conference in New York today as it seeks to relaunch its effort under new co-chairs West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and former Republican Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman.

• ReadWriteWeb, Forbes, and Techdirt
  looked at how Internet providers are beginning to implement the six-strikes system.

• The NYPD is considering using drones for monitoring crowds.

• Rhode Island will publish more state records online.

• A California proposition to monitor sex offenders online has been put on hold by a judge.

• The AP reported on how Google Fiber's very-very-fast Internet access program is drawing start-up to Kansas City.

• Michelle Dean wrote for the New Yorker about the implications of the Steubenville rape case for privacy and social media.

• Slate reported on what recently released FBI documents reveal about its use of a controversial cellphone tracking technology.

• Bit.ly has released an API for developers to incorporate real-time data from its link-sharing service into applications or other products.

• A recent report examined how to predict the credibility of tweets during disaster situations. The New York Times recently reported on the challenges in establishing a national communications network for first responders.

• Researchers recently used Google Maps to determine the fragmentation of the savanna in Africa, threatening the habitat of lions.

• Mobile broadband connections now make up a quarter of total global connections.

International

• The University of Edinburgh along with thirteen partners from other European countries is launching a €8.5 million project called the Citizen Observatory Web to allow members of the public to collect environmental data for research, decision making and policy formation using crowdsourcing technology.

• Eleven work and pensions civil servants in Britain have been fired for using social media, and 106 in that department have been fired for that offense since 2009.

• A report recommends that the British military urgently draw up cybersecurity plans.

• Reuters recently reported on Britain's plans to ramp-up its rollout of telehealth options for patients at home.

• The Wall Street Journal looked at how North Korea covered Eric Schmidt's visit.

• The Guardian recently reported on how "poor but sexy Berlin has tapped talent to be Europe's startup capital."

• Almost 60 federal bureaucrats in Canada were caught plagiarizing information from the Internet on their promotion applications.

• CNN recently reported on how the Internet Society of Bangalore is helping to educate local artisans on how to use Internet tools.

First POST is normally available only to Personal Democracy Plus subscribers. But as has been pointed out, it doesn't make much sense to limit access to today's post when the subject of today's headline and lead item is the freedom-of-information activist Aaron Swartz, who died Friday. — Nick Judd, managing editor