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MIT Attempts To Block Release of Documents In Aaron Swartz Case
Dputiger writes "In the wake of activist Aaron Swartz's suicide, MIT launched an investigation into the circumstances that led to his initial arrest and felony charges. It's now clear that the move was nothing but a face-saving gesture. Moments before the court-ordered release of Swartz's Secret Service file under the Freedom of Information Act, MIT intervened, asking the judge to block the release. Supposedly this is to protect the identities of MIT staff who might be harassed — but government policy is to redact such information already."
Mmm hmm, mmm hmm. And what ARE the names of the people employed by MIT who helped drive Aaron Swartz to kill himself? I'm not interested in threatening them, I just want to make sure their names are on the Internet and forever associated with the terrible, terrible thing they did.
They don't want to block them, just put them behind a pay wall as a final FU to the memory of Aaron.
Aren't MIT supposed to be the "good/brilliant guys" in all things tech? I don't understand why they have so much trouble with the Schwartz case... In any case, RIP Aaron Schwartz!
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Were they black? They were black weren't they. This was racially motivated.
Now here's a bunch of unrelated people to talk about it on tv.
(i have no idea if i'm joking anymore.... worlds gone insane)
This has nothing to do with driving anyone from any org to suicide (that is not dead yet) It does have to do with transparency and accountability though.
And with a sudden diminisging of MIT's cred with many tech people, sadly. Oh well, there are always others ready to pick any people (students or professors) that won't be heading to MIT as a reaction to this.
You're being ridiculous.
This was clearly the work of gay Muslims.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
And with a sudden diminisging of MIT's cred with many tech people, sadly. Oh well, there are always others ready to pick any people (students or professors) that won't be heading to MIT as a reaction to this.
MIT's cred with tech people is and has always been about the competence of their educators, the capabilities of their labs and the fact that a degree from MIT is taken at face value to imply a top-notch technical education. That has not changed. Students and professors don't go there for transparency.
There were a lot of problems with the whole Swartz case. In particular, that his actions were considered grounds for harsher punishment than many murderers and rapists. I don't care about the documents half as much as I care about the fact that our system is so broken that copying data is so disproportionately punished.
It doesn't even matter if Aaron was right or wrong when the fundamental laws, rules and regulations of the case were so flawed in the first place.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
And so where exactly is the "transparency"?
The kid killed himself because he downloaded information that *should* be freely accessible in a "transparent" world. Instead, it's a crime to do what he did, and he was threatened with excessive penalties, because "downloading" is apparently a WORSE crime than murder or rape.
Where is the "accountability" here, where the punishment should fit the crime? How has this country become so upside-down?
I agree that the world would not be a better place with vigilante justice, but it needs to be said that, for most people in the US, there really isn't any other kind of justice at all.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Ok, so I as an organization do something wrong. Judge orders me to release a documentation about it. What stops me to choose what documents I would release and what documents I would forget/destroy/whatever ?
Everytime I hear about freedom of information and disclosure of documents I'm thinking about this. Especially when it comes to governments which is not the case here.. but the point is still valid.
Or do they have some sort of 'protection' against this, that I'm not aware of ?
In its motion, MIT asked the court to establish a process by which MIT could review and propose redactions to any such documents prior to their release. With this motion MIT does not oppose the release of these documents, but seeks only to redact information that could threaten the safety and privacy of its employees, or that could threaten the security of MIT’s computer network.
Jeez MIT, its not as if you turned state's evidence against the mob and now need witness protection! The fact that they're seeking to hide information which ordinarily would be completely unremarkable, now only piques the interest of everyone concerned with the case. Is MIT hiding something more than the names of a few employees who were trying to track down an illicit use of network resources?
Don't worry little guy, Eric Holder is on it. He's a stand up all for justice kind of guy.
Sometimes, someone gets faced with an ethical dilemma and doesn't immediately know what the right thing to do is. In those circumstances, it's understandable that the first thing he does is not necessarily the best thing he could have done.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
FOIA requests can be redacted to protect the identities of agents in ongoing or sensitive investigations or to protect things like social security numbers whose release could abet fraud. They cannot be redacted to protect institutions from embarrassing imbroglios and bad decisions. That is the whole point of FOIA: the public has a right to know.
It's not dishonest if I haven't bothered to research the case. Merely ill-informed. In this case, I read about it several months ago, and am simply going off what bits and pieces I remember.
But, as you said, my point is still valid generally speaking.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
MIT's cred with tech people is and has always been about the competence of their educators...That has not changed.
Hasn't it?
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
where he didn't have access, and took books which the library had which could only be checked out under strict controls
Bullsh*t. You're just making it up. Swartz was a research fellow at a university with a JSTOR account. That mean he had legal access to them.
Say, you're not part of Idiot America are you?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
There is nothing in the article that supports your conclusion. From the article:
So your outrage is what, that MIT isn't proceeding in the good faith that the government would bear the burden of protecting their staff's identities. Yea, that makes sense.
