4 ms·

Strongbox and Aaron Swartz

239 points by Libertatea 13y ago

RyanMcGreal 13y ago
The link to Swartz' 2006 essay for Wired is broken. Here's the correct link: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2006/11/ringside_at_cop http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2006/11/ringside_at_cop
- codfrantic 13y ago
  Found the same, didn't feel like creating a newyorker/facebook/twitter account to post it as a comment to the original piece either :P
d23 13y ago
> Nine days after Aaron’s death, his familiar Skype avatar popped up on my computer screen. Somewhere, somebody—probably a family member—had booted up his computer. I fought the irrational urge to click on the icon and resume our conversation. Then he vanished from my screen again. Holy shit, that ending. Chilling.
- stephengillie 13y ago
  Ghost in the machine. Edit: http://xkcd.com/686/ http://xkcd.com/686/
  - idm 13y ago
    I love xkcd, and this one is the spookiest of them all. The logic of that comic leads to a challenging existential proposition.
- jccc 13y ago
  I'd sincerely like to hear what people think about the contrast between Poulsen's behavior and sentiment toward Swartz and (separately) Adrian Lamo vs. his behavior and sentiment toward, say, Bradley Manning: http://www.salon.com/2010/06/18/wikileaks_3/ http://www.salon.com/2010/06/18/wikileaks_3/ Maybe what impresses him most is a person's hacking chops and not so much the scale and morality of the actions that got a person into trouble.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    It makes sense to me. What Manning did was fairly awful from a dispassionate standpoint. Of course, few people are dispassionate about it, especially around here. :) If Manning had war crimes on file he could have revealed those and only those. What he did instead is at best reckless, and at worst could be said to be the instigator for the onset of the Arab Spring, and the follow-on violence that continues to this day, not to mention the Afghani and Pakistani families affected by the data leaks. On the other hand Swartz can be said pretty universally to be pursuing a noble goal (even those who disagree with some of his specific actions would tend to agree with that), and at worst gained unauthorized network access and downloaded a bunch of files...
- cwb71 13y ago
  It is chilling—but is it true? My immediate reaction when reading that paragraph was that someone as security-minded as Aaron would probably not leave his password saved in a Skype client.
  - breakyerself 13y ago
    Isn't that safer than typing it every time? A key logger could get it then. Has anyone ever extracted a password stored in a client like that?
    - eli 13y ago
      I don't know anything about Skype but yes, people have definitely extracted passwords saved in IM clients like that.
  - jeffasinger 13y ago
    There's no way he would have set things up to go from boot to skype without at least one password.
    - billybob255 13y ago
      There's the possibility that the person knew the password to log into his computer and Skype was a startup program.
  - byerley 13y ago
    There's a difference between being security-minded and being a crypto-nut. If you're proud of the work you're doing and it's not secretive, why bother encrypting the hard-drive? Similarly, he wouldn't have been caught in the first place if he had been security-nutty about the process, but he didn't think he was doing anything immoral.
Jun8 13y ago
"His suicide also raised new questions: Who owned the code now? (Answer: he willed all his intellectual property to Sean Palmer, who gives the project his blessing.)" Isn't his deaddrop code GPL licensed?
- admax88q 13y ago
  That doesn't answer the question of who owns the code. The code must have an owner to enforce the GPL or re-license or whatever.
  - jrochkind1 13y ago
    Yes, but the quote still implies some confusion about things. If the code is licensed GPL, you do not need the blessing of the owner, you already have a license. If the code is licensed GPL, and you want to use it, why do you even care who owns the copyright? There are reasons you might care, but they are not obvious, and the OP does not say why he was interested -- the implication of that sentence to the casual non-geek reader, is that the new yorker needed the copyright owners permission to launch. The OP doesn't even mention the GPL. If the code really is licensed GPL, that passage is misleading, is it not? Probably because the author himself is confused.
    - 3825 13y ago
      >If the code is licensed GPL, and you want to use it, why do you even care who owns the copyright? GPL protects the users' investments in that as a purchaser (there has to be a better word than purchaser here) of a derivative of GPL will have freedoms 0 through 3[1]. -- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. -- [1]

