MIT Investigating School's Role In Swartz Suicide 382
The untimely death of Aaron Swartz has raised a lot of questions over the weekend. Now MIT is launching an internal investigation to determine what role the school played in his suicide. From the article: "In a statement, MIT President L. Rafael Reif offered his condolences, saying that the school's community was 'extremely saddened by the death of this promising young man who touched the lives of so many. Now is a time for everyone involved to reflect on their actions, and that includes all of us at MIT,' Reif said. 'I have asked professor Hal Abelson to lead a thorough analysis of MIT's involvement from the time that we first perceived unusual activity on our network in fall 2010 up to the present. I have asked that this analysis describe the options MIT had and the decisions MIT made, in order to understand and to learn from the actions MIT took. I will share the report with the MIT community when I receive it.'"
Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
However it's sad that it took a suicide for them to examine their role here. For a college that pioneered OpenCourseWare, I never understood why they stood idly by.
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
3% of Americans are under the correctional supervision of their justice system. There are seven times more people in prison in the US as a percentage of the population as there are in Europe.
There is no evidence that this policy is any more effective than things like removing Lead in Gas for reducing overall crime. The rest of the world looks on in horror at prison camp America which locks up slightly more people than the Russians. Ever tried looking in the mirror?
I'm not surprised this guy looked at the options and chose the one he did, it was probably the most rational sane thing to do.
You Disgust Me (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, I am deeply saddened and distraught that such a prolific person that had already helped the world so much took his own life. I hope his family and friends take solace in the amount of achievements this young man had made before his decision to take his own life.
3% of Americans are under the correctional supervision of their justice system. There are seven times more people in prison in the US as a percentage of the population as there are in Europe.
There is no evidence that this policy is any more effective than things like removing Lead in Gas for reducing overall crime. The rest of the world looks on in horror at prison camp America which locks up slightly more people than the Russians. Ever tried looking in the mirror?
The US Justice System is there to enforce the law. I don't know what relevance this has or what you hoped to achieve with your parroted statistics but I don't find it very helpful here. He was charged with wire fraud, computer fraud among other things [archive.org] and when someone alerts the authorities that this may have taken place, they investigate it. If I bypassed your home's security and installed a laptop in your home that connected to your network and took all your files, would you want there to be laws against that? That's what they were investigating -- is there any evidence of undue or unjust actions in this investigation? I think that's what MIT wants to find out here.
I'm not surprised this guy looked at the options and chose the one he did, it was probably the most rational sane thing to do.
You know, that almost sounds like an endorsement for suicide which is probably one of the most disgusting and vehement posts I've read here so far. There is nothing rational nor sane about taking one's own life. When I was 16 one of my friends committed suicide and more recently a roommate's girlfriend came over while my roommate was gone and committed suicide. As someone who has witnessed the aftermath both to someone who meant so much to me and someone I barely knew, I will tell you right now that it is a terrible act that impacts everyone -- and most often in a profoundly negative way. To call it 'rational' or 'sane' in any case reveals that you do not know anything about suicide.
I didn't know Aaron Swartz although I've been following this case with interest. What I suspect happened was that Swartz wanted to make a statement about opening up journals to the public and he wagered that it would be hard to pin any fallout on himself if he did all of this covertly. And he tried. But at the end of the day they figured out who was taking these articles of information. Did you know he was a Fellow at Harvard University's Center for Ethics? What do you think this meant for his career to be indicted on such charges? How would you, as a student, listen to a lecture on ethics from someone who had broken laws and evaded police? I think that Swartz saw this as a sort of "civil disobedience" but when his peers did not agree, he took the coward's route instead of letting society decide his fate for his actions -- and I think the case was still open!
Let's assume Swartz was completely in the right on all of his actions. What, precisely, would you have MIT and the US Government do differently to prevent this suicide? What actions of theirs do you find culpable for forcing Aaron Swartz into no other choice than to take his own life?
You Disgust Me (Score:5, Insightful)
Take your penultimate question and look at it a bit broader
(not that others haven't done that already -- therefore my surprise).
Look at proportionality. Keep your suspicions out of the picture.
Good luck.
Re:You Disgust Me (Score:5, Insightful)
3% of Americans are under the correctional supervision of their justice system. [...] There is no evidence that this policy is any more effective than things like removing Lead in Gas for reducing overall crime.
The US Justice System is there to enforce the law.
So, what's your point? That anything which is law must be good policy? In the US, the penalty for identity fraud is up to 30 years in prison. In Germany, fraud, in "especially serious cases," may get you 6 months to 10 years. US law imposes harsher sentences for similar crimes (especially certain classes of crime), and these draconian penalties seem to serve no social benefit.
Depression [Re:You Disgust Me] (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not surprised this guy looked at the options and chose the one he did, it was probably the most rational sane thing to do.
You know, that almost sounds like an endorsement for suicide which is probably one of the most disgusting and vehement posts I've read here so far.
