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@n_dimension Apple does one unique MAC address per SSID unless it's an insecure/open network, and then it rotates your MAC address once every 14 days. It doesn't constantly change like people assume because that would be a great way to kill a poorly configured DHCP server with too small of a pool and too long lease expiration.
Android requires developer mode setting to make it always change, otherwise it only changes once per 24 hours or when the lease expires on an open network with no captive portal. Even deleting the SSID and re-adding it doesn't roll you a new MAC; it keeps the MAC address you used for that SSID forever unless you factory reset your phone
There probably are some slight variations on this behavior depending on vendor, but you wouldn't want to constantly have your MAC change.
and neither of these features even existed in 2013 --
For Android it was 2017, for Apple it was 2014
Android requires developer mode setting to make it always change, otherwise it only changes once per 24 hours or when the lease expires on an open network with no captive portal. Even deleting the SSID and re-adding it doesn't roll you a new MAC; it keeps the MAC address you used for that SSID forever unless you factory reset your phone
There probably are some slight variations on this behavior depending on vendor, but you wouldn't want to constantly have your MAC change.
and neither of these features even existed in 2013 --
For Android it was 2017, for Apple it was 2014
Replies
13@feld @n_dimension I think they point is not that it was happening automatically but simply that changing your mac address is not a crime.
@stark @n_dimension of course it's not, but doing it to evade a ban for violating the terms of service in the process of a much larger crime of stealing data certainly is
@feld @n_dimension a that just begs the question. Was there a violation of the terms of service? Was there a theft?
@stark @n_dimension yes, that's exactly the point. He was violating the ToS of JSTOR.
Aaron felt that all of these research papers behind paywalls / university logins should be public domain. So he was downloading a copy of everything to publish it openly. Which was very much illegal as he did not own the rights to that research.
Was much of this research at least partially funded with taxpayer dollars and should be open to the public? Yeah, and that would be nice, but that's not how things are. We've got to pass laws to change that. You can't just steal and publish the data and expect the entire system will throw up their hands and accept this as the new norm.
I am very sympathetic to Snowden for uncovering crimes against Americans and getting us that classified information. Government should not be able to hide crimes against its own citizens as classified information.
Absolutely zero sympathy for Aaron for trying to be a hero though.
https://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pdf
Aaron felt that all of these research papers behind paywalls / university logins should be public domain. So he was downloading a copy of everything to publish it openly. Which was very much illegal as he did not own the rights to that research.
Was much of this research at least partially funded with taxpayer dollars and should be open to the public? Yeah, and that would be nice, but that's not how things are. We've got to pass laws to change that. You can't just steal and publish the data and expect the entire system will throw up their hands and accept this as the new norm.
I am very sympathetic to Snowden for uncovering crimes against Americans and getting us that classified information. Government should not be able to hide crimes against its own citizens as classified information.
Absolutely zero sympathy for Aaron for trying to be a hero though.
https://swartz-report.mit.edu/docs/report-to-the-president.pdf
@feld @n_dimension @stark Swartz was scraping so fast it was causing availability problems for on-campus legitimate users, that was how he got caught and a big factor in why they went after him. If you think about it it's very similar to (legitimate) complaints about aggressive AI scrapers knocking out sites and raising maintenance costs.
@sun @n_dimension @stark yep it's in the PDF I linked. He crashed their servers and took the whole system down he was hitting it so hard
@sun @feld @n_dimension @stark I don't think the scraping of court documents from one source warranted the wrath of the data cartels though. The dude fucking died under their pressure. We haven't seen the blood of politicians for allowing them to let people scrape the entire damn internet at scale without consequence.
@kirby @feld @n_dimension @stark he didn't deserve aggressive prosecution at all. also, MIT pretended they weren't heavily involved in this but they were, they pretended it was all an aggressive federal prosecutor
@kirby @feld @n_dimension @stark also however he got insane charges because he rejected a plea. the plea system is a terrible system but he could have predicted this would happen
@sun @kirby @n_dimension @stark yeah but the Feds always play this game. They try to scare you shitless so you take a bad plea deal when in reality most of the charges would have been dropped and he would have received a starkly reduced sentence, maybe without even serving time
His own lawyer fucked up by not making this clear enough to him
His own lawyer fucked up by not making this clear enough to him
@feld @kirby @n_dimension @stark I will say it is fair to say if the god damn documents were just made public none of this would have happened. but at almost every step he did the thing that made everything worse. obviously him dying is incredibly bad outcome
@sun @feld @n_dimension @stark I’m against anyone whose activity makes people use captcha or Cloudflare