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\f0\fs24 \cf0 [Alex Stamos] Unlike a lot of the people here, I didn't know Aaron.
I never met him, didn't speak to him on the phone, never even got to exchange emails with
him, which, ironically, is why I'm here.
\
\ The fact that I didn't know him is the reason
why I was going to be the person that was put forth to objectively explain to the jury
of what Aaron did, and I think I was able to hold onto that objectivity until the last
week and a half, and per Teran's comments, I've perhaps become much more radical than
I was before, which you can tell, because I'm wearing my radical tie today.
\
\ [laughter]
\
\ What we were going to do is...I was objectively
going to go in front of that jury, and explain to them that these horrible hacking crimes
that Aaron was accused of is functionally the same as putting in the incorrect email
address to an airport WiFi, or going down the street to Starbucks to change your IP
address.
\
\ Dan Purcell was going to get up there and
grill MIT and JSTOR witnesses, and talk to them about how this kind of thing happens
dozens and dozens of times a year at MIT, and yet Aaron is the first person to ever
have the Secret Service get involved.
That JSTOR witness was going to talk about how, "Oh, there wasn't really any damage.
We were a little ticked off, but this isn't a big deal for us, and we don't want this
to happen."
\
\ Then Elliot Peters was going to get up and
give this fiery defense attorney speech, pounding the table, and pointing to Boston Harbor,
and invoking the American Revolution, and the spirit of freedom, and how Aaron lives
up to the greatest ideals in our founding documents.
\
\ Then Aaron's future was going to be in the
hands of 12 normal people, I mean, normal people who couldn't get out of jury duty,
but hopefully people who, I think, would have had the sense to understand that there is
a huge chasm between the way Aaron was being portrayed by the government and the young
man who was sitting there at that table.
\
\ I had faith in them, and we're not going to
get that chance to do all those things, and we can't help Aaron anymore, but I think we,
and by "we," I mean everybody who is listening to this, we can help the next Aaron, and we
didn't have to wait very long for the next Aaron.
\
\ The next Aaron is the Chinese-American man
who is accused of stealing source code from a hedge fund, and is being prosecuted under
the Espionage Act.
The next Aaron is the Canadian student who was expelled from his university for pointing
out security flaws to the university in their software that exposed his personal information.
\
\ The next Aaron is going to be that young lady
whose DEFCON speech is interrupted by the clink of handcuffs, or that grandfather who
is mystified by the demand for $50,000 to pay for copyright violations, because his
next door neighbor uses open WiFi to do a little BitTorrent.
Those are the next Aarons, and those are the people we can help.
\
\ One of the reasons, I think we really to need
help them is, while I think all of us feel gratified about the outpouring of love and
care, and the feeling of momentum that has come out of the last week and a half.
\
\ We also have to be really aware that we want,
that when people face the same kind of odds that Aaron faced, many of them without Aaron's
resources, that we want them not to think Aaron's final moments of weakness and doubt
to be the kind of thing that they need to do to bring about change.
\
\ There are two things we need to do for that.
One... \
\ [applause]
\
\ One, we need to give those people as much
as much support as Aaron was able to give.
Those people don't know Larry Lessig.
They don't hang out with MIT professors, yet they need the kind of support that Aaron was
able to muster.
\
\ One of the things I realized through this
whole thing is we never considered computer science to be the kind of thing that is a
profession that changes lives, and something this has demonstrated is that being able to
make an argument of whether a MAC address is just something that you use to keep collisions
from happening on a network, it is not equivalent to the serial number on a gun.
\
\ Making that argument is the kind of thing
that can mean spending decades in prison.
There are other professions that are life-changing, medicine and law, and in those professions,
people have an idea about equal access and helping people, and that doesn't happen in
reality, but at least they try.
\
\ There's an idea that everybody has a defense
lawyer.
There's an idea that you can go and get treated by a doctor, and they have an ethical obligation
to you.
I think those of us in the computer world need to see, via Aaron's tragedy, that we
have the same kind of obligation.
\
\ [applause]
\
\ The second thing we all need to do is when
we are up here speaking, or we're commenting on Reddit, or Hacker News, or talking to people
about Aaron, while we talk about the positive change that is going to come out of his death,
we have to make it clear that all of those positive things pale in comparison to what
he would've done had he lived.
\
\ [applause]
\
\ That's an important part of the message, because
we don't want those young people to think that their only way out is to sacrifice themselves,
that they deserve to live too, and that they have people who are standing behind them.
Thank you.
\
\ [applause] }