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FBI Investigates Liberator of Court Records
eldavojohn writes "Federal court documents aren't free to the public, they cost $0.08/page through a system called PACER. During a period when the US Government Printing Office was trying out free access at a number of courthouses around the US, a 22-year-old programmer named Aaron Swartz installed a small PERL script at the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals library in Chicago — a script that uploaded a public document every three seconds to Amazon's EC2 cloud computing service. Swartz then donated over 19 million documents to public.resource.org. That's when the FBI took interest in the programmer responsible for this effort and ran his name through government databases. How did he discover this? His FOIA was approved, of course, and he received the FBI's partially redacted report on himself. The public.resource.org database was later merged with that of the RECAP Firefox extension, which we discussed a couple of months back." Update: 10/06 18:22 GMT by KD: Timothy Lee pointed out that the summary as originally posted garbled the Swartz / RECAP connection. Improved now.
AARON SWARTZ would have known his access was unauthorized because it was with a password that did not belonged to him.
Proof-reading. A valuable tool.
The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
((((19,856,160 x 3 sec)/60 sec)/60 min)/24 hours)/365 days = 1.9 years
entirely doable
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
RTFA... He ran the script on the library computer, and the computer had a cookie set that allowed access to the PACER system without inputting a password.
Did you miss the part about installing (presumably non-permitted) software on a court computer?
I didn't. That could certainly be construed as a criminal activity, but was totally outside the scope of the FBI investigation.
How ironic that the only thing he did that could potentially be illegal (according to my understanding of events and the law) was totally igored by the FBI.
the fact you can only access them from the library means there are controls in place(pricing, etc) for a REASON. YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO CIRCUMVENT THEM.
What law is being broken here? In the US, government works can't be copyrighted. They're automatically public domain. They could be classified, so you need security clearance to legally view them, but the PACER docs aren't.
This isn't any more illegal than Project Gutenberg.
Did you miss the part about installing (presumably non-permitted) software on a court computer?
Did you miss the part where the software was installed on a library computer?
Yes it all costs money, and we the TAX payers have paid that money. Thus the works are public domain.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
An alternate explanation is this:
The only indication of pissiness would be if they continued the investigation, trying to bring up other strange charges to justify shutting him down.
As a matter of fact, nothing says one way or another if the plugin was wiped from the accepted computer.
> What am I missing?
Document != page
19,856,160 pages at 3 seconds per court document.
I expect many (most?) of those court documents are multi-page documents.
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
When something is in the public domain, you can still charge for reproducing or hosting it. You just can not prevent someone from copying and distributing it in the manner that they want as well. Public domain does not preclude paid access. Also, since people pay money to file court documents, IE filing fees, etc. There are instance where you paid NOTHING for court documents to be produced at all. Courts do not run wholly on tax dollars alone.
Pacer is worse than presented. Itâ(TM)s not just 8 cents a page for downloaded, itâ(TM)s 8 cents a page for any page you pull into your browser. They consider any Web page you surf on their site in search of the legal document to be a âoedownloadedâ document.
I work at a newspaper and one of my reporters ran up a $250 bill with Pacer checking many times a day to see if an important local opinion were issued. When it was, it was just 4 pages long; I expected to pay 32 cents. Instead they said we owed over $250. We never paid it and consequently no longer use Pacer.
Perl is only an acronym in certain contexts and PERL is a shibboleth! Fortunately, you can load PERL with this module: http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?Inline::PERL
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
Read the article. PACER was specifically giving the documents out for free via the library. He didn't circumvent anything, just made very efficient use of a perfectly legal process using perfectly legal means.
RTFFBI report, they say that he ran the script from a location outside of the library using the library password. Either the FBI are wrong, or the article summary is.
