Comment by SagelyGuru | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SagelyGuru | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Agreed. Further, if helping the secret service to prosecute under these just new laws <sic> is such a worthwhile cause, what are they so afraid of? Should they not be proud to be identified?

>"MIT claims it’s afraid the release of Swartz’s file will identify the names of MIT people who helped the Secret Service and federal prosecutors pursue felony charges against Swartz for his bulk downloading of academic articles from MIT’s network in 2011."

Let me get this straight. There are academics involved, who are supposed to be professionally on the side of the freedom of information. They instead choose to inform on a colleague and ruin his life and then, knowing what they had done is morally objectionable on many levels, they use the fact that they might well be criticised for it to stifle information again and try to justify anonymity for themselves?!?

If I was a bright young student I would no longer consider MIT. What can one hope to learn from people like these?

Sadly, this whole case brings up uncomfortable parallels with anonymous informants always crawling out of the woodwork and taking delight in ruining their neighbours' lives, whenever a despotic regime takes hold of a society.

This is a ridiculous line of argument. Let me re-contextualize with a parallel scenario. Suppose you are the victim of any of crime. Suppose your teenage daughter is the one who actually called the police. Suppose the perpetrator of the crime was an animal rights activist with a large cohort of people with similar viewpoints who occasionally in a mob mentality anonymously engage in violence, or threats of violence. During the prosecution of the crime, the DoJ goes a little crazy and the accused commits suicide. The estate of the animal rights activist wants to release your daughter's bus route home from school, email address, and cell phone number.

Do you file to prevent this information to be released?

Sorry but it is your "re-contextualizing" that is ridiculous.

Swartz never engaged in violence or threats of it. All he did was to download a large number of publicly funded scientific papers that he should have had access to anyway. MIT did not just report him. They made sure that the secret service was there in a couple of minutes and then they insisted on prosecuting him. One could argue that it was the MIT's insistence on prosecution that did him in, as much as the eagerness of the DoJ.

MIT made a number of bad decisions and this latest one only continues this trend. Until someone is named to take personal responsibility for those decisions, or someone does the decent thing and owns up to them, the responsibility must lie with MIT as an institution.

It is not Swartz, but certain (presumably lower case A) anonymous elements of the internet community who have phoned in multiple threats to MIT staff in the wake of his suicide. That is the subsequent violence that protection of information serves to prevent.

Swartz broke and entered MIT private property that is the crime I alluded to in my analogy. (See the matter in Massachusetts state court for details). MIT did not understand the nature of his actions on the wire before involving the Secret Service to assist in the investigation. At that point MIT has no more say in the prosecution. None. It is the United States Government's decision how to run the prosecution.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com