If somebody solicits your attention through forced indignation, its a sure sign you are talking to either a) a zealot or b) a drum beater looking for a pat on the back. Nobody thinks what happened to Aaron was reasonable (other than those fetid US attorneys and prosecutors who build their careers by prosecuting beyond reason or justice), but selling shit as Shinola just tarnishes the overall conversation around it, even if there is a grain of truth in what you are selling.
Surely you mean gay muslim atheists.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Yeah, on careful consideration, I think Swatz deserved 50 years in prison, and $1 million in fines. Not.
If you think that is a reasonable penalty, then I suppose you also think Oliver North paid the right price for his crimes as well.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Just shut the fuck up about this case already. The defence proved that Martin ambushed Zimmerman to punish him. Both people made mistakes but Martins proved fatal. If Martin was smart he would have just kept going and made it home safely. But he chose to confront Zimmerman. Stupid.
Gay muslim atheist paedophiles.
But don't call me Shirley.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'm not the AC, but no one drove Swartz to suicide, he killed himself. That is because he was mentally unstable to begin with. The only thing he is a victim of is depression and attendant poor decision making.
The government, of course, certainly didn't go easy on him, and their process of charging people with 2,358,976,543 things to get one charge to stick is horrendous. Still, that's exactly what they do to everyone. It's not like he was singled out for this treatment.
He knew he could get busted for this. He appears to have done so in the belief he'd get off easy. That was foolish.
Smacking a tiger in the face might be brave, but don't expect to not have your head bitten off for it. Activists in the past fully expected to be arrested for their actions and were prepared for it. That's why those activists are heroes. They did their actions in the expectation that they'd have to pay a price. There was only a minor technical difficulty in getting those documents. The real heroism is understanding the consequences and going forward anyway. He apparently did not understand the consequences.
Shirly? So... crosdressing gay Muslim atheist pedophiles
It has changed now that they have shown themselves to be as corrupt and self serving as every other education institution.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I don't think that mob justice is justified here as the people responsible most likely had no idea that their behaviour would lead to Aaron taking his own life. However, they were extremely malicious and the papers should be released (with their names redacted if deemed necessary) so that we can prevent this happening again.
America used to be proud of being "Land of the Free", but it now seems to be that secrecy is valued higher than people's lives. Release the information and let the chips fall where they may.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Threatening to charge my girlfriend with being an accessory and put my kid in the hellhole that is the Mass. foster system might drive me to suicide.
Which, ya know, the prosecutor did to Schwartz.
Do you think it is fair to threaten the to take away somebody else's child to get a conviction?
The people who care already care. The ones who don't aren't the type to read /.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
"The government, of course, certainly didn't go easy on him, "
MIT not 'The Government'. the DOJ wanted to drop the charges, MIT (the victims)wouldn't let them.
This is about MIT trying to control damage.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Dude, you know how low penalties for burglaries are? If Swartz was charged with Burglary, he could cop a plea deal and probably get a one year suspended sentence! Of course he did something much more sinister! He used a fuckin Computer! We can't have that. Only 3-letter-agencies can use computers to break laws!
Yes, cut what little science and engineering is being done in this country some more, good thinking.
Find a way to punish the people at MIT you abused the system. I suspect many of the teachers and students are just as appalled by these actions as you and I are.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Welcome to the Internet.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
From the article, MIT wants to protect the identity of the people involved and to make sure their network security is protected. They want to be able make redactions above and beyond what the government would normally redact in such a release of information under the Freedom of Information Act.
I'm pretty sure that everybody would like that opportunity when information is released, but why should MIT get preferential treatment? There are established laws and procedures on what should and should not be redacted. After all, these are the government's papers related to the government's investigation. They are not MIT's papers.
There are consequences to our actions and if MIT is embarrassed by what the government investigation showed or its employees said, well, that is a natural consequence of the actions they took. That is not to say they were or were not justified in those actions, just that all actions have consequences.
I don't think any sane person would have expected the kind of jail sentences that Aaron was facing for what were essentially victimless crimes. I don't think it is realistic to expect people to sacrifice their freedom (for decades) for the sake of enabling access to academic publications.
I expect that if he had been facing 30 days in jail, he most likely would have been prepared to stand trial and do the time.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
They will politely remind you the coverup always ends up worse than the crime.
thats a tall measure, but at the same token, they do have things to answer to.
The world is not black and white. If you view it as such you can niether make, nor observe progress.
he never broke into anything though. He was downloading what he already had access to, but not in the same amount. Its a bad analogy. Second, the machine in question was a system available to the public.
Its no worse than getting a free game in a pinball machine, except for a far more noble cause.
Lets also remember Rosa Parks was a criminal too, she was breaking a law sitting in the white's only section of the bus.
Then assume the worst, and he was a criminal, how serious is this crime, a real life burgler would never be charged 20-30 years first offense. Same as someone who robbed a bank at gunpoint. A rapist might get at most 7-10, assault with a deadly weapon against a police officer 15.
But unauthorized downloading 20-30? Doesn't that seem disproportionate.
Really? All it would have taken was a little research. He was in tech. He should have *known* the ridiculous shit they throw at "hacker-types". I know I do.
