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How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture

nytimes.com

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Re: How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture

#21

Post by mc32 »

Anechoic wrote: post #14
tchalla wrote: post #5

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 don't think this is only MIT. It's just a new ecosystem growing up. I remember when spoofing a superior's email was fun. I remember when accessing other people's emails via misconfiguration, etc. was 'fun'. I remember when very few paces had any kind of firewall.

None of these things are true any longer. As things mature, they take on a new importance and are treated as such.

When the first aeroplanes were around, did one need to get a pilot's license (no), could you buzz buildings (yes)? When the first autos came about, where there any traffic regulations? Nope. They were both freewheeling till they took on importance.

Re: How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture

#22

Post by MichaelSalib »

wpietri wrote: post #19
MichaelSalib wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The surprise isn't that they got their easily from their nearby office. It's that they so quickly decided to leave their office.

If I were a USSS officer specializing in computer crime and MIT called me after discovering a laptop that was used in an ongoing crime, I'd run like hell because I wouldn't want decisions to be made by the local Cambridge cops since they don't know anything about computer crimes. I mean, if you think the laptop represents a crime scene, you really don't want non-specialists handling it right?

Re: How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture

#23

Post by calibraxis »

Anechoic wrote: post #14
tchalla wrote: post #5

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…

Brewster Kahle was at MIT in 1982. I get the impression that MIT was gradually locked down. For example, prof Jerry Lettvin said, "Up to about 1950's there was a kind of freedom in the scientific world — certainly at MIT — that allowed you to play games of all sorts. As two or three decades went by MIT was taken over by managers." (http://www.tengerresearch.com/learn/interviews/jeromelettvin...)

And as the internet became important to business interests, it's not that surprising that these crimes became more harshly punished. (Though there's the argument that these punishments should be relaxed in some cases because elite CEOs and technologists have been guilty of them as part of their educations. Like Steve Jobs, Tufte, etc. Not unlike presidents getting away with drug use. And there's a conflict between businesses about intellectual property; Google probably would be happy if they could open up books.)

Re: How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture

#24

Post by SagelyGuru »

Why did MIT call in the secret service right away?

The answer must lie with certain Charles M. Vest who, in 1990, became president of MIT and served in that position until December 2004. He is now MIT professor and president emeritus.

He also happens to be a key member of the board of trustees of Ithaka, the owners of JSTOR.

I would not hold out my breath for MIT investigation criticising its own President Emeritus.

Re: How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture

#25

Post by fredgrott »

SagelyGuru wrote: post #24

Why did MIT call in the secret service right away? The answer must lie with certain Charles M. Vest who, in 1990, became president of MIT and served in that position until December 2004. He is now MIT professor and president emeritus. He also happens to be a key member of the board of trustees of Ithaka, the owners of JSTOR. I would not hold out my breath for MIT investigation criticising its own President Emeritus.

When the email intrusion was investigated for that top military general was not secret service called in conjunction with the FBI? Although I think Secret Service and FBI overlap in covering domestic computer break-ins

Re: How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture

#26

Post by [deleted] »

tchalla wrote: post #5

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…

[deleted]

Re: How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture

#27

Post by mjn »

SagelyGuru wrote: post #24

Why did MIT call in the secret service right away? The answer must lie with certain Charles M. Vest who, in 1990, became president of MIT and served in that position until December 2004. He is now MIT professor and president emeritus. He also happens to be a key member of the board of trustees of Ithaka, the owners of JSTOR. I would not hold out my breath for MIT investigation criticising its own President Emeritus.

I think it's a bigger change than with JSTOR specifically, so I'm skeptical that connection is the root cause. Another example, completely unrelated to IP, is that MIT used to quasi-tolerate tunnel/roof exploration, and in any case certainly didn't report students to the cops for it. But now they charge students with felonies for doing it: http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N4/hackers.html

Re: How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture

#28

Post by jonhendry »

wpietri wrote: post #19
MichaelSalib wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The surprise isn't that they got their easily from their nearby office. It's that they so quickly decided to leave their office.

If MIT does research related to military/defense technology, the possibility that such information was involved is probably enough to get the Feds interested, especially in the beginning.

Re: How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture

#29

Post by chaz »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #16
waterlesscloud wrote: post #6

"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.

Per his own LinkedIn [1], Michael Picket, the Secret Service agent, is a member of the New England Electronic Crimes Task Force Forensic Laboratory. Their website [2] has long role for the lab, but it a) supports local law enforcement (like Cambridge PD), and b) includes seven area universities (Harvard, Dartmouth, and Babson are the three mentioned; MIT was not, but doesn't necessarily exclude them).

My guess is it wasn't so much the Secret Service getting involved, but this DHS agency mandated by the USA PATRIOT act [3] made themselves available to major local organizations. Wouldn't be surprised if ECTF spent its first couple of years just meeting individual orgs one at a time for meets/greets.

"Have a computer crime that isn't just your usual Craigslist scam? Give Mike over at the Boston ECTF a call, and he can help you out."

[1] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/michael-pickett/15/722/660 [2] http://www.secretservice.gov/ectf_newengland.shtml [3] http://www.secretservice.gov/ectf.shtml

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