The four lamest excuses in MIT’s report on Aaron Swartz | Hacker News Reader

The four lamest excuses in MIT’s report on Aaron Swartz

washingtonpost.com

182 pointsbcn38 comments

MIT dropped the ball here but the prosecutor sounds absolutely evil by comparison and seems to have heavily influenced MIT's position of neutrality.

It doesn't sound like MIT was really neutral.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/01/15/humanity-deficit...

"Marty Weinberg, who took the case over from Good, said he nearly negotiated a plea bargain in which Swartz would not serve any time. He said JSTOR signed off on it, but MIT would not.

'There were subsets of the MIT community who were profoundly in support of Aaron,' Weinberg said. That support did not override institutional interests."

Not signing off on the plea bargain is precisely the definition of remaining neutral: not influencing the proceedings.

Putting him behind bars for downloading bits is ludicrous, and history will look back on us as living in some sort of dark ages.

Just had to get that out of my system.

>Putting him behind bars for downloading bits is ludicrous

Unless it's your data that's being downloaded unlawfully, right?

Even then. In fact, especially then. I wouldn't be able to stomach taking away even one month of someone's life for words that I wrote.

I'm writing a book. I plan on putting it on piratebay myself. I'll have an option for people to pay me if they so choose.

Wait until you're perhaps older, with children to feed, bills to pay. maybe employees or shareholders that need to see a return.

Well in this case, it's publicly funded research data. US citizens should have easy access to this data since we already paid for it. So yes. It is our data.

"JSTOR told the Chronicle that each and every year, they turn away 150 million attempts to gain access to articles."

Then tell your government to either provide it to the public themselves, or pay someone else to provide it to the public. Either way, funding one half of something and then demanding the rest is ridiculous.

It's not ridiculous to demand public access to public data post Internet, when almost everything is electronic.

Other people and other organizations are willing to provide this data to the public at their cost. However they can't publish data that's under lock and key.

First you shouldn't have to hide under a new throw away account.

Second, since MIT initiated the proceedings I wouldn't call that neutral either.

Given the level of adjectives and expletives that I have seen being used for anyone who has made even the slightest of remarks that don't aligned perfectly with the popular stand here, I can understand uhno's stance of saying stuff from a new account. And yes, it doesn't seem that MIT was neutral on this case. But I guess dropping the case wouldn't have been a neutral stance either.

I think you're confusing HN with reddit. While the comment quality may have gone down a bit from the influx of new users, most people on HN still tend to be courteous. Out of all the comments in multiple stories, I've only seen about 5 bad words give or take which is pretty good considering that a lot of people are probably furious.

Yes, I think the conversation is definitely tamer than the last time we were discussing aaronsw or MIT.

Of course I can be brave and eat downvotes when necessary without a throwaway as I never get to meet, or work with, anyone here IRL who might punch me in the face. But I have to say that even my non-conforming comments are usually left alone by downvoters, as long as I take pains to explain my disagreement.

"First you shouldn't have to hide under a new throw away account."

But you don't know who "you" is so how can you judge that they don't want to hide under a throwaway account?

What if "you" is <person who HN fawns over> or <CEO of HN's latest darling> or <someone nearing the karma point where you get to downvote> or <someone who's feelings are more easily bruised> (Karmaphiliac?)

Would be a nice feature to be able to post a comment which isn't linked to your handle w/o doing a throwaway. Said feature only available above a certain karma level of course.

Add: Or <someone who doesn't want to upset an important co-worker, boss or partner/spouse that reads HN who views things differently>

Going off-subject, I feel that one of the main reasons that HN is really civil compared to other social sites is that not many long standing HN users use throw-aways. If using throw-aways becomes more common, I feel that the comment quality will continue suffer even more, so I'm inclined to call it out when I see it.

since MIT initiated the proceedings I wouldn't call that neutral either.

MIT initiated a process to find out who the laptop they found belonged to. MIT did not initiate any legal proceedings, and did not tell anyone that they were in favor of doing so.

Combined with Jstor's actions, MIT could have stopped this circus at anytime. They didn't.

MIT could have stopped this circus at anytime.

The report gives plenty of evidence that doesn't support that contention. It looks to me like the prosecution didn't care what MIT or JSTOR thought.

Yes but it would probably weaken the prosecution's case at the very least.

it would probably weaken the prosecution's case at the very least

I can see one thing that would have weakened the prosecution's case: if MIT had been able to say definitely that Swartz's access to the MIT network was authorized. However, I'm not sure MIT could have said that definitely.

From http://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pd..., Appendix 14, Question 35:

> 35. What influence, if any, did MIT exercise or could it have exercised in the plea negotiations? Did MIT really scuttle a plea bargain with no prison time?

> Answer: MIT played no role in any plea negotiations related to the Aaron Swartz case. For a description of these negotiations, please see the Report, section II.B.2 The federal prosecution. For a description of MIT’s position regarding the government’s prosecution, please see Part III MIT’s Response to the Prosecution. It is unclear whether MIT could have exercised influence on the plea bargain. Please see in particular section III.A.2 MIT is informed about the prosecution; and section III.C.3 MIT’s outside counsel speaks with the lead prosecutor.

What would it mean for MIT to "sign off" on a plea bargain? The prosecutor alone was pressing criminal charges; MIT was not pressing any civil charges and it was not involved in the proceedings.

I really don't know since MIT has objected to FOIA requests in Aaron's case. A lot of details are missing. Personally I trust Aaron's lawyers more than MIT's administration.

