Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), outgoing Chairman of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, has asked an investigator to look into the Justice Department’s case against Aaron Swartz, the Internet activist and entrepreneur who took his own life last week, The Huffington Post reported Tuesday evening. Issa compared Swartz’s unauthorized access of the JSTOR article database in 2010 and 2011 — for which he faced 13 felony charges, all dismissed Monday due to his suicide — to the seminal New York Times “Pentagon Papers” case of the 1970s, telling The Huffington Post:
“I’m not condoning his hacking, but he’s certainly someone who worked very hard,” Issa said. “Had he been a journalist and taken that same material that he gained from MIT, he would have been praised for it. It would have been like the Pentagon Papers.”
