11–20 of 32 posts
"At 9:44 a.m. the M.I.T. police were called in; by 10:30 a.m., the Cambridge police were en route, and by 11 a.m., Michael Pickett, a Secret Service agent and expert on computer crime, was on the scene. " Less than 1.5 hours from campus cops to Secret Service on scene .
In order to understand why this incident was even more shocking than usual, one just needs to read this snippet The arrest shocked friends of Mr. Swartz, as well as M.I.T. alumni. Brewster Kahle, an M.I.T. graduate and founder of the digital library Internet Archive, where Mr. Swartz gave programming assistance, wrote: “When I was at M.I.T., if someone went to hack the system, say by downloading databases to play wit…
As an alum, I don't see a change in ethos. During my time there ('91 to '95) things were open, but if you were doing something that the institute considered improper they asked you to stop. If you persisted in the behavior, they escalated the response. In my four years there, I witnessed this philosophy applied to drinking, trespassing in forbidden places (roofs for example), harassing behavior and yes, behavior on the network.
Students often "explored" the network (myself included) but it was possible to go too far.
(no, I don't think Swartz's transgressions warranted multiple years in prison and the whole situation is a tragedy)
"At 9:44 a.m. the M.I.T. police were called in; by 10:30 a.m., the Cambridge police were en route, and by 11 a.m., Michael Pickett, a Secret Service agent and expert on computer crime, was on the scene. " Less than 1.5 hours from campus cops to Secret Service on scene .
In order to understand why this incident was even more shocking than usual, one just needs to read this snippet The arrest shocked friends of Mr. Swartz, as well as M.I.T. alumni. Brewster Kahle, an M.I.T. graduate and founder of the digital library Internet Archive, where Mr. Swartz gave programming assistance, wrote: “When I was at M.I.T., if someone went to hack the system, say by downloading databases to play wit…
I wonder if this incident makes current students wary about the change in MIT ethos. As an alum, I don't see a change in ethos. During my time there ('91 to '95) things were open, but if you were doing something that the institute considered improper they asked you to stop. If you persisted in the behavior, they escalated the response. In my four years there, I witnessed this philosophy applied to drinking, trespassi…
I did find an article from 2007 about a case that raised questions about how the university handled hacking (http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N4/hackers.html), and a follow-up from 2008 titled, "Hacking tradition under fire?" (http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N66/hacking.html)
So clearly there's been some discussion a sea change in the culture at MIT. If true -- if it is even perceived to be true -- that will really be a problem for the school, as its status among technical universities owes a lot to its cultural respect for all forms of hacking.
"At 9:44 a.m. the M.I.T. police were called in; by 10:30 a.m., the Cambridge police were en route, and by 11 a.m., Michael Pickett, a Secret Service agent and expert on computer crime, was on the scene. " Less than 1.5 hours from campus cops to Secret Service on scene .
The Secret Service office in Boston is a 2 mile drive from MIT. Once you decide to bring in the police, it makes sense that they'll contact specialist law enforcement that focus on computer crimes, especially since the Secret Service is so close.
"'M.I.T. had to identify the hacker and assist with his apprehension in order to prevent further abuse,' the government argued in court." Or they could have just tried talking to him and giving him a verbal warning.
What would a verbal warning have been useful for? He already knew his behavior was unwanted, and that's what verbal warnings are for. He wasn't stupid, so the verbal warnings wouldn't have been the first time that he learned that there were actual laws against unauthorized network access. Besides, what's there to warn him about, he's 100% right in what he was doing, wasn't he? To hear it from the hacktivists, he did…