Aaron Swartz shows his FBI file
aaronsw.com
aaronsw.com
The two accounts were responsible for downloading more than
eighteen million pages with an approximate value of $1.5 million.This reminds of big drug catches that bring in tons of a controlled substance. The value is always given in street value, to make the efforts seem more substantial. Too bad they never publicize stats that show the police and FBI catch an infinitesimally small percentage of narcotics.
and that's kind of understandable - court has no time/expertise/willingness to figure out what "market" value of stuff should be.
But in another way you're right - piracy is closer to counterfeit than theft. The original item is still available to its rightful owner to sell, although the copy arguably dilutes its value.
(An old roommate of mine got busted by the FBI for large-scale piracy, so I'm more familiar with it than I want to be.)
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts reported that the PACER system was being inundated with requests. One request was being made every three seconds.
Inundated by one request every three seconds? That's pretty pathetic if you ask me. They must not have planned for the PACER system to be used very much by very many people.
More frequent than that, and you're just causing trouble for the server with no real benefit for yourself.
there. fixed it for ya.
Anyway, the agents came to my house, made a vague accusation, and asked me if I knew anything about this. Having watched a bit of Law & Order, my answer was, "I think I need to talk to my lawyer". They persisted, and provided me with a lot of false information. At this point, I was annoyed at how wrong they were and said "yeah, I wrote this" and pulled up the comment in question.
(Resolution: they read the comment, realized that someone Higher Up totally overreacted, and went away.)
Basically, detectives are trained to extract information, and they are good at doing so. (Worth noting that after they got the information they wanted, they were generally pleasant people. Real life can be very much like television. :)
[just in case there is someone who hasn't seen this before]
Good to know.
EDIT: Apparently your webserver is a little less resilient though. :-p
There's a bigger picture (activism) here & maybe that's why the fbi has some interest. Having read this article ~ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13records.html I can now see why.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/steal-these-fede...
Even if they aren't public. They should be. This stuff can be used as law -- precedents. The only valid objection I see is that there needs to be some process to protect the privacy of the people involved in the case. But that's second-order concern.
[1] Matthew Bender & Co. v. West Publishing Co., 158 F.3d 693 (2d Cir. 1998) - http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/158/158.F3d.693.97-...
There already is: you can file documents under seal or in redacted form. Most courts require you to do so if you're including information such as social security numbers. See, i.e. http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/invitationstocomment/documents/s...
Nothing that's available via PACER couldn't be read by walking down to the courthouse and requesting the physical file.
It's not illegal, so what's going on?
Trying to collect $1.5MM?
I am not saying this is what should happen but this is what likely happened.
In this matter, I'd bet the NYTimes coverage was more valuable in deterring prosecution than any legal counsel or even influential friends -- it meant any trumped-up narrative of nefarious intent would be fighting an uphill battle against the story already started in 'the paper of record'.
IIRC the cost was $18. But don't send a personal cheque, or you'll get a call from some FBI processing person directing you to fax them credit card authorization or to completely refile the request. Mine took like 7 or 8 months to process. It was 3 or 4 months after I sent off the request before I got the call about the issue with payment through a personal cheque, which gives you an idea of what the backlog was probably like. This was around 2 years ago.
It's not like this is some sort of insidious process where you don't realize they are going to take your fingerprints until it's too late for you to back out because there is a gun against your head. The entire process is basically:
1. Get fingerprints on a card of acceptable format by a 'professional.'
2. Send in fingerprint card, request and payment.
As for me, it's hard to go through the immigration process without proving that you're not a criminal in your country of origin. That, and I have my fingerprints on record anyways. I had a class 3 gaming license in NY state. The NY State Police took my fingerprints for that.
:) I wonder how they will deal with more and more hacker-type people of independent means.
Next time we should coordinate, and pull a "Spartacus".
excellent.
the other thing I don't get is flags should be going up if nothing bad is being turned up. as for being legal? I bet Pacer didn't think/want 20% of their records searched even if they opened them up. It's unstated but it would be fair to assume this.
From what I've read here they (fbi) are doing simple background checks and want to talk. An interview/Talk doesn't imply a presumption of guilt. Having said that the fact that the "pacer" usage may have been excessive & someone has complained means anyone with excessive usage is going to be looked at.
There is no black and white here but shades of grey. The records probably should be in public hands. The means used so far might be illegal. The tussle is "public access" vs "payment" and the action taken is making the right waves to hightlight the need for the former ~ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13records.html