Re:MIT Report is a whitewash. My Statement in Response
by mscarborough on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @03:27PM
(#6129404)
> with the cooperation and possible collusion of your school
Aaron went to Stanford, and was for a time a fellow at Harvard. To my knowledge he was never an MIT student, and chose MIT for the network hack for separate reasons.
Re:MIT Report is a whitewash. My Statement in Response
by WalterSear on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @04:41PM
(#6129888)
I stand corrected.
Re:MIT Report is a whitewash. My Statement in Response
by jlev on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @06:36PM
(#6130582)
He wasn't a student, but he was definitely part of the MIT community. He was in a student group, a technical member of the W3C (housed on campus), and his father was an alum and a contractor at the Media Lab. Joi Ito, the head of the lab, sent President Reif a letter asking if this could be dealt with as a "family matter". Reif (or his lawyers) refused.
MIT may not be culpable in his suicide, but they sure don't come out of this looking good. They maintained strict neutrality, when they could have stood up for open access.
Their behavior makes me ashamed to be an alum of my school.
Re:MIT Report is a whitewash. My Statement in Response
by Shivetya on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @07:34PM
(#6130851)
they are party responsible that is true, but he is responsible himself for creating the situation that brought him to their attention.
Do need weigh every prosecution against the ability of the accused to act rationally? Do rational actors break laws or go to extremes to do so?
I am all for levying some culpability on MIT, but it started with him
Re:MIT Report is a whitewash. My Statement in Response
by WalterSear on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @09:19PM
(#6131265)
>Do need weigh every prosecution against the ability of the accused to act rationally?
This is exactly addresses NOT my point.
The mental anguish of being ruthlessly sued by a government, with the cooperation and possible collusion of your school, and facing the potential for many years in prison is inarguably substantial. How well would you have handled the same thing?
Whether a more stable person would have been able to suck it up is inconsequential - they still did the damage that they did. In his case, it was too much. The damage is there either way. They may not be responsible for the ultimate outcome, but they are responsible for the anguish that put him there.