Swartz, Weev & radical libertarian lexicon (Re: Jacob Appelbaum in Germany - Aaron Swartz)

[Adam Back]

On Tue, Jan 07, 2014 at 07:29:00PM +0100, Cari Machet wrote:
>> About Aaron's case and suicide, it seems to me that Aaron miscalculated,
>> and the hacking was pretty escalated, engaged in multiple escalating
>> counter-measures when it was obvious the sysadmins were on to him as an
>> intruder, he didnt back off
>
>i have not heard this before - i had the information that he was
>downloading way too much at a time and doing it over a very small
>period of time and that tipped them off my information is that he was
>very careful in other work of this kind why would he b so sloppy this
>time - i mean how do you know he knew they were on to him?

I imagine its all out there on the wikis or interwebs, thats where I read
it, so here I am just repeating what was written about extensively at the
time.  From memory there was some escalation.  He was detected, blocked,
reacted (mac tumble etc) blocked again, then proceed to enter presumably
restricted areas, hide equipment to bypass limits the admins had placed only
on wifi users, and still download the heck out of it.  It was a big risk and
not very smart move.

What do you think a competent sysadmin would do about on on going security
investigation in that situation - try to find the equipment or say "on noes
the hacker is too smart for us - we capitulate".  So they found the
equipment, called the local cops, and found Aaron when he came to collect
the equipment.  Its not as if he asked their permission, nor that they knew
it was someone even authorized to be on campus or to use JSTOR.

Once that happened it spiraled out of control, even though several
influential faculty knew Aaron, and as I recall his father also worked
there; and various people caved or chickened out of supporting him from what
others said on this threa, and the guy was like depressed obviously about
this situation.  From robin hood white knight hacktivist to soon to be felon
with soulless politicaly motivated fed prosecutor trying to make an example
of him by twisting the max out of some already egregious laws.

So yes I am against the state subsidized "copyright" censorship of some bit
strings, patents and monstrosities like CFAA, so I support Aaron's political
objective of his hactivism target there (and on the previous one) but Aaron
did screw up a bit also.  Maybe he got the wrong message from dodging a
justice system bullet on the previous succesful hactivism with the legally
liberated tax payer owned legal dox.

Adam