Intent is the key
Sorry, Jeff, but you are wrong. In any jurisdiction, the intent as such is not a crime, it is a compulsory element to commit a breach of rules, if this breach is declared to be a criminal offense by law. In other words - there is no crime even if there is such a breach without the proven intent of the person having willfully broken the rule to do so.
In this regard, intent can be negligence - not caring that the breach may constitute a crime - or some sort of knowledge about the nature of the crime. If a person is self-reponsible of its actions in the face of the law, the law imposes that it is aware of all such rules properly published in the statute boooks regardless of individual knowledge.
It is therefore totally irrelevant why Aaron Swartz was trying to hide his identity by changing MAC addresses. The crime is committed when and if such behaviour regardless of the hiding constitutes a breach of rules declared to be a crime by law. Actually, he did not hide his identity, as he made the facts public and some investigator working more or less hard to prove this, thus inciting him to declare himself.
From what I have read about the Swartz case so far, I find it very difficult to understand for what he should be punished under criminal law. It may well be that for some reasons, he may have not respected all the ethical rules in place when playing with the elements showing his identity. This is certainly not a crime - we all are faced with this problem on a daily basis and must choose the appropriate solution our conscience will allow us to live with.
However, there are some very eager individuals working in certain administrations or public institutions charged with enforcing the law trying to extend criminal protection beyond established principles. The idea is to disenchant others to do from what shall be made criminal by enlarging the scope of existing criminal law protection. Should the courts collaborate, to stop these efforts requires calling on civil liberty movements.
In another context, administrative practice as experienced here is usually called mobbing. Tragic enough, this happend to the extent of driving Aaron Swartz to take his own live and therefore deserves proper consideration.
The question is, what the movement he initiated will do now to stop this happen again. It was possible to dismantle SOPA and CISPA to a large extent for very good reasons, to stop the forces of evil to destroy the Internet liberties by using the IPU last year - so what is now the movement's answer to such mobbing?
