Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
The Boston.com article says that MIT's side of things is that they don't want the files blocked, just redacted.
It does express surprise that they've waited until so late in the process to do this though, especially when details like names are usually removed anyway. It is odd.
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.
Exactly, because when someone installs their own equipment in someone else's closet, tries to hide the fact that they installed the equipment, carfs down oodles and oodles of documents which the general public did not have access to because THEY felt they had the right to decide how the information is used, that person bears no responsibility for their actions.
It's all on the backs of those who caught the person doing something they didn't have a right to do, not the person committing the crime.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
No one is arguing that Aaron Swartz own actions did not contribute to what happened to him. It was suicide, after all. Way to use the all-or-nothing fallacy. Someone is arguing that MIT should not have gotten the government involved, and that there is a pattern of behavior here by them and their employees that should not be rewarded and should, in fact, be punished. I happen to think letting everyone know what these people did is punishment enough.
You're right, Aaron should have been held responsible for what he did. However, what he did amounted to the digital equivalent of checking out too many library books. He should have been held responsible for that and made to pay back damages to the victim(s).
However, I don't believe that his "crimes" should have involved any jail-time whatsoever and I'm surprised by anyone who did think that Aaron was a danger to society and should have been locked up for years.
So, with people being held responsible for their beliefs and actions, why is MIT not just releasing the information and instead weaseling around the court system?
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Don't worry little guy, Eric Holder is on it. He's a stand up all for justice kind of guy.
A few have done reverse FOIA:
http://www.annarbor.com/vielmetti/foia-friday-reverse-foia/
eg confidential commercial information vs defective parts
employment records
individual's privacy
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
Using a sledgehammer to swat a fly is bad, not because the fly doesn't need to be swatted.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Rare old books are a limited resource. If he took those, nobody else could use them. That would be stealing.
Checking out too many books from the library means those books aren't available for other library patrons to check out. That's rude.
What he did was weaker still. He violated a copyright license. JSTOR had negotiated monopoly rights to copy those articles, and he violated their rules. He probably didn't deprive anyone of anything, though he may have damaged JSTOR by making it harder for them to negotiate rights in the future.
If not, then apparently breaking and entering isn't a crime in your eyes, nor is stealing something you don't have access to.
where have you been the last year or so? the government is breaking and entering our digital lives at a much deeper level and much wider level of population (ie, EVERYONE).
they are not punished for their 'digital break-ins'. why should citizens, then? it seems its ok, in today's world. if the gov can get away with it, then it must be legal. RIGHT?
doublestandard much?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Er, no. In the situation you mention, by removing the books he would have been depriving other people of being able to use them, and (perhaps) harming the books themselves. Not particularly analogous at all. (And this is important, as being able to differentiate between physical and intellectual property is pretty central to having a meaningful discussion of intellectual property.)
He did violate access rules. He *might* have been intending to make the material publicly available - this is broadly asserted, but also disputed.
He also did kill himself.
The response to his actions is what is being questioned, and it even this response mostly is getting attention because of his suicide, the response was pretty crazy and it deserves attention.
It was not checking out too many books
Right, because Aaron being in possession of them did not stop anyone else from reading them.
He deliberately went into the library, where he didn't have access
He did have access, MIT's network is open and anyone who has access to MIT's network can access JSTOR.
took books which the library had which could only be checked out under strict controls
So strict that they give them out in PDF form to anyone who asks.
Palm trees and 8
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.
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.
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
Yes, Minister: the only show that is probably more relevant now than when it aired in the 1980s.
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?
What he did wast the equivalent of going to closed library, smashing smashing in the window, and then throwing books out the window.
We can quantify the damage done when a window is smashed. Books that are removed from a library must be replaced or they will be unavailable to patrons; that can be quantified as well.
Can you quantify the damage Aaron did? I suspect it is somewhere around "13 cents in electricity costs."
Palm trees and 8
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
Not really.
If we want to tune the analogy further, it'd be more akin to picking the lock on the library door to get out-of-hours access and then copying loads of books and letting anyone read those copies. (I don't know if he actually caused any significant damage or not).
Obviously, there's a lot of difference between moving physical books and digitally copying stuff.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
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
So .. breaking and entering will get you, what? 4 months?
Take a moment to go through the list of charges and tally them up until you hit 35 years and ask yourself if justice was being served. The punishment should fit the crime and, when it doesn't, we need to revisit our laws and sentencing guidelines.
And no need to call anyone an idiot -- this is one of those issues that divides people and when they feel passionate they respond passionately. There's room for passion in debates like these because it's a powerful motivator and a catalyst for discussion. But let's not forget that the discussion is the important part.
You're an idiot.
Did you notice the much of the government is also up in arms about what the NSA did?
And
Convenient that you forget about the breaking and entering and then illegal access to the computer system.
You idiots needs to realize it is not about the docs, it was about the crimes he committed to gain access to the docs.
Wow, did somebody just learn a new word? Good for you!
I can only assume you're still pretty young, or haven't watched politics very much. Politicians spend a lot of time being very dismayed, concerned, disappointed, and outraged when their opponents do certain things, and then justify those same acts when they're the ones who get caught. When they do something they shouldn't have, they create a law saying they can do that now. If they propose a law and everyone gets upset, they drop it and then propose a slightly watered down version in 6 months or so. If they make a significant promise to get elected, they discover it's just too difficult to keep it once they get elected. If they actually repeal a bad law (or don't renew it), they often find a way to get at least a watered down version in at some later date, or let their opponent re-enact it when they're back in power.
Given all the antics politicians regularly engage in, why should I give any credit to them because they've formed yet another committee? Let's see what the results are. I'll put my money that the TSA will still be around in three years, and will be doing more ground traffic checks.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
They will politely remind you the coverup always ends up worse than the crime.
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!