Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

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I don’t think that’s accurate. The MIT report [0] says “ The Institute made no public statements regarding the merits of the case against Swartz or whether it should proceed, nor did it attempt to influence the prosecutor’s decisions on the case, other than to tell the prosecutor that the government should not proceed on the assumption that MIT wanted Aaron Swartz to go to jail.”

But I think that’s pretty weasily as having a neutral position while the government is prosecuting means endorsing the status quo. “Not proceeding with the assumption that MIT wanted Aaron Swartz to go to jail” is so BS. How about a statement of “We do not want AS to go to jail.” Or “We do not believe a crime has been committed” or “As the operator of the network, we do not consider this a violation of CFAA” or the million other useful things MIT could have said and done.

Many urged MIT to advocate to not prosecute and MIT chose not to.

Also MIT brought the charges of breaking and entering that led to Swartz’s arrest. And that’s pretty lame given MIT’s mission and what Swartz was doing.

If I was a student and my guest was arrested for B&E that would be bad.

MIT isn’t legally culpable, but they acted poorly and all they needed to do was say “hey don’t do that” instead it led to a large scale prosecution and a suicide.

Spinning this like MIT wasn’t responsible or JSTOR wasn’t responsible is so mealymouthed.

[0] https://news.mit.edu/2013/mit-releases-swartz-report-0730

> MIT brought the charges of breaking and entering that led to Swartz’s arrest

That's because they didn't know who it was that was doing it. Their main purpose in getting the police involved was to find out.

> Many urged MIT to advocate to not prosecute and MIT chose not to.

Yes, that's a fair point (and IIRC the Abelson report makes a similar point), and it was an overstatement on my part to say that MIT asked that no further action be taken. (I believe JSTOR did, though.)

However, that's still very different from saying that MIT (or JSTOR) "lobbied the feds to pursue Swartz", which is what the post I was originally responding to claimed. Neither MIT nor JSTOR did any such thing.

> Spinning this like MIT wasn’t responsible or JSTOR wasn’t responsible is so mealymouthed.

I don't think either MIT or JSTOR were responsible for "pursuing" Swartz. They certainly weren't responsible for threatening him with decades in jail. That was the federal prosecutor.

One could argue that MIT was "responsible" because they didn't work harder to persuade the feds not to pursue Swartz. But that could just as easily have been because they couldn't wrap their minds around the idea that a federal prosecutor would go so overboard until after it had actually happened, at which point it was too late.

> all they needed to do was say “hey don’t do that”

It's not at all clear to me that that would have made a difference, given the attitude of the federal prosecutor. That's not to say MIT shouldn't have done it (I think they should have), but it's also not an argument, IMO, for MIT being responsible for what happened to Swartz. Prosecutorial overreach is the responsibility of the prosecutor--and of the government that empowers the prosecutor, and ultimately of all of us citizens who empower the government.

Do you think MIT doing something would've made a difference?

Certainly. Not charging him for breaking and entering. Not charging him for cfaa charges. Not treating like a laptop plugged in is a felony.

Also I think had MIT asked the prosecutor not to prosecute then the case would have been dropped. Without MIT and JSTOR saying Swartz committed computer fraud, the prosecution would have no case. Etc etc.

The case existed because MIT wanted it to exist.

> Not charging him for breaking and entering.

Why not? He did that.

> Not charging him for cfaa charges.

MIT didn't do that. The federal prosecutor did.

> Not treating like a laptop plugged in is a felony.

MIT didn't do that either.

> I think had MIT asked the prosecutor not to prosecute then the case would have been dropped

I don't know what you're basing this on. Everything the prosecutor said at the time made it clear that they wanted to make an example of Swartz and would have done much the same thing no matter what MIT and JSTOR said.

> Without MIT and JSTOR saying Swartz committed computer fraud

Neither MIT nor JSTOR ever said that. Charging Swartz under the CFAA was the federal prosecutor's doing.

> The case existed because MIT wanted it to exist.

I think you are mistaken. I think the case existed because the federal prosecutor wanted it to exist. That's not to say MIT made no mistakes, but we should put the blame for the CFAA prosecution and the threat of decades in jail where it belongs.

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