MIT releases report on its actions in the Aaron Swartz case

Respect and trust are lost much more easily than gained.

What is your suggestion on a better time to release? Or what do you think they should have done exactly?

What big event? Is it a holiday in US?

So Aaron had nothing to do with getting himself into the situation that he did?

Still, you call for a Cambridge detective, the Secret Service also shows up, and that doesn't cause major head scratching? I wish the summary had expanded on that part.

FD: I'm an alum.

Edit: From the report:

For the same reasons, the MIT Police sought forensic assistance from a detective in the Cambridge Police Department who had expertise in computer crime and with whom they had worked repeatedly in the past. The Cambridge detective, who was a member of the New England Electronic Crimes Task Force, responded to the call, accompanied by an agent of the U.S. Secret Service. While the inclusion of the Secret Service agent was not the intention of MIT, it was a recognized possibility. It was not until a few days later, when Aaron Swartz was arrested, that MIT learned the identity of the person involved in the JSTOR downloading. Thus, we find that MIT did not focus on Aaron Swartz at any time during its own investigation of the events that led to his arrest, and that MIT did not intentionally “call in the feds” to take over the investigation.

So it wasn't MIT's intention to "hand it over to the feds" but it was indeed a recognized possibility that the feds would get involved when the request was made.

The summary would be improved if that were included.

I'd also argue that having campus police is not mutually exclusive of fostering the creative mischief that you mention...in fact, I'd argue that having campus police is the best way to maintain that creative mischief. Again, a police close to its constituents learns (ideally) the give and take and the pulse of the people it serves. A well-managed MIT police force could handle all the calls that are made by well-intentioned people, but come in knowing a likelihood of how much caution to take...whereas if you leave it to the Boston police force, who knows how familiar that officer is with said kind of call in that particular part of campus. An effectively managed campus police force can help keep things de-escalated.

Whether that's happening at MIT is beyond the scope of this argument, but I'm just pointing out that it's not necessarily either-or

Then I would expect over time with the Internet that that would not be as effective as it was in years past before the Internet.

Do we have any data on how this has changed now that anyone can broadcast anything and get attention? I would expect that if the primary reason for existence of the police force was to control the information flow as I think you suggest (which it could do quite easily pre internet) that we should see much more of this negative information has come out because it has a path.

Has that been the case? (Serious question).

https://www.google.com/search?q=downgrade+crime

I'm not saying that we don't need checks on the system, but to say that university police don't provide any valuable service is ridiculous.

One of the things which was mentioned in the report as a potential policy question to be considered is whether random visitors to the campus should be given some level of consideration as extended members of the MIT community. (If Aaron had been an MIT student or some other member of the MIT community, the situation would have probably been handled quite differently, and it might have gotten escalated to someone higher level inside MIT --- i.e., one of MIT's Deans ---- much more quickly, instead of having the Cambridge police get involved, who then brought in a Secret Service buddy of his, at which point things escalated down a very different path, one which was largely out of MIT's control.)

One important thing to remember is that when people talk about "MIT decided", it's really not MIT as the entire organization, but individuals who happen to be MIT employees making various decisions on the spot. So from the perspective of the institution, if someone makes a decision which is within their scope of their responsibility, and that decision was consistent with the policy in force at that particular point in time, and that person was acting in good faith, MIT the organization has to really protect that person, and not offer that person up as a sacrificial lamb to hordes of ravening Internet denizens screaming for revenge. It might have been the case that if someone like Hal Abelson had been brought in that fateful night, he would have made a different choice at multiple points in the timeline. But until Aaron committed suicide, it seems pretty clear that this whole affair wasn't considered something that required the attention of senior MIT administration officials, or the consideration of senior faculty members such as Prof. Abelson.

In some ways, the way some folks have been complaining about MIT is very similar to how the Republicans have been certain that decisions made by lower level staffers in the IRS must be something where direct blame must be laid at the feet of someone senior in the White House.