71–80 of 149 posts
Being a chronic depressed and chronic pain sufferer, I wonder how much problems like these contributed to him killing himself. I think about killing myself everyday. I haven't done it yet because I am a devout Catholic and I believe I can be in a worst place (or better) after death.
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Realistically, he could have just gone ~anywhere outside the US and probably wouldn't have been pursued too aggressively.
Accused of a crime thought so horrific it warrants 30 years in prison, I doubt that. The US has grabbed people on the other side of the world for lesser charges.
Which makes this whole thing even sadder. It's entirely possible his (great) IP law firm could have gotten him off, or at least ended up with a brief or suspended sentence. Even though worst case he was facing 50 years, it would have almost certainly been far less. But I am sure he was depressed and so involved in it that he wasn't thinking about it rationally.
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He wasn't a member of the MIT Community, and was in a wiring closet. If they'd charged him with trespassing, I would have contributed to his legal defense fund and bought him a drink when he finished his ~30 days of community service or whatever. Minimal harm, minimal foul. I did way worse stuff from my machines at MIT when I was an undergrad. I actually was called to testify in a federal case over it, but told them…
Secret Service was involved prior to MIT knowing who was web-scraping JSTOR. Does MIT normally call the Secret Service when they find Laptops w/Hard Drives in wiring closets, particularly unlocked wiring closets that Homeless people were known to store their stuff in? This is all very strange. From: http://chronicle.com/article/Rogue-Downloaders-Arrest/128439... "On January 4, MIT police officers were notified that a…
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What would cause an MIT IT executive (and this would have to be an executive decision) to bring in the Secret Service for someone running curl against academic journal website. I have done precisely that type of thing dozens of times in the last 10 years, and it would have never occurred to me that I was doing anything wrong. And yes, I always had to login first through a browser, figure out how the hell the cookie w…
What made this one different from their perspective? He was downloading millions of articles, well more than the rest of the campus all put together. That caught their attention. And they kept on stopping him, by locking out his MAC addresses. And he kept on working around the ways they were stopping him. and it would have never occurred to me that I was doing anything wrong When you are going into a wiring closet we…
I disagree. You know you're doing something that isn't allowed and will get you into trouble, but you might feel that it's morally right to do so.
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What would cause an MIT IT executive (and this would have to be an executive decision) to bring in the Secret Service for someone running curl against academic journal website. I have done precisely that type of thing dozens of times in the last 10 years, and it would have never occurred to me that I was doing anything wrong. And yes, I always had to login first through a browser, figure out how the hell the cookie w…
What made this one different from their perspective? He was downloading millions of articles, well more than the rest of the campus all put together. That caught their attention. And they kept on stopping him, by locking out his MAC addresses. And he kept on working around the ways they were stopping him. and it would have never occurred to me that I was doing anything wrong When you are going into a wiring closet we…
I realize that sneaking into Wiring Closets and plugging in a laptop to get onto a privileged vlan isn't something sanctioned by the school. If I was caught, I probably would expect to get my hand slapped if I'm a student, and if I'm not a member of the community maybe even charged with trespass (though, I understand at MIT they dropped those charges)
But if I was a student, I wouldn't (and didn't) consider that behavior to be "criminal."
But what I find astonishing about the MIT case is that they pulled the secret service into the case (A) Just because someone was webscraping from a laptop and (B) Before they knew that the person doing the webscraping wasn't a student.
If it were me in charge of IT - I would have probably just asked campus security to lock the closet moving forward, make sure there are locks on all the wiring closets, and replace the laptop with a sign explaining campus-security had confiscated the laptop, and please go have a conversation with them to pick it up - return of Laptop being subject to (A) Apology for slamming JSTOR, and (B) Return of all the JSTOR IP.
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What made this one different from their perspective? He was downloading millions of articles, well more than the rest of the campus all put together. That caught their attention. And they kept on stopping him, by locking out his MAC addresses. And he kept on working around the ways they were stopping him. and it would have never occurred to me that I was doing anything wrong When you are going into a wiring closet we…
> When you are going into a wiring closet wearing a mask over your face to hide your identity, you pretty much know you are "doing something wrong." I disagree. You know you're doing something that isn't allowed and will get you into trouble, but you might feel that it's morally right to do so.
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What made this one different from their perspective? He was downloading millions of articles, well more than the rest of the campus all put together. That caught their attention. And they kept on stopping him, by locking out his MAC addresses. And he kept on working around the ways they were stopping him. and it would have never occurred to me that I was doing anything wrong When you are going into a wiring closet we…
You transposed my text a bit. The "wrong" reference was to me webscraping journals via curl. I realize that sneaking into Wiring Closets and plugging in a laptop to get onto a privileged vlan isn't something sanctioned by the school. If I was caught, I probably would expect to get my hand slapped if I'm a student, and if I'm not a member of the community maybe even charged with trespass (though, I understand at MIT t…
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You transposed my text a bit. The "wrong" reference was to me webscraping journals via curl. I realize that sneaking into Wiring Closets and plugging in a laptop to get onto a privileged vlan isn't something sanctioned by the school. If I was caught, I probably would expect to get my hand slapped if I'm a student, and if I'm not a member of the community maybe even charged with trespass (though, I understand at MIT t…
Please read the indictment. It wasn't like he walked in on Monday to do this and they called the police on Tuesday. They were repeatedly trying to keep him out, and he knew it, and he kept on trying to get back in anyway. This went on for months . When they finally had a piece of physical evidence they called the Secret Service because they could get the guy. And he fled when campus police approached him.
But someone at MIT wanted to call in the feds. Make case hard and tough and send someone to prison for causing them inconvenience. This was a decision someone there made.