Just as a reminder, Swartz was subject to bouts of extreme depression. Although it's a human tendency to want to find external causes and somebody to blame, it is most likely that depression has more to do with his suicide than any other factor.
Re:Depression [Re:You Disgust Me] (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. The following is based on my own experience.
To put it metaphorically, depression manages the volume control for positive and for negative thoughts and emotions. It turns the volume to almost zero on positive thoughts and to zero on positive emotions. At most, after something that makes a normally functioning person happy, the person with severe depression is only aware that something good has happened.
For negative emotions and thoughts, on the other hand, it turns the volume to maximum. Problems become insurmountable and the person with depression is typically too emotionally drained to contemplate or execute ways to solve them. (This is one reason why cognitive behavioral therapy is such a vital part of successful treatment. The brain needs to get out of that groove once the underlying physiological problem is resolved by relearning how to process negative and positive thoughts appropriately. It's another reason why the placebo effect is so powerful with depression. The person may well have been recovered physiologically but the brain had gotten into a rut of negative thoughts.)
It is quite possible that anything bad might have tipped Swartz over the edge. The end of a relationship, the death of a pet, a personal or professional failure, anything like that.
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Re:You Disgust Me (Score:5, Insightful)
In your idiotic support of the current system you seem to miss out a lot of things. Maybe your ignorance or your unwillingness to confront them leads you to spout this nonsense.
1. MIT's investigation is not about just and unjust actions - it is more about the fact that they did not actively stop the justice department from going after Schwartz. JSTOR aggressively responded to the prosecutorial threat and declined to pursue charges, whereas MIT did not. If MIT too had strongly declined, then, the prosecutor would have very little grounds to prosecute Aaron.
2. The justice department is there to enforce laws - yes. But Very often, due to the fact that most prosecutors seem to aim for political office, they make their prosecutions a populist action. Thus you have prosecutors often hiding exculpatory evidence, going after lifetime charges against kids to please the local population and basically looking out for themselves. That's not exactly a 'justice is blind' policy - it is more like 'what do I do get headlines and further my career'
3. After watching US going after Assange, Lulsec and others and basically meting out punishments in decades to computer hackers, a person who is facing 35 yrs in the slammer wont exactly be happy. Especially because no one recently has managed to get out of such charges. So now 26 Aaron had a choice. Fight for 3-4 yrs in the courts and then spend 15-20 yrs in the slammer or hug the grim reaper.
Finally, if ignorance is your excuse - learn to keep your rants to your head. Unfortunately, the world has too many of you, and too few of people like him... we can ill afford to lose people like him ... and would not feel the difference if 100s of people like you disappeared this instant.
Re:You Disgust Me (Score:4, Interesting)
A few minor corrections.
After watching US going after Assange...
Uh, the US has not gone after Assange (not yet, anyway). The US went after Bradley Manning, is that who you're thinking of? Sweden is going after Assange, who is wanted in Sweden for questioning on rape charges, and Assange says that he fears that if he goes to Sweden to answer the charges, they will extradite him to the US... but to date, there is no U.S. action against Assange.
...So now 26 Aaron had a choice. Fight for 3-4 yrs in the courts and then spend 15-20 yrs in the slammer or...
Newspapers always like to phrase indictments with words like "up to XX years in prison!" This makes the news story more exciting. However, there are such things as federal sentencing guidelines [ussc.gov]. Non-violent crime, first offense, no previous convictions, no aggravating factors-- I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up with a fine plus time served.
Furthermore, he almost certainly could get a plea bargain-- believe it or not, prosecutors don't want to go to court if they can possibly get a conviction without doing so. Unfortunately, a plea bargain would have required Swartz admitting that he did broke the law, and it looks like he was not the type of person who would do that.
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the US has not gone after Assange (not yet, anyway).
Not officially, and not in so many words ("No comment" is only two words). But we all know who's pulling the strings behind that fiasco.
Re:You Disgust Me (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, a plea bargain would have required Swartz admitting that he did broke the law, and it looks like he was not the type of person who would do that.
He tried to use a wifi connection to download the articles. He was kicked off wifi - over and over and over. So instead he broke into a network closet, and hid a hardwired laptop in to continue downloading the articles.
The university installed a camera - which he was aware of and used a bicycle helmet to block his face from the camera.
I am as unhappy with the outcome as anyone here - but come on - to even imply that he is not guilty of knowlingly trying to gain unauthorized access REPEATEDLY is insane.
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Re:You Disgust Me (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously?
Please don't try to split hairs.
It WAS unauthroized access - as he was certainly NOT authorized to download gigs from JSTOR. Furthermore - it was unathorized because JSTOR and MIT both kept trying to block him over and over and he kept circumventing their blocks. If you have to constantly change IPs and mac addresses and finally end up breaking and entering to get physical acceess - you don't get much more unauthroized than that.
