1/2) I stand corrected. I will reread about what happened.

To answer your questions, though: In the generic case, the MIT administration lies or at the very least badly misleads in these reports (see the Epstein report, for example). In this specific case, MIT chose Abelson to author the report precisely since he has unimpeachable integrity. I'd trust whatever he signed his name to, as would everyone else in the MIT community.

3) It sort of depends. I wouldn't e.g. walk into a random biology lab where I knew no one, and no one knew me, in the middle of the night and use a centrifuge. On the other hand:

* There were plenty of times when I walked into 38-501 lab, which was a big undergraduate EE lab, and made things, even long after I graduated (and other alumni did too), waving "hi" to the desk workers if they were around (who knew me and knew I had no affiliation). It was pretty normal. And I think that extended to any member of the MIT community. Cheap things like resistors were also free. More expensive things, unaffiliated people were respectful of (indeed, more respectful than the people managing the lab expected them to be).

* I used a few machine shops around MIT, where I was safety trained by the staff but had no formal affiliation with the shop or lab. I'd walk into these and use them casually. When the people who managed these came in, we'd usually have a friendly chat about what I was making.

* There was one makerspace in the Media Lab where I used equipment regularly without asking. I knew the prof in whose jurisdiction it was, and it was sort of symbiotic. I reverse-engineered a lot of his equipment in the process, which was useful to his research group. There were plenty of hanger-ons too, doing likewise.

* Institute-wide communal resources, like classrooms or network drops, you'd just use. You definitely didn't ask anyone. I can't imagine I'd think twice about leaving a laptop connected (except for having it stolen; theft was not uncommon). Indeed, I'd likely look for a place like a network closet where it wouldn't be as likely to be casually stolen.

And there were plenty of places which were restricted-use. For example, Edgerton shop made it clear it could only be used for specific uses. I didn't use that one. You got a feel for the specific lab.

That's actually a lot of what made MIT great. If you wanted to make something (virtually anything) you had the resources at your disposal to do it. I learned a lot from more experienced people who were hanging out making things when I was an undergrad, and I think undergrads learned a lot from me once I was an alumnus.

To be clear, that culture is dead now. I couldn't go to MIT and use a machine shop or EE lab right now, at least without paying an annual alumni membership fee.

And to be clear, there were people doing the same who weren't alumni too, but who were accepted as members of the community.

4) re: Using Swartz as an example: I can say that happens with 100% certainty, but these things wind up under NDA, so I don't know of public sources.

re: Doing something wrong: I don't disagree he knew he was doing something sketchy, but it comes back to who the victim is. It was JSTOR, not MIT.