Two Days Before MIT and Cambridge Cops Arrested Aaron Swartz, Secret Service Too

[Silent_Bob]

http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/01/13/two-days-before-cambridge-cops-arrested-aaron-swartz-secret-service-took-over-the-investigation/

The public story of Aaron Swartz' now-tragic two year fight with the Federal government usually starts with his July 19, 2011 arrest.

But that's not when he was first arrested for accessing a closet at MIT in which he had a netbook downloading huge quantities of scholarly journals. He was first arrested on January 6, 2011 by MIT and Cambrige, MA cops.

According to a suppression motion in his case, however two days before Aaron was arrested, the Secret Service took over the investigation.

    On the morning of January 4, 2011, at approximately 8:00 am, MIT personnel located the netbook being used for the downloads and decided to leave it in place and institute a packet capture of the network traffic to and from the netbook.4 Timeline at 6. This was accomplished using the laptop of Dave Newman, MIT Senior Network Engineer, which was connected to the netbook and intercepted the communications coming to and from it. Id. Later that day, beginning at 11:00 am, the Secret Service assumed control of the investigation. [my emphasis]

In fact, in one of the most recent developments in discovery in Aaron's case, the government belatedly turned over an email showing Secret Service agent Michael Pickett offering to take possession of the hardware seized from Aaron "anytime after it has been processed for prints or whenever you [Assistant US Attorney Stephen Heymann] feel it is appropriate." Another newly disclosed document shows the Pickett accompanied the local cops as they moved the hardware they had seized from Aaron around.

According to the Secret Service, they get involved in investigations with:

    Significant economic or community impact
    Participation of organized criminal groups involving multiple districts or transnational organizations
    Use of schemes involving new technology

Downloading scholarly articles is none of those things.

A lot of people are justifiably furious with US Attorney Carmen Ortiz and AUSA Heymann's conduct on this case.

But the involvement of the Secret Service just as it evolved from a local breaking and entry case into the excessive charges ultimately charged makes it clear that this was a nationally directed effort to take down Swartz.

MIT's President Rafael Reif has expressed sadness about Aaron's death and promised an investigation into the university's treatment of Aaron. I want to know whether MIT–which is dependent on federal grants for much of its funding–brought in the Secret Service.



From wikipedia on the federal legal issue:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

Legal problems
PACER

In 2009, he allegedly downloaded and publicly released approximately 20% of the PACER database of United States federal court documents managed by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.[30][31] He had accessed the system as part of a free trial of PACER at 17 libraries around the country, which was suspended "pending an evaluation" as a result of Swartz's actions. Those actions brought him under investigation by the FBI, but the case was closed two months later with no charges being filed.[31]
JSTOR

On July 19, 2011, Swartz was charged by Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer, in relation to downloading roughly 4 million academic journal articles from JSTOR.[32] According to the indictment against him, Swartz surreptitiously attached a laptop to MIT's computer network, which allowed him to "rapidly download an extraordinary volume of articles from JSTOR."[33] Prosecutors in the case claim Swartz acted with the intention of making the papers available on P2P file-sharing sites.[34]

Swartz surrendered to authorities, pleading not guilty on all accounts, and was released on US$100,000 unsecured bail.[35][36] Prosecution of the case continued, with charges of wire fraud and computer fraud, carrying a potential prison term of up to 35 years and a fine of up to $1 million.[37][38] After Swartz's arrest, JSTOR put out a statement saying it would not pursue civil litigation against him,[35][39] though MIT remained silent on the proceedings.[40]

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Stephen P. Heymann and Scott L. Garland[41][42][43] pursued the criminal case against Swartz under U.S. attorney Carmen Ortiz, who justified the charges by stating "stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars."[35] The case tested the reach of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which was passed in 1984 to enhance the government's ability to prosecute hackers who accessed computers to steal information or to disrupt or destroy computer functionality.

Shortly before Swartz's death, JSTOR announced that it would make "more than 4.5 million articles" available to the public for free.[44]—but capped at three articles every two weeks[45]—This announcement did not affect the prosecution, ongoing before his death.