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FBI secretly collected data on Aaron Swartz earlier than was thought
- danharaj 8y agoNever forgive MIT
- mymythisisthis 8y agoLet's not forget Popcorn Sutton as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glQjCKAI4gA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glQjCKAI4gA he shared a similar fate. Kindred spirits.
- ryanmercer 8y agoI'm not defending the government (since controlled buys are entrapment in my book and should be illegal) with Popcorn but there's a pretty big difference here. Aaron Swartz = a very questionable "breaking and entering" charge and some computer "crimes". Otherwise, publicly, an extremely upstanding member of society. Popcorn Sutton = very very very openly an illegal distiller, and seller, of untested/unreglated alcohol that he self-documented via video and distributed the video as well as a self-published manual. Had multiple arrests and convictions over the years for the alcohol production, drug charges, assault with a deadly weapon. He was then arrested for trying to sell to an undercover officer while illegally possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. Popcorn illegally distilled alcohol for at LEAST 35 years.
- Kinnard 8y agoSo he did things that were illegal but not wrong?
- malcolmgreaves 8y agoMorally wrong to sell untested and unregulated drugs. Alcohol kills. To me, doesn't sound like this guy was at all on the same level of soft law breaking as Mr. Schwartz. Do you believe this distiller's actions to be just and moral? Are you opposed to laws or something?
- Kinnard 8y agoI am an anarchist actually: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist I do not believe it is wrong to sell "drugs" without government intervention
- ryanmercer 8y agoPopcorn? Popcorn sold potentially dangerous alcohol, drugs, almost certainly was guilty of tax evasion spanning multiple decades, was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. Bootleggers aren't 'innocent'. They're extremely territorial up to the point of property destruction and even murder. They evade alcohol taxation, they often don't report the income from their sales (because, well, duh they don't want more attention). In some instances they are often involved in narcotic/meth/marijuana/heroin trafficking, sometimes have gang affiliations, have murdered law enforcement officers, etc. Popcorn was convicted, and served time, for some of those offenses decades before his last arrest and continued to carry on with his illegal activity. If you think selling potentially toxic alcohol, tax evasion, drug dealing and violent assault are absolutely 'wrong'. Those are the things we KNOW he did. His last arrest, in my opinion the alcohol charge should have been dropped as entrapment, but he was a felon in possession of a firearm which is a crime (and a sensible one, given his prior conviction of assault with a deadly weapon) and he should have been fully on the hook for that. It's unfortunate he felt the need to take his life but his case is in no way similar to that of Aaron Swartz. Aaron made a bad decision and did a largely digital crime, Popcorn was overtly a career criminal.
- Kinnard 8y agoNot equating the two. I don't know Popcorns case in detail but if the assault you listed was in self-defense every thing you list is illegal but not wrong. All alcohol is toxic. Exchange and consumption are consensual, that's what matters.
- roywiggins 8y ago> All alcohol is toxic all alcohol is toxic but sometimes your alcohol is actually accidentally methanol and then you die now, not later https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-33224514 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-33224514
- fulafel 8y agoThere was also a headline today about a tomato rice-related death toll in India... (https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-india-46573273 https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia-india-46573273) As long as you ignest methanol with enough ethanol mixed in, it's not lethal. You would have to separately capture the small amount of stuff coming out before the "heads" to make deadly methanol. Soundslike this could happen only if you make an industrial quantity batch, and are completely reckless about the basics.
- jstanley 8y agoIt's not just MIT. The prosecutors are really the ones to blame.
- RKearney 8y agoAnd let’s not forget he killed himself before any kind of sentence was given. For all we know he could have been found innocent. And he physically broke into an IDF at MIT to do this.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago> And let’s not forget he killed himself before any kind of sentence was given. For all we know he could have been found innocent. He was hounded to death by a prosecutor. The fact that the prosecutor lied to him is hardly a defense.
- ryanlol 8y agoIt's shocking how many people on HN seem to assume that Swartz was an idiot. He had good legal representation and it couldn't have been as easy to mislead him as people here keep suggesting.
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoSo, what, he killed himself to cynically manipulate public opinion?
- ryanlol 8y agoI simply don't find it very realistic that he killed himself over the possibility of spending 6 months in prison.
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoHe was threatened with prison and then he killed himself. I doubt it was the only factor, but you'll need some sort of compelling evidence to argue that it wasn't the main factor.
- ashelmire 8y agoMIT and Carmen Ortiz share responsibility for the death of Aaron Schwartz. Threatening the guy with life in prison for downloading academic journals? It's absurd. Never forgive either, let it haunt them wherever they go.
