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MIT Police Suspended For Trashing Student Newspaper

from the and-the-online-version? dept

Thu, Apr 2nd 2009 7:53pm — Mike Masnick

Apparently, two police officers at MIT have been suspended after they decided that students at the university shouldn't see a front page story about another MIT police officer caught dealing drugs -- so they dumped hundreds of copies of the paper in the trash (well, actually a recycling bin -- they may want to censor, but not clog landfills, apparently). Of course, it really makes you wonder what they hoped to accomplish. The MIT paper, The Tech, is available online, including the article in question. Throwing out the papers probably did little (if anything) to stop people from reading about the incident -- and simply ended up calling more attention to questionable activities by MIT police. All of this, of course, highlights yet another nice benefit to online newspapers: people can't throw them out to try to hide what's in them.

Filed Under: journalism, mit, newspapers, police

17 Comments

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Weird Harold, 2 Apr 2009 @ 8:00pm

Wow, this is bad. Even for a worthless tool such as myself that is just bad.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Apr 2009 @ 8:17pm

Chalk one more up for the Streisand effect.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Apr 2009 @ 8:48pm

All of this, of course, highlights yet another nice benefit to online newspapers: people can't throw them out to try to hide what's in them
Online articles can't be thrown out but the authors/editors can change them.
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Overcast, 2 Apr 2009 @ 9:06pm

Good to see them standing up for free speech rights. Seems all too typical anymore.
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Hans, 2 Apr 2009 @ 9:10pm

And remember....
Never talk to a cop, because nothing good will *ever* come of it, and *always* spit in their food.
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Albert Nonymous, 2 Apr 2009 @ 9:13pm

"All of this, of course, highlights yet another nice benefit to online newspapers: people can't throw them out to try to hide what's in them"

Meh. They can confiscate the server and that takes care of all the non-physical copies. Single points of failure - so annoying. Unless they have some sort of load balancing across geographically distributed systems so readers will get something when the browse to the URL, electronic copies make it easier for a motivated censor to quash the undesirable.

Online newspapers would be advised to throw some copies into the cloud and mail them out directly to subscribers too, if they are sufficiently concerned that an unpopular article might draw the ire of the powerful.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Apr 2009 @ 9:47pm

More proof that police are dumb as rocks.
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thomas, 2 Apr 2009 @ 9:54pm

it is alittle bs that the police would try to take censorship into their own hands...but i can understand where there actions lead them... just because one person who turned out to be a drug dealer wearing the badge doesnt mean the rest of the cops would or are doing it
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Dan, 2 Apr 2009 @ 10:00pm

Deep thought?
They should fired for stupidity.
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Another Mike, 2 Apr 2009 @ 10:05pm

Re: Deep thought?
They may well be... it is MIT.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Apr 2009 @ 10:12pm

Re:
Google already does this quite nicely. You can cache-view most things.
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Rose M. Welch, 2 Apr 2009 @ 11:09pm

Re:
Look, you can learn! I bet no on fed you today...

Hungry trolls learn best.
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Rose M. Welch, 2 Apr 2009 @ 11:12pm

Re:
I have spoken to plenty of cops and had plenty of good come out of it. I have even been pulled over and not been written tickets before.

Also, you should never spit in anyone's food because that is really nasty and bad for your karma.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Apr 2009 @ 11:51pm

Re: Re:
There is no such thing as karma and unless you have a cold or something, spit is harmless. In the right context it is quite enjoyable.
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wheatus, 3 Apr 2009 @ 12:31am

Split
Is human kind experiencing an evolutionary split right now?

bbb
wheatus.com
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Enrico Suarve, 3 Apr 2009 @ 1:15am

In other news...
The officers involved were on MITs ground breaking "Police State & application of appropriate brutality" course which they are currently acing

A spokesman for the GOP funded initiative stated "We are so proud of these boys, it just goes to show what you can do with the proper resources." He went on to say "[the GOP] are busy today, helping create the police force for the election of tomorrow"

Sources close to the college reveal that next year they are planning to expand the course to cover topics such as ordinary rendition and advanced interogation
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another mike, 6 Apr 2009 @ 12:32pm

Re: Re: Deep thought?
It's usually poor form to post using someone else's name.
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