MIT Releases Swartz Report: Instead of Leading, School Was 'Hands-Off' 127
curtwoodward writes "MIT's long-awaited internal investigation into its handling of the Aaron Swartz prosecution has been released (PDF), and it's massive — about 180 pages, not counting the reams of supporting documents. And although the report's authors say they were told not to draw any conclusions about MIT's actions — really — they still gently criticized the university. Swartz, a well-known activist, killed himself earlier this year while being prosecuted for federal computer crimes after he improperly downloaded millions of academic research articles. MIT remained notably 'hands-off' throughout the case, the internal report notes, despite requests that it defend Swartz or oppose the prosecution, and ample opportunities to show leadership. The report quotes an MIT official: 'MIT didn't do anything wrong; but we didn't do ourselves proud.'"
Swartz's partner, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, calls the report a whitewash.
Gee, I expected different results....! (Score:5, Insightful)
Can there be any surprise here?
An internal investigation, with nobody sworn in, and no subpoena power, finds the institution that empowers it blameless.
Lets have an investigation of why they wasted the money doing this investigation. No doubt that will find no fault either.
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Why exactly should your college defend you when you comit a crime?
Why should commiting suicide make you an hero?
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Let's ask Jesus.
Jesus says martyrdom is ok with him, that the automatic disdain for those who commit suicide is a terrible reflection of a desire to judge people and ignore their problems rather than embrace them with the spirit of love which he endorsed.
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Not to mention that MIT would expose itself to civil litigation from the journal publishers if they didn't cooperate.
Re:Gee, I expected different results....! (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to mention that he wasn't a student at MIT.
Re:Gee, I expected different results....! (Score:5, Interesting)
Why exactly should your college defend you when you comit a crime?
Well, it wasn't even his college...
But what he did should most certainly not be a crime (just a civil tort instead), and he was charge not just with the "crimes" he committed but a number he most certainly did not commit, and MIT was in a position to know for a fact that the charges were wildly exaggerated, and universities are supposed to represent and defend academic freedom, and as an alum I am deeply disappointed in the administration's behavior.
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Not entirely true. His father is an alumnus, and works there to boot. So he had reason and opportunity to be on campus anyway. That does not make him a student or faculty member, it does make him "legacy" according to most every college I've ever been associated with. These guys are usually given the benefit of the doubt.
Re:Gee, I expected different results....! (Score:5, Insightful)
Cynical. Very cynical. Not really wrong, but it misses subtlety. In this case we have a government with a heavy-handed response to an active resistance protest. It looks terrible, because it got a political activist arrested for what wasn't intended to do harm. It doesn't matter what others involved did, the blame rests with the DoJ for "cracking down" on a crime that was meant to do no harm.
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It wasn't MITs fault this kid killed himself.
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Please don't call him a kid, that carries connotations of irresponsibility. He was a grown man, and what would you prefer? Years of harassment by the DoJ and apathy by one of the (until now) most respected technical universities who are supposed to defend this sort of thing and have in the past, and then on top of that jail time for a so-called "crime" that did no damage. Or as you so stupidly put it: "Off yourself". It was MIT's fault as much as the DoJ's and his own.
Re:Gee, I expected different results....! (Score:5, Insightful)
MIT has a responsibility to defend someone who broke into one of their closets and installed a device?
Oh sure, academic freedom and all of that.
Seriously, though, I can't even imagine why they'd want to encourage that. Maybe not throw him to the sharks, but why is it MIT's responsibility to save him from his own plan?
I do agree that he wasn't a kid, although I think everyone wants to treat him that way. Probably because see him as a poor broken bird due to suicide.
Aside from that, though, that doesn't mean I agree with the way the prosecution was handled. That's classic Federal overkill. He was definitely guilty of trespass and probably some civil stuff, but I can't see why they'd go farther than that. Still, breaking the law is always a very, very dicey prospect as a method of protest, even in more benign jurisdictions, and he should have known that.
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Responsibility: No.
However lets look at this from the perspective of human decency. If, for instance, a stray dog took shelter on your porch, do you have any responsibility to protect it from the neighborhood bully that's chasing it with a baseball bat? Hell, the dog is trespassing. Breaking the law! Hand it over to whoever is pursuing it and let the punishment commence. As you watch the animal getting battered and beaten, does that make you a bad person?
Or do you just keep telling yourself : Not my re
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Uh. Dogs don't trespass. And the "bully", (ie. The Government) was chasing Swartz *after* he trespassed, not before.
