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This Is the MIT Surveillance Video That Undid Aaron Swartz
- alisnic 13y agoRIP
- spodek 13y ago"This Is the MIT Surveillance Video That Undid Aaron Swartz" A video didn't undo Aaron Swartz. People undid Aaron Swartz. People with agendas and without compassion using a system of justice stacked in their favor.
- linux_devil 13y agoAaron is still an inspiration for me , don't understand the point of such videos , creates nothing but anguish for this system.
- Amadou 13y ago--off topic I see that all of your HN story submissions are marked [dead] as soon as you submit them. Do you know why that is happening to you? It started happening to me a couple of days ago without any explanation.
- linux_devil 13y agoHey , today it happened as I wrote title and and link but didn't click submit button, by the time it was dead. I clicked "back" in the browser and submitted again , it was dead for 3-4 times and 5th time it got posted. I think when you want to post new story you should not wait too long (>10 minutes) to click submit button or else it will be dead
- Amadou 13y agoI just looked at your submission history again and even the most recent one "Game industry of Finland" on slideshare is marked [dead]. Looking back through your history, the last 129 submissions are all [dead] it changed right between #129 and #130. Your #130 was "Startup - Bill Watterson, a cartoonist's advice" which got 192 karma points, but starting with #129 "Brilliant Resource on Typography (practicaltypography.com)" posted one day later, everything is marked [dead].
- linux_devil 13y agoBut I recently posted a poll 3 days back which got 70 upvotes and it came on first page (top 10). Surprising is that I can't see [dead] alongside my post when i see my submission history
- Amadou 13y agoYeah, that poll is the one anomaly. Go to your profile and set "showdead" to yes, I think that will let you see all [dead] posts and submissions.
- linux_devil 13y agoI found out , problem is our submission rights have been taken , it might be due to reposting and deleting stories, or might be due to posting irrelevant material which is of no relevance to HN community .
- Amadou 13y agoWhere do you find that? Is there some sort of recourse?
- linux_devil 13y agoSend gentle mail to HN , they might give your submission rights back.
- RexRollman 13y agoCouldn't it be argued that Aaron undid himself? He was not entirely blameless (although I do agree with those who have issues with the way the Government reacted).
- easy_rider 13y agoSorry but uhm, didn't he undo himself? Seriously stop saying that someone "undid" him, killed him, or even take the blame for him killing himself. Yes injustice is all around. A lot of people have been convicted for murders they have not done, later released because of new DNA evidence. These people have been in jail for decades, falsely imprisoned, and while released, their name probably never clean, but hey ...still alive.. Guess they had some sort of outlook. Aaron was facing charges for something he knew he did was against the law, but he didn't accept the world where that thing he did was against the law. So he took his own life.
- throwawaykf 13y agoI don't think, given his history of depression, that there's any easy rational explanation for his suicide.
- pyre 13y agoThe legal process isolated him from others because he couldn't discuss the trial with them. Even if he didn't commit suicide because of the prospect of jail time; the situation he was in (limited form of isolation) doesn't help someone with depression.
- danielweber 13y agoI would really like more details, from someone besides Lessig, on how he "couldn't discuss the trial" with people. That is a very very serious issue.
- pyre 13y agoIt's good legal advice not to discuss the trial with someone, as they can be called as witness against you. Even if you don't say anything incriminating to them, it could disrupt their life in a way that you don't want to happen.
- dasil003 13y ago
- mistresskim 13y agoLots of things contributed to this tragedy. The uneducated and alienated public is also to blame. Not that they are consciously evil but they are a huge part of the problem anyway. They are those who should have stepped forth and defended Aaron Swartz and set things straight. I find that it is of little help to look at these big problems in terms of individual intentions. In the end the underlying problems are widespread social circumstances that need to be fixed. The human nature impersonations, the evil people with agendas are just symptoms.
- res0nat0r 13y agoBy people I assume you mean Aaron himself repeatedly breaking the law undid Aaron Swartz.
- yawgmoth 13y agoI don't understand why the penalty for his crimes is so severe (Wikipedia: Federal prosecutors later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and 11 violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,[16] carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution and supervised release.[17]). That seems like a preposterous amount of time, money, and stipulations post-release. What was the federal prosecution's motivation for making an example out of him?
