Arrest Raises Questions About Hacker Crackdown

(Flickr/MyDigitalSLR)

Over the past month, British and American law enforcement agencies have made about two dozen arrests connected to computer hacking.

A British teen was arrested for allegedly taking part in Lulzsec, a group accused of hacking into Sony Playstation user accounts and the CIA.

Also caught up in the recent crackdown: 24-year-old Aaron Swartz.

The former Harvard fellow is accused of hacking into and downloading four million academic journal articles from JSTOR, a subscription service that costs universities up to $50,000 a year. Swartz now faces the possibility of 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines.

Nicco Mele, a supporter of Swartz and lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government tells Here & Now‘s Robin Young that Swartz is being unfairly targeted.

Mele says it’s unclear that Swartz stole anything, since he accessed the articles through MIT’s subscription service.

And Mele says the government should instead focus on catching those who commit crimes like hacking into credit card accounts.

Guest:

Nicco Mele, lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government

We welcome comments from all of our listeners. Post below. Please stay on topic and be civil. Comments may be moderated by us, but you are solely responsible for the content of your comments.

Guest

It is expensive to make these documents available. The idea that “information should be free” is really a way of saying “it should be free for me when I want it” and someone else should have to pay. JSTOR has servers to maintain, electric bills to pay, and employees to manage their systems. Why should anyone be able to take their content on any terms? Also, PACER can charge 8 cents to people who want the documents, or everyone could pay higher taxes to make everything available for free. Information is not free to produce, and it does not “want” anything.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Saul-Tannenbaum/1115408168 Saul Tannenbaum

In the case of PACER, our tax dollars are already paying for the production of the content which is literally in the public domain, and our tax dollars are already paying for government lawyers and court officials to re-access the content they themselves have produced. It’s a model that dates back decades. And the 8 cents a page costs seems more in line with a copying machine than a modern IT infrastructure. It’s a business model that should be re-examined.

Amanda Qualls

I completely agree with your guest that there is a question of degrees here (stealing and using personal data versus academic papers), and possible civil disobedience. I also agree that rather than engaging in a meaningful discussion over the issues raised by the digital revolution, the government has just fallen back on prosecution.

Here is my food for thought: how did that work for the music industry? Their strategy of making examples out of single mothers and teenagers by suing them for millions of dollars didn’t stop illegal downloading, and it hasn’t stopped the decline of cd/music sales. I think the same thing will happen here. The government is focusing on individuals rather than taking a step back and really engaging with the issues.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Saul-Tannenbaum/1115408168 Saul Tannenbaum

Nicco Mele calls this an act of civil disobedience. But civil disobedience is performed in the open and with the full acceptance of the consequences. Swartz covertly entered MIT, tried to hide his tracks and concealed his identiy. Whatever this is, it wasn’t civil disobedience, and it does no service to the pro-Swartz position to elevate it into something it wasn’t.

On the other hand, whatever this was, it certainly doesn’t deserve decades of jail time.

I’m very sympathetic to the open-information movement, but if you’re going to covertly attach a computer to a universty’s network, evade their countermeasures ahd hide your tracks, you shouldn’t be surprised or outraged to be charged with a crime.
Michael Kitt

I have heard all my life about “extreme left-leaning professors” at elite colleges around the country “ruining” our youth; and always thought it was such an asinine comment.

However, after hearing your interview with Nicco Mealey (who I THOUGHT I heard taught college courses), I may have to rethink my opinion. To suggest that “hacking” may be as simple as opening up your computer case and that Mr. Swartz may have gone through an unlocked door with no sign on it, sounds like the worst of defense lawyer ‘outs’. Countries shouldn’t have the right to keep secrets? (Have I gotten that old that I take offense to this line of thinking?)

If indeed, this is an attitude of this new generation of our kids, (along with lack of intellectual property rights that allow you to ‘steal’ movies & music), then I’ll have to take the line of our parent’s generation that ‘things are going to hell in a handbasket’.

Am I missing something?

http://www.facebook.com/marco.vandegraaf Marco Vandegraaf

Michael in answer to your question: Countries shouldn’t have the right to keep secrets? (Have I gotten that old that I take offense to this line of thinking?) The answer is yes go back to your childhood an relearn that keeping secrets is bad because they can hurt you and get you into trouble.

Anonymous

I agree with Mr. Mele. There is a new breed of computer user/hacker that has an agenda of freedom of information at mouse-point: http://michaelmaczesty.blogspot.com/2011/06/next-political-movement-web-party.html
Chris

Mr. Mele could not be more SPOT-ON regarding the problem we’re truly facing. I thank him sincerely for his direct, truthful, and accurate responses.

I’m a Sr. Engineer and have worked for numerous Fortune500 companies. I can tell you that from an AVID technologist’s perspective, Mr. Mele is right on the money. My -job- is to find flaws with applications and systems and evaluate ways to protect my company from running into these problems. We have the luxury of a reasonably open-dialog with our vendors (due to our company’s size & weight – ie, buying power) so that we can get the most serious of these problems addressed. Technology is only as good as it’s creator – meaning that NO COMPUTER SYSTEM ANYWHERE is “perfectly secure”. Anybody that tells you likewise is lying.

As Mr. Mele points out, there are quite obviously varying degrees of what’s being widely called “Hacking”. Without going into the history of the term itself, let me just say that downloading academic documents from your university is NOT malicious hacking. Breaking into things like CIA networks or the Sony Playstation systems however, should hopefully be recognized as a DRAMATICALLY different act.

