A whitehouse.gov petition demanding the President Barack Obama administration remove Aaron Swartz's prosecutor in the aftermath of the internet activist's suicide has surpassed 25,000 signatures.
That means the Obama administration is obliged to enter the debate over whether authorities -- including line prosecutor Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann -- went too far in prosecuting the 26-year-old internet sensation.
Swartz, a founder of Demand Progress who had written about his own depression, was found dead at his Brooklyn apartment last month. He was under indictment for more than a dozen counts of computer hacking and wire fraud in connection to the illicit downloading of millions of academic articles from a subscription database.
His prosecution was being handled by Heymann, the Boston-based cybercrime prosecutor who won a record 20-year prison stretch for TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez. Another defendant connected to the TJX case, Jonathan James, committed suicide.
The Swartz case has been wending through pre-trial motions for 18 months, and was set for jury trial on April 1.
"We should not destroy the lives of human beings for crimes against computer systems that harm no one and provide no benefit to the perpetrator," said the petition, which reached 25,000 signatures on Monday, triggering a forthcoming response from the government. "Such actions should be treated as forms of protest and civil disobedience. To prosecute these actions the same as rapes and murders is a savage abuse of the criminal justice system which continues to destroy the lives of peaceful, productive members of society."
Swartz had said his motive to was to free up intellectual research to the masses.
Another petition seeking the removal of Carmen Ortiz, Heymann's boss and the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, has also garnered enough signatures requiring the administration to respond.
Responses to both petitions are pending.
Before Swartz committed suicide, Ortiz's office had offered a six-month plea deal, which Swartz rejected.
Ortiz said the government's "conduct was appropriate" in its handling of Swartz's prosecution.
