MIT faulted over its support for students
bostonglobe.com
bostonglobe.com
It is up to Universities like MIT to aggressively intervene in these cases and ensure that young people are free to (some extent) break systems and exploit system weaknesses in the interest of learning.
MIT did the opposite in the Aaron Shwartz case, their conduct was in large part responsible for Ortiz & Heyman getting Aaron over a barrel of 30 years in the pokey. They miserably failed in their moral obligations in that case - and the time is long past for changes to this policy.
We do not tolerate young people "learning" how to pick locks by breaking into peoples' homes, and we certainly don't argue that universities have a moral obligation to support such "learning." So why should it be different in the digital world? There was a time maybe when we tolerated that because you could do a lot less damage breaking into a computer than breaking into a house, but that time is long gone.
Personally, I think people over-romanticize hacker culture in saying it's a key part of technological progress. Scientific advancement is a process that overwhelmingly happens purposefully, not through tinkering. It's DARPA funding defense contractors to invent TCP/IP, not some kids "learning" by breaking into other peoples' property.
The stuff Bill and Steve did--they did it because they were smart kids and could get away with it. But saying it was a necessary component of their future success is just romanticization.
It's hacker culture that created GNU/Linux (and lots of other free software), not DARPA's funding.
Tinkering is exactly what got us Linux, what got us Unix, and what got us radio communication and x-rays.
So, no, I do believe you are mistaken.
Would you mind giving your thoughts on http://paulgraham.com/america.html ? Specifically, point #7:
If there are any laws regulating businesses, you can assume larval startups will break most of them, because they don't know what the laws are and don't have time to find out.
For example, many startups in America begin in places where it's not really legal to run a business. Hewlett-Packard, Apple, and Google were all run out of garages. Many more startups, including ours, were initially run out of apartments. If the laws against such things were actually enforced, most startups wouldn't happen.
That could be a problem in fussier countries. If Hewlett and Packard tried running an electronics company out of their garage in Switzerland, the old lady next door would report them to the municipal authorities.
The reason I responded the way I did is because you seem to be arguing for a docile population, which to anyone who has studied history is a recipe for disaster.
Linux is a very advanced piece of engineering today, but much of that development was done by professionals hired by companies like IBM and Google. Also, I wouldn't conflate "hacker culture" with open source generally. I'm sure there is a lot of overlap, but I imagine that there are plenty of open source hackers who didn't grow up breaking into peoples' computers.
> Would you mind giving your thoughts on http://paulgraham.com/america.html ? Specifically, point #7:
In law there is a distinction between offenses that are "malum prohibitum" (i.e. wrong because they are prohibited) and offenses that are "malum in se." (i.e. wrong because they are inherently wrong). Running a business out of your garage in violation of zoning is malum prohibitum. Infringing property rights have historically been considered malum in se.
Laws create social norms. The social norms surrounding private property are very stringent. I leave my door unlocked, because the social norm is such that most people would never even think of entering someone's house "just because the door was unlocked." The social norms on the internet are still in flux, but as it matures and people come to rely on it, they will move in the direction of being more like those in the real world. Boundaries in digital space will come to resemble boundaries in real space.
> The reason I responded the way I did is because you seem to be arguing for a docile population, which to anyone who has studied history is a recipe for disaster.
I don't see where you get "docile." Out in Texas, trespassing on someone's physical property can get you shot in the face. Nothing docile about it. Fortunately for hackers, this is not precedent in the digital realm.
God I hope not!
There's very little reason that one should reflect the other.
Those pushing for the preservation and promotion of "hacker culture" are really advocating a cooperative society over an adversarial one. They want us to be motivated by discovery and collective interest, not by a dog-eat-dog sense of protectionism and enemies.
Those who argue against a parity between digital and physical borders are fighting a balkanization of the Internet (and thus common society) along entrenched ideological and national lines. They aren't saying that there should be no boundaries, only that the boundaries shouldn't be arbitrarily chosen to match the status quo in the physical world.
The issue, fundamentally, isn't whether digital boundaries are drawn along the same lines as physical ones. They transcend physical boundaries. The issue is whether we give the same deference to digital boundaries as to physical ones. I.e. whether we treat kids hacking into AT&T's network just for shits and giggles the same as their breaking into AT&T's corporate offices with no particular malintent in mind.
It seems to me that, right now, we treat the digital equivalent far more harshly.
If you want to encourage people to learn, they have to be able to explore. To explore, they have to be able to conduct some minor mischief from time to time, if for no other reason than mischief is often what evolves into innovation.
I don't understand why you are so conservative and, well, stuffy about this.
The problem here stems from young being people more in touch with actual reality, as they haven't been beaten down by society to respect arbitrary social mores. So they take risks doing things that seemingly should have no consequence - like smoking marijuana or sending nonstandard signals over communication networks. And so a few unlucky ones get caught, and the best they can currently hope for is to have an institution that will go to bat and isolate them from the "real world" of public persecutors' scoreboards.
And none of what I said keeps vindictively publishing someone's semi-private information from being the specific crime in your example. My point is that the serious of the situation should depend on the intent and damage caused, as well as the actual victims (email account holder) feeling of wrongedness, rather than an immediate felony because witchcraft. For example if you get into a bar fight, there is a whole spectrum from getting temporarily kicked out, to assault charges, to second-degree murder, depending on what actually occurs. While getting into a scuffle is wrong, it doesn't and shouldn't lead to life-altering penalties.
"Due to the top secret nature of the work, Los Alamos was isolated. In Feynman's own words, 'There wasn't anything to do there'. Bored, he indulged his curiosity by learning to pick the combination locks on cabinets and desks used to secure papers."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman#The_Manhattan_...
