On 2014-01-07 03:18, John Young wrote:
Swartz was ratted by a sysadmin, investigated by several sysadmins, some who formerly helped him and were pressured to betray him, indicted with the essential help of sysadmins. University and JSTOR administrators could not have discovered him , aided the investigation, cooperated with the prosecutor, without sysadmins. The cops and prosecutor could not have caught, investigated, coerced witnesses, indicted and killed Swarz without sysadmins. Some of those sysadmins are under lifetime vows of secrecy for cooperating against Swartz.
They were not "ratting" on him A sysadmin tries to keep his systems working. Aaron Swartz was disruptively trespassing on their systems - he was arrogantly and obnoxiously aggressing against them. And that, in fact, was what he was charged with, not with releasing JSTOR IP property, but with screwing up other people's computers. If he had been furtive about collecting the data, the way Snowden was, there never would have been any problem. The problem was that Aaron Swartz was an arrogant asshole who thought he was ruling class and above the law, and that those he aggressed against were menials beneath the law - the Henry Louis Gates phenomenon. One of the things our ruling class filters against is conspicuous and obnoxious arrogance. They don't want us noticing them. Aaron Swartz failed the conspicuous arrogance filter before being granted tenure, so suddenly found himself no longer ruling class.