That is just about every case ever. Even the really bad people, the ones you and I and everyone else reading this agree deserve to be locked behind bars, have their charges trumped up far beyond what they are actually guilty of in an attempt to coerce them to take a plea bargain for lesser charges. To put another way, they are successfully punishing most people for insisting on their right to a fair trial.
"I love how surprised people are by the fact that a prosecutor may have overcharged. This is something prosecutors do all the time, as a strategic choice, for various reasons"
(edited to put the 's' back on 'reasons')
* Massachusetts US Attorney Carmen Ortiz pushed for the prosecution
* MIT (can we be more specific?) did nothing to stop the prosecution (to say the least)
Please, continue...
Would you place all the responsibility for the report on Abelson? Or do you think Rafael Reif is responsible for setting the parameters of the report to be produced?
Do you really believe Hal Abelson was deliberately or negligently --- ie, culpably --- deceptive?
later: added clarifying word "really"
A whitewash is dissembling and deflecting and, ultimately, deceptive. Abelson, and the other authors of the report should have refused to write it.
But Reif is mostly to blame. He asked for the report, and used it to deflect blame.
Now here is where YOU are being deceptive. You are digging for "Hal Abelson is culpably deceptive." You would even prefer something stronger. That's a weak rhetorical ploy. Write it yourself if you want to read it.
I don't feel like I'm so much trying to use debate tactics against you as to observe how uncomfortable even you seem to be with the idea that Hal Abelson was deliberately deceptive.
Are you still comfortable with your comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484
That doesn't need to be contradicted to call it weak sauce and whitewash.
"Aaron Swartz was neither a member of the MIT staff, nor an enrolled student nor alumnus, nor a member of the faculty. He was a regular visitor to the MIT campus and interacted with MIT people and groups both on campus and off."
I want to know who called in the secret service/electronic crimes division here? MIT (who's only concern was trespass) or JSTOR who might be able to enforce contract terms on MIT or a EULA on Aaron at best?
They had some unknown person massively exceeding the limits of what they intended to offer to the public. When they used blocking methods that would stop most people, he evaded them. When they continued trying to stop him, he continued evading.
Then he entered an equipment room off limits to the public, wired equipment into the network, and hid it.
He repeatedly trespassed to check his equipment and was grabbing so much data that to stop him JSTOR cut all of MIT off from JSTOR access for a couple days while they tried to figure out what to do next. So at that point he has disrupted research at MIT and possibly put them in violation of their contract with JSTOR.
MIT is a major research center, and that research includes quite a bit of research funded by and for the Department of Defense and other government agencies. Poking that kind of thing tends to get agencies like the Secret Service called in.
The fact that the case was prosecuted federally is notable, but the USSS's involvement isn't.
My opening salvo: The point at which individuals and corporations use of cryptography can be denigrated as, "Making it hard to detect terrorist activity" is the exact point at which it becomes impossible for the individual or the corporation to meaningfully engage with law enforcement. The escalation of the rhetoric surrounding e-crimes blurs and negates our ability not only to judge appropriate penalties, general severity, but also when, how, and to whom to report these crimes.
Its very hard to even tell when and if a crime has been committed.
In such a chaotic environment it is inevitable that money and connections and influence supplant the law.
So what's your suggestion? Ignore the intrusion until it goes away?