He entered the MIT wiring closet, and plugged in a laptop - where once again he was unauthorized to plug in. The time MIT and JSTOR both had to spend trying to kick him off their network was probably totaled hundreds of hours. I'd hate to have been their admin.
He was commiting what he MUST have known was a criminal act. What did he expect?
Re:You Disgust Me (Score:4, Informative)
...I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up with a fine plus time served.
Furthermore, he almost certainly could get a plea bargain-- believe it or not, prosecutors don't want to go to court if they can possibly get a conviction without doing so. Unfortunately, a plea bargain would have required Swartz admitting that he did broke the law, and it looks like he was not the type of person who would do that.
Swartz tried to plea bargain two days before he killed himself. The prosecutor adamantly refused to accept less than a guilty plea to every single charge (even the patently absurd ones), and was also adamant that prison time would be required.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2262137/Aaron-Swartz-Reddit-founder-request-plea-deal-turned-Massachusetts-prosecutor.html [dailymail.co.uk]
If you're just going to make stuff up, you should probably be quiet.
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I don't think anyone here could handle being a felon regardless of how much love they profess for the current system or how much optimism they have regarding this kid's prospects within the prison system.
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You seem to be suffering from the common delusion that anyone but the prosecutor has any say as to whether prosecution goes for
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In your idiotic support of the current system you seem to miss out a lot of things. Maybe your ignorance or your unwillingness to confront them leads you to spout this nonsense.
1. MIT's investigation is not about just and unjust actions - it is more about the fact that they did not actively stop the justice department from going after Schwartz. JSTOR aggressively responded to the prosecutorial threat and declined to pursue charges, whereas MIT did not. If MIT too had strongly declined, then, the prosecutor would have very little grounds to prosecute Aaron.
This is the second time I can think of where the MIT administration acted like assholes.
http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N40/simpson.html [mit.edu]
MIT releases statement, says student’s actions were ‘reckless’
MIT is cooperating with the state police in the investigation, according to a statement released by the MIT News Office this afternoon. “As reported to us by authorities, Ms. Simpson’s actions were reckless and understandably created alarm at the airport,” the statement continues.
Ethical is not the same as lawful (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'd go so far as to say that a person who lectured about ethics, but has never toed the line of legality, probably has little or nothing of value to say about ethics. If you come from a world where nobody has ever questioned whether you did the right thing, who the hell are you to tell me you know right from wrong?
Doing the right thing is difficult. It's difficult because there are consequences to your actions, and very often that does, or could potentially include legal consequences. Being forced to pro
Re:You Disgust Me (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that he ran into a careerist prosecutor. To be a former prosecutor with a record of being touch on cybercrime, especially anything related to "information activists" (think Julian Assange), is a big red loyalty star in the party book, and this prosecutor was (is) running for office. Aaron's earlier stunt with the legal database PACER was also completely legal, yet pissed off many in the US legal establishment.
Not all lawyers are created equal. O.J. Simpson could afford a team of star lawyers, one would have to be pretty naïve to think it didn't matter. One would have to be similarly naïve to think it didn't matter that Aaron was a prize target for a powerful Democratic party apparatchik.
Unfortunately for Aaron, he wasn't as rich as O.J. (It's well known he'd given away a lot of the money he made on the reddit sale to charity). He really wasn't prepared to fight on the terms of this corrupt system. Something the prosecutor exploited grossly in the plea bargain, of course - a great example of how plea bargains corrupt justice.
If he hadn't been a high-profile target of a high-ambition prosecutor eager to score political points, charges would have been dropped the moment JSTOR asked for it.
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I am sure that had he been willing to put up a fight he could have easily secured a high caliber lawyer at little or no cost due to the high profile of the case. EFF and others may have been willing to help and if not - all he'd have to do is start a fund raiser.
The problem isn't that the charges are overblown, or that he ran into a career prosecutor - the problem is that the evidence is damning. He'd have a very tough time getting out of this without a felony conviction - which he actually does deserve bec
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I am sorry that he killed himself, I am even more sorry that he chose to comit acts that should have been obviously criminal to him.
This says a lot about you as a person. You would prefer that this man die than he get off without spending half his life in prison. I am an atheist myself. Always have been. But the message about compassion and kindness and forgiveness, enforced by cultural norms and a belief in eternal damnation, is as needed in the world now as it ever was. And it's due to people like you who would rather see this guy dead than him getting away with downloading some files. People like you make me almost physically ill.
Re:You Disgust Me (Score:5, Insightful)
Overcharging is the issue. The DOJ has a habit of charging misdemeanors and felonies and low felonies and high felonies in order to try to get plea agreements. And US Attorneys have a habit of using high profile criminal cases to get publicity to run for office or to get appointed as a federal judge. The overcharging happened here. They charged Aaron Swartz with anything they could remotely stick to him and exaggerated his downloading of academic documents to look like a major cybercrime. There is nothing about this case that served justice. The only logical reason that this case was prosecuted with the ferocity and with the resources that were expended is that the US Attorney and Assistant US Attorneys involved wanted a trophy they could put on their wall.
