Right now, the DOJ is one of the targets of a massive scared-straight campaign by Beltway technologists. One of the worst kept secrets in the world is that US cybersecurity, outside of the military and the IC, is incredibly bad. If most civilian agencies were private corporations, they would have been sued dozens of times by users for negligence in data handling.
For those that understood the dangers of this lax security posture, for many years it was a game of railing into the wind about the potential consequences of continuing to ignore this attack vector.
Then, China got involved.
Suddenly, the dangers weren't speculative at all. They were right at our doorstep. And the same Cassandras that were on the outs for so long suddenly found themselves with the ear of every CIO in Washington. What followed was a massive purchasing binge, which is still ongoing, and a huge amount of advertising and mindshare devoted to this topic.
It was amidst the height of this cyber-scare that the Schwartz prosecution was brought. For Mr. Heymann, Aaron Schwartz was a huge target. A US hacker, caught in the act of stealing information worth millions, was a great prize for Mr. Heyman, his boss Carmen Ortiz, who has rather naked political ambitions, and her bosses in DC.
So why am I disappointed in MIT? Because the DOJ has never understood computer technology very well. MIT does. It was their job to educate the DOJ, to subordinate passion to reason, and to parse the difficult technological issues to explain the real lack of damage caused by Aaron Schwartz's actions.
MIT is supposed to be a guardian of our online rights and a cradle for technologists like Schwartz. It should have been on the forefront of the opposition to Mr. Heymann, demanding that charges be dropped. Instead, they threw him to the wolves. And now, in one final insult, they ask the courts for special leave to screen documents in order to hide their involvement with the prosecution.
I hope the individuals involved know that they abandoned a sacred trust, tarnished the name of a great institution, and negligently contributed to the death of a brilliant young man. I hope they know that they weren't "just doing their jobs," that they didn't "follow rules and procedures," and that no one buys their excuses anymore.
I hope that at least one of the administrators responsible has lost even one night's sleep over Mr. Schwartz's death. But, knowing the disdain and disregard for Mr. Schwartz that these hired bureaucrats expressed while he was alive, I doubt it.
I can see where you're coming from here, but unfortunately, from what I've read (particularly what's in the Abelson report, see below), I don't think the DOJ was listening to MIT in this case anyway; the US Attorney's office had its own view of the case and wasn't receptive to alternative views.
And now, in one final insult, they ask the courts for special leave to screen documents in order to hide their involvement with the prosecution.
Are you referring to MIT's request to redact the private personal information of MIT employees who were named in the documents? That doesn't hide anything about MIT's involvement; it just allows employees, who did not set MIT policy to begin with, to get on with their lives without being persecuted.
I'm also curious what "involvement with the prosecution" you think MIT had. Have you read the Abelson report?
It's quite comprehensive in its treatment of what involvement MIT had at each phase of things.
>"I'm also curious what 'involvement with the prosecution' you think MIT had. Have you read the Abelson report? It's quite comprehensive in its treatment of what involvement MIT had at each phase of things."
I'm very skeptical of any internal investigation conducted by an institution that exonerates it from all wrongdoing. While I have tremendous respect for Prof. Abelson as a person and an academic, it was obvious from the outset that he was interested primarily in protecting MIT's reputation rather than seeking the truth. Nor am I the only person that thought so. See e.g. http://business.time.com/2013/07/31/aaron-swartzs-father-bla...
Prof. Abelson began his investigation with an outright statement in The Tech that he didn't expect to find any wrongdoing. That very statement is the hallmark of either an inept or a biased investigator. A true investigator enters his task with no preconception of what its result will be. To do otherwise is to invite confirmation bias.
Universities are places of complex politics. I wouldn't trust any investigation by an employee of the institution under investigation, much less a professor who's beholden to the very administrators he's investigating for funding, offices, and staff.
Also, MIT didn't seek leave merely to redact names of employees, although I see no reason why those who participated in these terrible events should be shielded from public opprobrium, but also any information in which MIT has a privacy interest. For an attorney, what that means is any information that could potentially implicate or even embarrass the university. I stand by my original statements.
Not sure why you're excluding Mil/IC here, in light of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, did you mean to restrict your point to Internet-connected devices?
Both Snowden and Manning got their information from systems to which they had been granted access. .Mil and IC targets are among the most hardened in the world, even if they were a bit lax about implementing fine-grained access control amongst their cleared personnel.
Other words I misspelled at one or another include Heymann, personnel, guardian, and wolves. :)
[1] http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/stron...
The smart people in law enforcement are scared sh*tless of hacktivists, so it's totally possible they lumped him in with the Sabu/Hammond/Lulzsec crowd.
Pure mobster mentality.
I'm all for piling on the malefactors in the Aaron Swartz case, but I wouldn't bet a nickle on anything that comes out of PJ Media.
‘from a human one-on-one level to an institutional level.’
The corporate capture has left the wealthy and powerful above the law, if they're just willing to join the corruption scheme.
In short, the US is swiftly becoming a 3rd world country when it comes to equality of income and fairness of justice, and this is especially the case if someone like Aaron Swartz is looking to really rock the boat… they become the examples hung in plaza so everyone else meekly complies.
All Ford's pardon did was to prevent vengeful Democrats, some holding grudges going as far back as 1950, from criminally prosecuting him. It allowed the nation to Move On; the alternative would have pretty quickly ended the Republic if history is any guide.
So while we're in agreement that Nixon was a criminal, you're saying he should not have been prosecuted...because people had other reasons to dislike him beyond his criminal acts? I fail to see how allowing Nixon to escape justice allowed the country to Move On. It demonstrated to the public that in fact, there are different classes of people in this country, and the powerful simply aren't subject to the same laws as the commoners.
Depends on how you qualify its big-ness. Go out and talk to regular, non-techie folks about NSA spying. In the unlikely event that you even find someone who knows what you are talking about, they won't care. They will look at you like you're crazy and they'll say, "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about."
If it's just a small, quickly forgotten blurb on Fox news between TERRORISM and Honey Boo-Boo then does it even qualify as scandal?
So why not download from Harvard, instead of abusing guest access at MIT?
It reminds of the time I was reprimanded by a teacher more harshly because I chose to share the sequence of events that unfolded with my parents. My parents called the teacher about it, and the next day, things were magically worse.
Edit: fixed typo
Prosecutors have a huge amount of discretion in their jobs. They can choose if they press charges and if so what charges to press.
In this case, there are allegations that the prosecution abused its power by retaliating against free speech.
The prosecutor allegedly said something along the lines of: Aaron Swartz was foolish to exercise free speech because it then went "‘from a human one-on-one level to an institutional level.’ The lead prosecutor said that on the institutional level cases are harder to manage both internally and externally"
I presume by "one-on-one" prosecution, the prosecutor meant it was one prosecutor against Aaron Swartz. But by publicizing the case, it aroused the interest of the "institution" (i.e. the higher ups), who then decided to throw the book at Swartz.
Just surreal. Like Swartz was a sadist and MIT was a traumatized victim of violence, not like a young prodigy whose life were being crushed for the modern "Prometheus" action and a bunch of PC-sensitive executive bureaucrats augmented by a lawyer department.