{"id":636,"date":"2014-07-24T19:14:10","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T19:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/?p=636"},"modified":"2017-09-09T11:57:12","modified_gmt":"2017-09-09T11:57:12","slug":"from-felony-technique-to-ios-feature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/from-felony-technique-to-ios-feature\/","title":{"rendered":"From Felony Technique to iOS Feature"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, I shared a letter I sent<\/a>\u00a0to US Attorney Carmen Ortiz<\/a>, AUSA Stephen Heymann<\/a>, and others that prosecuted Aaron Swartz<\/a>. \u00a0I felt (then and now) the government over-prosecuted this case, consuming\u00a0significant prosecutorial &\u00a0investigative resources and taking a negotiation stance way\u00a0out of line with what Mr. Swartz actually did.<\/p>\n

One of the key\u00a0points\u00a0in the government’s indictment<\/a> was Mr. Swartz changing the MAC addresses on his laptop to avoid MIT’s attempts to block access. \u00a0(Since MIT’s network is completely open, MAC address tracking and blocking\u00a0is the only real way to shut someone down, short of finding the physical device.)<\/p>\n

And now, Apple has announced that MAC addresses in iOS 8 will be randomized,<\/a>\u00a0a user privacy feature to thwart tracking. \u00a0In other words, Apple has feature-ized the same technique Mr. Swartz used to avoid being tracked and blocked! \u00a0There’s a certain absurdity here I can’t quite express.<\/p>\n

To be clear: \u00a0I’m not defending what Mr. Swartz did. \u00a0But this is one small example why this case has gotten so much attention. \u00a0When our prosecutors and law enforcement professionals don’t understand the technology (and don’t bring in experts that do) in complex cases, justice isn’t served.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year, I shared a letter I sent\u00a0to US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, AUSA Stephen Heymann, and others that prosecuted Aaron Swartz. \u00a0I felt (then and now) the government over-prosecuted this case, consuming\u00a0significant prosecutorial &\u00a0investigative resources and taking a negotiation stance … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":637,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions\/637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}