Dive Brief:
- A newspaper’s extensive review of documents in the Aaron Swartz hacking case at MIT, more than a year after his suicide, raises questions about the university’s role in the investigation and prosecution of the activist.
- The in-depth Boston Globe article depicts a culture and computer network access policies at the school that almost seemed to encourage the data theft that Swartz was accused of.
- MIT’s assistance to the authorities in identifying Swartz and building their case against him contrast with the university’s insistence that it remained neutral and fair.
Dive Insight:
The Globe story is a fascinating read, and hopefully holds some lessons for other universities trying to balance academic freedom and cyber security. The article is based on the newspaper’s review of more than 7,000 pages of documents posted by MIT and JSTOR, the non-profit entity that administers an academic journal data base. Using access through MIT’s network, including a laptop he hid in a campus building’s wiring closet, Swartz stole 4.8 million articles from the JSTOR database. The brilliant programmer, by the age of 19, had helped to create the RSS news feeds service and the Reddit social media website. He also helped launch political activist groups, as well as protests of the Stop Online Piracy Act. Swartz killed himself in January 2013, under indictment for charges that may have sent him to prison for years.
