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I said upfront that this is not a straight up comparison. The main point for me is that I walk past the memorial for the MIT police officer killed in duty about

by Smerity 13y ago

I said upfront that this is not a straight up comparison. The main point for me is that I walk past the memorial for the MIT police officer killed in duty about once per week. One of these events had a tremendous impact on MIT and the surrounding community, the other had a negligible one. Regardless, have a re-read of the article you linked to. Jennifer Granick writes: > He could plead guilty to all 13 felony charges and the government would argue for a six-month prison term ... Some have blithely said Aaron should just have taken a deal. This is callous. There was great practical risk to Aaron from pleading to any felony. ... More particularly, the court is not constrained to sentence as the government suggests. ... if he plead guilty to a felony, he could have been sentenced to as many as 5 years, despite the government's agreement not to argue for more. Each additional conviction would increase the cap by 5 years ... On top of that, Aaron "would have had to swear under oath that he committed a crime, something he did not actually believe". Due to the obscenely high maximum penalty, it is no longer a sane option to fight to prove one's innocence, even in the case of what would be a minor crime, as the risk in case of failure is disastrous. Even if he pleaded guilty to all the crimes, there was no guarantee of a six month sentence. Thank you for linking to the article though. It's well written and sheds a light on the complexities at play. Small note: I didn't mention Tsarnaev in my original post, I mentioned his roommates, so your statement about Tsarnaev and a six month jail term is unfounded.

mpyne 13y ago
> On top of that, Aaron "would have had to swear under oath that he committed a crime, something he did not actually believe". Many people, almost by definition, do not believe that their own criminal acts were actually a "crime". Rationalization is a well-known human psychological phenomenon. Whatever else Aaron thought about his idealistic mission, being on the MIT subnet without permission was wrong (both morally and legally), as was entering into the MIT server farm to gain that access. But this wasn't even something that Aaron naïvely didn't recognize... he knew this was wrong to do as he had the same level of JSTOR access at his own campus at Harvard. But he didn't leech JSTOR from his own campus, he traveled across the city to surreptitiously do it from MIT. He even once covered his face with his bicycle helmet when he noticed a security camera so let's know act like "I didn't commit a crime" was his big hang-up. He did know, even if he disagreed personally with the law itself. > Due to the obscenely high maximum penalty, it is no longer a sane option to fight to prove one's innocence, even in the case of what would be a minor crime, as the risk in case of failure is disastrous. Well for starters you don't need to prove your innocence, you need only demonstrate that the government was unable to prove your guilt. But either way Dr. Granick covered this point already, and her treatment was comprehensive. I do apologize for misunderstanding your point to include Tsarnaev, though I think it still applies even for the accomplices. You said you pass by that memorial every week... you think the people of Boston would let anyone involved skate?
- omegaworks 13y ago
  >his idealistic mission We don't know what he intended to do with the JSTOR data. >being on the MIT subnet without permission was wrong MIT grants guest access to its network while on the physical premises. >MIT’s open-network policies at the time allowed anyone visiting campus to access services like JSTOR.
  - roel_v 13y ago
    > MIT grants guest access to its network while on the physical premises. > >MIT’s open-network policies at the time allowed anyone visiting campus to access services like JSTOR. Please not this misinformation again. I have no horse in this race, but he was repeatedly kicked off the network, told not to mass-download again, and yet he chose to find ever-more invasive ways of accessing JSTOR, eventually planting a computer directly on the network access point; and doing so while disguised so as to avoid being caught on camera. It's not like he didn't know what was coming - and if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
    - ogreyonder 13y ago
      > if you can't do the time, don't do the crime. That is entirely the point. He may well have been willing to do "the time". But "the time" is wildly disproportionate to "the crime". This is bad for the same reason that we don't execute everyone convicted of breaking the law. Furthermore, how does your logic apply to the NSA? A group of someones very clearly broke the law hundreds of millions of times after being told to stop and being kicked off networks, then finding ever-more invasive ways of stealing our emails to grandma. Remind me, who is threatened with jail for the next billion (!) years under the CFAA?
      - roel_v 13y ago
        I'm not sure what points you're arguing, or what position you think I'm defending. He knew what 'the time' was, the saying doesn't go 'don't do the crime if you can't do what you feel is a reasonable amount of time for said crime'. I'm also not sure why you think this whole NSA bruha is relevant to this. What 'the law' is for an individual isn't always 'the law' for state actors, otherwise every soldier who ever killed someone would have to be jailed. I'm not interested in discussing whether the NSA spying is lawful, the point of my post was to counter the demagogy of 'oh he was just downloading stuff within his rights and then they killed him'. He deliberately broke the law, which is exactly what 'activism' is, but then when the time came to reap what he sewed, well we all know what happened then. Which is a tragedy, and I feel for the family having had two suicides close to me last year, but if you're going to make a point about sentencing practices or penalties of computer fraud laws, make them about actual issues, and don't distort what actually happened for your rhetorical convenience, otherwise you're no better than Fox News. (all 'you' in this not directed at 'you you' but meant as a generic 'you' that refers to everybody acting as described).