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Except when 'prosecutorial discretion' is employed in cases, e.g. that of David Gregory [blogspot.com].
As you browse Overcriminalized [overcriminalized.com], you may get the impression that the second best way to destroy a country, after debt, is regulation.
Re:You Disgust Me (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's assume you didn't mean that as a troll.
For a nonviolent crime with no victims and no damages (sorry, but we really need to move beyond considering people torrenting movies as "lost customers" - And even JSTOR, for all their other evils, did the right thing here and decided not to pursue any civil penalties), what would you consider a proportional reaction by the relevant authorities?
Ideally, this should never have reached the police intervention level (never mind the feds) - The only "real" offense here involves misusing access to MIT's network. A purely internal student misconduct disciplinary board could best have handled the whole affair with a semester or two of probation.
Once it did go to the police level - Okay, he technically committed a crime. Guilty as charged. Which better serves society and justice - 30 years in prison (or a death sentence, as it turns out), or 100 hours of community service?
Everyone, at every level of escalation here, should have taken a step back and considered what really happened. A kid abused his uni's access to a subscrption service to download more than he should have. That is not a fucking capital offense.
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A crime. Yes. B&E, arguably (if the average passer-by would have reason to believe they shouldn't peek inside). But a "serious" crime? Not talking about breaking into the Pentagon here; not even someone's home where we'd have a reasonable expectation that no one but the owners would casually stroll within a few feet of that spot; but a (literal) closet in the basement of the same building MIT that students occasionally turn
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Here, let me quote what you responded to back for you: "Yes, Swartz did things that would justify some degree of punishment. Spending the best half of his life in a cage (which IMO made suicide an entirely rational decision in this case)? Not so much."
So, I would ask you bluntly - Do you believe what he did justifies spending 30 years in a cage?
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Just because he killed himself does not mean that he was innocent of what he was charged with.
Here, let me quote what you responded to back for you: "Yes, Swartz did things that would justify some degree of punishment. Spending the best half of his life in a cage (which IMO made suicide an entirely rational decision in this case)? Not so much."
So, I would ask you bluntly - Do you believe what he did justifies spending 30 years in a cage?
No - and I'd be really REALLY surprised if he didn't end up with a plea deal for less than 4 years and end up getting out on probation in 2 or less.
Had he been found guilty and sentenced to 30+ years - he could have easily killed himself at that point. As a non violent offended he would proably have been given several weeks if not several months before reporting to prison to serve his time.
Aaron Swart did not make a rational decision by killing himself nor did he make a rational decision messign with MIT an
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IMO, 30 years in prison qualifies as a terminal illness.
Though I will grant that you made a good point in that he might not have gotten that heavy of a sentence. Let's call his decision "premature optimization", then, as a compromise.
It's seriously offensive and fucked up.
Welcome to the internet. Please check your tired morals at the door, and your complimentary handbasket has two uses.
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30 years in prision at 26 is hardly a terminal illness and nobody expected him to get or serve the full term.
The keyword in the charges has always been UP TO.
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Okay, so strike that line and go with the "community service" option. It doesn't change much.
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> The case is about someone gaining unauthorized access to the system - repeateldy, tresspassing and wire fraud.
"wire fraud" is a bullshit crime used by the corrupt to intimidate the innocent. It's the perfect example of the problem here. It's a manifestation of the fascist approach to enforcing the law here.
It's nonsense to "trump up" charges with.
THIS is why we don't want cops on campus. I fear cops much more than I fear a psycho with a gun. Cops are much more likely to destroy your life over some tri
Re:You Disgust Me (Score:4, Insightful)
> The case is about someone gaining unauthorized access to the system - repeateldy, tresspassing and wire fraud.
"wire fraud" is a bullshit crime used by the corrupt to intimidate the innocent. It's the perfect example of the problem here. It's a manifestation of the fascist approach to enforcing the law here.
It's nonsense to "trump up" charges with.
THIS is why we don't want cops on campus. I fear cops much more than I fear a psycho with a gun. Cops are much more likely to destroy your life over some trivial shit and it won't ever make the evening news.
So you don't think breaking into a network closet and hooking up a hidden unauthorized laptop to a switch is a criminal act?
Seriously, read the posts when he was first indicted - most people agreed that he WAS commiting criminal acts.
