By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
Friends and supporters of Aaron Swartz planned to pay tribute Saturday to the free-information activist and online prodigy, who killed himself last week as he faced trial on hacking charges.
Since his suicide, friends and admirers have cast free-information activist Aaron Swartz as a martyred hero hounded to his death by the government he antagonized. One newspaper columnist _ whose piece on Swartz was accompanied by a photo showing him at his computer, his head encircled by a golden halo _ even compared him to an Internet-age Martin Luther King Jr.
His father, Robert Swartz, has said his son "was killed by the government."
The suicide, he said, was "due to the fact that he was put under relentless, incredible pressure."
