MIT Attempts To Block Release of Documents In Aaron Swartz Case 159
Dputiger writes "In the wake of activist Aaron Swartz's suicide, MIT launched an investigation into the circumstances that led to his initial arrest and felony charges. It's now clear that the move was nothing but a face-saving gesture. Moments before the court-ordered release of Swartz's Secret Service file under the Freedom of Information Act, MIT intervened, asking the judge to block the release. Supposedly this is to protect the identities of MIT staff who might be harassed — but government policy is to redact such information already."
Who? (Score:1, Insightful)
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Exactly, because when someone installs their own equipment in someone else's closet, tries to hide the fact that they installed the equipment, carfs down oodles and oodles of documents which the general public did not have access to because THEY felt they had the right to decide how the information is used, that person bears no responsibility for their actions.
It's all on the backs of those who caught the person doing something they didn't have a right to do, not the person committing the crime.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I don't believe that his "crimes" should have involved any jail-time whatsoever and I'm surprised by anyone who did think that Aaron was a danger to society and should have been locked up for years.
So, with people being held responsible for their beliefs and actions, why is MIT not just releasing the information and instead weaseling around the court system?
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It was not checking out too many books. He deliberately went into the library, where he didn't have access, and took books which the library had which could only be checked out under strict controls (i.e. the books were rare, old, in bad shape, etc).
You would agree that someone breaking into a library and performing the above acts should be jailed, correct? If not, then apparently breaking and entering isn't a crime in your eyes, nor is stealing something you don't have access to.
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If MIT doesn't have anything to hide, they don't need to block the release of the documents. Se how fun it isn't, when it's applied the other way around? Bunch of fucking hypocrites, and they are allowed to continue due to idiots like you.
It's a fucking shame. And you're a fucking disgrace.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rare old books are a limited resource. If he took those, nobody else could use them. That would be stealing.
Checking out too many books from the library means those books aren't available for other library patrons to check out. That's rude.
What he did was weaker still. He violated a copyright license. JSTOR had negotiated monopoly rights to copy those articles, and he violated their rules. He probably didn't deprive anyone of anything, though he may have damaged JSTOR by making it harder for them to negotiate rights in the future.
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Convenient that you forget about the breaking and entering and then illegal access to the computer system.
You idiots needs to realize it is not about the docs, it was about the crimes he committed to gain access to the docs.
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So .. breaking and entering will get you, what? 4 months?
Take a moment to go through the list of charges and tally them up until you hit 35 years and ask yourself if justice was being served. The punishment should fit the crime and, when it doesn't, we need to revisit our laws and sentencing guidelines.
And no need to call anyone an idiot -- this is one of those issues that divides people and when they feel passionate they respond passionately. There's room for passion in debates like these because it's a po
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The B&E wasn't the basis of the threatened 35 year penalty, and in fact Wikipedia says those charges were dropped. The charges that remained were that he didn't follow the JSTOR rules. It's ridiculous that not supporting a monopoly is legally so much worse than breaking and entering.
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Didn't the JSTOR servers crash because he put like 10x normal load on them?
I don't remember that, and don't see it mentioned in the Wikipedia article, but if it's true, then JSTOR would have additional reason to sue him beyond the damage to the reputation that I already mentioned.
The whole thing should have been a civil claim against Swartz by JSTOR for damages. He violated a contract with them, and it may have caused some harm to them.
That part of it should not have led to criminal charges. The B&E probably was a criminal act, but it's not one that typically has a 35 year j
Re:Who? (Score:5, Interesting)
If not, then apparently breaking and entering isn't a crime in your eyes, nor is stealing something you don't have access to.
where have you been the last year or so? the government is breaking and entering our digital lives at a much deeper level and much wider level of population (ie, EVERYONE).
they are not punished for their 'digital break-ins'. why should citizens, then? it seems its ok, in today's world. if the gov can get away with it, then it must be legal. RIGHT?
doublestandard much?
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You're an idiot.
Did you notice the much of the government is also up in arms about what the NSA did?
And
Convenient that you forget about the breaking and entering and then illegal access to the computer system.
You idiots needs to realize it is not about the docs, it was about the crimes he committed to gain access to the docs.
Wow, did somebody just learn a new word? Good for you!