Swartz was, if he rejected the plea bargain that would have given him a few months at most and went to trial and lost on all charges, looking at around 7 years at the extreme outside, tops, not 30. If you would like the detail on why this is so, take a look at any of the dozens of prior discussion of the Swartz case here, since this has been explained in great detail in nearly every one of them.
Swartz had competent legal representation from the jump. His counsel at the time of his suicide wrote in a postmortem on the case that he believed Swartz stood little chance of any custodial sentence, even were he to be convicted. It's not hard to see why: the sentencing guidelines for first-time offenders of non-remunerative CFAA offenses aren't very demanding.
Swartz was likely to be ruined by the cost of defending a complex federal charge, faced the prospect of potentially spending months in federal prison, and an overall likelihood of the whole incident concluding with a felony conviction on his record, which may have been problematic for his future endeavors. He was oppressed by his prosecution in a variety of ways. It's unnecessary to manufacture new ways.
Jobs didn't avoid jail because times were more permissive. He stayed out of jail because he didn't get caught. People went to jail for phone phreaking.
>It is up to Universities like MIT to aggressively intervene in these cases and ensure that young people are free to (some extent) break systems and exploit system weaknesses in the interest of learning.
I don't understand how anyone could come to this conclusion. Students breaking the law should be expelled, not coddled.
Depends. If it's a felony where you are, then yes.
>What about people like Edward Snowden?
What about him? If the feds ever catch up with Snowden he'll go to jail, and that's where he belongs.
>Should he have gotten the Aaron Swartz treatment too if he were at MIT? Right, because all laws are just.
Justice is a subjective thing, and that's why legislatures write the laws. If you're going to have the rule of law you have the rule of law. The upside is people in power have to obey the laws just like everyone else. The downside is everyone else has to obey the laws too.
Your theoretical model for how the system works falls short of reality. If you truly think the law is applied equally among all, you need to do some serious research. The powerful among us don't have to obey the laws like everyone else. Finally, it isn't the powerless among us writing or influencing those who do write the laws.
Actually, the laws in the US are pretty evenly enforced. It's as close as you're going to get in the real world.
>Finally, it isn't the powerless among us writing or influencing those who do write the laws.
Everyone gets to vote. Granted, we can't all make large campaign contributions, but ultimately the vote is what actually matters.
Wrong, on the most basic level. [1]
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_State...
You can of course define "total loser" to include someone who has been disenfranchised, but that would be an unusual definition that seems deliberately constructed to misinform.
Instead, they are elected by "electors" who are chosen by popular vote on a state-by-state basis.[3]
Lawrence Kohlburg classifies this kind of reasoning at the fourth of six stages of moral development. [1] Laws are created by people - no, even worse: by committee. Do you think people who have committed no violence on others ought to be stripped of their education and opportunities?
>The upside is people in power have to obey the laws just like everyone else.
This principle is violated time and time again by people in power. Consider the recent fines imposed on HSBC for facilitating money laundering in latin america. A pittance. A slap on the wrist. The consequences for them didn't even come close to the profits they made.
1. http://brianwilliamson.id.au/cit/level1/psych1/kohlberg.pdf
Great. When I want Lawrence Kohlburg's opinion I'll seek it out.
>This principle is violated time and time again by people in power.
If by "time and time again" you mean "rarely, in the great scheme of things".
Caption under picture: Critics say MIT also should have intervened in the case of Aaron Swartz.
Swartz was never a student at MIT.
But he represented values for which the MIT stands in its self-characterisation.
- the MBTA "hackers", 2008: http://www.openmediaboston.org/content/mbta-suit-against-mit...
- Star Simpson, 2007: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2...
- Ryan McKinley's "Government Information Awareness", 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Information_Awarene...
- Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, 2002, XBox hacker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Huang
- Ladyada, 2002: http://www.ladyada.net/pub/research.html
- David LaMacchia, 1994: http://cd.textfiles.com/group42/WAREZ/LAMACCHI.HTM
And these are only a few cases that made headlines; there are many additional controversies handled more quietly. The point remains that the MIT General Counsel's office exists to protect the institute, not the students, even while MIT's culture rewards innovative, boundary-pushing work.
The point at issue here is that MIT needs a legal support structure for such students commensurate with its encouragement of the work.
Defending a student from feds means risking their careers since they only got these positions through political connections. All of them go on to the Dept of Foreign Affairs or some other government appointed position. This is just a stepping stone for them, who cares about students.
> “Students are being threatened with legal action for doing exactly what we encourage them to do: explore and create innovative new technologies,” wrote Hal Abelson, a computer science professor; Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT; and Media Lab graduate student Nathan Matias.
The school says it's a misunderstanding:
> MIT provost Martin A. Schmidt said Thursday evening that there had been a misunderstanding. MIT advised the students to get their own lawyer who would be solely focused on their best interest, he said.
“It was never our intent to say we can’t support you,” he said in an interview. “Now that they have that counsel, the Institute stands by its students and we are prepared to support them and their counsel in whatever way we can to help them in this defense.”
So, no, why should we assume our kids should follow that bollocks?
Think very hard about your statement: if there is no practical way of reforming a system, disobedience becomes the only viable alternative.
But even if the law is on the side of the students (which I believe is obvious), that doesn't necessarily mean much if they don't have the same level of legal support that the state has at its disposal. This is why MIT fully supporting their students is so vital.
It doesn't surprise me that the Boston Globe would want to stay on good terms with a major local power, but there are limits.
Consider instead: MIT Faulted for Lack of Support; Student Support Faulted at MIT; Students to MIT: Support Please!....