15 ms·

You keep shifting the goal posts... He did something illegal, repeatedly, he got caught, he got offered a lenient plea deal of a few months. Those are the fact

by gertop 1mo ago

You keep shifting the goal posts... He did something illegal, repeatedly, he got caught, he got offered a lenient plea deal of a few months. Those are the facts. Yet somehow y'all turn it into: he was harassed, his family's life was threatened, he was going to get life in prison.

pdonis 1mo ago
> He did something illegal Read the book Three Felonies A Day. The law is so bloated now that we all do illegal things all the time, we can't help it. What Swartz actually did was to download copies of scientific papers that should be in the public domain to begin with, because we paid for the research already with our tax money. The fact that such information is considered "proprietary" and JSTOR and other companies are able to keep it locked behind paywalls is an outrage. Further, after Swartz returned all the material he had downloaded and agreed not to do it again, both JSTOR and MIT said they were satisfied and no further action was needed (though JSTOR was more emphatic about it than MIT was). Which, combined with the above, should have ended the case then and there.
- 9x39 1mo ago
  > Swartz actually did was to download copies of scientific papers That's the root, but I think what Swartz actually did was anger someone at MIT, who called the Secret Service. The federal involvement persisted even after JSTOR and the state quit, and they had him served on a plate with MIT's help. You can set a surprising amount of government force in action with a concerned phone call, as it turns out.
  - pdonis 1mo ago
    > I think what Swartz actually did was anger someone at MIT, who called the Secret Service. MIT was concerned that someone (they didn't know who it was at the time--in fact IIRC they didn't find out until the police told them after they caught Swartz) was using their network in a suspicious way. I don't know that anyone was "angered". > You can set a surprising amount of government force in action with a concerned phone call, as it turns out. I don't think the people at MIT who called in the police (and they were, IIRC, fairly low level people) had any idea what a shitstorm they were going to unleash. Nor do I think the (higher-level, but still IIRC not at the level of the top MIT administration) people at MIT who ended up interacting with the Federal prosecutor thought through what was actually going on as they should have, or had the issue considered by the MIT administration as a whole as it should have been.
    - 9x39 1mo ago
      MIT evidently added a camera. Later that day, the MIT police made their first contact with him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#United_States_v._Aaron_Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#United_States_v._... "When it was discovered, a video camera was placed in the room to record Swartz; his computer was left untouched. The recording was stopped once Swartz was identified," IME, months-long internal investigations in an org with Secret Service involvement would be unlikely to escape senior management, but I'm just speculating and only have the same info as everyone else. You might be right.
    - harshreality 1mo ago
      If they were even slightly concerned that the scope went beyond what they were aware of with JSTOR, they would've either immediately contacted police or disconnected the laptop. The timeline in the report outlines that they discovered the laptop at 8am, and were in internal communications with their bosses and MIT's lawyers before someone finally contacted police at 9:45am. They knew what was going on before they found the laptop. They had been briefed by someone at MIT who was in contact with JSTOR. I suspect that everyone on the networking staff (and possibly most of the university) knew of the JSTOR downloading situation after the second incident in October. JSTOR had blocked MIT for 3 days, and that must have caught people's attention. Once they found the laptop, they involved police despite knowing to a virtual certainty that the problem with the laptop was that it was scraping JSTOR, again. They didn't know yet that it was Aaron, but they would've known it would turn out to be someone ideologically just like him. There was nothing suspicious about it. It was simply jeopardizing MIT's contract with JSTOR. The use of a data closet like that was very bad manners.
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
Quarrelsome 1mo ago
I think you're being hysterical. Getting threatened for 35 years in jail is absurd for the crime. Stating "oh well it would never have actually _been_ 35 years" is akin to pretending to punch someone and stopping just before you hit them and then mocking them for flinching. > I wasn't _actually_ going to hit you, quit being a baby. Which is why its actually illegal to do that to people in a lot of places. My issue is that the sentence is artificial and used for intimidation as opposed to being a rational basis for a justice system. Hence the mafia analogy. Imagine if the US had a maximum sentence of 35 years for mere possession of a firearm but in practice, it would only be used in very unlikely conditions. It wouldn't last a minute. It's only allowed to be like this because nobody cares about tech.
- tpmoney 1mo ago
  > Imagine if the US had a maximum sentence of 35 years for mere possession of a firearm but in practice, it would only be used in very unlikely conditions. It wouldn't last a minute. It's only allowed to be like this because nobody cares about tech. This is effectively how all federal sentencing and reporting about that sentencing works, all the time. A lawyer blogger Popehat has talked about this for years[1]. Headlines pull add up all charges and the maximum statutory sentences for those and report it as if that's even remotely close to a likely outcome and it's not. In fact, Popehat actually wrote about that as it applied to Swartz in the aftermath of his suicide[2]. If you read about the Swartz prosecution, you saw people decrying the fact that he was facing 35 years in prison. That's more than rapists and murders serve, they say. But they are talking about the maximum possible sentences, not any sentence he was remotely likely to get. Recently in the context of another case I explained how federal sentencing works, and how it's driven by an arcane set of rules producing a recommendation that federal judges often follow — rules that on most occasions produce a result well below the maximum possible sentence. Which isn't to say that this sort of aggressive intimidation isn't bullshit. It is. But it's also not some unique "nobody cares about tech" thing. [1]: https://www.popehat.com/p/beware-the-flood-of-trump-sentencing https://www.popehat.com/p/beware-the-flood-of-trump-sentenci... [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20150604204913/http://www.popehat.com/2013/03/24/three-things-you-may-not-get-about-the-aaron-swartz-case/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150604204913/http://www.popeha...