He kills himself - and suddenly the public is upset about trumped up charges on an innocent kid.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/07/19/1839237/aaron-swartz-indicted-in-attempted-piracy-of-four-million-documents [slashdot.org]
Re:You Disgust Me (Score:5, Insightful)
No it isn't. Start with this: https://secure.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/myths-of-the-criminal-justice-system_n_879768.html [huffingtonpost.com]
link to the book referenced: Three Felonies a Day, how the Feds target the innocent: http://www.harveysilverglate.com/Books/ThreeFeloniesaDay.aspx [harveysilverglate.com]
The Federal criminal system is designed to give the Feds total power and control. A government can take such control in several ways. The transparent manner is for a government to just do what it wants without explanation. Such governments are rightly despised as despotic. The US Federal government has chosen a different method. It has made so many crimes of such a vague nature, that everyone commits them without even knowing it. As a result, the Feds have no difficulty figuring out how to persecute a person should they decide they don't like that person for one reason or another. They just shuffle the deck and "pick a crime, any crime."
Now, whether Swartz committed a crime or not is sort of beside the point. Even assuming that he did, how does a 35 year prison term fit into what he did? It doesn't. It lacks all proportionality. What this lack of proportionality does do howver, is give the Feds absolute despotic control over people's lives, a power which they can exercise at will, with total immunity, against any person they decide to hate.
And worse, despite its ruthless disproportionate persecution, a signficant portion of the population will respond like you by blaming Swartz for being a crook. Problem is, with so many laws on the books -- you too are a crook. You just don't know it and not knowing the law is not a defense (except for police and prosecutors). That's a nice catch 22. You can't use lack of knowledge to defend yourself, but the code is so vast, vague, and disorganized, you can't know the laws.
Re:You Disgust Me (Score:5, Insightful)
"There is nothing rational nor sane about taking one's own life."
Please do not generalize. I've witnessed the suffering of a terminally ill relation who more than once pleaded with me for some drug that could end it all. I find it more disgusting that you'd presume to know some other person's pain well enough conclude that surviving to the end of your natural lifespan is the end-all of human existence.
Re:You Disgust Me (Score:5, Insightful)
> There is nothing rational nor sane about taking one's own life.
Fallacy.
Why prolong pain and suffering when you can give a world a message that they might actually pay attention for a brief second instead of watching all the unreality and whatever passes for mindless entertainment these days.
If I have the right to life then that ALSO implies I have the right to death.
NOTE: It is _perfectly_ legal to perform suicide in most countries.
* You can smoke yourself to death.
* You can drink yourself to death.
* Etc.
But the instant somebody decides the time frame is far too long and should be minutes instead of years all of a sudden everybody throws a hissy-fit. Why is the _duration_ the focus instead of RESPECTING a person's right to life AND death?
> To call it 'rational' or 'sane' in any case reveals that you do not know anything about suicide.
Statements like this just proves you _know_ _nothing_ about what happens after death or before life.
However, with all that said, I would put this big disclaimer out there: Death does NOT solve any problems -- it just merely DELAYS them. You can't run away from yourself -- sooner or later you WILL be forced to confront yourself. The ONLY fallacy in suicide is the incorrect thinking that somehow you avoided a problem.
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The US Justice System is there to enforce the law.
No it's not. If it were, people like Lloyd Blankfein would get much more attention than Aaron Swartz. The US Justice System is there to keep the powerful powerful. Nothing else.
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instead of letting society decide his fate for his actions
Society doesn't care about this case at all. Ask any man on the street who Aaron Swartz is. I didn't know who he was until he committed suicide and it was posted on /.
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isn't it justice systems fault when case law is cited as reasons for why it's ok to pile up charges to 35 years in jail for something so simple as dumping documents - documents which are by no means secret. counting it as wire fraud worth as 35 years in prison most definitely WAS up to the state attorneys to decide. doesn't help that you guys have the bullshit system of plea deals where the whole crime is transformed to be something else in the books than it was if you make the state attorneys job easier! T
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Let's assume Swartz was completely in the right on all of his actions. What, precisely, would you have MIT and the US Government do differently to prevent this suicide? What actions of theirs do you find culpable for forcing Aaron Swartz into no other choice than to take his own life?
They shouldn't have prosecuted him.
It's called prosecutorial discretion.
Just the way they didn't prosecute the financial companies responsible for the housing collapse, even though the companies committed wholesale fraud by falsely swearing they had properly handled legal papers.
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he took the coward's route instead of letting society decide his fate for his actions
He was looking at 35 years and up to $1 million in fines.
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The US Justice System is there to enforce the law
Maybe you should review just what happened when HSBC was caught red-handed laundering billions of dollars for drug cartels and Al-Quaeda.
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The US Justice System is there to enforce the law.
No, it isn't. Federal prosecutors routinely use fucked up laws, trumped up charges and fabricated evidence to indict innocent people and don't give a shit if their targets are felons or not. Defending oneself in a court is very expensive and US prosecutors have practically unlimited funds to drag their suspects long enough to bleed them dry. Thus you get >99% conviction rate for all who decide to go all the way through courts. Less than one person of 100 has chance to avoid jail. The only practical way t
Re:Your post is a pathetic troll (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing is rational or sane about suicide. It is the ultimate selfish act for cowards.
