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The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video]

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Re: The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video]

#71

Post by voteforchange »

tedunangst wrote: post #70
voteforchange wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a debate worth having. My opening salvo: The point at which individuals and corporations use of cryptography can be denigrated as, "Making it hard to detect terrorist activity" is the exact point at which it becomes impossible for the individual or the corporation to meaningfully engage with law enforcement. The escalation of the rhetoric surrounding e-crimes blurs and negates our ability not only to judge app…

> Its very hard to even tell when and if a crime has been committed. So what's your suggestion? Ignore the intrusion until it goes away?

If I had the ear of middle management in America's security service I'd suggest a different approach to evangelizing at a grassroots level. Let's stop pretending startups can ignore the law and make knowledge of the law a distinguishing mark in the pedigree of a startup hacker.

Re: The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video]

#72

Post by Zigurd »

afarrell wrote: post #65
Zigurd wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That report is a shameful whitewash

Do you have sources to contradict it?

Contradict what? The report amounts to "It wasn't our fault because, except for the people we won't name, and won't say what they told law enforcement, nobody here told Aaron to kill himself."

That doesn't need to be contradicted to call it weak sauce and whitewash.

Re: The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video]

#73

Post by Zigurd »

tzs wrote: post #67
voteforchange wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about you, but I always call the FBI when I leave my facebook open at the public library: http://www.avclub.com/article/updated-fbi-arrests-man-suspec...

What was happening at MIT was hardly equivalent to someone leaving their Facebook page open at the library. They had some unknown person massively exceeding the limits of what they intended to offer to the public. When they used blocking methods that would stop most people, he evaded them. When they continued trying to stop him, he continued evading. Then he entered an equipment room off limits to the public, wired e…

The supposed victim, JSTOR, dropped their civil case. If it had affected them materially, they would have been wrong to do so.

Re: The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video]

#74

Post by voteforchange »

tedunangst wrote: post #70
voteforchange wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a debate worth having. My opening salvo: The point at which individuals and corporations use of cryptography can be denigrated as, "Making it hard to detect terrorist activity" is the exact point at which it becomes impossible for the individual or the corporation to meaningfully engage with law enforcement. The escalation of the rhetoric surrounding e-crimes blurs and negates our ability not only to judge app…

> Its very hard to even tell when and if a crime has been committed. So what's your suggestion? Ignore the intrusion until it goes away?

most lawyers I know, know how to party rock.

Re: The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video]

#75

Post by idlewords »

sanoli wrote: post #56
ionised wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how many then? 5? 10? 20? How many less than the figure that was being thrown around as his possible sentence is he supposedly a disappointment to us all for avoiding? Oh, I forgot, he can be an activist from prison? Nothing to worry about then! How many on here would honestly do it for even 5 years? I wouldn't. I'd sooner kill myself out of spite.

I wouldnt kill myself because of 5 years out of the 40 or so that i probably have left.

Or at the least you might wait until you were convicted and sentenced.

Re: The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video]

#76

Post by tptacek »

ionised wrote: post #44
idlewords wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He would never have been sent to jail for 38 years.

So how many then? 5? 10? 20? How many less than the figure that was being thrown around as his possible sentence is he supposedly a disappointment to us all for avoiding? Oh, I forgot, he can be an activist from prison? Nothing to worry about then! How many on here would honestly do it for even 5 years? I wouldn't. I'd sooner kill myself out of spite.

DOJ strongly suggested they'd be shooting for a 5+ year sentence, which according to the guidelines would have required them to establish losses (stipulating that Swartz had succeeded in his ultimate plan, unimpeded by the countermeasures JSTOR and MIT erected) in the millions of dollars.

Orin Kerr suggests that the likely outcome would have been "anything from probation to a few years", depending on where the judge landed on the financial damages.

Popehat has a really good take (as usual) on the circumstances faced by Aaron Swartz, but it's not as specific as Kerr's, which is the most detailed breakdown I've seen available on what actually happened with the case:

http://volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-aa...

Re: The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video]

#77

Post by tptacek »

tzs wrote: post #67
voteforchange wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about you, but I always call the FBI when I leave my facebook open at the public library: http://www.avclub.com/article/updated-fbi-arrests-man-suspec...

What was happening at MIT was hardly equivalent to someone leaving their Facebook page open at the library. They had some unknown person massively exceeding the limits of what they intended to offer to the public. When they used blocking methods that would stop most people, he evaded them. When they continued trying to stop him, he continued evading. Then he entered an equipment room off limits to the public, wired e…

The Secret Service is routinely called in for complicated computer crime cases; they are historically the federal government's computer crimes expertise center.

The fact that the case was prosecuted federally is notable, but the USSS's involvement isn't.

Re: The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video]

#78

Post by tptacek »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #42
patcon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might have sympathized with Atwood's comment before watching the doc, but the film goes into the misery Swartz felt even on the first day of working in the Conde Nast office. He literally barred himself in a bathroom stall and wept. For a unique character like Swartz, the disempowerment of the prison system must have literally seemed a living nightmare.

Surely he knew prison would be a likely outcome of his actions? If he was not prepared to do jail time (like hundreds of other hackers and activists had done without a whimper), then perhaps he should have recalculated what he was doing. For someone so intelligent, it seems he didn't fully understand the implications of his own actions, which is puzzling on several different levels. While his suicide was a tragedy, i…

Suicidal depression can be intractable, and we should be careful about assertions of how avoidable any given suicide is. This is a motherfucker of a group of diseases we're talking about.

Re: The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video]

#79

Post by tptacek »

Zigurd wrote: post #63
afarrell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those curious about MIT's role should 1) Read Prof Hal Abelson's report http://swartz-report.mit.edu/ 2) Remember that a prosecutor does not serve the person who reported a crime or prompted an investigation. A prosecutor serves The State http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1423

That report is a shameful whitewash

You're accusing Hal Abelson of deliberately deceiving the public? Or is there a better way to interpret what you wrote?

Re: The internet’s own boy: the story of Aaron Swartz [video]

#80

Post by Zigurd »

tptacek wrote: post #79
Zigurd wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That report is a shameful whitewash

You're accusing Hal Abelson of deliberately deceiving the public? Or is there a better way to interpret what you wrote?

If you look at my response below, the report does not have to be an outright lie to be a whitewash. It can deceive by omission, for example. The headline of CNN's coverage of the report was "We did not target Aaron." That's true-ish. There's a lot of room between there and the truth, which is more like "We failed to stand up to stop a bad investigation and prosecution, and now we're dodging responsibility."

Would you place all the responsibility for the report on Abelson? Or do you think Rafael Reif is responsible for setting the parameters of the report to be produced?

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