article by Hal Abelson re Aaron

[Kelsey Kauffman]

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519866/the-lessons-of-aaron-swartz/

I found this far more galling than the report.  patronizing and condescending.  MIT has, I think, learned the wrong lessons: protect self and institution above all.  They certainly chose the right man to write their report.  

[Samuel Klein]

That was rude and discompassionate, with only a gloss of morality.

Not a promising stance for an educator, nor a helpful point of
departure for acting on the report.

[Holmes Wilson]

"Aaron's mentors should have done a better job teaching him to be a coward, though we do a pretty good job of that already here at MIT."

And I can't believe he says "Aaron's mentors should have raised him better".  It's practically calling out specific critics of MIT by name.  What a dick thing to say.  And so petty.

--Holmes

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[Lawrence Lessig]

yea, I felt it.

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Lessig

Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership

Harvard Law School

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[Jacob Appelbaum]

I read the article and was similarly unimpressed. MIT has shamed itself with how they handled the case and how they have handled the entire ordeal. 

One part rang true to an experience that I shared with Aaron. We were walking in Boston and he had recently been arrested. He was afraid to talk about it and as we walked through Cambridge, we had to avoid specific strips of land that belonged to MIT. That punishment before conviction and effectively, a banishment for various strips of property spread throughout the area was heavy in the air.

We were accompanied by a third person who had just been threatened quite seriously in the WikiLeaks grand jury. The three of us joked, in a sense, about the amount of surveillance the three of us must bring to a given city. Do the surveillance teams work overtime, in shifts or do they reduce their operations to reduce costs and overlap? I suppose one day we may learn the answer if the Secret Service ever releases these files.

The more serious matter for discussion was about how such investigations created a really depressing reaction in people that we thought to be our friends. Between the three of us, only Aaron had been arrested and it was clear that he felt that certain people treated him differently. It seemed like his arrest was a scarlet letter to some who couldn't ever imagine being arrested. We all felt it in different ways.

I remember people saying things around that time and afterwards about facing the music and about owning up to the mistakes made and so on. It was really shocking - very few people considered the entire ordeal to be an affront to justice or that an arrest isn't the same thing as a guilty sentence. Nearly no one from that set of people considered that even a verdict of guilt might just be a badge of pride in a corrupt society.

I think that chill that Aaron expressed is felt by many people under heavy scrutiny and I think it comes from a firm belief that the system works as intended. This view was incorrect in Aaron's case and it is incorrect in similar cases. Many people are being targeted in the US for their politics - especially people who engage in sharing and internet related cultures - journalists, hackers, engaged or concerned citizens. I feel that people should be standing in solidarity to prevent these tragedies and we should be working to build alternatives to the routes that are currently taken by such institutions. The most insulting part of MIT's latest statement is that they're not reversing the elitist trend or removing the stigma from those targeted for political reasons. Rather MIT appears to be continuing and encouraging it with victim blaming and shaming.

If there is to be blame and shame, it rightly should be with those who enabled the persecution of Aaron but not with Aaron or with his memory. Better still would be to move past such feelings and move into a solution space where the past does not repeat.

Sincerely,

Jacob

[Daniel P. Goodwin]

Using power responsibly means using it for good.  Aaron understood that.  MIT should teach it.  Abelson does not even consider it.

________

Daniel Goodwin
ThoughtWorks, Inc.
+1 312 560 2700

--

[Kelsey Kauffman]

I've been listening all morning to Indiana legislative hearings on the state's new criminal code.  A judge accused prosecutors of using the newly-enhanced threat of an habitual offender charge primarily as a way of forcing defendants to plead guilty.  The spokeswoman for Indiana prosecutors gave a spirited defense of plea bargaining, including a rhapsody on why plea bargains are superior to trials because they involve public confessions of guilt.  "Any time I can get someone to say 'I did this,' it is better for them and the community."  

Like Puritans with their scarlet letter or Soviets with their show trials, Hal Abelson and a distressingly large percent of US prosecutors care very little about justice and a great deal about conformity.  

[Matt Stoller]

Destroying and shaming dissidents and leaders is the ethic coursing through modern institutional arrangements. It's people like Abelson who teach this ethic. He's a very bad man.

On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 1:33 PM, Jacob Appelbaum <ioe...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Quinn Norton]

I don't think he's bad. I think he's scared, scared because the only other thing you can admit here is that you're out of control, and there's a horrible & arbitrary fate that can land on anyone, anyone you love. Being with the man helps, then one day because of some strange mood you can't know about, it suddenly doesn't anymore, and you have to scurry back in the shadows before the thing reaches out and kills you, too.

The only way you can deal with it is to call the constant scurry, constantly running and kowtowing and crushing fear just what you always wanted, the right, the just. A good society. And the worse it gets, the more you have to talk about how great it is, the more you have to find the flaw in the crushed, not the crushing. So you don't admit, because the day you do, you can't sit at mit anymore thinking of the great and the good. You're marked, they don't want you anymore, and you don't want them.

And then you're alone, in the light, and you'll never be able to tell youself lies about how safe you and the things you love are, ever again.

Bad is not such a problem. They can be reformed or destroyed. The fearful have to burn themselves down, which is so hard. In the end they are much worse than the bad.

Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.