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MIT agrees to release redacted Aaron Swartz files

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:09:00 +0000

The president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced on Tuesday that the school will voluntarily release public documents related to the prosecution of the free-information activist Aaron Swartz, who killed himself in January as he faced trial on hacking charges.

The email announcement by MIT president L Rafael Reif came in response to a request on Friday by lawyers for Swartz's estate to have the US district court in Boston make the documents public. The university has come under fire for what critics say is its compliance with federal prosecutors in the legal case against Swartz. Supporters of Swartz have painted him as a zealous advocate of public online access, a martyred hero hounded to his death by the government he antagonized.

To prosecutors, the 26-year-old Swartz was a thief whose aims to make information available didn't excuse the illegal acts he was charged with: breaking into a wiring closet at MIT and tapping into its computer network to download millions of paid-access scholarly articles, which he planned to share publicly. Swartz was facing possibly decades in prison after being indicted in Boston in 2011 when he hanged himself in his Brooklyn, New York, apartment.

The documents will be released at the same time as an internal analysis of MIT's role in the Swartz case is made public. No date has been set for the release of that analysis, which is being conducted by professor Hal Abelson. The documents will have MIT employees' names blacked out in order to protect their safety, Reif wrote. The university will also black out information that might open it to further hacking attacks.

"In the time since Aaron Swartz's suicide, we have seen a pattern of harassment and personal threats," Reif wrote. "In this volatile atmosphere, I have the responsibility to protect the privacy and safety of those members of our community who have become involved in this matter in the course of doing their jobs for MIT, and to ensure a safe environment for all of us who call MIT home."

Swartz's family said his death was "the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach". Federal prosecutors have defended their pursuit of the case and say Swartz was offered a deal under which he would have spent just four to six months in prison. Charges were dropped after Swartz's death.

A lawyer for Swartz's estate welcomed Reif's decision, but questioned MIT's need for secrecy and worried that documents with names blacked out would be "incomprehensible and impossible to follow". "It's long overdue that they've agreed to release something," San Francisco-based attorney Elliot Peters said. "But I don't see the reason to redact. I am not aware of any threats having been made to anybody at MIT. I don't know why that's a concern."

Lawyers for Swartz's estate said in their filing on Friday that "the public has an important and clearly established interest in receiving the information necessary to understand the events that led to Aaron Swartz's arrest and indictment."

Peters said: "It would show what happened and show the role MIT had in this."

The lawyers asked that names remain in the documents if released. "Redaction of these individuals' names would merely add a layer of confusion and opacity to the documents without any additional privacy benefit," they wrote.

MIT's computer system has been hacked a number times since Swartz's death. The campus was placed into lockdown last month when someone called to report a gunman in a university building. MIT later said the gunman report was a hoax apparently prompted by Swartz's death.

Aaron Swartz prosecution weighed his politics

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:25:00 +0000

Late last week a Justice Department official told a congressional committee investigating the prosecution of late technologist Aaron Swartz that the young man's political writings had been taken into account in building their criminal case. According to HuffPo's Ryan Reilly "a Justice Department representative told congressional staffers during a recent briefing on the computer fraud prosecution of Internet activist Aaron Swartz that Swartz's 'Guerilla Open Access Manifesto' played a role in the prosecution."

Embattled Swartz prosecutor breaks silence

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 15:49:00 +0000

Federal prosecutors have been under scrutiny following the suicide of 26-year-old computer prodigy Aaron Swartz. After a few days of silence, the prosecutors are standing up for their work.

At the funeral, Swartz's father, Robert Swartz, said, “Aaron did not commit suicide — he was killed by the government. And [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology] betrayed all its basic principles,” and the family has called the death "The product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach."

At the time of his death, Swartz was facing 13 felony charges stemming from his use of an MIT network to download thousands of articles from the nonprofit digital academic library JSTOR. The charges had increased from an original four charges: Wire fraud, computer fraud, theft of information from a computer and recklessly damaging a computer, according to Techdirt.

Aaron Swartz, freedom fighter

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 18:07:00 +0000

For Aaron Swartz, the act of sharing was a "moral imperative." In his Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, released to the Web in July 2008, he specifically targeted the "world's entire scientific and cultural heritage," which he said "is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations." Swartz called for those with access to such knowledge to make it available to others.

You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not -- indeed, morally, you cannot -- keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends ... Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

In July 2011, Swartz was arrested on charges of illegally downloading 4.8 million documents from JSTOR, an online archive of scholarly articles. Facing a maximum possible prison sentence of 35 years and a fine of as much as a million dollars, Swartz killed himself Friday night, just two days after prosecutors rejected a plea bargain deal that would have allowed him to avoid jail time.

Anonymous hacks MIT for Aaron Swartz

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:45:00 +0000

When news first spread of Aaron Swartz's suicide, a number of early response articles focused on and lamented the 26-year-old programmer and thinker's struggle with severe depression. A statement released by the Reddit co-founder's family and partner on Sunday directed anger and blame elsewhere: the institutions -- the U.S. government and MIT -- that would see the brilliant technologist and social justice activist jailed for up t0 50 years.

"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy," the statement read, "It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's office and at MIT contributed to his death."

Over the weekend, the thin veins connecting disparate social justice activist and hacker networks have pulsed thick with anger, sadness and a shared desire to fight the conditions that drove Swartz to his death. Anonymous has already struck. The hacker collective broke into MIT's website and replaced the homepage with a tribute, "In Memoriam, Aaron Swartz."

Suicide of a hacker

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 16:37:00 +0000

If the Internet were a thing that could grieve, it would be in full mourning at the news that Aaron Swartz, a young activist with an impressive record of accomplishment, committed suicide Friday night. He was 26.

At age 14, Swartz co-wrote the RSS specification that turbo-boosted the art of blogging into the lingua franca of the Web. He was instrumental in the creation of Reddit -- the so-called "front page of the Internet." He was renowned -- and drew considerable negative legal attention for -- his efforts to increase public access to case law and scholarly journals. He was an information-wants-to-free hacker in the purest sense, but he was arrested in July 2011 on charges of illegally stealing 4 million documents from M.I.T. and the online scholarly archive JSTOR.

For the full story, Cory Doctorow's obituary at Boing Boing is the essential read, a memorial drenched in sadness and love.