Letter from MIT President on Releasing Aaron Swartz Documents | Hacker News Reader

Letter from MIT President on Releasing Aaron Swartz Documents

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68 pointsigul22238 comments

Some actual reporting on this issue besides just the letter from the MIT President can be found at http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N13/swartz.html

Apparently JSTOR also supports redaction: " JSTOR’s response was similar to MIT’s. “We believe the information we provided to the United States Attorney’s Office in this case should be made open and available to the public. In a letter dated Feb. 25, we agreed to the lifting of the protective order so long as the articles downloaded from JSTOR were not released and the identities of our staff are protected,” said Heidi McGregor, a JSTOR spokeswoman, in an email to The Tech. “We do not agree that individuals’ names need to be included with these materials to serve the public interest.” "

" “Although the United States and representatives of Mr. Swartz agreed on many proposed modifications to the order, the United States and Mr. Swartz’s representatives did not reach agreement on the scope of the redactions,” Pirozzolo said.

“The United States expects to respond to the motion within the time provided by the district court rules,” he said. “It will also request that individuals potentially affected by the modification of the order be given an opportunity to be heard on the proposed modifications.” "

Given that last part you can certainly expect the MIT documents to come out much much faster than Gov documents.

He is walking a tightrope. And protecting the privacy of those that are not deemed culpable in some way is understandable. However to be consistent with his previous acceptance of MIT holding some responsibility, he probably should: (1) release the redacted documents now. (2) perhaps not refer to this as the "Aaron Swartz situation" or state that "In the time since Aaron Swartz's suicide, we have seen........ ", as this wording is less accepting of some responsibility and really is putting the full burden of the backlash on Aaron. (he could perhaps say "our handling of the Aaron Swartz situation".)

It would appear that regardless of what MIT does, it would be up to the court when and how to release the un-redacted version.

....and MIT, for Fks sake, get your Network security together, that is really not a great reflection on your reputation as world class engineering org.

get your Network security together

No. In an educational setting, lax security is a feature.

The aspects of their lax security that are an intentional 'feature' presumably aren't the "vulnerabilities" they want to redact, because there's nothing secret or unknown about that intentional lax security.

Which makes me very curious about what the vulnerabilities they want to redact ARE.

Unless they are just being totally ridiculous and insisting on redacting things everyone already knows and were never secrets in the first place, like that any device can get on their network.

If Aaron's crime revolved around breaking a use agreement by downloading in bulk, and trespassing by stashing a laptop making those bulk downloads in a known-unlocked-utility shed, what "network vulnerabilities" would even have been be germane to the case and thus included in MIT's filings?

Not only am I curious about what the vulnerabilities are (in general), I'm more curious as to why they were ever sent.

Is it just email where network engineers mused about known-vulnerabilities while discussing 'how Swartz got on the network'? Or was MIT making additional accusations against Aaron, that they would prefer to let plunge down the memory hole to avoid being seen as having been party to the prosecution trying to 'throw the book' at Swartz?

A document saying that any device can get on their network, and that it is deliberate policy to allow that, already is in the public record --- aaronsw's father read from it at the recent media lab memorial.

That said, it's possible that a general document sweep, answering a subpoena, also swept up documents describing, say, internal routing policies, or technical measures protecting access to student records, or something like that, which would be tangentially relevant to the case, and which they would have some legitimate interest in keeping to themselves.

Wouldn't it be ironic if MIT closed their network to non-affiliated people as a result of this whole affair?

LOL, not at my friends campus. He's the network administrator and it is very secured, probably better than most banks or big businesses.

Translated to actions, that means 1) MIT lawyers are going to argue against being compelled to release the un-modified documents immediately 2) the Abelson report isn't going to come out in 2013 ("careful").

Everything else that has ever been said indicates that the report will be out in 2013. If you look carefully , (;)) you can find some Abelson quotes on the web discussing this.

The Tech said "in a few weeks" on 23 January.

MIT has clear commercial reasons for wanting to defer until after admissions, and possibly until the end of the 2012-2013 year. Releasing it in the summer actually is a more effective way of burying than releasing in 2014, so I guess what I mean is "released after the end of the 2012-2013 academic period".

MIT will be empty (sort of), everyone will be distracted by something new, and it won't affect admissions.

"the Abelson report isn't going to come out in 2013 ("careful")."

