Thanks for taking the time to write this. A few questions/comments on your points:

1) Ok, from that perspective Aaron Swartz was part of the MIT community, but I don't agree that his case "was an attack by the administration on a member of the community". MIT did not speak against (or in support of) Swartz, did not press charges, told the prosecution it should not think MIT wanted a jail sentence for Swartz, and really was not involved in the trial. As I said before, you can definitely criticize MIT for not actively supporting Swartz, but I get the sense that people think MIT was out there encouraging the prosecution and pushing for some severe punishment, which it was not.

2) MIT did not press charges, MIT called the police. I just took a look at the Abelson report and it in fact states multiple times that MIT did not press charges, although it also points out that MIT was not opposed to charges. I would call that being neutral. I believe the report is fairly objective in its fact-reporting, but of course we have to acknowledge that it comes from MIT itself, so please let me know if you think Abelson/the administration is outright lying when they say they did not press charges.

3) I agree that people at MIT are/were actively encouraged to push boundaries, and that MIT resources were for everyone in the community to use, although your description of using random lab equipment does strike me as a bit odd. Granted, I was not part of the makers community, but while I had friends who actively used the hobby shop for personal projects, I never heard of anyone just going into random labs while people weren't there to play around with equipment and build something. Not saying it's wrong, just wondering how common this actually is at MIT.

4) Maybe he just left a laptop in a closet, but I would argue Swartz had at least some idea he was doing something questionable - I'm not saying something illegal or even wrong - but somewhat inappropriate. When he was caught near Central Square, the MIT PD officer identified himself and said he wanted to speak with him, after which Swartz dropped his bike and started running away. If I'm a member of the MIT community working on a project while connected to the MIT network, I don't drop my stuff and run away when MIT PD approach me asking to speak with me if I don't think I'm doing anything wrong.

I agree that the culture at MIT has changed over the past decade (in mostly a negative way), in large part because of the administration, but in this specific instance I feel like MIT is getting more hate than it should.

    What's really evil is that the MIT administration continues to uses Swartz as an example to intimidate community members into compliance with what it wants them to toe the line.

Do you have any sources for this? I haven't heard of it, but if that is the case, that's a pretty shitty thing to do

user:	nawwal
created:	May 25, 2020
karma:	36