The practices of the Federal government are not surprising or opaque. They may suck, but it is suck that you can see every day by watching any news story about a federal case. Or did you think that they only used pages and pages of charges against mob bosses? Even mob bosses probably don't even do half the shit that they get charged for.
If you are some sort of hacktivist and you think you are "well-informed", but still think you will only get 30 days in jail, you really need to get a lot better informed. Yes, it could have come down that way, but its a lottery, a very, very unfavorable lottery.
Repeat after me: You do NOT put yourself in the gaze of a Federal prosecutor and expect to have your hand slapped. Getting noticed by one of them is one of the worst possible things you can do to your life. You had better understand that reams of charges and Federal PMITA prison is a serious possibility.
Really, that's just more authoritarian apologia. Swartz no doubt also knew that prosecutors love to go after child molesters, but he would have gotten less time for fucking a 14 year old girl (or boy) in the ass than what the DOJ was threatening him with for trespassing.
Your comments are great, only lifelong activists and hacktivists such as myself and others, don't believe the system to be broken, but simply purposely perverted to serve the needs of the super-rich.
At the latest Bilderberg meeting, who were some of the attendees, and what was the connection to owning the Internet (Web), Aaron Swartz and WikiLeaks?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-03/full-list-2013s-bilderberg-attendees
First, there was the primary person pushing for the extradition of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, Carl Bildt of Sweden.
Next, we have Robert Kaplan of Stratfor, the private intel outfit which was hacked by Anonymous, providing some most interesting and incriminating data.
Of course, we also see Alex Karp, of Palantir, the bunch who were prostituting themselves and tripping over themselves to run a disinformation campaign for the banksters against WikiLeaks.
Most telling, though, was a Harvard attendee, Lawrence Lessig, the dood and attorney for Aaron Swartz, the guy who was supposed to be Aaron's friend and mentor, the guy who brought Aaron into his fold so he could "watch over him" (or how about observe, compromise and interdict Aaron), the guy who waiting until after Aaron had committed suicide before he was planning to tell him that the federal prosecutors had backed away from their original onerous agenda of legally making Aaron give up any online computing for the remainder of his natural life?
Looking at that latest list of Bilderbergers, it is certainly not surprising to read this about MIT and company!
Wait, how is that qualified as not being broken?
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Court verdicts and punishments normally are irrational. At times the system has deliberately used irrationality as a supposed method of crime control. For example you might have ten people charged with exactly the same crime with very similar life histories. One defendant gets a fine. Most of the other defendants get fines of various sizes and one gets 30 days plus a fine. But the last defendant gets 1 year in jail plus 2 years probation with a hefty fine on top of that.
So just why would judges act that way? It clears the court calendar. When a lawyer tells a defendant that the punishment can be serious more people plea bargain and it saves the state time and money.
And we all understand that if you can not afford a really good defense, expert witnesses and investigators that you may be dead meat before the trial even starts. Those who can not come up with big money take a huge beating in the courts. It is a CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM. There are times I think that it is a worse crime to send a man to jail than any crime he could have possibly committed.
I can't think of any previous case that would have indicated the kind of jail-time he could have been facing, so I don't think he could have known about what would happen.
Ironically, the Feds wanted to drop the case, but it was MIT that was pushing for jail-time.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
No - there's a difference between manslaughter and murder. They should be punished by having to live with what they did and by being removed from MIT.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Corrupt and self serving are consistent with competent. Besides, there's no indication that the educators are any more or less self-serving than any other institution, nor that the behavior you call corrupt (but which isn't) has anything to do with the professors who will teach you rather than the administration who will not.
Driving people to suicide over trivial nonsense changes things, MIT is dead. Good teachers might or might not stop associating with MIT but the extremely excellent ones will probably leave over time. Anyone on the outside with half a clue and anything resembling a human heart hears "Aaron Swartz" each and every fucking time someone mentions MIT or a paper published from MIT comes their way.
Aaron Swartz has become MIT's unwanted brand and they manage to make themselves look even worse when they try to get rid of it.
Sure the paper-mill will roll on with plenty of people but any real aces who knows what happened won't go there because they don't want to be treated that way should they happen to run afoul of the administration. They know what to expect. Those who find out afterwards (likely as a warning or implied warning) will be limited by it and the implications of it no matter if it's sensible or applicable to themselves or not simply because they now know what to expect.
"Driving people to suicide" is not what they did. It's complete bullshit to lay that at the feet of MIT. Aaron Schwartz's own psychological problems made him unable to deal with the consequences of his actions, and his own lack of thinking through the possible consequences is largely responsible for the situation in which he found himself.
Imagine yourself in the shoes of the administrators at MIT. You have a history of Schwartz pulling files that you think are protected by copyright from your school's servers and publishing them without permission. You've asked him nicely to stop. Then you've warned him not so nicely to stop. Then you've blocked his access to the files so he'll stop. Then you find him in a closet with his computer plugged right into your server.
What are you going to do? Ask him nicely AGAIN? Or admit that he must be right because he BROKE THE LAW and lawbreakers have God on their side?
Seriously, what the hell would you have done?