UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
________________________
)
UNITED STATES ))
v. ) No. 11-10260-NMG
)
AARON SWARTZ )
________________________)
MOTION TO SUPPRESS ALL FRUITS OF INTERCEPTIONS AND DISCLOSURES OF
ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS AND OTHER INFORMATION BY MIT
PERSONNEL IN VIOLATION OF THE FOURTH AMENDMENT AND THE STORED
COMMUNICATIONS ACT AND INCORPORATED MEMORANDUM OF LAW
(MOTION TO SUPPRESS NO. 1)

Exhibit 4. Unlike other institutions which require passwords to access their servers and require
additional layers of authentication to access digital libraries such as JSTOR, MIT required neither a password, a formal affiliation with the school, or any form of identification for any visitor to
become an authorized guest enjoying access to the MIT electronic communication service which was
the equal of that afforded to MIT students and professors.
Swartz was validly signed on to the MIT network as a guest, as the MIT guest policy
permitted him to be, as verified by an October 14, 2010, email from Ellen Duranceau, MIT Program
Manager of Scholarly Publishing and Licensing, to Brian Larsen at JSTOR, informing him that
“[o]ur investigations here point to the same guest that was involved in the 9/27 incident. We don’t
have enough information to follow the trail completely, but the signs suggest that the same guest
user was responsible for this latest activity. . . . all of this excessive use was caused by a guest visitor
at MIT,” Exhibit 5 (emphasis added), and then by an October 18, 2010, email from Ms. Duranceau
to Tim McGovern, MIT Manager of Network Security & Support Services:

Tim and Mike:
Would it be accurate for me to answer [JSTOR’s] query this way:
“We offer guests access to the MIT network, and this practice will continue. However, once
we [in the future] institute our additional authorization layer for JSTOR, this route will be
closed to guests. So we will have closed the pathway used.”
* * * *
Mike, I will be asking JSTOR about your mod_rewrite idea once I check in with Rich
Wenger in the Libraries and once JSTOR has shifted more clearly into implementing the new
method rather than still working on resolving the excessive use issue.

As we mourn Aaron Swartz’s tragic death, many of us are deeply troubled as we learn more about the government’s actions against him. His family’s statement about this speaks volumes about the inappropriate efforts undertaken by the U.S. government. There’s no way to reverse the tragedy of Aaron’s death, but we can work to prevent a repeat of the abuses of power he experienced.

We should prevent what happened to Aaron from happening to other Internet users. The government was able to bring such disproportionate charges against Aaron because of the broad scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the wire fraud statute. It looks like the government used the vague wording of those laws to claim that violating an online service’s user agreement or terms of service is a violation of the CFAA and the wire fraud statute.

Using the law in this way could criminalize many everyday activities and allow for outlandishly severe penalties.

Aaron Swartz Case 'Snowballed Out Of MIT's Hands,' Source Says

....Privately, several MIT officials expressed concerns that prosecutors were "overreaching" by charging Swartz with federal crimes that carried a sentence of up to 35 years in prison, according to a MIT employee familiar with the investigation.

But by then, it was too late. "By the time this thing snowballed out of MIT's hands, it was gone," said the employee, who asked not to be named because he still works at the university. "When the federal government chooses to prosecute, you don’t get to say no."

....MIT employees also captured network traffic from Swartz's laptop and turned that data over to the Secret Service without requiring a warrant or subpoena. MIT disclosed that data to law enforcement with permission from the university's general counsel’s office, Swartz's attorney wrote in an October court filing.

....Some say the university could have handled Swartz's case internally. "The lesson learned is MIT needs a clear policy on when to talk to outside law enforcement because the case became a fiasco," the MIT source said. "Once federal prosecutors were on the case, there was no going back."

He was facing 35 years for a TOS violation.

Anonymous hacks MIT- tribute to Aaron Swartz~UPDATE~

no, this is how the law works.

However, in a blog post, Orin Kerr, a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, wrote the actions of the prosecutors had been "based on a fair reading of the law".

"None of the charges involved aggressive readings of the law or any apparent prosecutorial overreach," he said.

"All of the charges were based on established case law."

quote:

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Monday morning the government filed one last motion in United States of America v. Aaron Swartz.

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Once upon a time long ago and far away, universities published the scientific journals. We outgrew that system and the system didn't really work all that well anyhow as the number of journals exploded. What we have now is a continuing privatization, commercialization and monetization of knowledge and the universities themselves.

Is it fair that an unsuccessful outgoing CEO gets a 10 million handshake whilst and leader in research only gets profits by tying up copyright on his findings. The brain drain saga continues.

said by Link Logger q :

The other question always comes down to who gets to decide what is beneficial? Aaron Swartz thought free information would be beneficial, whereas I think it would kill the creation of new information. For every successful inventor who makes a million, there are million inventors who ended fin the red, take away the reward and the remaining untouched risk kills the motivation.

The fact is people just don't value anything anymore as everything is just given to them without any real effort on their behalf and its killing them, society and the the planet. Maybe its time for expectations to change.

Content creators have every right to their content and if they choose to make it private, then what right does someone else have to decide otherwise.

This was typical prosecutor action....

In any event, we've had people who did far [more] actual harm to our country and/or government, who were prosecuted with much [less] vigor.

he had a license to the content. The bulk downloading was probably a violation of the license as well as the "intent to distribute". But he did not hack anything.

quote:

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... Prosecutors said Swartz hacked into MIT's system in November of 2010 after breaking into a computer wiring closet on campus. Prosecutors said he intended to distribute the articles on file-sharing websites. ...

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The billions of snippets of sadness and bewilderment spinning across the Net confirm who this amazing boy was to all of us. But as I’ve read these aches, there’s one strain I wish we could resist:

Please don’t pathologize this story.

No doubt it is a certain crazy that brings a person as loved as Aaron was loved (and he was surrounded in NY by people who loved him) to do what Aaron did. It angers me that he did what he did. But if we’re going to learn from this, we can’t let slide what brought him here.

I've no doubt the prosecution probably pushed him over the edge, and yes, the prosecutor is to blame for that. But it appears that he had issues long before that started.

I don't want to get into a debate over what caused him to do what he did, that is something we will probably never know.

Speaking as a bipolar person who has been treated like shit because of it, I can tell you, people readily exploit you once they know you deal with a mental issue like depression. Some get their jollies with it. Some just take advantage of you. Clinical depression is pure hell, and being sad isn't depression, sadly, the folks that most need to understand are the quickest to dismiss...