I know what you think you're saying, but it's not the same thing. It's more like someone trespassing, you calling the cops because you heard someone outside messing with your wiring, and then watching some kid being shoved in the back of a police car under arrest in cuffs. You probably had no intention of having the boy next door dragged away in cuffs for simply hooking up to your cable TV
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The analogy isn't perfect, but it captures the spirit of the incident. Standing by idly (which is exactly what MIT did) while someone else is brutalized defies every bit of human decency. Yes, the guy broke the law, but his crimes were relatively minor, and didn't warrant the attention they were given.
Yes, Aaron Swartz is the one who killed himself, but the prosecution is the one who made that an attractive option. They hounded, harassed, browbeat, threatened, embarrassed and otherwise did everything they
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I am calling shenanigans here.
Everybody knows that all black people are named Sambo.
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The prosecutor set out to terrify him to the point that he would see no alternatives and no hope. The prosecutor was successful. I don't have much problem in considering terrifying someone into killing themselves to be manslaughter.
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lame rests with the DoJ for "cracking down" on a crime that was meant to do no harm.
The intended harm was to deprive JSTORS of the revenue it requires to handle the peer reviews and publish papers.
Swartz broke the law and decided to not stand up for his principles.
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Unless it was an external non-related investigating body doing the work, I sincerely doubt the veracity of their conclusions
Honestly, with the name Hal Abelson on the report's cover, I don't think anyone would would have berated you had you had higher expectations.
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It's turtles, I mean investigations, all the way down.
Unless it was an external non-related investigating body doing the work, I sincerely doubt the veracity of their conclusions. You'd think the most scientifically advanced (okay, arguably) place of higher learning in the world would have tried to remove any perception of bias on the part of the investigating body. Hire an outside firm at the very least.
That said, have you read the findings of the report? I don't think you'd want to doubt the veracity of some of their conclusions... they actually sound a lot like what I sometimes consider "rants" on slashdot... talking about protecting the hacker community, preventing chill, encouraging freedom of academic investigation, even for people not directly related to the institution, etc.
The paper has some great recommendations, and I hope they get followed, not just by MIT, but by any other educational institut
Re:Gee, I expected different results....! (Score:5, Interesting)
Forget the masturbatory self-congratulation that is this report. They almost certainly have something to hide. A reporter at Wired submitted a FOIA request for Aaron's Secret Service file. A judge OKed the release of the file but then MIT intervened to block the release!
See http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/mit-swartz-intervene/all/1 [wired.com]
Supposedly, it is _extremely_ rare for non-governmental entities to block FOIA requests. There must be something in there that MIT doesn't want to see the light of day.
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It could easily be the name of the secretary that processed the relevant paperwork. The main legitimate reason to deny a FOIA request is if the documents make reference to someone who is still alive who might face danger or harassment if their name is released.
Try RTA. The names of third parties would have been redacted as SOP for FOIA releases. Try again?
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They were fading that day...
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They're trying to block it because staff are named in the report and identified in other way (such as by title or affiliation where a name and contact information could be quickly acquire with duckduckgo.com or another search engine).
After Aaron committed suicide several staff at the Institute received very frightening and detailed death threats both via email and phone. One particular threat involved a "swatting" call that included a caller saying he was a gunman on his way to kill specific employees by na
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OK. I was not aware of the threats/SWATings that have occurred already. Perhaps more than the names could be redacted so that peoples identities could not be found out with bing (or another search engine). Regardless, if the people making these threats (which I don't condone by the way), then the identities of people involved are already known by at least some people.
I think that allowing the release of the Secret Service file with go a LONG way toward making amends for any wrongdoing, perceived or real. Pe
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Well, what's the point then blocking it if the death threats are happening already to specific members of the staff? it certainly doesn't make it sound like they're clean on it. Maybe they're just shitty by going along with the SS but that's just as shitty in the end.
Still I find it ridiculous that anyone who is involved with FOIA can block them. Call yourself a death threat and block the FOIA on government deal that you got under the table..
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Can there be any surprise here?
An internal investigation, with nobody sworn in, and no subpoena power, finds the institution that empowers it blameless.
Lets have an investigation of why they wasted the money doing this investigation. No doubt that will find no fault either.
There's no surprise here -- you obviously didn't read the report. Just going to the findings/questions sections is very illuminating.
First off, this investigation was called by the president of MIT, but was only partly internal.
Second: MIT wasn't found blameless in the findings (it's even in TFS).
