
This Is the MIT Surveillance Video That Undid Aaron Swartz - Libertatea
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/swartz-video/
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spodek
"This Is the MIT Surveillance Video That Undid Aaron Swartz"

A video didn't undo Aaron Swartz.

 _People_ undid Aaron Swartz. People with agendas and without compassion using
a system of justice stacked in their favor.

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easy_rider
Sorry but uhm, didn't he undo himself? Seriously stop saying that someone
"undid" him, killed him, or even take the blame for him killing himself.

Yes injustice is all around. A lot of people have been convicted for murders
they have not done, later released because of new DNA evidence. These people
have been in jail for decades, falsely imprisoned, and while released, their
name probably never clean, but hey ...still alive.. Guess they had some sort
of outlook.

Aaron was facing charges for something he knew he did was against the law, but
he didn't accept the world where that thing he did was against the law.

So he took his own life.

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dasil003
I think the suicide is beside the point here. The undoing was getting busted
and having the book thrown at him.

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easy_rider
The suicide is hardly beside the point. Please do note that the author is
Kevin Poulsen and he writes:

"His jury trial was looming when Swartz took his own life in January, 2013.

MIT faced a firestorm of criticism in the wake of Swartz’s suicide. Critics,
including Swartz’s family and prominent MIT alumni, said the institution
betrayed its own principles by not advocating for less harsh treatment of
Swartz."

I can't see how "undid" would point to anything other than his "not being
here". His presence being undone. His life being undone. If he would have been
incarcerated for life, I don't think Kevin would use the word "undid". He
would print "Free Aaron" stickers, and getting the word out that this fight
should not be over.

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alanctgardner2
Maybe you aren't a native English speaker, so this is a misunderstanding.
Despite what it literally means, "to undo" in common English usually just
means "screwed over". If he had been convicted and was alive he would still
have been "undone" by this video

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easy_rider
I'm indeed not. Thanks for clarifying, and it could be, but I still think it
has a double meaning. Especially in this context I think It's just insinuating
and sensational.

I've actually never seen this wording being used ever, so for me it seemed
quite similar to "doing someone". Yes that also means "screwing someone over"
but for me, when reading "undid" a quote from the movie Trainspotting came to
mind.

"Begbie didn't do drugs either. He just did people" and that involved a knife
usually.

/edit: Considering the dictionary's definition I will hereby withdraw my
suspect of any intent by the author to suggest that another person or entity
was responsible for Aaron's death :)

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yawgmoth
I don't understand why the penalty for his crimes is so severe (Wikipedia:
Federal prosecutors later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and 11
violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,[16] carrying a cumulative
maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture,
restitution and supervised release.[17]).

That seems like a preposterous amount of time, money, and stipulations post-
release. What was the federal prosecution's motivation for making an example
out of him?

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danielweber
He wasn't facing 35 years of time. His lawyer did not just fall off the turnip
truck and knew how federal sentencing guidelines worked.

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RyanMcGreal
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The only way he didn't face 35 years of prison time is
_if he was prepared to plea guilty_ despite believing firmly and with sound
reason that he was not a criminal.

As I've argued elsewhere [1], "A prosecutor forcing someone to admit guilt by
threatening a life-destroying cruel and unusual punishment if they do not
admit it - why, that is the very essence of using torture to extract a
confession!"

[1] [http://quandyfactory.com/blog/103](http://quandyfactory.com/blog/103)

~~~
tptacek
No, this is not in fact how it worked. Swartz's own lawyer wrote up the range
of possible sentences presuming Swartz refused to plead out, ranging from "no
custodial sentence at all" (his lawyer's own expectation) to 7 years on the
outside, if the prosecutors carried out all their threats _and_ the court
sided with them entirely _and_ Swartz had been convicted on all counts.

Once again: Swartz's own lawyer wrote that he believed it unlikely that Swartz
would do any time in prison _even if he was convicted after pleading not
guilty._

The "35 years" thing is entirely fictional. Popehat has a fantastic blog post
on why this fiction exists and how it is misunderstood.

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atmosx
I remember when his death hit the news, my twitter timeline was full of hash-
tags and posts and links. I didn't even knew the guy, then I decided to browse
wikipedia and see who he is. I was impressed to say the least.

It's too bad that many activists, who want clearly an open, just and more
socially enabled world, have a psyche that is so fragile. But apparently the
two things are correlated: If you are sensitive, you might very well be
fragile.

Now given the fact that tampering 40.000 criminal cases[1] give you 3 to 5
years, I don't see how publishing MIT documents can be so _dangerous_ for the
_society_.

[1] [http://filmingcops.com/corrupt-government-chemist-
tampered-w...](http://filmingcops.com/corrupt-government-chemist-tampered-
with-40000-cases-locking-countless-innocent-americans-in-prison/)

~~~
3rd3
I wonder how we can create a social system that has incentives for sensitive
people to become leaders. I think, the insensitivity that is necessary to
become a leader is _one of_ , or even _the_ most fatal flaws of all types of
societies we have come up so far.

~~~
atmosx
I never thought this approach, but you are correct. Sensitive people are _true
believers_ and thus much harder to corrupt.

I don't have the faintest idea on how we could achieve this on our _televised
democracy_ , but I'd be interested on reading other's opinion on the matter.

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lasermike026
This is MIT. There is no security there by design. Swartz is guilty of what?

RMS - " Hackers typically had little respect for the silly rules that
administrators like to impose, so they looked for ways around. For instance,
when computers at MIT started to have "security" (that is, restrictions on
what users could do), some hackers found clever ways to bypass the security,
partly so they could use the computers freely, and partly just for the sake of
cleverness (hacking does not need to be useful). However, only some hackers
did this—many were occupied with other kinds of cleverness, such as placing
some amusing object on top of MIT's great dome ( __), finding a way to do a
certain computation with only 5 instructions when the shortest known program
required 6, writing a program to print numbers in roman numerals, or writing a
program to understand questions in English.

Meanwhile, another group of hackers at MIT found a different solution to the
problem of computer security: they designed the Incompatible Timesharing
System without security "features". In the hacker's paradise, the glory days
of the Artificial Intelligence Lab, there was no security breaking, because
there was no security to break. It was there, in that environment, that I
learned to be a hacker, though I had shown the inclination previously. We had
plenty of other domains in which to be playfully clever, without building
artificial security obstacles which then had to be overcome. "

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lwhi
Why is this video news? Its presentation feels exploitative and sensational.

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znowi
Damn, I feel sad he's not around anymore.

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DEinspanjer
So did MIT and JSTOR get away with further third-party redaction to this set
of documents? It was reported in earlier articles by this author regarding the
FOIA lawsuit that they were attempting to do so, but I didn't see any mention
of the result in this article.

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adrianwaj
Reminds me of the Osama Bin Laden video where he's sitting in front of the TV
looking at the public image of himself.. too compelling to be true.

note the filename of the pic in the article: swartz-double.jpg

~~~
quarterto
...that would be because it's two photos side-by-side. A _double_ photo.

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mrcactu5
Academics are suspicious of anything slightly outside the mainstream. Did he
know that?

MIT trains hackers for a living, since before this guy was born.

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MWil
I think everyone who graffiti'd the closet should come forward and beg to be
forgiven for their breaking and entering too and MIT and the Secret Service
can throw the book at them.

/s

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imahboob
Some one had to take an extreme step like this to push for open access of
government funded research.. I wish he has this kind of support when he was
alive.

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alisnic
RIP

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debian69
"TNT" was here .....

