> trespassed into a room

A room with an unlocked and unmarked door, off of a hallway that was open to the general public. An INCREDIBLY tame act compared to other unprosecuted trespasses normalized and celebrated at https://hacks.mit.edu/.

> rotated his MAC address

Not a crime; in fact now a widespread and default practice for consumer Wi-Fi/Bluetooth devices.

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sillysaurusx 32 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not sure if this is meant as some kind of "gotcha," but the legal system doesn't work that way. He wasn't rotating his MAC address as a default practice. He changed the last byte of his MAC only when he noticed he was banned from the network.

Intent matters. Plugging your laptop into a router you normally don't have access to, with intent to download a large number of private articles, means something. And it means more than "I downloaded a lot of public files off the public internet," which is what Meta did.

All of this is in the indictment, which is worth reading: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/217117-united-states...

Personally I think it's a shame that digital crimes can result in prison time at all, except for e.g. crypto theft. But under US law, Aaron committed a crime back then, and it would still classify as a crime today.

	▲	thomasjeff1 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		From your sourced link. > JSTOR,founded in 1995, was and continued to be a United States-based, not-for-profit organization that provides an online system for archiving and providing access to academic journal. If it was online, could any one have access to it? So why him downloading them was breaking the law?

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FireBeyond 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Were those hackers MIT students? Was Aaron?

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greyface- 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Both Aaron and "those hackers" were MIT community members.

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FireBeyond 2 hours ago | parent [-]

That's an interesting spin that means precisely nothing. I'm not authorized to enter facilities or building maintenance spaces in buildings in my town because I'm a "community member".

	▲	greyface- 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The general public was authorized to enter the facilities 24/7. The exterior doors were unlocked and it was considered an "open campus". The access controls you see today have only existed since COVID. Whether he was a student at the time also means "precisely nothing".