
Aaron Swartz shows his FBI file - wglb
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/fbifile
======
ivankirigin

      The two accounts were responsible for downloading more than
      eighteen million pages with an approximate value of $1.5 million.

Ha! Just because they charge $0.08 a page doesn't mean millions of page views
online cost the same amount.

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.

~~~
palish
Source?

~~~
ivankirigin
Numbers are higher than I thought, but still do nothing to stop traffickers,
given their high margins
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs#Assorted_arguments...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs#Assorted_arguments_against_the_efficacy_of_the_War_on_Drugs)

~~~
palish
Thanks!

------
apollo
Mr. Swartz is known to frequent "Hacker News," an underground forum operated
by the "partner in crime" of convicted computer criminal Robert Tappan Morris.

~~~
kiba
Where did it say that in the FBI report? I took a look over it like 2-3 times
and I can't find such mention.

~~~
markerdmann
Apollo is just making a joke.

~~~
anovaskulk
still I dont't see why kiba should be down voted for not getting it, huh

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jrockway
I love how the case was closed as soon as his lawyer got involved. "Oh damn,
now we have to decide which law he broke."

~~~
kirubakaran
Don't talk to the police : <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc>

[just in case there is someone who hasn't seen this before]

~~~
DanielStraight
Why does the guy sound like it's all a joke though?

~~~
grinich
Because he's a lawyer.

~~~
DanielStraight
For the win.

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biohacker42
_House is set on a deep lot, behind other houses on Marshman Avenue. This is a
heavily wooded, dead-end street, with no other cars parked on the road making
continued surveillance difficult to conduct without severely increasing the
risk of discovery._

Good to know.

~~~
gojomo
Good thing it was just the FBI. The BATF might have classified this mysterious
residence as some sort of cult compound and executed a no-knock raid with
automatic weapons drawn.

~~~
mattculbreth
And burnt down his house for good measure.

~~~
dfranke
and then found a rubber band amid the rubble and seized it as an unregistered
exotic firearm.

~~~
kirubakaran
Well, I would too if a rubber band survived even when the whole house was
burnt down.

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sachinag
Wait, I thought Aaron was still in Cambridge. Did he come back to Chicago?

~~~
aaronsw
Congratulations, you're better at finding me than the FBI.

~~~
arithmetic
I wonder if they're watching this HN post and going "Darn it! He's in
Cambridge!" :)

------
tsally
Balls of steel mate. Respect.

EDIT: Apparently your webserver is a little less resilient though. :-p

------
ZeroGravitas
I learned a new word: _exfiltrated_

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exfiltrated>

~~~
LeChuck
Did you know of _defenestration_?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestration>

~~~
drenei
Bill Waterson's Calvin & Hobbes poem introduced "defenestration" to me when I
was young young young: "The monster, in his consternation, Demonstater
defenestration". Its such a great word, and he was such a brilliant person,
and a great inspiration. (sorry, completely off topic)

~~~
shiranaihito
Who _was_ a brilliant person?

~~~
dmoney
I think he is currently alive. Cursory googling didn't reveal a death date.

~~~
randallsquared
More of an artistic death. :/

~~~
kirubakaran
How do you know that he is not secretly creating something amazing, to be
released later? (This is my fantasy anyway)

------
bootload
_"... In his call to action, Mr. Malamud pointed to the free trial Pacer was
offering and called for a “Thumb Drive Corps” to go to libraries with small-
but-capacious “thumb drives,” plug them into computers, download as many court
documents as they could, and send them to Mr. Malamud so that he could
translate them them into a format that Google’s search software can read and
put them on line. ..."_

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.

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tptacek
Someone got the backstory here?

~~~
ajju
He crawled a bunch (780 Gigs / ~20 million pages) of 'public' court records
that were behind some kind of auth (pay) wall via a free trial and opened them
up. Likely as a result of this crawling, the free trial was shut down. The
pages he crawled constitute 20% of the total records. The feds then started
investigating him.

[http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/steal-these-
fede...](http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/steal-these-federal-
records-okay-not-literally/)

~~~
rguzman
Court records are, in general, public. Not 'public'. Just go to the library.
However, PACER costs money and so do the favored online vendors (westlaw and
lexis-nexis).

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.

~~~
ajju
They should be public but are behind a wall. Thus, the quotes.

------
lg
funny, this reminds me of the typical series of bugzilla comments i make when
I'm debugging something. although this is a lot more detailed and thorough
than I ever am...

~~~
jyothi
and guess there is opportunity here. FBI agents can be excellent trainers for
issue tracking and documenting projects. One of them should start a blog.

~~~
johnnybgoode
This is a case where I want to upvote you if you were being sarcastic, and
downvote you if you were not. :)

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ttol
If you would like to request your own FBI file, if you have one, the link with
step-by-step instructions are: <http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cjisd/fprequest.htm>

~~~
pyre
I had to request my FBI file once, and there was none. But the papers they
send you are woefully misleading. It says something to the effect of 'Below
are all the documents:' and under the rest of the page is blank. A 'None
exist' would have been a little helpful. I kept thinking that they forgot to
mail me some other page, but I was able to get by with what they gave me.

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.

~~~
there
and you have to give them your fingerprints which i'm assuming will then be on
file for any other law enforcement agency to use.

~~~
pyre
Not sure what the point of this comment is. Fingerprints are one of the
requirements for requesting any law enforcement records (not court documents)
so far as I know.

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.

------
aristus
"A search for wages for Swartz at the Department of Labor was negative."

:) I wonder how they will deal with more and more hacker-type people of
independent means.

------
babyshake
For any of us using hosting services from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc. this
should be a wakeup call.

Next time we should coordinate, and pull a "Spartacus".

------
grhino
I'm curious about the entry "March 23, Manassas, VA". Did somebody from the
FBI wonder why the case hadn't been closed yet?

~~~
aaronsw
It looks to me like the FBI was wondering why exactly this was a crime.

~~~
prawn
Aaron, how did you know on Feb 13 that the FBI had opened a file on you? From
my skim, the first contact was April 14, or was there something else before
then?

~~~
aaronsw
I didn't. But when PACER went down they announced they were launching an
investigation into who did it.

------
joseakle
What´s the Long-Term Planning Committee for the Human Race ?

------
bootload
_"... NCIS report for Aaron Swartz was negative ..."_

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.

~~~
rglullis
Presumption of guilt?

~~~
bootload
_"... Presumption of guilt? ..."_

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>

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zandorg
I'm a UK citizen and I apparently have none, because I requested for me and
Don Simpson (the deceased film producer), and they only said 'No file on Don
Simpson' - didn't even say 'No file on [Zandorg]'.

------
eli
Wow, that's quick. I thought it typically took years to get a file out of the
FBI.

------
arithmetic
The Big Brother is watching. Who'd have thought?