- oh_sigh 8y agoCome on...what they did was shitty, but Aaron killed himself because he was depressed and suffered frequently from suicidal ideation, literally for years before he even stepped foot into MIT.
- 1000units 8y agoHe killed himself because he was threatened with life in prison. He may have been particularly vulnerable to these threats, but that only makes them worse. If they had just called him mean names, maybe you'd have a point.
- oh_sigh 8y agoNo, he killed himself because he was depressed and had suicidal thoughts. > Swartz declined a plea bargain under which he would have served six months in federal prison. Two days after the prosecution rejected a counter-offer by Swartz, he was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment, where he had hanged himself.[15][16] So, he was facing potentially 6 months in prison. He rejected that, and then killed himself.
- 1000units 8y agoWhy do none of the words "plea", "bargain", "six", or "months" appear anywhere in [15] and [16]?
- oh_sigh 8y agoI don't know, but it is reported on elsewhere, for example: https://www.boston.com/uncategorized/noprimarytagmatch/2013/01/14/mit-hacking-case-lawyer-says-aaron-swartz-was-offered-plea-deal-of-six-months-behind-bars https://www.boston.com/uncategorized/noprimarytagmatch/2013/...
- y-c-o-m-b 8y agoWho at MIT? We need to start attaching responsibility to actual individuals and not just the organizations they belong to.
- danharaj 8y agoIndividuals can't do things like this without an organization.
- mLuby 8y agoIf an organization murders someone, who serves the punishment? You can't put an organization in prison, though you could shut it down for a period of years. Or you assign guilt to specific people and put them in prison. We've got to get better at "piercing the corporate veil."
- claudiawerner 8y agoThere's somewhat of a breakdown between responsibility and criminal liability, and you've jumped from one to the other. The original comment was talking about responsibility, and in this sense, an organisation's internal practices, accepted behaviours etc. all share significantly in the responsibility. Often responsibility really is impersonal. On the other hand, the substance of your comment points to the fact that criminal law is served on an individual basis, and perhaps that's a good thing. It is, however, ignorant at best if we stop discussion completely at the point where an individual is put in prison for something they did on behalf of the organisation, or due to organisation policy etc. since part of the justice system is deterrence, the organisation itself should be factored into that calculation. Various mafias are also organisations, but that's a much easier case than this - shut down a mafia by taking the heads of the organisation. That works because it's not "just business". But in the case of MIT I have a strong feeling that if there is such a systemic issue as other commenters are hinting towards, it won't be so easy to be rid of it by putting the person in top position in prison. Such a person is the appearance, not the essence.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- joemi 8y agoAlso never forget what depression does to a person.
- coldtea 8y agoMillions suffer with depression and don't kill themselves. No reason to whitewash an organization that didn't support its supposed principles.
- zozbot123 8y agoTL;DR: not so much "data on Aaron Swartz" as "metadata on Swartz's email correspondence, as part of an unrelated investigation". The amount of email addresses about which 'metadata' was collected was obviously quite large, so it would be a mistake to read anything of significance into the fact that Swartz's email was involved.
- jstanley 8y ago> The amount of email addresses about which 'metadata' was collected was obviously quite large This is the significance that should be read into it.
- zozbot123 8y agoThat's par for the course for the sort of investigation we're talking about, though. It's not a 'fishing expedition', it's just a practice that's narrowly tailored to try and figure out the structure of highly dangerous crime cells and networks, as well as the possible perpetrators involved. There's a bit of a scare about 'metadata' collection lately, but as a tool it does have its narrow uses.
- shkkmo 8y agoDo you have any basis for your claims of "narrowly tailored" or are you just making up facts? If it were narrowly tailored, the FBI wouldn't be able to access the information when conducting an investigation that would not have otherwise been able to obtain that information without a court order. Additionally your attempt to justify why this is OK is also wrong, NSLs are not supposed to be used to investigate organized crime, but to investigate and prevent terrorist attacks.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- zaroth 8y agoBad headline to IMO a much bigger story. Aaron’s metadata was swept up in, apparently, an NSL grab of a massive trove of email headers from the University of Pittsburg. A case ostensibly linked to “Al Qaeda” allowed the FBI claim they had a basis to request a massive dump of email metadata from the University of Pittsburg IT department. We don’t know exactly how much data was collected, just that Aaron’s email happens to be on Page 27 of an Appendix. All this metadata is stored indefinitely and is accessible in the course of any unrelated investigation. The legal standard the FBI has to meet to be able to NSL this information from a target is described as “a hunch”.