239 points by Libertatea 13y ago

The link to Swartz' 2006 essay for Wired is broken. Here's the correct link: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2006/11/ringside_at_cop http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2006/11/ringside_at_cop

codfrantic 13y ago
Found the same, didn't feel like creating a newyorker/facebook/twitter account to post it as a comment to the original piece either :P

d23 13y ago

> Nine days after Aaron’s death, his familiar Skype avatar popped up on my computer screen. Somewhere, somebody—probably a family member—had booted up his computer. I fought the irrational urge to click on the icon and resume our conversation. Then he vanished from my screen again. Holy shit, that ending. Chilling.

stephengillie 13y ago
Ghost in the machine. Edit: http://xkcd.com/686/ http://xkcd.com/686/
- idm 13y ago
  I love xkcd, and this one is the spookiest of them all. The logic of that comic leads to a challenging existential proposition.
jccc 13y ago
I'd sincerely like to hear what people think about the contrast between Poulsen's behavior and sentiment toward Swartz and (separately) Adrian Lamo vs. his behavior and sentiment toward, say, Bradley Manning: http://www.salon.com/2010/06/18/wikileaks_3/ http://www.salon.com/2010/06/18/wikileaks_3/ Maybe what impresses him most is a person's hacking chops and not so much the scale and morality of the actions that got a person into trouble.
- mpyne 13y ago
  It makes sense to me. What Manning did was fairly awful from a dispassionate standpoint. Of course, few people are dispassionate about it, especially around here. :) If Manning had war crimes on file he could have revealed those and only those. What he did instead is at best reckless, and at worst could be said to be the instigator for the onset of the Arab Spring, and the follow-on violence that continues to this day, not to mention the Afghani and Pakistani families affected by the data leaks. On the other hand Swartz can be said pretty universally to be pursuing a noble goal (even those who disagree with some of his specific actions would tend to agree with that), and at worst gained unauthorized network access and downloaded a bunch of files...
cwb71 13y ago
It is chilling—but is it true? My immediate reaction when reading that paragraph was that someone as security-minded as Aaron would probably not leave his password saved in a Skype client.
- breakyerself 13y ago
  Isn't that safer than typing it every time? A key logger could get it then. Has anyone ever extracted a password stored in a client like that?
  - eli 13y ago
    I don't know anything about Skype but yes, people have definitely extracted passwords saved in IM clients like that.
- jeffasinger 13y ago
  There's no way he would have set things up to go from boot to skype without at least one password.
  - billybob255 13y ago
    There's the possibility that the person knew the password to log into his computer and Skype was a startup program.
- byerley 13y ago
  There's a difference between being security-minded and being a crypto-nut. If you're proud of the work you're doing and it's not secretive, why bother encrypting the hard-drive? Similarly, he wouldn't have been caught in the first place if he had been security-nutty about the process, but he didn't think he was doing anything immoral.

Jun8 13y ago

"His suicide also raised new questions: Who owned the code now? (Answer: he willed all his intellectual property to Sean Palmer, who gives the project his blessing.)" Isn't his deaddrop code GPL licensed?

admax88q 13y ago
That doesn't answer the question of who owns the code. The code must have an owner to enforce the GPL or re-license or whatever.
- jrochkind1 13y ago
  Yes, but the quote still implies some confusion about things. If the code is licensed GPL, you do not need the blessing of the owner, you already have a license. If the code is licensed GPL, and you want to use it, why do you even care who owns the copyright? There are reasons you might care, but they are not obvious, and the OP does not say why he was interested -- the implication of that sentence to the casual non-geek reader, is that the new yorker needed the copyright owners permission to launch. The OP doesn't even mention the GPL. If the code really is licensed GPL, that passage is misleading, is it not? Probably because the author himself is confused.
  - 3825 13y ago
    >If the code is licensed GPL, and you want to use it, why do you even care who owns the copyright? GPL protects the users' investments in that as a purchaser (there has to be a better word than purchaser here) of a derivative of GPL will have freedoms 0 through 3[1]. -- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. -- [1]