MIT releases report on its actions in the Aaron Swartz case • Hacker News Board

Re: MIT releases report on its actions in the Aaron Swartz case

#41

Post by sadfaceunread » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 4:58 PM UTC

twotwotwo wrote: post #23

twotwotwo wrote: post #15

This report is necessarily missing important information: MIT is still intervening in a Wired reporter's FOIA request. You don't bother to block an information release unless something important would be released; that doesn't pass the smell test. Here's a statement from Swartz's partner: http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/56881327662/mit-report-is-a-w...

I have no reason to believe the authors aren't honest people who worked hard and firmly believe what they wrote, BTW. But they're also members of the MIT community, and Abelson at least is a professor first and investigator second; that's going to affect the investigation process and conclusion. That's why when there are big investigations in government, they often go hire an outsider as inspector general or independ…

Andrew Grosso.

Re: MIT releases report on its actions in the Aaron Swartz case

#42

Post by sadfaceunread » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 5:01 PM UTC

sadfaceunread wrote: post #25

The number of people in this comment thread who have not read this report in detail is outstandingly large. It is a 100+ page document and I've been reading it for longer than this link has been active and I still haven't finished reviewing finely enough to comment intelligently on the contents.

Update: Still on Part III. I am amazed that people are posting like they have gotten through it all.

Re: MIT releases report on its actions in the Aaron Swartz case

#43

Post by sp332 » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 5:03 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #21

My TLDR on this is that it all basically went haywire when MIT IS&T decided to call MIT Police for a machine downloading content on their network. They screwed up in many ways after that, but once someone unleashed a politically ambitious US Attorney on the case, it was kind of a lost cause. I don't believe universities should have police departments (or really that any private organizations should have police depart…

The "oh no, China!" thing is BS; traffic analysis would show that the china logins were (presumably) ssh portscans and not real connections.

You have no evidence of that; you just made it up out of thin air.

Odds would be that it was a MIT student scraping

Every large network, and there's no reason to exclude MIT, gets attacked by non-students on a regular basis. They can't just assume every portscan is innocuous.

Re: MIT releases report on its actions in the Aaron Swartz case

#44

Post by rayiner » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 5:05 PM UTC

larrys wrote: post #36

rdl wrote: post #21

My TLDR on this is that it all basically went haywire when MIT IS&T decided to call MIT Police for a machine downloading content on their network. They screwed up in many ways after that, but once someone unleashed a politically ambitious US Attorney on the case, it was kind of a lost cause. I don't believe universities should have police departments (or really that any private organizations should have police depart…

"University police essentially exist to cover up rapes on campus." Oh come on what kind of statement is that to make?

University police exist to insulate students from all sorts of crimes, rape just happens to be one of the crimes that happens on college campuses. Others include public intoxication, drug use, etc. There was a huge row a few years ago when Yale students were treated like commoners in a New Haven night club raid: http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/10/02/news/new_haven....

Re: MIT releases report on its actions in the Aaron Swartz case

#45

Post by rdl » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 5:07 PM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #38

larrys wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Great timing on the release as well since it will likely be forgotten and hidden due to another big event today." What is your suggestion on a better time to release? Or what do you think they should have done exactly?

Simple. Delay it for a few days. I would imagine MIT's administration reads the news. Even if they publicly announced a deadline, which I don't think they did; it's not like they couldn't offer a good rationale for delaying the release of the findings. My opinion hasn't changed. Given the date of release and their objection to the FOIA requests, the only things MIT really wants is to have this event forgotten and to…

The optimal thing for MIT would have been to release it after PFC Manning gets ~20 years (which is my prediction; not found guilty on aiding the enemy, but everything else). It's weird to do something slightly shifty (morning-of) but not optimally shifty.

Re: MIT releases report on its actions in the Aaron Swartz case

#46

Post by rayiner » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 5:08 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #21

My TLDR on this is that it all basically went haywire when MIT IS&T decided to call MIT Police for a machine downloading content on their network. They screwed up in many ways after that, but once someone unleashed a politically ambitious US Attorney on the case, it was kind of a lost cause. I don't believe universities should have police departments (or really that any private organizations should have police depart…

> I don't believe universities should have police departments

Said like someone who has never been to Hyde Park: http://chicagomaroon.com/2012/05/25/a-brief-history-of-the-u....

The times I've wandered down there, I wouldn't have minded if U Chicago had a private army...

Re: MIT releases report on its actions in the Aaron Swartz case

#47

Post by mpyne » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 5:11 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #37

danso wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for MIT's police, but at my campus, campus police were not armed with guns and had just started debating the use of Tasers...so, I agree with you. I'd also argue that having campus police is not mutually exclusive of fostering the creative mischief that you mention...in fact, I'd argue that having campus police is the best way to maintain that creative mischief. Again, a police close to its constituents…

Yeah -- we probably agree. I'd like early, lightweight intervention; I just don't think they should be from sworn law enforcement officers, who generally have a duty to report/intervene. The ideal would be to have peers as the first line of intervention, followed by RAs and other sort-of-peers, and then IMO people who are not law enforcement but are somehow trained. Part of what happened at MIT was Susan Hockfield, w…

Every police officer I've ever passed on the highway while breaking the speed limit has apparently not had a duty to report.