by Smerity 13y ago

mpyne 13y ago

> On top of that, Aaron "would have had to swear under oath that he committed a crime, something he did not actually believe". Many people, almost by definition, do not believe that their own criminal acts were actually a "crime". Rationalization is a well-known human psychological phenomenon. Whatever else Aaron thought about his idealistic mission, being on the MIT subnet without permission was wrong (both morally and legally), as was entering into the MIT server farm to gain that access. But this wasn't even something that Aaron naïvely didn't recognize... he knew this was wrong to do as he had the same level of JSTOR access at his own campus at Harvard. But he didn't leech JSTOR from his own campus, he traveled across the city to surreptitiously do it from MIT. He even once covered his face with his bicycle helmet when he noticed a security camera so let's know act like "I didn't commit a crime" was his big hang-up. He did know, even if he disagreed personally with the law itself. > Due to the obscenely high maximum penalty, it is no longer a sane option to fight to prove one's innocence, even in the case of what would be a minor crime, as the risk in case of failure is disastrous. Well for starters you don't need to prove your innocence, you need only demonstrate that the government was unable to prove your guilt. But either way Dr. Granick covered this point already, and her treatment was comprehensive. I do apologize for misunderstanding your point to include Tsarnaev, though I think it still applies even for the accomplices. You said you pass by that memorial every week... you think the people of Boston would let anyone involved skate?

omegaworks 13y ago
>his idealistic mission We don't know what he intended to do with the JSTOR data. >being on the MIT subnet without permission was wrong MIT grants guest access to its network while on the physical premises. >MIT’s open-network policies at the time allowed anyone visiting campus to access services like JSTOR.
- roel_v 13y ago
  > MIT grants guest access to its network while on the physical premises. > >MIT’s open-network policies at the time allowed anyone visiting campus to access services like JSTOR. Please not this misinformation again. I have no horse in this race, but he was repeatedly kicked off the network, told not to mass-download again, and yet he chose to find ever-more invasive ways of accessing JSTOR, eventually planting a computer directly on the network access point; and doing so while disguised so as to avoid being caught on camera. It's not like he didn't know what was coming - and if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
  - ogreyonder 13y ago
    > if you can't do the time, don't do the crime. That is entirely the point. He may well have been willing to do "the time". But "the time" is wildly disproportionate to "the crime". This is bad for the same reason that we don't execute everyone convicted of breaking the law. Furthermore, how does your logic apply to the NSA? A group of someones very clearly broke the law hundreds of millions of times after being told to stop and being kicked off networks, then finding ever-more invasive ways of stealing our emails to grandma. Remind me, who is threatened with jail for the next billion (!) years under the CFAA?
    - roel_v 13y ago
      I'm not sure what points you're arguing, or what position you think I'm defending. He knew what 'the time' was, the saying doesn't go 'don't do the crime if you can't do what you feel is a reasonable amount of time for said crime'. I'm also not sure why you think this whole NSA bruha is relevant to this. What 'the law' is for an individual isn't always 'the law' for state actors, otherwise every soldier who ever killed someone would have to be jailed. I'm not interested in discussing whether the NSA spying is lawful, the point of my post was to counter the demagogy of 'oh he was just downloading stuff within his rights and then they killed him'. He deliberately broke the law, which is exactly what 'activism' is, but then when the time came to reap what he sewed, well we all know what happened then. Which is a tragedy, and I feel for the family having had two suicides close to me last year, but if you're going to make a point about sentencing practices or penalties of computer fraud laws, make them about actual issues, and don't distort what actually happened for your rhetorical convenience, otherwise you're no better than Fox News. (all 'you' in this not directed at 'you you' but meant as a generic 'you' that refers to everybody acting as described).