- tomschlick 8y agoPittsburgh
- diafygi 8y agoNational Security Letters (NSLs) are the things that every time they have been challenged in court the FBI drops the request, right? Since they don't want to test the constitutionality of them? Seems like the University of Pittsburgh didn't call up the EFF and instead capitulated to a likely unconstitutional request. https://www.eff.org/issues/national-security-letters https://www.eff.org/issues/national-security-letters
- skywhopper 8y agoIn 2007 I don't think it was nearly as clear that challenging them was an option. But I'm also sure that similar things go on all the time and we just don't learn about it.
- skywhopper 8y agoThe irony of the email header collection is that since this batch of headers is associated with an "al Qaeda" investigation, then since the content of the emails is unknown, suddenly anyone who shows up in the headers appears suspect, especially out of context in a future datamine. Even though presumably hundreds or thousands of email addresses were in this same dump, and maybe one was of interest to the FBI at the time, but they cast the net as widely as they're allowed.
- mtgx 8y agoRemember this article the next time the FBI argues for "more data access". The FBI is already allowed to eat the fruit of the poisonous tree on a daily basis thanks to its expansive surveillance powers, and the vast majority of judges are clueless about it. Obama's executive order days before he left office along with the recent renewal (and expansion) of FISA 702 now also allows all 17 enforcement agencies (including DEA, IRS, SEC, etc) to have the same type of access without a warrant. Who knows how many decades will pass until all of this will be properly challenged at the Supreme Court. It's why I've argued here in the past about US' necessity to create a "Constitutional Court" that wouldn't allow blatantly unconstitutional laws to become laws after Congress and the president pass them in their effort to gain more power and control over the population.
- adonnjohn 8y agoHow does that not just become another check to balance in this bipartisan mess?
- mtgx 8y agoAnd what makes you think that the checks and balances you have now are "the right amount"? Does it feel that way to you right now or in the past few decades?
- adonnjohn 8y agoI really am open to listening if you have any tangible ideas on why more than 3 would fix or help deter bipartisanism overriding checks and balances
- dev_dull 8y agoOne “great” thing about Trump taking office has been all of the sunlight on the FBI/DOJ abuses. We already knew these surveillance systems would be abused, and now we have many evidences of smoking guns. Unfortunately right now the only places picking them up are conservative researchers. Don’t ask me why. This quote is a verifiable fact and should frighten everyone: > We know from Collyers report the FISA-702(16)(17) process was extraordinarily abused by verified “contractors” who had access to the FBI/NSA database. The rate of abuse was 85%. Meaning 85 out of every 100 FISA702 database searches were unauthorized and outside of compliance.[1] It gets worse. The data was used/sold for political purposes by opposition researchers. The whole thing stinks and it’s not a partisan issue. Anyone that cares about this stuff should be rallying around this news and demanding more information. Parties aside, this is serious. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/12/14/john-solomon-drops-a-tick-tock-bombshell-dia-holds-documents-that-can-exonerate-flynn/#more-157749 https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/12/14/john-solomon...
- blattimwind 8y ago> all of the sunlight on the FBI/DOJ abuses. We already knew these surveillance systems would be abused creates secret police secret police abuses citizens What a twist.
- capulate89 8y agoWhat was the point of your comment? To be smug? You just posted the equivalent of "hueh hueh and water is wet amirite?" Let's have real discussions here.
- cowsandmilk 8y ago> Unfortunately right now the only places picking them up are conservative researchers. The document here was obtained by Property of People, who don't appear to be conservative researchers[1]. [1] https://propertyofthepeople.org/about-us/ https://propertyofthepeople.org/about-us/
- dev_dull 8y ago
- meandave 8y agoIf you’d like to remind Carmen Ortiz of the blood on her hands - http://www.andersonkreiger.com/attorney/carmen-m-ortiz/ http://www.andersonkreiger.com/attorney/carmen-m-ortiz/
- mtnGoat 8y agoWait, the FBI did something sketchy? This should honestly come as no surprise to anyone paying attention. Protect yourselves folks, no one else will.
- eeZah7Ux 8y agoThe more power an organization has the more scrutiny should receive. Power abuses need to be brought to light. This is how democracy works. We can't ignore a problem just because "everybody knows".
- mtnGoat 8y ago100% agreed. i don't think anyone should ignore it by any means. it's just that the FBI/NSA/etc seem to just keep doing it, which is why it shouldn't come as a surprise, they've been caught many times doing questionable data gathering.
- 8bitsrule 8y agoThreatening the status quo is a guaranteed ticket to that mad theater.