This has been long time coming.
These days if a student or young person does what Steve Jobs (phone device) or Bill Gates (exploiting bugs for more Computer time) did and got away with, they face lawsuits and decades in Jail.
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.
> 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
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.
Uh huh, but the prosecutor threatened him with 30 to try and scare him into bargaining, and Swartz apparently believed him, so I'm not sure what your point is.
The feds tore apart his life. They forced his girlfriend to speak out against him. He couldn't trust anyone, his coworkers, the school. They were out for blood, his blood. You want a felony on your record? Say goodbye to financial aid, and look forward to explaining it to everyone that runs a background check on you - if you even get the chance to explain.
The world in which Jobs and Gates grew up was very different, one in which computers didn't play as vital a role in everyday life, and compromising a computer system could cause less in the way of damage, simply because people did not rely on them as heavily. In our modern world, saying that young people should be free to break and exploit systems has very different implications.
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.
We do not tolerate young people "learning" how to pick locks by breaking into peoples' homes...
"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."
Be careful what you wish for. History has shown that countries which are free to think will eventually outthink those that aren't. And what you're arguing for is restriction of thought.
I'd say a university should support students learning to pick locks by ignoring (as long as no particular damage was caused) them using campus locks for practice.
>This has been long time coming. These days if a student or young person does what Steve Jobs (phone device) or Bill Gates (exploiting bugs for more Computer time) did and got away with, they face lawsuits and decades in Jail.
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.
So by your reasoning, students caught smoking marijuana should be expelled? What about people like Edward Snowden? Should he have gotten the Aaron Swartz treatment too if he were at MIT? Right, because all laws are just.
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.
I don't know of any university that would stand up for their students. My old school doesn't even do tenure anymore so they can muzzle the staff, and is run by successive former political hacks who all chaired some partisan fundraising society and were parachuted into the dean's office through cronyism. The associate and vice presidents are real estate speculators and lobbyists or did party fundraising who've been busy building large private condos on endowment land to sell to foreign investors in order to personally profit.
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.
So this story is from February 14, 2014, and contains a bit of "he said, MIT said"...there must be an update by now?
> “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.”
What "law"? Just because the authorities in New Jersey try to attack (Massachusetts) university students for a proof of concept project doesn't mean the law is on their side.
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.
The laws are obviously not worth the paper they're printed on--they are neither wholly reformative nor punitive in nature, and their administration could best be described as whimsical if not outright malicious.
So, no, why should we assume our kids should follow that bollocks?
This has been long time coming. These days if a student or young person does what Steve Jobs (phone device) or Bill Gates (exploiting bugs for more Computer time) did and got away with, they face lawsuits and decades in Jail.
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.
> 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
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.
Uh huh, but the prosecutor threatened him with 30 to try and scare him into bargaining, and Swartz apparently believed him, so I'm not sure what your point is.
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This does nothing to address suprgeek's point: Excessive prosecution has a chilling effect on technological exploration and entrepeneurship.
The feds tore apart his life. They forced his girlfriend to speak out against him. He couldn't trust anyone, his coworkers, the school. They were out for blood, his blood. You want a felony on your record? Say goodbye to financial aid, and look forward to explaining it to everyone that runs a background check on you - if you even get the chance to explain.
2 replies →
The world in which Jobs and Gates grew up was very different, one in which computers didn't play as vital a role in everyday life, and compromising a computer system could cause less in the way of damage, simply because people did not rely on them as heavily. In our modern world, saying that young people should be free to break and exploit systems has very different implications.
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.
We do not tolerate young people "learning" how to pick locks by breaking into peoples' homes...
"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_...
Be careful what you wish for. History has shown that countries which are free to think will eventually outthink those that aren't. And what you're arguing for is restriction of thought.
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I'd say a university should support students learning to pick locks by ignoring (as long as no particular damage was caused) them using campus locks for practice.
>This has been long time coming. These days if a student or young person does what Steve Jobs (phone device) or Bill Gates (exploiting bugs for more Computer time) did and got away with, they face lawsuits and decades in Jail.
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.
So by your reasoning, students caught smoking marijuana should be expelled? What about people like Edward Snowden? Should he have gotten the Aaron Swartz treatment too if he were at MIT? Right, because all laws are just.
11 replies →
Headline: MIT faulted over its support for students
Caption under picture: Critics say MIT also should have intervened in the case of Aaron Swartz.
Swartz was never a student at MIT.
If you'd like MIT students who were impacted by the administration's callous lack of support, consider:
- 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.
I don't know of any university that would stand up for their students. My old school doesn't even do tenure anymore so they can muzzle the staff, and is run by successive former political hacks who all chaired some partisan fundraising society and were parachuted into the dean's office through cronyism. The associate and vice presidents are real estate speculators and lobbyists or did party fundraising who've been busy building large private condos on endowment land to sell to foreign investors in order to personally profit.
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.
Definitely! What's pretty cool is that this is exactly the response of MIT administration as well http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N7/tidbit.html
Your parents point is not that MIT has done no wrong, but that Swartz is not the right example.
> Swartz was never a student at MIT.
But he represented values for which the MIT stands in its self-characterisation.
Isn't that why they used the word "also"?
Old news. MIT administration has responded in a pretty reasonable manner.
http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N7/tidbit.html
Really out of date. http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N7/tidbit.html
So this story is from February 14, 2014, and contains a bit of "he said, MIT said"...there must be an update by now?
> “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.”
An MIT lawyer is prohibited from representing the best interests of the students. He is required to put the interests of MIT first.
Grow up, kids. The law applies to you too.
What "law"? Just because the authorities in New Jersey try to attack (Massachusetts) university students for a proof of concept project doesn't mean the law is on their side.
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.
The laws are obviously not worth the paper they're printed on--they are neither wholly reformative nor punitive in nature, and their administration could best be described as whimsical if not outright malicious.
So, no, why should we assume our kids should follow that bollocks?
Having issues with the government / laws does not mean that people get to just toss them out the window.
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Because if they don't they'll go to jail.
2 replies →
There are any number of alternative headlines for this story that would not only be less misleading, but also more succinct.
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!....