In the off-case you do need to arrest someone on campus you need sworn police, and while it's possible to detain someone for a "real" cop to come arrest them, you end up that way with situations where someone who just needs to be separated from the campus population for a bit, instead ends up in city lockup with all that implies.

Cops are allowed to use their best judgment when handling civil and criminal complaints (this is, after all, one of the things Arizona was trying to "fix" with their anti-immigration laws, was to make enforcement of those law mandatory on their cops).

Re: MIT releases report on its actions in the Aaron Swartz case

#48

Post by chaostheory » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 5:11 PM UTC

larrys wrote: post #33

bguthrie wrote: post #5

Those of us who believe MIT deserves some blame for subsequent events do so because they could have asked the prosecution to desist, as JSTOR did, or at least downgrade the charges to a misdemeanor, but chose not to. That amounted to an implicit endorsement of the prosecution, which would have been difficult to pursue without the support of either MIT or JSTOR. The report appears to find that MIT should not have chan…

"Those of us who believe MIT deserves some blame for subsequent events" To be clear do you mean that MIT deserves blame for the suicide?

Correct me if I'm wrong but they deserve blame for initiating the destruction of someone's life (jail time and fines in the millions) and not doing anything to stop it like JSTOR did. Yes not everyone offs themselves when their lives are ruined, but there are a lot of people who do. Now they're essentially trying to be free of any blame by releasing a CYA document during a time when everyone's attention will be on something else.

Even if Aaron was still alive, the things MIT did would be no less wrong.

Re: MIT releases report on its actions in the Aaron Swartz case

#49

Post by rdl » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 5:12 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #46

rdl wrote: post #21

My TLDR on this is that it all basically went haywire when MIT IS&T decided to call MIT Police for a machine downloading content on their network. They screwed up in many ways after that, but once someone unleashed a politically ambitious US Attorney on the case, it was kind of a lost cause. I don't believe universities should have police departments (or really that any private organizations should have police depart…

> I don't believe universities should have police departments Said like someone who has never been to Hyde Park: http://chicagomaroon.com/2012/05/25/a-brief-history-of-the-u... . The times I've wandered down there, I wouldn't have minded if U Chicago had a private army...

They shouldn't need to be sworn LEO for that, just security guards, same as any private business would have for protecting property and personnel.

Re: MIT releases report on its actions in the Aaron Swartz case

#50

Post by vabmit » Tue, Jul 30, 2013, 5:14 PM UTC

jpmattia wrote: post #27

vabmit wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The MITs neutrality apparently extends so far that they > don't even bother with what kind of police forces are > strolling around on campus. Inter-agency task forces have become common in American law enforcement since 9/11. Many people have multiple affiliations. For example, I have a friend that is part of the New England Electronic Crimes Task Force. He's a Secret Service agent and does Secret Service details.…

> Inter-agency task forces have become common in American law enforcement since 9/11. Still, you call for a Cambridge detective, the Secret Service also shows up, and that doesn't cause major head scratching? I wish the summary had expanded on that part. FD: I'm an alum. Edit: From the report: For the same reasons, the MIT Police sought forensic assistance from a detective in the Cambridge Police Department who had e…

>Still, you call for a Cambridge detective, the Secret Service also shows up, and that doesn't cause major head scratching?

No. If something similar happened in Boston and you called BPD, you'd probably get a BPD detective that does burglaries for the break in and a BPD detective that does computer crimes for the laptop - someone like my friend (who is a Boston PD detective that has an "extra" Secret Service credential by way of his assignment to the New England Electronic Crimes Task Force).

The New England Electronic Crimes Task Force is funded and run by the Secret Service. My understanding is that is primarily for jurisdictional reasons. But, it is also because way back in the day (300baud dail-up era) the majority of computer crime was related to the anti-counter fitting mandate that Secret Service has (like fake credit cards, fake vital documents, and fake currency). Computer crime was a new thing and most people didn't have PC's yet (or computer skills) so there wasn't an agency that was a great fit. The FBI didn't want it. So, in many places Secret Service got it.

Any computer crime in Mass is will almost always have Secret Service involved. New Hampshire and Maine are a little different. They have their own state level task forces/labs. So, any computer crime there will almost always have the State Police involved. The Secret Service involvement in Mass. is like the State Police involvement in those states. It's not an escalation. It's just a matter of where the resources (people with comp. forensic training and equipment) were developed and are located.