The first sentence is true, the second only half true; I see you've never had the misfortune of knowing anyone with clinical depression. You can no more blame a suicide's death on the suicide victim than you can blame the victim of a heart attack for his. It's a disease; clinically depressed people can't just shrug it off any more than you can shrug off cancer. It needs professional treatment, and like cancer treatments, sometimes they fail.
It's a disease (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing is rational or sane about suicide. It is the ultimate selfish act for cowards.
The first sentence is true, the second only half true; I see you've never had the misfortune of knowing anyone with clinical depression. You can no more blame a suicide's death on the suicide victim than you can blame the victim of a heart attack for his. It's a disease;
Having personally known people who committed suicide after suffering intense attacks of depression, I will agree. But then you shouldn't blame a suicide's death on MIT or the Justice Department, either. They didn't cause the disease. (Swartz had written about depression years before; no, being charged with a computer break-in did not cause his depression.).
clinically depressed people can't just shrug it off any more than you can shrug off cancer. It needs professional treatment, and like cancer treatments, sometimes they fail.
I'll agree here-- suicide is not a heroic act of defiance against the system; it is, for the most part, the result of a disease that is difficult to cure and far too often fatal. Clinical depression is not to be taken lightly.
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You say that, but there are underlying causes for depression.
Very often, those underlying causes are related to brain chemistry, not external factors.
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There are no gaurantees here. He could be sent to ANY federal detention facility. Once he's in the system, the system can do anything it likes with him. Neither he nor you can make any optimistic assumptions based on watching Office Space too many times.
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"Our Crime Rate is dropping, so why are all these people in prison"?
Whoosh!
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Just to be clear, the 3% number includes Americans who are on parole or probation. It's about .8% in prison. Still very high.
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"Examine their role" indeed.
They're trying to establish that they are not liable. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was a bully, pure and simple, as was the prosecutor.
Now, we see all the ass-covering. Well, fuck you, MIT. It's too late.
RE: Unusual (Score:5, Insightful)
What I have found the most unusual about this situation is the outright-condemnation of techniques such as changing a MAC address, writing scripts, etc.
As anyone with a vague notion of computing can attest to, these are simply 'problem-solving techniques' - and are incredibly far removed from the judge's analogy of "a digital crowbar".
The closest 'real' analogy that I can come up with is someone sneaking into the library to photocopy journals - and when known to the doorman, putting on a hat or a fake moustache.
One can't help but question why the government had such a hardon for the case, considering JSTOR dropped all charges, and MIT didn't really care.
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Re: Unusual (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Unusual (Score:5, Insightful)
In the case of a crowbar it wouldn't take too imaginative a prosecutor to come up with an argument for attempted burglary and to consider the crowbar as a weapon.
Re: Unusual (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The plea bargain system works (for the government) because the government, as the first step of the indictment process, freezes all of the target's bank accounts, forcing them to either accept a plea or attempt to defend themselves against highly-paid, very resourceful federal prosecutors with a court-appointed, as-dumb-as-they-can-make-them public defender (who, by the way, is basically telling you that accepting a plea is the only option).
Re: (Score:3)
Burglary (Score:2)
Yeah, but what was described was burglary, not mere trespass.
Re: (Score:2)
Money? Really? (Score:3, Informative)
Hypothesis (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see if the final report:
Clears MIT of any real responsibility.
Talks about the need to listen more to issues that affect its community.
Talks about he need for MIT as an institution to take an active role in trying to educate authorities on technical issues.
Advocates for handling more issues internally but always cooperating with the authorities.
I'd hope the report won't look like the bound edition of this 15-second CYA.
How would MIT be responsible here? (Score:2, Insightful)
Based on what I've read and heard so far about this matter, I fail to see how MIT should be responsible for something that Swartz did to himself, in his own apartment.
In fact, it sounds like MIT is very much a victim of this whole ordeal, too, and were dragged into it solely by the actions of Swartz that happened on their property.
Re: (Score:2)
MIT were more dragged into it by the Feds. MIT had no desire to pursue legal action against Swartz. The Feds pushed this matter, one might infer, because they had an axe to grind with him.
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And MIT didn't say no. Thus they're culpable.
it's the copyright law they should investigate (Score:5, Insightful)
it's not how MIT acted, but the copyright law, that's what they should investigate. like how come someone can be threatened with 35 years in prison and a $1m fine for making state-funded research papers accessible to people at large?
for killing a person, you only get 4 years.
yeah, for killing Micheal Jackson, you get less than for distributing one song of his 'illegaly'
this has to stop.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
He wasn't charged with breaking Copyright law, rather he was charged with wire fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, recklessly damaging a protected computer, and aiding and abetting.
If convicted on all charges and the judge chooses the maximum sentence and chooses to have all sentences run consecutively then yes it would be 35 years. However, both the federal sentencing guidelines and common sense indicate that someone like Swartz with no criminal record and relatively benign
Re: (Score:3)
And anyone with common sense would also realize that this was a very political act on both Swartz & the prosecutors' parts.
