> "'Wrongdoing' is a broad term. The report says that MIT did not do anything illegal. It does not say that MIT made no mistakes.

Once again, have you actually read the report? If not, you should do so instead of relying on biased second-hand accounts."

Yes, I have read the report in detail. To comment without doing so would be irresponsible.

In particular, the portion I, as well as many others including Aaron Swartz's father, take issue with is the section beginning on page 52 entitled "MIT adopts and maintains a posture of neutrality."

MIT in fact began the prosecution through contacting law enforcement, conducted a sting operation by videotaping the wiring cabinet, and most importantly, at every turn chose to escalate the situation rather than see the incident for what it was: a petty experiment. They could have chosen to block his access, or approached him privately. Instead they chose to hand him over to a US attorney's office for prosecution under laws they knew or should have known to be draconian.

>"In other words, you don't think any institution can ever police itself."

That is emphatically not what I said, nor is it an accurate restatement.

I said that I don't trust any internal investigation which exonerates the institution that conducted the investigation. Prof. Abelson began his investigation by stating, "The review will not be a witch-hunt or an attempt to lay blame on individuals. We don’t know what we’ll find as the answers unfold, but I expect to find that every person acted in accordance with MIT policy."

Before he spoke to a single witness, weighed a single piece of evidence, examined a single record, or interviewed a single expert he stated that he expected to find no deviation from policy. That is not the statement of a fair or unbiased investigator.

I place no more stock in his investigation than I would a JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs "investigation" that concluded that they played no role in the mortgage crisis.

Twisting my words to argue against a strawman is facile and does not further the cause of informed debate.

>"Source, please?"

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/729140-mit-motion-to-...

Note the broad claims to protecting employee "privacy." This is about more than redacting a few names, not least because FOIA requires that the names of third parties be redacted anyway.

If redacting names is a requirement of the law, why would MIT need an invented "pre-screening" procedure to ensure names were redacted? The answer is, of course, that they wouldn't.

Never have I seen a private institution intervene in a FOIA request in this manner. This intervention had precisely nothing to do with protecting the privacy of employees, and everything to do with establishing a legal avenue to conceal information MIT found embarrassing.

>"I see no reason why those who participated in these terrible events should be shielded from public opprobrium
>>Even if they were acting reasonably? For example, take the MIT network engineers who noticed the unusual activity and reported it, helped to discover where it was coming from (as in, what device was producing it--the laptop), but had no further part in the proceedings. They are named in the documents. Do they deserve public opprobrium?"

No, nor would they receive it. Setting aside that FOIA requires their names be redacted anyway, I trust that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and that public scorn would be heaped upon those that deserve it.