Please recall the case of Kevin Mitnick and how his behavior, although actually (partly) malicious, was blown WAY out of proportion by the folks prosecuting him in an attempt to try to make an example out of him (whistling missile launch codes…). Knowing Mr. Mitnick, I can say that most all of his motivations were those of CURIOSITY. Computer and Phone networks were a wide open playground back then, and many places still are. I cannot fault him for the desire to explore and understand. Lewis and Clark were not arrested for their expeditions….

We as humans are naturally born with the innate ability to wonder. Our minds drive us to obsess about the how and the why. The fact that you can even read this message is proof of the amazing accomplishments possible by asking the question and then building upon the lessons learned.

The U.S. Government, along with big-business, needs to pull their heads out of the Ostrich-hole and stop hiding from the reality that is today. The electronic and virtual worlds we have toiled day and night for decades to build are changing the ways in which the world even works. We didn’t quite know it would turn out as such a beautiful monstrosity, but it has. Our entire society needs to really start having the dialogues that should have been going on for years – those of how we deal with the openness and pervasiveness of information. Digital forms of communication have been digitized precisely for the reasons of portability and ease of transport…and we need to -really- wrap our heads around the ramifications of this.

Part of the problem we’re facing, to quote a Billy Idol song from the 90′s, is that “Information is power and currency in a virtual world”. We’re obviously still grappling with how this all works.

Bottom line is that the Government arresting someone for downloading documents available to students is way out of line. People are getting FAR too upset when they discover that their assumed access policies are shown to be erroneous. Even if the University charged students to reach these documents, the proposed penalties for accessing them are still LUDICROUSLY draconian. The University has to PAY for electricity, but we don’t arrest people for plugging something in or using lights in a room that they haven’t paid for. Why don’t these prosecutors turn their attention to their own problems and face the music that their own systems (U.S. Govt) are STILL swiss-cheese sitting on a picnic blanket in the hot summer sun. We are the worlds technological laughing stock.

This is yet another example of how out-of-alignment our Government’s priorities and directions are. Just like Congress walking out on taking care of the JOBS that they keep claiming they care about… prosecuting someone this harshly for something so innocuous is absurd and waste of resources.

Let Aaron Swartz go. He has done nothing wrong. He’s simply a “high profile” target to try and set some example. The man’s obviously intelligent…so I would imagine he suffers from this same craving for knowledge I speak of. That is all he is guilty of.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_2L4LQQNBMFLZ7QPCZCBEABTXEI Mark

Nicco Mele is full of Crap. Hackers caught should be pay.
Bhohimer

Plain and simple…there was a rule and/or law and it was broken. Your guest was clearly sympathetic to the accused, understandably. However, I put some data in “cloud” environments with the assumption that it is safe! If these people can go around breaking in and stealing data, how are we to trust “clouds” with our data. Google is currently trying very hard to get corporations to trust them with their data. If this guy gets a slap on the wrist, it is a large regression for the current trend in data storage. He knew what he was doing was wrong and did it anyhow. 35 years behind bars is a bit extreme, but there needs to be some consequences.-BDH

Bhohimer

Some data very well should be free, but then what happens to the business model of content providers??

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_2L4LQQNBMFLZ7QPCZCBEABTXEI Mark

Not all information should be free. There is a difference between freedom of speech and freedom of information. Freedom of speech should include some control of who hears your voice. That is why Face book privacy functions are so important to its success.

http://www.facebook.com/marco.vandegraaf Marco Vandegraaf

I find that it the option to opt out of face book is not as useful as one might think. Everyone must join but you may choose to remove yourself (if you can figure out how) should not be the mantra.

Ron

To be a legitimate and non – malicious hack there should be a mechanism in place for the hacker to notify who they are attempting to hack and keep them abreast of their findings.
Bethpuch

While naive to the whole truth of hacking I have to agree an act like this should not constitute a sentance as to the one the government is pursuing. When are we going to bring common sense back into our lives? It is the American peoples responsibility to be watch dogs of our government, without full participation our government can do want it wants and when it does it can seriously affect those that become objects of the government’s attention. This issue does need, as the guest said intellectual discussion, and the government should allow that, a principal of American freedom to take place. But to throw a man with this knowledge into already financially strapped jails ? Really?? And when the charges have been dropped by the school? Reminds me of the baseball inquisition with drugs. Since when throughout history and what we know to be true of government should government govern baseball? What I don’t understand is the laws that are supposed to help us can just as easily bind and restrict the American people. We need to take notice of the freedoms we are supposed to have in this “FREE” country and how easily these are disappearing and that line is blurring.

http://www.facebook.com/marco.vandegraaf Marco Vandegraaf

I so agree freedom isn’t free that’s why the constitution tells us we can try to make changes to what the government imposes on us. But the rule of law has made that impossible.!

http://www.facebook.com/marco.vandegraaf Marco Vandegraaf

there is an old dutch saying: Als Geluck in je huis behort; spreek dan stil en sluit de port. Loosely translated if you want luck in your house, speak quietly and shut the door. If you want to keep something secret don’t tell anyone even your computer!
http://www.moroncentral.com Moron Central

Whats wrong is wrong. Whether you are a Harvard fellow or a high school dropout. Any reasonable tech savvy individual knows that downloading four million subscription based materials is NOT OK. It is disappointing to hear a college professor like Mr. Mele advocating on this man’s behalf.