Aaron Swartz was a 26-year-old American Internet activist, writer and software developer. On January 6, 2011, Swartz allegedly entered Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Building 16 to download over 4,000,000 articles from JSTOR (a digital archive) with the intent to distribute them. Swartz was neither affiliated with MIT nor JSTOR in any fashion. The purpose for his activism, or crime, was that he adamantly opposed the practice of JSTOR for compensating publishers, rather than authors, out of the fees and charges that the company imposes upon users who access their database. To find out more, view the Aaron Swartz indictment
Overview of offences:
Between September 24, 2010, and January 6, 2011, Swartz contrived to:
A) Break into a restricted computer wiring closet at MIT;
B) Access MIT’s network without authorization from a switch within that closet;
C) Connect to JSTOR’s archive of digitized journal articles through MIT’s computer network;
D) Use this access to download a major portion of JSTOR’s archive onto his computers and computer hard drives;
E) Avoid MIT’s and JSTOR’s efforts to prevent this massive copying, measures which were directed at users generally and at Swartz’s illicit conduct specifically; and
F) Elude detection and identification;
Counts:
- Wire Fraud
- Computer Fraud
- Unlawfully Obtaining Information from a Protect Computer
- Recklessly Damaging a Protected Computer
On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested by the FBI for his connection in the alleged theft of academic journals on the JSTOR server. The combined crimes above theoretically carried a 50 or more year sentence if the U.S. Attorney sought the maximum punishment. On January 11, 2013, Aaron Swartz was found dead in his apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
The case of Aaron Swartz, and any suicide alike, is tragic. The reason why Swartz took his life is unknown but it is hypothesized that it had to do with the eminent court case (Pow et al, 2013). The issues surrounding the event highlight a number of issues: intellectual property, access of information, privacy, copyright-protection, and activism. One issue that bears to mind is how hacktivists will be sentenced in an increasingly digitized society. Another concern is how hackers and activist will be criminalized by policing and security agencies across the globe. The alleged acts of Swartz can be viewed upon as a demonstration of civil disobedience or the equivalent of entering a bookstore and walking out with all of the products. In any case, careful conversations need to commence as the hacker community, and society in general, will see a number of sentences be handed down in 2013 (e.g. Barrett Brown, Christopher Weatherhead, Peter Gibson, etc.).
Advice from my supervisor and mentor: “pay attention to how state agencies respond to hackers and hacktivists in 2013.”
References:
Pow, Helen., Nye, James., & Rachel Quigley. “Revealed: Aaron Swartz prosecutor ‘drove another hacker to suicide in 2008 after he named him in a cyber crime case’”, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2262831/Revealed-Aaron-Swartz-prosecutor-drove-hacker-suicide-2008-named-cyber-crime-case.html#ixzz2ITereRxw (accessed on January 19, 2013)