Thirdly, if you read the President's report or the prolog to the report, you'll see that the report wasn't about finding MIT guilty of anything, it was to get a third-party summary of what actually happened and wh
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Mistakes... (Score:2)
Re:improperly downloaded articles? (Score:5, Insightful)
They were pay-walled (by journls who claim copyright from authors who did them as works for hire and thus didn't have the copyright to transfer). He downloaded them for free from a university that had payed a license (with a laptop hidden in a closet). There was TOS involved (which he may or may not have violated), which violating is a felony (due to an obscure and unconstitutional law).
improperly? (Score:5, Informative)
"Swartz, a well-known activist, killed himself earlier this year while being prosecuted for federal computer crimes after he improperly downloaded millions of academic research articles." (emphasis added)
Given that: 1) he wasn't convicted; 2) the journals in question didn't have the right to the works they were selling access to (the authors were generally funded by university/public money, and thus did not hold the copyright and thus could not transfer the rights to the journal); 3) its even debatable if he violated the TOS (he was apparently doing a research project related to the papers, presumably some sort of meta study, which could might be acceptable use for millions of papers), it seems inaccurate to say his downloads were "Improper".
I personally think his actions were perfectly acceptable, proper and legal.
Re:improperly? (Score:5, Insightful)
If anything he was properly releasing information that was improperly withheld.
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If anything he was properly releasing information that was improperly withheld.
The articles in question weren't actually released (don't confuse this with his freeing of the PACER documents, which was clearly legal and accepted, and he paid for!). JSTOR (the claimed owner of the documents in this case) reached an out of court settlement and Aaron Swartz did not release them (and there is no indication that he ever intended to). It was after that that the United States federal government pressed criminal charges.
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Exactly, this was simply bullying writ large by US Attorney Carmen Ortiz.
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Yes, this case demonstrates the misuse of power (for personal gain) by Prosecutors who's sole motivation is a stunning WIN record so that they will gain promotions and raises
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Prosecutors
That seems like a good term for the politicians of the last ~30 years.
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This is an interesting claim: "the authors were generally funded by university/public money, and thus did not hold the copyright and thus could not transfer the rights to the journal."
Unfortunately, I don't think this is true. You are assuming that research publications funded by government money (federal, state, etc) constitute a "work for hire" under copyright law. I've never seen such an agreement, and the one I just looked up (University of Texas) specifically states that employees retain ownership of
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"Swartz, a well-known activist, killed himself earlier this year while being prosecuted for federal computer crimes after he improperly downloaded millions of academic research articles." (emphasis added)
Given that: 1) he wasn't convicted; 2) the journals in question didn't have the right to the works they were selling access to (the authors were generally funded by university/public money, and thus did not hold the copyright and thus could not transfer the rights to the journal); 3) its even debatable if he violated the TOS (he was apparently doing a research project related to the papers, presumably some sort of meta study, which could might be acceptable use for millions of papers), it seems inaccurate to say his downloads were "Improper".
I personally think his actions were perfectly acceptable, proper and legal.
So do you personally think that my actions would be acceptable, proper and legal if I hid a laptop in your house and downloaded all content I found on your network that I felt you didn't legally have access to?
Four wrongs don't make a right.
Swartz was definitely improperly downloading information. His actions surrounding the event speak to that as much as the hidden laptop and the license agreement. However, I sometimes improperly open a door by using the key instead of the doorknob -- this isn't a felony
Re:improperly? (Score:5, Insightful)
The journals in question didn't have the right to the works they were selling access to (the authors were generally funded by university/public money, and thus did not hold the copyright and thus could not transfer the rights to the journal);
This statement has no basis in the law of the United States, it is mere sophistry posing as a postulation of fact. University authors (even publicly funded ones) retain rights to their own work. They're the author. You are confusing by degree restrictions placed on what is patentable for what is copyrightable - they are not the same, restrictions on one don't cross to the other - and there are very VERY few strings attached even to patenting work funded by public monies in the United States.
It is not debatable that he breached the TOS - because he was not a student or faculty (or even invitee) of MIT. Those terms of service posted at MIT's site include that you must be a student/faculty/staff to access JSTOR. JSTOR saw that someone at MIT was systemically downloading every journal in their database -- they asked MIT to look into it. MIT did. MIT took steps to stop whomever was downloading the journals from doing so - Swartz then designed around that limitation - leaving a laptop hidden under a box in a closet. MIT found the laptop and put a camera there -- they saw Swartz enter the closet (taking steps to hide his face while sneaking in to engage in his -- what did you call it "meta study"). When a police officer approached Swartz, he fled (itself a criminal act) and was arrested in the middle of trying to ditch the hard drive full of data.
So, he traveled to MIT from the campus where he was on staff (and had access to JSTOR there), hid a device on campus to downloand the files, hid his face as he came and went, fled from police, and tried to ditch the stolen items when he was accosted. There is a serious question whether or not Swartz knew what he was doing was against the law? Seriously? Not buying it.