If by "objected to FOIA requests" you mean "filed a motion, just like JSTOR, proposing the ability review and suggest redactions to the requested documents over a window of five days for the explicit purpose of ensuring the privacy and safety of its employees, especially in light of the threatening communications it has received". MIT never proposed preventing the documents from being released.

http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N29/swartz/MIT-motion.pdf http://tech.mit.edu/V133/N29/swartz.html

But based on your comments in the other threads, I'm not sure you're interested in the actual facts...

> MIT never proposed preventing the documents from being released. I'm not sure you're interested in the actual facts

Ok they blocked and prevented FOIA access to documents until Aug 23. What I posted wasn't inaccurate. If what I posted before weren't facts, maybe you should dispute them instead just making one generalized statement. I've been wrong before, and I don't mind being proven wrong.

Thanks for stepping up to argue MITs case. I understand you personally hold the view that MIT is not to blame for very much at all.

IANAL... I just notice that other people said that MIT could have put an immediate stop to the proceedings:

"Here are the facts: This report claims that MIT was “neutral” — but MIT’s lawyers gave prosecutors total access to witnesses and evidence, while refusing access to Aaron’s lawyers to the exact same witnesses and evidence. That’s not neutral. The fact is that all MIT had to do was say publicly, “We don’t want this prosecution to go forward” – and Steve Heymann and Carmen Ortiz would have had no case. We have an institution to contrast MIT with – JSTOR, who came out immediately and publicly against the prosecution. Aaron would be alive today if MIT had acted as JSTOR did. MIT had a moral imperative to do so."

(from http://tarensk.tumblr.com/post/56881327662/mit-report-is-a-w...)

What have I said that suggests "MIT is not to blame for very much at all"? My comments have dealt with factual issues; I don't see where I advanced any opinions on MIT's deserved level of blame.

The MIT report lays out facts (and not conclusions or judgements) for the express purpose of informing the debate. Many here would probably be interested in its contents if they weren't so busy expressing opinions about it.

It's not clear to me what Ms. Stinebrickner-Kauffman meant by her comment, since prosecution was entirely at the discretion of the DA (as with all criminal charges) and MIT (like JSTOR) had no involvement in the criminal charges. The report explains as much in careful detail and my poor paraphrasing is no substitute.

(Judging by tweet timestamps, Ms. Stinebrickner-Kauffman's statement may have been made about 18 minutes after the release of the report (8:31am @TarenSK vs 8:13am @MIT), so it's possible that the statement was not based on the entirety of the report's content. That is not based on precise knowledge of the report's actual time of release.)

Here is a personal opinion: Hal Abelson, founding director of both the Free Software Foundation (with RMS, GJS, and others) and Creative Commons (with Lawrence Lessig and others) and lead author of the MIT report, produced a thoughtful and thorough document and it should not be ignored.

Your comments seems to be ignoring both the facts and the issues.

> What have I said that suggests "MIT is not to blame for very much at all"? My comments have dealt with factual issues; I don't see where I advanced any opinions on MIT's deserved level of blame.

My comment should have been a question, let me put it explicitly: What is your personal opinion on MIT's deserved level of blame?

OK I have now read the entire report, up to and including the first appendix. My now informed opinion is that with the issue of this, umm, mild report, MIT have missed an opportunity to address the "one issue for reflection" identified in the report itself:

In closing, our review can suggest this lesson: MIT is respected for world-class work in information technology, for promoting open access to online information, and for dealing wisely with the risks of computer abuse. The world looks to MIT to be at the forefront of these areas. Looking back on the Aaron Swartz case, the world didn’t see leadership. As one person involved in the decisions put it: “MIT didn’t do anything wrong; but we didn’t do ourselves proud.”

The report seems to be saying "MIT didnt interfere", "MIT didnt get involved", "MIT didnt do anything wrong". Who is this MIT? Why dont we just talk about human beings and address them by the names they are known by.

"MIT didnt do anything wrong".

The report doesn't really say that. It says MIT did nothing illegal and acted prudently, but it doesn't say that MIT couldn't have done better. Item 4 in the introduction (p. 14) specifically says MIT could have done better.

Why dont we just talk about human beings and address them by the names they are known by.

The report explains why: to protect the privacy of the people involved. It's up to MIT to take whatever action might be warranted involving those people; the public doesn't need to know their names. (The report also points out that the names of key people at MIT who were involved are already matters of public record since they appear in court documents; but that there is no reason to further erode those people's privacy.)

This article really needs more evidence supporting its views. Just restating the claims of the report isn't enough. For example, the third claim is that MIT claims no one cared until aaronsw's suicide. Citing protests by students, open letters by faculty, or articles by alumni would sufficiently refute the report, which is DH5^1. As it stands, this article is just contradicting, which is DH3, and much less convincing.

[1]http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

I don't think they are even doing a DH3; they aren't claiming that MIT is lying. I think it is rather: "Here are excuses offered up by MIT for its behavior, even assuming they are true, it's lame"

That would be true if we were all uneducated about the issue, but that fact nearly everyone can agree that those claims are ridiculous means adding piles of proof would only bloat the article.

For example, what would you have them refute of this statement? "Prosecutors said that Swartz bringing MIT personnel into hearings and trials was like re-victimizing a rape survivor."

Moral of the story DO NOT SUE YOUR STUDENTS. For crying out lout TALK with them first.

The other lesson is we can all trust the USA to not kill a person (indirectly and unwillingly but still dead non the less) when people commit minor crimes, and don't even cause significant financial losses.

That's a curious lesson to learn seeing as Aaron Swartz was not a student at MIT.

And MIT didn't sue him...

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