Category Archives: oa.usa.fbi

FBI Got Access To Sci-Hub Founder’s Apple Account | Techdirt

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“The war against educating people without paying huge sums of money continues without pause. Over the last few years, we’ve written a bunch about Sci-Hub and its founder, Alexandra Elbakyan, including the fact that academic publishers have convinced the DOJ to investigate Elbakyan, claiming that this effort to (*checks notes*) give more academics free access to academic articles is… tied to Russian intelligence. The whole thing seemed bizarre. Sure, fine, people can make arguments about copyright — but saying that it’s connected to Russian intelligence seems like quite a conspiracy theory.

Either way, it appears that the “investigation” continues along. TorrentFreak alerts us that Apple has informed Elbakyan that the FBI now has access to her Apple account. …”

Apple provided FBI with data on Sci-Hub founder

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“A woman who has in the past been described as “the spiritual successor to Aaron Swartz” – who was a US web pioneer hounded to suicide by US prosecutors for making academic research available to everyone – has now learned the FBI is investigating her….

Elbakyan included a screenshot of the conveniently “no-reply” email in her tweet, where Apple informed her that it in February 2019 received a request from the FBI for data pertaining to her account, and that the nature of the request was such that it only allowed the tech giant to notify the user with delay.

Apple also told Elbakyan that the requested data had been handed over, and washed its hands off the whole thing by advising the programmer that if she wanted to know more about the request and what kind of information the FBI wanted – she should talk to the FBI….”