by gertop 1mo ago

pdonis 1mo ago

> He did something illegal Read the book Three Felonies A Day. The law is so bloated now that we all do illegal things all the time, we can't help it. What Swartz actually did was to download copies of scientific papers that should be in the public domain to begin with, because we paid for the research already with our tax money. The fact that such information is considered "proprietary" and JSTOR and other companies are able to keep it locked behind paywalls is an outrage. Further, after Swartz returned all the material he had downloaded and agreed not to do it again, both JSTOR and MIT said they were satisfied and no further action was needed (though JSTOR was more emphatic about it than MIT was). Which, combined with the above, should have ended the case then and there.

9x39 1mo ago
> Swartz actually did was to download copies of scientific papers That's the root, but I think what Swartz actually did was anger someone at MIT, who called the Secret Service. The federal involvement persisted even after JSTOR and the state quit, and they had him served on a plate with MIT's help. You can set a surprising amount of government force in action with a concerned phone call, as it turns out.
- pdonis 1mo ago
  > I think what Swartz actually did was anger someone at MIT, who called the Secret Service. MIT was concerned that someone (they didn't know who it was at the time--in fact IIRC they didn't find out until the police told them after they caught Swartz) was using their network in a suspicious way. I don't know that anyone was "angered". > You can set a surprising amount of government force in action with a concerned phone call, as it turns out. I don't think the people at MIT who called in the police (and they were, IIRC, fairly low level people) had any idea what a shitstorm they were going to unleash. Nor do I think the (higher-level, but still IIRC not at the level of the top MIT administration) people at MIT who ended up interacting with the Federal prosecutor thought through what was actually going on as they should have, or had the issue considered by the MIT administration as a whole as it should have been.
  - 9x39 1mo ago
    MIT evidently added a camera. Later that day, the MIT police made their first contact with him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#United_States_v._Aaron_Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#United_States_v._... "When it was discovered, a video camera was placed in the room to record Swartz; his computer was left untouched. The recording was stopped once Swartz was identified," IME, months-long internal investigations in an org with Secret Service involvement would be unlikely to escape senior management, but I'm just speculating and only have the same info as everyone else. You might be right.
  - harshreality 1mo ago
    If they were even slightly concerned that the scope went beyond what they were aware of with JSTOR, they would've either immediately contacted police or disconnected the laptop. The timeline in the report outlines that they discovered the laptop at 8am, and were in internal communications with their bosses and MIT's lawyers before someone finally contacted police at 9:45am. They knew what was going on before they found the laptop. They had been briefed by someone at MIT who was in contact with JSTOR. I suspect that everyone on the networking staff (and possibly most of the university) knew of the JSTOR downloading situation after the second incident in October. JSTOR had blocked MIT for 3 days, and that must have caught people's attention. Once they found the laptop, they involved police despite knowing to a virtual certainty that the problem with the laptop was that it was scraping JSTOR, again. They didn't know yet that it was Aaron, but they would've known it would turn out to be someone ideologically just like him. There was nothing suspicious about it. It was simply jeopardizing MIT's contract with JSTOR. The use of a data closet like that was very bad manners.

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

Quarrelsome 1mo ago

I think you're being hysterical. Getting threatened for 35 years in jail is absurd for the crime. Stating "oh well it would never have actually _been_ 35 years" is akin to pretending to punch someone and stopping just before you hit them and then mocking them for flinching. > I wasn't _actually_ going to hit you, quit being a baby. Which is why its actually illegal to do that to people in a lot of places. My issue is that the sentence is artificial and used for intimidation as opposed to being a rational basis for a justice system. Hence the mafia analogy. Imagine if the US had a maximum sentence of 35 years for mere possession of a firearm but in practice, it would only be used in very unlikely conditions. It wouldn't last a minute. It's only allowed to be like this because nobody cares about tech.

tpmoney 1mo ago
> Imagine if the US had a maximum sentence of 35 years for mere possession of a firearm but in practice, it would only be used in very unlikely conditions. It wouldn't last a minute. It's only allowed to be like this because nobody cares about tech. This is effectively how all federal sentencing and reporting about that sentencing works, all the time. A lawyer blogger Popehat has talked about this for years[1]. Headlines pull add up all charges and the maximum statutory sentences for those and report it as if that's even remotely close to a likely outcome and it's not. In fact, Popehat actually wrote about that as it applied to Swartz in the aftermath of his suicide[2]. If you read about the Swartz prosecution, you saw people decrying the fact that he was facing 35 years in prison. That's more than rapists and murders serve, they say. But they are talking about the maximum possible sentences, not any sentence he was remotely likely to get. Recently in the context of another case I explained how federal sentencing works, and how it's driven by an arcane set of rules producing a recommendation that federal judges often follow — rules that on most occasions produce a result well below the maximum possible sentence. Which isn't to say that this sort of aggressive intimidation isn't bullshit. It is. But it's also not some unique "nobody cares about tech" thing. [1]: https://www.popehat.com/p/beware-the-flood-of-trump-sentencing https://www.popehat.com/p/beware-the-flood-of-trump-sentenci... [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20150604204913/http://www.popehat.com/2013/03/24/three-things-you-may-not-get-about-the-aaron-swartz-case/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150604204913/http://www.popeha...