I can only assume you're still pretty young, or haven't watched politics very much. Politicians spend a lot of time being very dismayed, concerned, disappointed, and outraged when their opponents do certain things, and then justify those same acts when they're the ones who get caught. When they do something they shouldn't have, they create a law saying they can do that now. If they propose a law and everyone gets upset, they drop it and then propo
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Huh! (Score:1)
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Er, no. In the situation you mention, by removing the books he would have been depriving other people of being able to use them, and (perhaps) harming the books themselves. Not particularly analogous at all. (And this is important, as being able to differentiate between physical and intellectual property is pretty central to having a meaningful discussion of intellectual property.)
He did violate access rules. He *might* have been intending to make the material publicly available - this is broadly asserted,
Re:Who? (Score:5, Interesting)
It was not checking out too many books
Right, because Aaron being in possession of them did not stop anyone else from reading them.
He deliberately went into the library, where he didn't have access
He did have access, MIT's network is open and anyone who has access to MIT's network can access JSTOR.
took books which the library had which could only be checked out under strict controls
So strict that they give them out in PDF form to anyone who asks.
You just made that up. (Score:5, Insightful)
where he didn't have access, and took books which the library had which could only be checked out under strict controls
Bullsh*t. You're just making it up. Swartz was a research fellow at a university with a JSTOR account. That mean he had legal access to them.
Say, you're not part of Idiot America [amazon.com] are you?
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He committed breaking and entering, and he access a computer he DID NOT have authorization to do so.
Just becasue you can get to a place on the web, does not mean you can go to where the web sited is hosted, break in the back door, and plug in your laptop behind their firewall.
You seem to know nothing about the case, nothing about his actions. You have the some gall to imply other people are idiots.
How about you learn the facts about something for talking about them?
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Which merits at worst a few weeks in jail. A lotta dumbfuckers, then and now, pretend that objecting to 35+ years in jail meant Swartz should have suffered no consequences. No, it means that if the choice is walking or spending half in life in jail for trespassing, the guy should walk.
Anyone who thinks otherwise, I ask why they haven't immigrated to Saudi Arabia yet so they can watch people be executed for
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For the record, I do not think that a member of the public who breaks into a public library should be jailed. Why should we prioritise the "locking down" of information over the freedom of an individual? Something's very wrong with your world view if you think that makes sense.
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I'm torn as I regularly read Slashdot, but I live in an EU country and as such feel that I should be using metric units. Anyone know the metric equivalent of 1 LOC?
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"what he did amounted to the digital equivalent of checking out too many library books. "
No. What he did wast the equivalent of going to closed library, smashing smashing in the window, and then throwing books out the window.
Would you argue the someone who did that was just giving out information that was going to be free anyways?
Remember, there was breaking and entering, physical access a computer he was not authorized to access.
You example would only apply if he sat at home a distributed the files via bit
Re:Who? (Score:5, Insightful)
What he did wast the equivalent of going to closed library, smashing smashing in the window, and then throwing books out the window.
We can quantify the damage done when a window is smashed. Books that are removed from a library must be replaced or they will be unavailable to patrons; that can be quantified as well.
Can you quantify the damage Aaron did? I suspect it is somewhere around "13 cents in electricity costs."
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If we want to tune the analogy further, it'd be more akin to picking the lock on the library door to get out-of-hours access and then copying loads of books and letting anyone read those copies. (I don't know if he actually caused any significant damage or not).
Obviously, there's a lot of difference between moving physical books and digitally copying stuff.
Re:Who? (Score:5, Interesting)
Using a sledgehammer to swat a fly is bad, not because the fly doesn't need to be swatted.
Not Block (Score:1)
They don't want to block them, just put them behind a pay wall as a final FU to the memory of Aaron.
I would have expected better from MIT? (Score:2)
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The Boston.com article says that MIT's side of things is that they don't want the files blocked, just redacted.
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I guess by redacted, they mean the classic joke where the end result is a fax consisting of 100 entirely black pages.
What do you mean by "good?" (Score:4, Interesting)
Sometimes, someone gets faced with an ethical dilemma and doesn't immediately know what the right thing to do is. In those circumstances, it's understandable that the first thing he does is not necessarily the best thing he could have done.
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But when, like MIT, they select nearly the worst thing they could do, you should at LEAST question their ethical judgement.
They had lots of choices. Picking the best would have been difficult. Not picking a blatantly evil one would have been easy. They picked a blatantly evil one.
