My recollection of the event at the time was that nothing was 'hacked', not even by the most falsely misconstrued interpretation of the term. It was material made available freely for anyone to download.
And Swartz did. But he downloaded not just an article, but used a little script to pull the entire site contents down. Which might have been unanticipated by MIT, but thats how 'the commons' goes sometimes.
And for this he was arrested and charged under this notion that him doing what he was invited to do somehow detracted from the experience of others who were also downloading the articles. And for this, he was tormented and threatened until he killed himself.
Which is even more damning than the response to any 'hacking'. Who attacks perfectly lawful people for doing exactly what the site & site owner encouraged them to do?
Hitting on a trove of contraband certainly might have been the motivation for the insane response.
In desperation, Jstor eventually blocked the entire MIT network from access to its vast database for several days in October 2010 – cutting off one of the world's premier research universities from the millions of scientific journals and academic articles Jstor holds.
But even then, the talented coder is alleged to have bypassed them completely by entering a restricted network interface room on MIT's campus and wiring his equipment directly to its network.
AND
According to Demand Progress, MIT has already reached a settlement with Swartz, while Jstor said: "We secured from Mr Swartz the content that was taken, and received confirmation that the content was not and would not be used, copied, transferred, or distributed."
That has left some observers puzzled as to why the federal prosecutors have gone ahead with the case, especially as Jstor – the most obvious victim in the affair – publicly announced: "Our interest was in securing the content. Once this was achieved, we had no interest in this becoming an ongoing legal matter."
So the hacking was more direct physical access to the MIT network than anything else.
With that being said, it appears Swartz submitted some interesting FOIA requests shortly before his death, including this one-
Also on December 10, Swartz filed a FOIA request with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeking “All clinical trial information, including the medical and statistical reviews of New Drug Applications.” The FDA said his request was too broad. Swartz narrowed it and asked for “the list or log that includes all names of drugs which the FDA has already processed and prepared for public release all the submitted medical and statistical new drug reviews. [sic]” The FDA told Swartz he could find that information on the agency’s website. It’s unknown why Swartz was so interested in the data.
As you say, they would have him with breaking and entering, trespass and unauthorised network access with the entering restricted areas to continue doing what he had already been admonished and cautioned for. Minor to be sure in terms of charges, and probably more detrimental to whatever academic line he was involved with.. because he probably would have been expelled.
Very strong parallels with the blocking of medical researchers in the current day from medical journals, wouldnt you say?
Case in point, Dr Robert Malone was first blocked (by IP no less) from the New England Journal of Medicine, and then also subsequently blocked from Journal of the American Medical Association.
My recollection of the event at the time was that nothing was 'hacked', not even by the most falsely misconstrued interpretation of the term. It was material made available freely for anyone to download.
And Swartz did. But he downloaded not just an article, but used a little script to pull the entire site contents down. Which might have been unanticipated by MIT, but thats how 'the commons' goes sometimes.
And for this he was arrested and charged under this notion that him doing what he was invited to do somehow detracted from the experience of others who were also downloading the articles. And for this, he was tormented and threatened until he killed himself.
Which is even more damning than the response to any 'hacking'. Who attacks perfectly lawful people for doing exactly what the site & site owner encouraged them to do?
Hitting on a trove of contraband certainly might have been the motivation for the insane response.
In desperation, Jstor eventually blocked the entire MIT network from access to its vast database for several days in October 2010 – cutting off one of the world's premier research universities from the millions of scientific journals and academic articles Jstor holds.
But even then, the talented coder is alleged to have bypassed them completely by entering a restricted network interface room on MIT's campus and wiring his equipment directly to its network.
AND
According to Demand Progress, MIT has already reached a settlement with Swartz, while Jstor said: "We secured from Mr Swartz the content that was taken, and received confirmation that the content was not and would not be used, copied, transferred, or distributed."
That has left some observers puzzled as to why the federal prosecutors have gone ahead with the case, especially as Jstor – the most obvious victim in the affair – publicly announced: "Our interest was in securing the content. Once this was achieved, we had no interest in this becoming an ongoing legal matter."
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jul/21/aaron-swartz-indicted-hacking-charges
Archived link- https://archive.md/a2nGO
So the hacking was more direct physical access to the MIT network than anything else.
With that being said, it appears Swartz submitted some interesting FOIA requests shortly before his death, including this one-
Also on December 10, Swartz filed a FOIA request with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeking “All clinical trial information, including the medical and statistical reviews of New Drug Applications.” The FDA said his request was too broad. Swartz narrowed it and asked for “the list or log that includes all names of drugs which the FDA has already processed and prepared for public release all the submitted medical and statistical new drug reviews. [sic]” The FDA told Swartz he could find that information on the agency’s website. It’s unknown why Swartz was so interested in the data.
https://archive.md/YDaxY
Thank you so much for the very detailed write-up!
As you say, they would have him with breaking and entering, trespass and unauthorised network access with the entering restricted areas to continue doing what he had already been admonished and cautioned for. Minor to be sure in terms of charges, and probably more detrimental to whatever academic line he was involved with.. because he probably would have been expelled.
Very strong parallels with the blocking of medical researchers in the current day from medical journals, wouldnt you say?
Case in point, Dr Robert Malone was first blocked (by IP no less) from the New England Journal of Medicine, and then also subsequently blocked from Journal of the American Medical Association.
https://patriots.win/p/13zg4zg9Kv/robert-w-malone-md--this-is-/c/
https://patriots.win/p/13zgJ2Yazn/jama-joins-nejm-in-blocking-dr-r/c/
Apparently they fear that famous and accomplished doctors are reading articles about medicine... certainly cant be having that!
Was Aaron Swartz Killed By An MIT Satanic Child Porn Ring?
Created a new thread with link to that archived article here-
https://greatawakening.win/p/140c9TRyKO/future-proves-past--was-aaron-sw/c/