Given the fact that there are going to be a "review of this written material as well as extensive in-person interviews", is 2014 even realistic?

That's fine, as long as the names of the people who made the relevant decisions regarding the case are released. It's unacceptable to hide that information.

Don't look at whether its acceptable or not, look at the implications. If those names were to be publicly released, the MIT employees would not exactly be safe. In fact, I would be pretty scared for them myself. Given all the emotion in the aftermath of the suicide, it's not fair to put those people in danger. Mr. Reif couldn't have said this better: "But I believe that openness must be balanced with reasonable concern for privacy and safety"

What is important, however, is that those people are self-accountable. And they realize their own faults and look to improve in the future. You might say this is awfully altruistic, but it is better to hold the employees accountable in this regards instead of jeopardizing their personal privacy and safety.

Why ? - if you made a mistake at work, how would you feel if your employer publicly published your identity ?

The implication of the letter, though, is that they're not going to release those names. It's only prudent that they protect the safety of those people.

I'd have to think carefully about releasing names. Accountability without personal accountability is a bit shallow, though.

Do you understand what people do to other people on the Internet...? This would not end well.

A little confused here...is Pastebin the communication method of choice for the President of MIT? Is this a re-posting of a letter? How have we verified that this is indeed from the President of MIT? All I see is a Pastebin guest account pasting a message with a text signature, and I don't see how that can be considered a verified communication to be commented on. I might be missing something; if so, someone please enlighten me.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/reif-letter-swartz-docume...

There's the official version. Text appears to be the same. I don't know why people use the Pastebin copy (I've seen this a few other times with documents related to the Swartz case).

To add to SeanKilleen's comment, a Pastebin mirror probably can't be modified with subtle wording changes that might invalidate a lot of the discussion and conceal the original apparent intent of the letter. I'm not suggesting that MIT would do this, but that in general, a read-only mirror of a document can be a useful thing.

Thanks for the update. Maybe folks copy it to Pastebin for anonymity or redundancy in case it should disappear. Possible that it was copied from an e-mail before it was known that the contents would be made public. Appreciate the link!

Can anyone link to the harassment/threats he mentions? (Mostly the latter, I'm sure there was much harassment but I have yet to see any real "threats").

I would suspect a lot of the harassment/threats was through things like e-mail, etc. Given the wide range of emotions this has prompted all over the place, I can find it believable that some people might send what could be construed as threatening messages, especially anonymously.

http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N7/hoax.html

From the above link: Students were not notified of the situation until after an hour after the initial tip.

It seems as if the powers that be decided student safety was less important than apprehending any possible suspect...

Human reactions under dangers like this are extremely unpredictable. I mean, who has ever really had a chance to test the effectiveness or wisdom of their fight or flight response?

If there is a gunman I think you would want students spread out among their classrooms. If there's a major panic there can be deaths from the panic not to mention the danger of a gunman in a hallway as students try to escape.

I mean, there was a delay in sending out an alert, but you most certainly couldn't get very far if you tried to walk into the main group that morning.

Why is Professor Abelson involved in this - i.e. why not a committee or $LAWYER to conduct a review? Not that I have a problem with it but it just sounds weird to have someone like Professor Abelson do what would amount to identifying personal info and redacting it from the documents.

He's a respected member of the community at MIT.

One thing I've realized in my discussion with MIT alumni on the matter is that the university is really focused on the students/alumni, and is much more concerned with what they think than outsiders. They can't make the entire world happy, but they can focus on those closely related to them.

PR. By having Abelson involved, it hopefully throws a bone to all the angry hackers.

Aha! It does make sense from that pov.

He almost surely has gathered a team to help with the paper shuffling and related activities required to produce a large investigative report.

Is MIT going to have to stop being so generally open after this?

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Aaron's name was released in all the court materials— those of his accusers should be too.

His accusers? You do realize most of the redacted folks are just your average employees that have nothing to do with the case? And that his accusers are actually the Justice Department anyway? As a citizen that supposedly owns a piece of that department (it fights for our interests, right?), you're as much an accuser as the people who will be redacted.

Makes me wonder which staffer was pushing for prosecution.

Carte Blanche power of redaction combined with "openness"? This is Orwellian double-speak. If they want to reasonably redact, that's fine to an extent, so long as there's an uninterested third party review.

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