This will tarnish the name of MIT for at least the next decade. (To, admittedly, a decreasing amount.) But the people who made the decision should never again be put in a responsible position. They have proven that they are e
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Sure, but since this was a slowly developing situation, they had plenty of time for second thoughts but freely chose to double down on the incorrect action.
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Apparently you don't know much about the history of MIT.
Sleep with dogs, you get fleas, MIT (Score:1)
Guess someone is a little ashamed to be caught in bed with the Feds. Hope MIT at least demanded they wear a condom.
Quick! To the racemobile! (Score:1)
Were they black? They were black weren't they. This was racially motivated.
Now here's a bunch of unrelated people to talk about it on tv.
(i have no idea if i'm joking anymore.... worlds gone insane)
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You're being ridiculous.
This was clearly the work of gay Muslims.
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Gay muslim atheist paedophiles.
But don't call me Shirley.
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Shirly? So... crosdressing gay Muslim atheist pedophiles
Pointless details. Let's look at the meat of it. (Score:5, Insightful)
There were a lot of problems with the whole Swartz case. In particular, that his actions were considered grounds for harsher punishment than many murderers and rapists. I don't care about the documents half as much as I care about the fact that our system is so broken that copying data is so disproportionately punished.
It doesn't even matter if Aaron was right or wrong when the fundamental laws, rules and regulations of the case were so flawed in the first place.
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It's not dishonest if I haven't bothered to research the case. Merely ill-informed. In this case, I read about it several months ago, and am simply going off what bits and pieces I remember.
But, as you said, my point is still valid generally speaking.
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The people who care already care. The ones who don't aren't the type to read /.
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Welcome to the Internet.
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If you think that is a reasonable penalty, then I suppose you also think Oliver North [wikipedia.org] paid the right price for his crimes as well.
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Wait, how is that qualified as not being broken?
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Court verdicts and punishments normally are irrational. At times the system has deliberately used irrationality as a supposed method of crime control. For example you might have ten people charged with exactly the same crime with very similar life histories. One defendant gets a fine. Most of the other defendants get fines of various sizes and one gets 30 days plus a fine. But the last defendant gets 1 year in jail plus 2 years probation with a hefty fine on top of that.
Release of documents (Score:2)
Ok, so I as an organization do something wrong. Judge orders me to release a documentation about it. What stops me to choose what documents I would release and what documents I would forget/destroy/whatever ?
Everytime I hear about freedom of information and disclosure of documents I'm thinking about this. Especially when it comes to governments which is not the case here.. but the point is still valid.
Or do they have some sort of 'protection' against this, that I'm not aware of ?
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http://www.annarbor.com/vielmetti/foia-friday-reverse-foia/ [annarbor.com]
eg confidential commercial information vs defective parts
employment records
individual's privacy
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Presumably there's always the danger of someone, somewhere remembering that there was a document that was supposed to be there. Especially a lawyer on the opposition. Some piece of paperwork that is part of the bureaucracy that serves as a flag in a folder as thick as a thigh that, if missing even by accident, raises warning flags.
Also, shredding papers and burning papers tends to raise eyebrows among the staff who may or may not be in on your scheme and, if not, may just tip off the authorities.
There are l
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Nothing, that's exactly what happened under Bush regarding the Iraq war. Some hard drives just went "missing".
As someone else said you can always hope that someone recognises something is missing or destroy but for many organisations it'll be a cost-benefit analysis. What's going to hurt the organisation more, the revelations themselves, or the data proving the revelations themselves being found to have disappeared?
Say Obama ordered the NSA to assassinate the Queen of England, say someone leaked this but th
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Jim: How am I going to explain the missing documents to the Mail?
Sir Humphrey: Well this is what we normally do in, circumstances like these. [hands over a file]
Jim: [reading] This file contains the complete set of papers, except for a number of secret documents, a few others which are part of still active files, a few others lost in the flood of 1967. [to Humphrey] Was 1967 a particularly bad winter?
Sir Humphrey: No a marvellous winter, we lost no en
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Yes, Minister: the only show that is probably more relevant now than when it aired in the 1980s.