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He's making a very good martyr though. His suicide drew more attention to the issue of overzealous prosecution and the use of intimidation than staying alive would have.
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I'm not a fan of Aaron Swartz, but I would prefer him alive and not dead. He didn't actually choose martyrdom, the depression chose it for him.
I dislike the idea that his end is going to get used in that way, but I guess he's beyond caring.
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He is not a martyr. Suicide is not martyrdom. And claiming it is, just encourages more of the same. Be Very Careful what you're actually trying to say.
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I hope you get AIDS and kill yourself asshole...
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Wow, an internet tough guy.
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couldn't stand the heat of the kitchen he was cooking in
While ignorance of the law is no excuse, google "3 Felonies a day". Do you realize the kitchen you are cooking in?
Timing (Score:5, Informative)
Regarding Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman's response, (Score:3)
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the most MIT could complain about would've been a momentary spike in their bandwidth usage.
...and breaking & entering, trespassing an unauthorized access to a computer system.
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I think JSTOR was taken aback by their sudden role in the case and has made some good moves since (starting with the decision to oppose prosecution in that case).
There are a substantial number of librarians there, who tend to have fairly civic-minded views, and see themselves as on the pro-information-dissemination side of things. The main counteracting forces are: 1) for post-1923 journals, the journals rather than JSTOR ultimately own the copyright, so JSTOR has to work with them to be allowed to digitize
"Aaron would be alive today if MIT had acted..." (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yes, but the comment is still directly linking his suicide to the actions of MIT. If she'd really been trying to center her focus on MIT, she would have left the fact that Aaron killed himself out of that comment and just stated something like: "We feel MIT had a greater responsibility to academic freedom to act and that it has let down the community". Instead, she suicide shamed them, the words were just ordered in a different way.
And since he died of suicide caused by depression, there is actually no wa
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"Lately there has also been a lot of sympathy expressed for people who committed suicide after being bullied, gay-bashed, or slut-shamed. "
I think that if someone is going to kill themselves over bad things others have done to them, their time might be better spent killing their enemies instead, or first.
I have no enemies I know of, and lead a peaceful life. If I were so distressed by the actions of someone else that I was going to check out, I'd make damn sure they were deader than a pickled herring so the
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"We want a review, but don't review our actions" (Score:5, Insightful)
"Because we're not doing a review to correct any possible problems, we're doing a review so that we can tell people we did a review and didn't find any problems.
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"Because we're not doing a review to correct any possible problems, we're doing a review so that we can tell people we did a review and didn't find any problems.
...except that the review found problems. Did you read it?
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Near the end of the report:
MIT says MIT not guilty (Score:2)
Glad the truth finally came out in an independent investigation.
All the important facts are ignored. (Score:2)
A young man is dead because the government set out to destroy his life over some documents. Beyond that, very little matters at this point.
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You make it sound like people without basic life skills should be allowed to ignore the law. That's absurd. There are literally millions of people who have had worse interactions with the government and spend much more time in much more difficult incarcerations than Mr. Swartz faced. If Mr. Swartz was particularly unable to deal with the world he should not have made such an effort to cause trouble for himself.
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The problem with your argument is that he did not actually ignore the law. Mr. Swartz did have access to JSTOR and was authorized to access the material he accessed. At worst, he entered an IT closet. If he damaged any part of the closet, I wouldn't know, as I consider it such a minor matter as to be negligible in this case. Especially since he did have the right to have his laptop on that network.
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If you think "no reason" applies to this situation, you don't know much about how the feds get when they are trying to destroy a person as an example. They don't let the facts get away of "sending a message".
More background, New yorker article has more depth (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are interested, a few months ago the new yorker had a great article detailing exactly what happened here with first hand interviews with most of the players. You can then make your own decisions.
Requiem for a dream: the tragedy of aaron swartz [newyorker.com]
What I got out of the article was 1) He was not trying to "make a statement" with his "hacking" action, but that was how the government portraited it. 2) He was very ecentric, and primarily seems to have killed himself because of what the legal action would have done to his future career. He had aspirations of running a foundation or becoming active in politics, and he felt that having a criminal record crippled his future. 3) One of the tipping points was having many of his personal correspondences subpenaed, as he was a very private person, which the government did solely to embarrass him, by making him and his girlfriends correspondences over the years, public.
In the end though, I think he just over reacted. His suicide was his doing and no one elses. Sometimes life will try and break you down and if you give up, then you die. I think if he had more robust coping strategies he could have seen that this was just a speed bump on the road of life and not over reacted by killing himself. The "crimes" he committed were not really that bad, and prosecutors are going to be mean and aggressive - that is their job. However of course, I was not in his shoes, so who am i to judge.