Thus the sentence is very likely to be much higher than the run of the mill first time convict.
Re:it's the copyright law they should investigate (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you see what happened here? Charge with 35 years offer 6-24 mos. In the context of the trial, sounds like a great deal. In the context of reality --- WTF? Two years in prison for what?
Americans are becoming enslaved -- quite literally -- to the special interest groups that can afford to buy legislation. Welcome to fascism -- government for the benefit of the mega-corporation.
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That - and a significant portion of those slaves stand behind this slavery and call it "freedom".
Prosecutors (Score:5, Insightful)
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Running a meth lab? Manufacturing of biological weapons of mass destruction.
Burned a flag? Sedition!
Jail-walked? Terrorism!
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Let's call an investigation! (Score:2)
Is there actually any question as to exactly what MIT did? What new questions remain to be answered?
Reflection (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me that before his suicide would have been better timing.
We've started an investigation into ourselves..... (Score:2)
suicide is a significant problem at MIT (Score:5, Interesting)
Up to a half dozen students commit suicide any year. Several large lawsuits from the parents of suicide victims in the past decade prompted MIT to beef up round-the-clock mental health care help. Most recently the MIT student newspaper conducted and extensive study [mit.edu] of stress in student life. Its almost like coming out gay- plenty of students think they are the only ones suffering from stress and retreat into their personal hell-holes. The need to talk to each other and professionals.
Aaron wasn't a member of the MIT community (Score:2)
Aaron had no connection to MIT. He was trespassing, physically, and stealing network resources, power, and space he had no right to.
in other words... (Score:2)
In other words we will take the Warren Report, change the name from Kennedy to Swartz, feed it back throught the MIT Paper Generator [mit.edu], and provide it everyone. Proving, that our lack of action in the previous year provided us with the ability to have an annual discourse on our probable deniability, fully exonerating us of apathy, poor judgement and a full disclosure of our tenacious mendacity. Thank you, I'll have my tea now.
Why Swartz faced charges (Score:2)
What Swartz actually did (Score:3)
It's pretty clear from many of the top voted comments that most people here have no clue what Swartz was actually doing. On the off chance that some people might want to base discussion on facts, here's a nice post [volokh.com] by a law professor who has worked, for both defense and prosecution, on these kind of cases, covering what Swartz was actually alleged to have done and analyzing the charges.
Re:good (Score:4, Insightful)
So, he followed along in the tradition of TMRC / the original MIT computer hackers?
I like this Swartz guy more and more!
Wrong. "Truth About Aaron Swartz "crime"" (Score:5, Informative)
"-Aaron did not “hack” the JSTOR website for all reasonable definitions of “hack”. Aaron wrote a handful of basic python scripts that first discovered the URLs of journal articles and then used curl to request them. Aaron did not use parameter tampering, break a CAPTCHA, or do anything more complicated than call a basic command line tool that downloads a file in the same manner as right-clicking and choosing “Save As” from your favorite browser. .bash_history, his uncleared browser history and lack of any encryption of the laptop he used to download these files. Changing one’s MAC address (which the government inaccurately identified as equivalent to a car’s VIN number) or putting a mailinator email address into a captured portal are not crimes. If they were, you could arrest half of the people who have ever used airport wifi.
-Aaron did nothing to cover his tracks or hide his activity, as evidenced by his very verbose
-The government provided no evidence that these downloads caused a negative effect on JSTOR or MIT, except due to silly overreactions such as turning off all of MIT’s JSTOR access due to downloads from a pretty easily identified user agent.
-I cannot speak as to the criminal implications of accessing an unlocked closet on an open campus, one which was also used to store personal effects by a homeless man. I would note that trespassing charges were dropped against Aaron and were not part of the Federal case.
http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/ [unhandled.com]
Re:Wrong. "Truth About Aaron Swartz "crime"" (Score:5, Informative)
"-The government provided no evidence that these downloads caused a negative effect on JSTOR or MIT, except due to silly overreactions such as turning off all of MIT’s JSTOR access due to downloads from a pretty easily identified user agent.
The original MIT Tech coverage trivially refutes this. JSTOR's servers went down because of the volume of downloads. JSTOR responded first by blocking certain parts of the 18.x.x.x IP block, and then took down the entirety of the 18.x.x.x IP block when MIT could not stop the downloads, because they wanted to be able to serve other academic institutions. Stupid overreaction it was not.
MIT IS&T is not full of chumps. They started by revoking Swartz's network access, so he purchased dedicated computers. They revoked network registration to the MAC addresses in questions, so Swartz started spoofing. Is it really worth the time of a few professional troubleshooters and a student volunteer maintenance team to continually hunt down MAC addresses?