Why so secretive MIT? (Score:1)
In its motion, MIT asked the court to establish a process by which MIT could review and propose redactions to any such documents prior to their release. With this motion MIT does not oppose the release of these documents, but seeks only to redact information that could threaten the safety and privacy of its employees, or that could threaten the security of MIT’s computer network.
Jeez MIT, its not as if you turned state's evidence against the mob and now need witness protection! The fact that they're seeking to hide information which ordinarily would be completely unremarkable, now only piques the interest of everyone concerned with the case. Is MIT hiding something more than the names of a few employees who were trying to track down an illicit use of network resources?
MIT has no standing (Score:3)
FOIA requests can be redacted to protect the identities of agents in ongoing or sensitive investigations or to protect things like social security numbers whose release could abet fraud. They cannot be redacted to protect institutions from embarrassing imbroglios and bad decisions. That is the whole point of FOIA: the public has a right to know.
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..wouldn't they like to know if their data is on the swarts secret service file anyways? unless of course if they know it's some info that is going to bomb their reputation to the ground.. which I guess it is.
... nothing to see here, move along ... (Score:2)
There is nothing in the article that supports your conclusion. From the article:
MIT coverup (Score:2)
From the article, MIT wants to protect the identity of the people involved and to make sure their network security is protected. They want to be able make redactions above and beyond what the government would normally redact in such a release of information under the Freedom of Information Act.
I'm pretty sure that everybody would like that opportunity when information is released, but why should MIT get preferential treatment? There are established laws and procedures on what should and should not be redac
Check with your History Department, MIT (Score:3)
Great blog post, now let's examine the details (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-03/full-list-2013s-bilderberg-attendees [zerohedge.com]
First, there was the primary person pushing for the extradition of WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, Carl Bildt of Sweden.
Next, we have Robert Kaplan of Stratfor, the private intel outfit which was hacked by Anonymous, providing some most interesting and incriminating data.
Of course, we also see Alex Karp, of Palantir, the bunch who were prostituting themselves and tripping over themselves to run a disinformation campaign for the banksters against WikiLeaks.
Most telling, though, was a Harvard attendee, Lawrence Lessig, the dood and attorney for Aaron Swartz, the guy who was supposed to be Aaron's friend and mentor, the guy who brought Aaron into his fold so he could "watch over him" (or how about observe, compromise and interdict Aaron), the guy who waiting until after Aaron had committed suicide before he was planning to tell him that the federal prosecutors had backed away from their original onerous agenda of legally making Aaron give up any online computing for the remainder of his natural life?
Looking at that latest list of Bilderbergers, it is certainly not surprising to read this about MIT and company!
Re: Sorry internet (Score:2, Interesting)
This has nothing to do with driving anyone from any org to suicide (that is not dead yet) It does have to do with transparency and accountability though.
And with a sudden diminisging of MIT's cred with many tech people, sadly. Oh well, there are always others ready to pick any people (students or professors) that won't be heading to MIT as a reaction to this.
Re: Sorry internet (Score:4, Insightful)
And with a sudden diminisging of MIT's cred with many tech people, sadly. Oh well, there are always others ready to pick any people (students or professors) that won't be heading to MIT as a reaction to this.
MIT's cred with tech people is and has always been about the competence of their educators, the capabilities of their labs and the fact that a degree from MIT is taken at face value to imply a top-notch technical education. That has not changed. Students and professors don't go there for transparency.
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MIT's cred with tech people is and has always been about the competence of their educators...That has not changed.
Hasn't it?
Re: Sorry internet (Score:5, Insightful)
It has changed now that they have shown themselves to be as corrupt and self serving as every other education institution.
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The world is not black and white. If you view it as such you can niether make, nor observe progress.
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Driving people to suicide over trivial nonsense changes things, MIT is dead. Good teachers might or might not stop associating with MIT but the extremely excellent ones will probably leave over time. Anyone on the outside with half a clue and anything resembling a human heart hears "Aaron Swartz" each and every fucking time someone mentions MIT or a paper published from MIT comes their way.
Aaron Swartz has become MIT's unwanted brand and they manage to make themselves look even worse when they try to get rid of it.
Sure the paper-mill will roll on with plenty of people but any real aces who knows what happened won't go there because they don't want to be treated that way should they happen to run afoul of the administration. They know what to expect. Those who find out afterwards (likely as a warning or implied warning) will be limited by it and the implications of it no matter if it's sensible or applicable to themselves or not simply because they now know what to expect.
