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Please Stop Attacking MIT's Network

blog.achernya.com

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Re: Please Stop Attacking MIT's Network

#151

Post by thefreeman »

vor_ wrote: post #94
BrokenPipe wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but Aaron's activism resulted in him being bullied until he took his own life. It's a difficult topic. If you assume that ddos from a collective is similar to blocking a road by a collective during a strike or manifestation then I must say that some people won't be able to get to work that day and in general nobody would get hurt. This sort of pacific interruption raises awareness, which by itself is very import…

This "pacific interruption", as you delicately describe it, hurts innocent teachers and students who had nothing to do with the alleged bullying of Swartz, who was already suicidal prior to his prosecution. Regardless of what one may think of computer laws, there is no proven link between his suicide and the criminal charges he faced, and any claims to the contrary have so far been entirely speculative and coming fro…

I've been trying to stay out of this, but I gotta agree with you hear. For all we know, Aaron got dumped by his girlfriend last week or something.

People are just using his suicide to turn him into a martyr for a cause they believe in, and its disturbing.

Re: Please Stop Attacking MIT's Network

#152

Post by simonster »

leepowers wrote: post #54

My guess is someone wants to "send a message" to MIT and so they're attacking the most vulnerable, most exploitable part of MIT's infrastructure: a non-critical system run by student volunteers. I doubt it's anything personal against Alex or other MIT students. Imagine if a thousand members of Anonymous staged a non-violent protest at MIT, marching across campus. This would inconvenience some students, possibly even…

> My guess is someone wants to "send a message" to MIT and so they're attacking the most vulnerable, most exploitable part of MIT's infrastructure: a non-critical system run by student volunteers. I doubt it's anything personal against Alex or other MIT students.

But they're not sending a message to MIT, because the systems they are attacking don't matter to the faculty or administration. They're just creating a mess for the student volunteers.

Re: Please Stop Attacking MIT's Network

#153

Post by kevinskii »

darkarmani wrote: post #29

Please let me read your blog page without needed to turn on lots of javascript. The page is blank without whitelisting JS content.

Please let me read relevant discussion without having to scroll through a two page meta-debate. If you have an issue with the blog's presentation, kindly send it to the author directly.

Re: Please Stop Attacking MIT's Network

#154

Post by analog »

thefreeman wrote: post #148
analog wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"no proven link between his suicide and the criminal charges he faced, and any claims to the contrary have so far been entirely speculative and coming from people who never met the guy" Please stop spreading lies and disinformation. 'killed by the government,' father tells mourners [1] 'depressed about his case/upcoming trial, but we had no idea what he was going through was this painful.' from his mother [2] [1] htt…

Your links have absolutely no proof in them. A grieving Father's statement on who he blames for his sons death is not proof.

"..coming from people who never met the guy"

They clearly show that the statement from vor_ which I quoted is incorrect.

Re: Please Stop Attacking MIT's Network

#156

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

danielweber wrote: post #28
latj wrote: post #14

I do not condone the attacks that may be occurring. However, if you are trying to get someone's attention- it makes more sense to get the attention of the students rather than the administration. Today's MIT students are tomorrow's death-ray designers, robot-maintainers, and policy makers. They are tomorrow's administration- and they may not have made up their minds yet about ethical issues of intellectual property o…

As a first guess, MIT students are very unlikely to react to someone causing them trouble by become more sympathetic with the people causing them trouble. Especially if the message of the attackers is "people who break into the network shouldn't have the cops called on them." (Although we should wait for Hal Abelson's report to find out what happened behind the scenes.)

How do you know that MIT students aren't the ones leading the charge? I wouldn't be surprised to learn it.

Re: Please Stop Attacking MIT's Network

#157

Post by bzbarsky »

leepowers wrote: post #95
Permit wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it perfectly acceptable to inconvenience people from their studies? Man, this kind of attitude makes me want to encourage harsher penalties on people who pull this bullshit. You do your movement no favours when you inconvenience the same people you want on your side.

I'm not a member of any movement, Anonymous or otherwise. The point I was trying to raise: civil disobedience is disruptive by nature and will inconvenience and annoy - but it is far from immoral. Why should a DDoS be considered any differently? The methods of physical and virtual protest are different but their ends are the same.

But methods matter, unless you want to argue that the ends justify the means. Which would be a bit of a stretch in this case, by the way, since the most likely ends range somewhere between nothing and causing a bunch of problems for people who have had nothing to do with this whole story.

Re: Please Stop Attacking MIT's Network

#158

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

FireBeyond wrote: post #100
btilly wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if it turns out, after all, that MIT was in some way responsible -- that's still very unclear In the Boston Globe, Aaron's lawyer says that a suggested plea deal with probation and no actual jail sentence was rejected by MIT, and that played a part in the prosecutor pushing for harsher judgement. If there is any truth in that, then there is evidence that MIT did indeed play enough of a role to have some of the respon…

So MIT should have had reasonable cause to believe that there was a risk of suicide should they decide to prosecute a case? And that makes them responsible? Is that a road we want to go down?

Of course not, MIT administration's alleged behavior was terrible even in absence of Swartz's suicide.
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