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> Many people, almost by definition, do not believe that their own criminal acts were actually a "crime". Rationalization is a well-known human psychological ph
by walid 13y ago
> 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.
It is problematic when you accept people's sworn testimony when it is against their true belief. Usually that is what is called a lie and sometimes a form of slavery. Disagreeing with clearly stated laws is one thing, but signing in agreement on what you totally disagree with and only because you were compelled is suppression of expression. I'm NOT trying to convert Aaron's position to one of free speech, but there is a line when you decide that someone has broken the law whether they agree to it or not and making them against their beliefs sign on a paper that becomes public record stating that they knowingly broke the law. The case here is when a law's validity is being challenged, this signed piece of paper removes any doubts about wrong doing and seals the fate of the signer. The law is validated by invalidating the counterargument through coercion.
> 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.
This I totally agree with and even if he disagreed personally with the law itself he did what he did and it was at least in my opinion somehow not right and obviously illegal.
> 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.
The problem with this argument is that his life was already nuked. The prosecution and MIT were in cahoots. If you read the article carefully you can see that Aaron's lawyers were upset that the prosecution was getting documents from MIT without warrants and hence violating Aaron's 4th amendment rights.
Tensions at MIT heightened in October after Aaron’s lawyers filed a motion alleging the university was “acting in concert” with the prosecution, violating federal law and Aaron’s Fourth Amendment rights protecting him from unreasonable search and seizure. The motion sought to suppress the indictment and all information gathered during the investigation. MIT was afraid its employees might have to defend themselves on the stand, which Abelson concluded served to further align the university’s interests with the prosecution.
- rayiner 13y agoTwo points: 1) You can disagree with a law yet concede that you broke it. I might disagree with the concept of copyright, but I can recognize and admit when my actions, fit the definition of infringement. 2) It was not a violation of Aaron's 4th amendment rights for MIT to hand over documents without a warrant. You cannot invoke 4th amendment protection over someone else's property, only that person can. And that person is free to cooperate without a warrant.
- walid 13y agoIn your first point you skip that the reason why Aaron was able to get into the system was that MIT was a breeding place for the hack culture and didn't clamp down on security like keeping the door of the switches closet open and allowing highly privileged access to its network. If it was locked or entry was prohibited then it would have been outright against set rules. It wasn't. This means according to MIT's followed traditions he did what everyone else was capable of doing and it was not against the law because heavy use of the network and access to the switches room was allowed. As for your second point it doesn't hold. The kerfuffle around the NSA is partly because it was collecting data from the ISPs without a warrant and 4th amendment rights are being violated. In this case MIT is in the same position as the ISPs while not having immunity over their actions like ISPs did.
- mpyne 13y agoFor your first point, Aaron was not an MIT student or MIT faculty so whatever traditions MIT might have regarding their lax security, they didn't apply to him. Either way MIT made it actively clear to Aaron that his presence was unwelcome on their subnet. Keep in mind that your logic would excuse essentially any amount of computer crimes and actual vandalism if applied in general to anyone who cared to go to MIT. Note further that MIT 'hacks' are also famous for having the hackers treat the campus with great care to include not interfering with the rest of the students' study and cleaning up after themselves when they were done. And student 'hacks' certainly didn't last over a period of weeks and months. As for your second point, MIT was the ISP (at least to the point of their network peers and upstreams) and since MIT is not the government the Fourth Amendment never applied between MIT <-> Aaron. Aaron's Fourth Amendment rights (which range Aaron <-> government) could never be violated by MIT unless MIT were working directly at the behest of the government, which is not something that happened here. Rather MIT voluntarily cooperated with the prosecution after completing their own investigation (which is always the right of the victim of a crime). But ISPs don't get a separate legal immunity; if you are an ISP and act like an ISP (including following the law as an ISP) then you would have the same legal rights as any other "ISP".