"Driving people to suicide" is not what they did. It's complete bullshit to lay that at the feet of MIT. Aaron Schwartz's own psychological problems made him unable to deal with the consequences of his actions, and his own lack of thinking through the possible consequences is largely responsible for the situation in which he found himself.
Imagine yourself in the shoes of the administrators at MIT. You have a history of Schwartz pulling files that you think are protected by copyright from your school's
Re:Sorry internet (Score:5, Insightful)
And so where exactly is the "transparency"?
The kid killed himself because he downloaded information that *should* be freely accessible in a "transparent" world. Instead, it's a crime to do what he did, and he was threatened with excessive penalties, because "downloading" is apparently a WORSE crime than murder or rape.
Where is the "accountability" here, where the punishment should fit the crime? How has this country become so upside-down?
I agree that the world would not be a better place with vigilante justice, but it needs to be said that, for most people in the US, there really isn't any other kind of justice at all.
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Don't worry little guy, Eric Holder is on it. He's a stand up all for justice kind of guy.
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Just becasue a library allows you to get free information doesn't mean you can through a brick through their windows when they are closed.
", it's a crime to do what he did, and he was threatened with excessive penalties,"
no, he wasn't. Don't confuse 'Maximum penalty possible' for a crime with what the person will get. This is a classic media ploy to make number seems bigger and scarier.
The DOJ wanted to drop the case, MIT wouldn't allow them. MIT was the victims so it's not like the justice system can choos
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Dude, you know how low penalties for burglaries are? If Swartz was charged with Burglary, he could cop a plea deal and probably get a one year suspended sentence! Of course he did something much more sinister! He used a fuckin Computer! We can't have that. Only 3-letter-agencies can use computers to break laws!
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Its no worse than getting a free game in a pinball machine, except for a far more noble cause.
Lets also remember Rosa Parks was a criminal too, she was breaking a law sitting in the white's only section of the bus.
Then assume the worst, and he was a criminal, how serious is this crime, a real life burgler wo
Re:Sorry internet (Score:5, Interesting)
Threatening to charge my girlfriend with being an accessory and put my kid in the hellhole that is the Mass. foster system might drive me to suicide.
Which, ya know, the prosecutor did to Schwartz.
Do you think it is fair to threaten the to take away somebody else's child to get a conviction?
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Just shut the fuck up about this case already. The defence proved that Martin ambushed Zimmerman to punish him. Both people made mistakes but Martins proved fatal. If Martin was smart he would have just kept going and made it home safely. But he chose to confront Zimmerman. Stupid.
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I'm not the AC, but no one drove Swartz to suicide, he killed himself. That is because he was mentally unstable to begin with. The only thing he is a victim of is depression and attendant poor decision making.
The government, of course, certainly didn't go easy on him, and their process of charging people with 2,358,976,543 things to get one charge to stick is horrendous. Still, that's exactly what they do to everyone. It's not like he was singled out for this treatment.
He knew he could get busted for th
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"The government, of course, certainly didn't go easy on him, "
MIT not 'The Government'. the DOJ wanted to drop the charges, MIT (the victims)wouldn't let them.
This is about MIT trying to control damage.
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I expect that if he had been facing 30 days in jail, he most likely would have been prepared to stand trial and do the time.
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Really? All it would have taken was a little research. He was in tech. He should have *known* the ridiculous shit they throw at "hacker-types". I know I do.
The practices of the Federal government are not surprising or opaque. They may suck, but it is suck that you can see every day by watching any news story about a federal case. Or did you think that they only used pages and pages of charges against mob bosses? Even mob bosses probably don't even do half the shit that they get charged for.
If you are
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Really, that's just more authoritarian apologia. Swartz no doubt also knew that prosecutors love to go after child molesters, but he would have gotten less time for fucking a 14 year old girl (or boy) in the ass than what the DOJ was threatening him with for trespassing.
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Ironically, the Feds wanted to drop the case, but it was MIT that was pushing for jail-time.
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America used to be proud of being "Land of the Free", but it now seems to be that secrecy is valued higher than people's lives. Release the information and let the chips fall where the
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Yes, cut what little science and engineering is being done in this country some more, good thinking.
Find a way to punish the people at MIT you abused the system. I suspect many of the teachers and students are just as appalled by these actions as you and I are.