Install unauthorized software on a government
Didn't RTFA eh? What he actually did was access the PACER database using the username/password of the library from his Amazon IP address. One request every 3 seconds (which apparently counts as "inundated"), worth an imaginary $1.5 million. So they investigate the IP address, Amazon helpfully coughs up all the accounts details, with the name they find his web page and from Accurint get his social security number and other details, then gain access to his LinkedIn and Facebook accounts, drivers license, drive by his house and get photos (they suggest surveillance will be difficult), then he gets interviewed by the New York Times. After all that, they drop the case.
Possibly the best quote from the FBI: AARON SWARTZ would have known his access was unauthorized because it was with a password that did not belonged to him.
That is what makes sales and property taxes unconstitutional.
You work and earn wages or a salary. That is taxed very heavily. Then you make a purchase; that money is taxed again. Then, you are charged property taxes. That same money is in effect taxed yet again.
Never mind the fact that people do not legally earn income per the legal definition: you exchange x amount of time for an equivalent value of debt (fiat currency). There is no increase in value and therefore no profit, and legally, no income as it is defined by both law and the tax code. The 1040 instructions even state this and that the tax system is voluntary, but just try to not volunteer and see what happens. Many people have filed suit against the government and won and don't pay taxes, but far many more fail and get screwed by the private corporation known as the IRS.
Also, if you pay property taxes, you actually do not own your property. Try not paying your property taxes and see what happens.
This country has been on the slippery slope to communism for a very long time, and like the proverbial frog in the pot of water (I know, it's not true and the frog would jump out, but the metaphor does hold true in this situation) people are so infused with their entitlement attitudes and suckling Uncle Sam's teet that they are completely uninterested in stopping this slide - and won't be interested until it's too late and the government is dictacting which doctor you can see, that you cannot get your own health insurance, how many children you can have, and what your salary will be - oh and by the way you can give up your guns "for the children." By the time people wake up and start voting sensibly we will have a choice of Stalin or Stalin running for office, and if you question it, the new KGB (homeland security) will come and make you disappear.
It did happen. I suggest you be the one to re-read the article, friend.
"He visited ... the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals library in Chicago ... and installed a small PERL script he'd written."
FYI, the computers in the court's library belong to the court that, you know, owns the library.
The FBI were essentially wrong. That's why the case was dropped.
But thanks for playing.
Instead of spouting bullshit, you could get some facts first. From the PACER FAQs:
Why are there user fees for PACER?
In 1988, the Judiciary sought funding through the appropriation process to establish the capability to provide electronic public access services. Rather than appropriating additional funds for this purpose, Congress specifically directed the Judiciary to fund that initiative through the collection of user fees. As a result, the program relies exclusively on fee revenue.
So, in fact, PACER is NOT supported by taxes.
Furthermore, just because some service receives some tax money does not mean it is completely funded by taxes. There are many services that receive some tax money, but not enough to pay for the entire service. The rest is made up in user fees. This is not double dipping.
"flamebait" isn't supposed to be used as "I disagree"
May be he just copied the cookie?
CAPTCHA: Submit O.O
Is /. becoming sentient?
OK... No additional direct cost to me. Thanks for chipping in for postage =)
Sadly, in your (accurate) context, I helped pay for them to investigate me...
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Well, it all depends. The information is "freely" available as in "free as in speech". You can go on PACER any time you want and download anything you want.
However, PACER itself is not (or at least not fully) tax-funded, so it's not "free as in beer". There is a user fee involved if you want to download the originals off the PACER system, which funds the system and makes the documents accessible. Once you have a copy of a document, you are free to do anything you want with it including share the document with anyone you want, which is why groups like RECAP can re-share any documents they've paid for or had donated to them.
This one is an interesting case, because the library access was initially set up so people could do free searches for small numbers of records, expecting a small number of hits. When the number of hits started skyrocketing, the government got suspicious as to who was collecting all of the documents and why. The FBI started an investigation, and it sounds like they discovered that nothing illegal was going on after all and dropped it. I'd say the number of hits on the system was enough to raise suspicion and justify a further look into what was going on, but that's one man's opinion.