- DanBC 13y agoi) US prison system is weird and puts people in prison even when they pose no risk of harm to others ii) US justice system is a machine. Roll over and give up, or they're going to crush you like a bug.
- agilebyte 13y agoIt is easy to be tough on crime, it is harder to politically justify the opposite. Edit: English
- canweriotnow 13y agoYou mean to be crime on tough?
- agilebyte 13y agoNo, have fixed the sentence now.
- deaconblues 13y agoIt's a crime to be tough on easy.
- danielweber 13y agoHe wasn't facing 35 years of time. His lawyer did not just fall off the turnip truck and knew how federal sentencing guidelines worked.
- znowi 13y agoDamn, I feel sad he's not around anymore.
- adrianwaj 13y agoReminds me of the Osama Bin Laden video where he's sitting in front of the TV looking at the public image of himself.. too compelling to be true. note the filename of the pic in the article: swartz-double.jpg
- quarterto 13y ago...that would be because it's two photos side-by-side. A double photo.
- mrcactu5 13y agoAcademics are suspicious of anything slightly outside the mainstream. Did he know that? MIT trains hackers for a living, since before this guy was born.
- lwhi 13y agoWhy is this video news? Its presentation feels exploitative and sensational.
- atmosx 13y agoI remember when his death hit the news, my twitter timeline was full of hash-tags and posts and links. I didn't even knew the guy, then I decided to browse wikipedia and see who he is. I was impressed to say the least. It's too bad that many activists, who want clearly an open, just and more socially enabled world, have a psyche that is so fragile. But apparently the two things are correlated: If you are sensitive, you might very well be fragile. Now given the fact that tampering 40.000 criminal cases[1] give you 3 to 5 years, I don't see how publishing MIT documents can be so dangerous for the society. [1] http://filmingcops.com/corrupt-government-chemist-tampered-with-40000-cases-locking-countless-innocent-americans-in-prison/ http://filmingcops.com/corrupt-government-chemist-tampered-w...
- 3rd3 13y agoI wonder how we can create a social system that has incentives for sensitive people to become leaders. I think, the insensitivity that is necessary to become a leader is one of, or even the most fatal flaws of all types of societies we have come up so far.
- atmosx 13y agoI never thought this approach, but you are correct. Sensitive people are true believers and thus much harder to corrupt. I don't have the faintest idea on how we could achieve this on our televised democracy, but I'd be interested on reading other's opinion on the matter.
- DEinspanjer 13y agoSo did MIT and JSTOR get away with further third-party redaction to this set of documents? It was reported in earlier articles by this author regarding the FOIA lawsuit that they were attempting to do so, but I didn't see any mention of the result in this article.
- debian69 13y ago"TNT" was here .....
- imahboob 13y agoSome one had to take an extreme step like this to push for open access of government funded research.. I wish he has this kind of support when he was alive.
- lasermike026 13y agoThis is MIT. There is no security there by design. Swartz is guilty of what? RMS - " Hackers typically had little respect for the silly rules that administrators like to impose, so they looked for ways around. For instance, when computers at MIT started to have "security" (that is, restrictions on what users could do), some hackers found clever ways to bypass the security, partly so they could use the computers freely, and partly just for the sake of cleverness (hacking does not need to be useful). However, only some hackers did this—many were occupied with other kinds of cleverness, such as placing some amusing object on top of MIT's great dome (), finding a way to do a certain computation with only 5 instructions when the shortest known program required 6, writing a program to print numbers in roman numerals, or writing a program to understand questions in English. Meanwhile, another group of hackers at MIT found a different solution to the problem of computer security: they designed the Incompatible Timesharing System without security "features". In the hacker's paradise, the glory days of the Artificial Intelligence Lab, there was no security breaking, because there was no security to break. It was there, in that environment, that I learned to be a hacker, though I had shown the inclination previously. We had plenty of other domains in which to be playfully clever, without building artificial security obstacles which then had to be overcome. "
- MWil 13y agoI think everyone who graffiti'd the closet should come forward and beg to be forgiven for their breaking and entering too and MIT and the Secret Service can throw the book at them. /s