It is really just a tragedy.
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He did have a robust coping strategy. The government simply stripped him of it. Thats why the case is fucked up.
If I tell the media to publicize the possibility that you broke into a school, stolen millions of dollars of 'confidential' information and convince your family, friends and anyone else around you that you're already guilty; what kind of coping strategy are you left with?
Oh and your personal assets have been frozen and you're now being watched by the authorities/media, so you can't run away. Oh an
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If I tell the media to publicize the possibility that you broke into a school,
Considering they had him on tape doing the break in and the equipment he left in the wiring closet, "possibility" does not apply here.
Swartz knew there would be consequences for his action but was not prepared to accept them. If you can't do the time don't do the crime. If you want to be a political activist look at Nelson Mandela. He spent may years in prison for what he believed in and didn't kill himself.
"If you can't do the time don't do the crime" (Score:2)
Every time people say this I refer them to the following link:
http://threefelonies.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx [threefelonies.com]
It has been proven time and after time in history, that ANY criminal justice system is just a political tool for the elite ruling class to suppress those who try to unseat them.
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Since what Swatrz did was none of these things and the things he did he knew were illegal that article does not apply to this situation.
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What? No, he didn't have a robust coping strategy. Unless you mean he had a robust coping strategy for dealing with threats at the level of internet trolls or something.
He killed himself. There are people who are in jail for life who don't kill themselves. THAT is a robust coping strategy. Granted, he had a lot more to lose than your usual inmate, but did he think that he was going to just break the law and sort of get away with it?
He didn't know what the heck he got himself into is what happened, but
MIT did nothing (Score:2)
By doing nothing, MIT implicitly condoned the prosecutor's infamous behavior. Neutrality was a pocket signature. They knew this and they persisted in their inaction.
Even after the death of a person, MIT's refusal to condemn its actions shows a lack of moral courage. They should be ashamed of themselves.
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By doing nothing, MIT implicitly condoned the prosecutor's infamous behavior. Neutrality was a pocket signature. They knew this and they persisted in their inaction.
Even after the death of a person, MIT's refusal to condemn its actions shows a lack of moral courage. They should be ashamed of themselves.
...and in politer words, this is precisely what the conclusion of the report says, and goes one further to say that this kind of situation is precisely where MIT should be a LEADER, not avoiding by refusing to step in.
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I disagree. MIT was involved. They did not step back from the process. They allowed the process to occur, knowing that the boy would end up in jail, dead, or both.
MIT didn't do anything wrong (Score:1)
MIT didn't do anything at all.
Who are we to try to influence the DoJ? It's not our job.
What was MIT's duty here? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Do you have a source for that? My understanding is that he was a research associate at Harvard.
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Let's be honest here.
Maybe.
If you did have a B&E and they were charged with...oh... call it use of a deadly weapon for having a screwdriver they used to open the door.
Well... it shouldn't hold up and not really your problem.
If they were your guest -- say, breaking into your guesthouse they rented and would've reimbursed you... then... yeah, you should defend that they had a right to be there even if not by that manner. They're your guest after all...
But more interestingly, if they were a petty burgler,
"didn't do anything wrong" (Score:3)
Would it be wrong to walk right by, completely ignore and not even dial 911 for a bloodied driver in a car wreck when you're the only one who could help? Would it be wrong to ignore the sight of several police officers ruthlessly beating on someone in the street if you had a camera in hand (or in pocket, as we all do) and were obscured enough that you could guarantee your own safety? If you see a child about to unwittingly run off a cliff and don't even do so much as say, "Hey kid! Watch out!", would that be wrong?
There are lots of hypothetical situations where we could say we didn't do anything wrong. But when you willingly neglect to do the right thing, especially when it carries no potential of harm you, it amounts to the same.
Maybe they didn't actively participate in any wrongdoing, but they are guilty as hell of willful ignorance.
Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. (Score:2)
In the words of Bishop Desmond Tutu: "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."
In the words of Elie Wiesel: "I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. "
In the
MIT was a "dutiful" lap dog of the police state (Score:1)
Remember that Aaron has a history of conflicts with the US Federal government that long preceded MIT/JSTOR.
In Chicago in 2008, he liberated the pay-walled PACER federal court records.
The FBI investigated and decided he didn't do anything wrong.
He then embarrassed the FBI by doing a FOIA for his file, and posted it on his blog.
This is when I first heard of Aaron -- It really made FBI look like the Keystone cops !
Aaron then proved himself to be a very effective leader and organizer in the defeat of SOPA last