While I applaud Aaron's efforts on behalf of RECAP, the net result was the publication of a few million files (good) and the shutting down of the free access to PACER at libraries due to what PACER obviously thought of as abuse (not so good).
If everyone expects/gets access to all PACER documents for free, then there won't be any money going into PACER to pay to scan the documents, organize them, and make them available. Then PACER will either cease to exist, or require additional taxpayer funding to continue since they won't be making any funds from user fees.
I'm not saying that complete taxpayer funding is a BAD idea, only that it is not how PACER is funded at this time. RECAP's initial approach was to collect donations to get "first copies" of a bunch of records from PACER then make them freely available to all (or to ask people to donate "first copies" they'd already purchased). So PACER was making revenue, and everyone was happy.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
So they had 88 pages on you for no reason?
Not for no reason - I was told by the investigating agency that they were looking at me and I was interviewed twice, thus my interest in acquiring whatever they found. I knew pretty definitively that "they" had something on me. The point is, once they decide to look at you, they really try hard to look at you. So, if you know or suspect that you've got a file, read it - It's interesting.
Part of the fun for me was looking at the various 'Red Flags' that turned up (They turned up the facts that I used to home-brew explosives, make improvised explosives (some multiple pounds)*, and get high all the time** - Those, for some reason, were lesser red-flags than the fact that I've had a common nick-name since Junior High and therefore use an 'alias'). Another fun area was looking at their interview list. For the interview list, my reaction was mostly, "How in the heck did you find him?" or "Man, if you wanted dirt on me you really talked to the wrong people..."
* Stopped within a year after high-school
** Stopped after college
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy also applies:
"In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."
Get off my lawn.
He created an executable file containing computer instructions written in a programmming language. How is that not a program? He received no authorization to install it, and therefore it was "unauthorized". The description "installed an unauthorized program" sounds right on to me.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
"Better not (hire/give a loan to/let the apartment to/insure) this guy; he's been (in rehab/psych treatment/in hospital 17 times).
Not having read the article but reading the three parent posts to this, I would assume that he grabbed the cookie (with a unique username and session id in it) and used that on an external computer. If the system wasn't set up to compare ip address, it would have accepted the cookie session id without requiring a password, despite him not being at the library.
Are government bodies not entitled to charge a nominal fee for services rendered?
No. First they didn't "render" and service - these records are available electronically anyway.
No, they are not. You are simply and plainly wrong. That's the whole POINT of PACER: to send people into the vaults with tens of millions of pages of paper records and scan them, and check them and collate them and file them so they can be found by the people who need them. When was the last time you scanned tens of millions of pieces of paper? What makes you think this is not a service rendered?
Second these public records were already paid for by public taxes - the "nominal fee" has already been paid by Joe public
No, they haven't. PACER is not receiving tax money. You and your ilk would be frothing at the mouth about the waste of your tax dollars if it were.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
bleeding hearts are responsible for the national debt
Actually, you're wrong.
"social services" really ought to be handled by private organizations like they used to.
You might want to do some research on the 1880s, and how effectively social services were handled by private organizations back then. Protip: they weren't handled at all. People died in the streets in massive numbers.
Most of the cries of "ooh big government! big government!" that people love to wave around come from an ignorance of how important government programs are to maintaining social order and a modicum of well-being for poor people. Well, that and a gross misconception of how much of the federal purse is spent on social programs, versus the things that the libertarians actually think are worthwhile. (We could just as easily cut almost all of our defense spending, since it's pretty much worthless).
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
Oh well, blame it on cultural differences
President Eisenhower explained the dangers of an entire industry built on creating the machines of war nearly 50 years ago. His warnings went unheeded, and the result is our out-of-control military spending. See his comments in his own words here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY
or google "military industrial complex" for more information. Many US citizens are opposed to our militarism, but we seem unable to alter the course of so much short-sighted self-interest, money, and influence.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."