They start looking for a physical presence, Swartz leaves hidden computers in the SIPB room and a network closet. Sooner or later you have to concede that there is reasonable level of response before you call the authorities. For the record, while that network closet is occasionally unlocked it is also frequently locked; there's a somewhat well-known hacking location nearby (a shaft, I believe) and my own visits there sometimes had to involve picking said lock.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
What you have to understand is that majority of people posting on this site are anti-copyright zealots, because to them digital stuff should all be free as in beer. Music, movies, games, code, lecture videos, journal articles, whatever. (Ironically, all the stuff which the USA happens to be good at vis-a-vis China and other countries, but that is no matter). So they're going to blame Swartz's death on those who enforced copyright.
Re:Zero Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
What you have to understand is that majority of people posting on this site are anti-copyright zealots, because to them digital stuff should all be free as in beer. Music, movies, games, code, lecture videos, journal articles, whatever. (Ironically, all the stuff which the USA happens to be good at vis-a-vis China and other countries, but that is no matter). So they're going to blame Swartz's death on those who enforced copyright.
The articles were from publicly funded research. We the people already paid for the research once, why should the results not be free to us? If the public is going to fund the research the results should be made freely available to them.
Re:Zero Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't think it is so clear cut. If you bully someone into a corner, with 30 years of imprisonment, which is effectively a life sentence (the guy wouldn't be out until 56), then from a certain perspective committing suicide doesn't seem such like a bad alternative.
I would love to see the prosecutors to be disbard for inappropriate behavior that turned what was otherwise a minor of offence into something that was treated as was worse than murder. I would love to have the prosecutors and judge interviewed to understand why they had such a large axe to grind.
Justice should be about fair and appropriate punishment and not something used to make prosecutors feel like rock stars.
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In the current political climate, that isn't going to happen. They couldn't explain it coherently either. In a politicized judicial system, you do what you think the political authorities will approve of as a matter
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Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
I won't make the same claim for children, but when an adult commits suicide, the only one responsible, is that individual. I don't care how much somebody verbally abuses you, the only person who can be blamed, if you commit suicide, is you. That doesn't mean that other people are not jerks, but you can not blame them for somebody else's decision to take their own life.
Most suicides are the result of a mental problem, because situations where a suicide would be a sane and rational decision would be very rare. Mental problems _can_ be created or made worse by other people's actions, for example depression.
I suggest people should take responsibility for their actions (that's what Americans always say), and if someone kills themselves because of the shit some jerk told them, then that jerk should take responsibility for his actions.
Re: (Score:3)
In hearing all the horror stories about prison life, I imagine "not taking me alive" might be the best solution when looking at 35 years.
[John]
Re: (Score:3)
Fine, we won't hold the prosecutor responsible for killing Aaron. However, she did want to lock him up in a violent prison for some 30 years for taking something the offended party (JSTOR) had decided not to care about.That's really not much better.
And for what? Unless she supplies something that can explain the extreme overreaction better, I will assume it was to curry favor in the US political system, in particular the Democratic party. It's not as if we haven't seen such behavior before, in the US and ot
Re: (Score:3)
Tough guy? No, but old enough to have known a few people who committed suicide. People like to blame others as a means of coping. That is human nature. Emotion causes people to act in strange ways. Unfortunately, we now have a society that can't deal with death without blaming somebody or something. For example, take the recent school shootings in Connecticut. While we do give casual blame to Adam Lanza, society can't hold him accountable since he took his own life. So instead we blame the guns. In
Re:The school is not responsible. (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to think that just because something is breaking the law, it should be punished to the fullest extent. Protips:
1. Most people break the law many times each day. The accumulated penalties for those crimes, in most any western country, even if you took the minimum sentences prescribed by law, would immediately put many a country's population behind bars for millenia or make them owe millions of dollars in fines. Mostly both. Just like that.
2. There's this thing called prosecutorial discretion. As in the prosecutor has full control over what cases they want to prosecute. Just like that.
3. Copyright violations, while a matter of criminal law in the U.S. and thus prosecutable ex officio, require participation of the injured parties. If no party claims that a copyright law violation took place, then there's nothing to prosecute. This is where copyright violations differ, from, say, murders. In an attempted murder, it doesn't matter all that much that the victim forgave the attacker and doesn't want them punished. The prosecutor is free to ignore that. In a copyright violation, the victim has pretty much full say in keeping the legal action going, and it's up to them whether it keeps going or stops. Same goes with regard to criminal trespass -- if the injured party says that there was no trespass, the prosecutor has no leg to stand on. Anything else is vigilante justice and amounts to harassment of the defendant. Just like that.
So there.
Re: (Score:2)
You know there is a good chance that his untimely death wasn't connected to JSTOR. He seemed to be a brilliant individual. He could have been battling depression all this time and the environment he found himself in just exacerbated the problem. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family.
I think if you don't know all the facts then it is probably best to not say anything.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it's a little hard to investigate a schools role in events before they even happen.