From
http://www.theguardian.com/education...hacker-garrett

An Oxford University academic who penetrated London's secret underground
tunnels and scaled its tallest skyscrapers for a geography PhD has been
spared a possible jail sentence, in a qualified victory for academic
freedom.

Dr Bradley Garrett, a researcher at the school of geography, had joined a
group of "place hackers" who surreptitiously explore the off-limits corners
of Britain's towns and cities. He was charged with conspiring to commit
criminal damage during sorties into disused London Underground tunnels and
stations such as Aldwych.

But after growing outrage from academic colleagues who considered the
prosecution a fundamental breach of academic liberty, his trial has
concluded in a conditional discharge.

It ended a two-year nightmare for Garrett, a 33-year-old US citizen who
found fame in 2012 by scaling the Shard, when the tallest tower in Europe
was under construction. He was photographed clinging to a crane 300 metres
in the air.

Before he was arrested, Garrett had embarked on a four-year ethnographic
study with more than 100 urban explorers, in which he participated in their
regular trespasses. He joined the London Consolidation Crew, a group of
part-time photographers interested in accessing off-limits architecture
including the top of the Forth rail bridge in Scotland, abandoned mental
hospitals and Joseph Bazalgette's Victorian sewer systems.

They went by pseudonyms such as Neb, Winch, Bacchus and Guts. Garrett
chronicled the group's adventures including a drum and bass party in a
disused bomb shelter beneath Clapham, accessing the Tyburn river under
Buckingham Palace and rescuing a colleague trapped in a lift-shaft in a
half-built City skyscraper.

Garrett was arrested in August 2012 by British transport police who boarded
his incoming plane at Heathrow and seized his passport. While they held him
in a London police station cell, officers took a battering ram to the door
of his home in Clapham and confiscated his computer, phones, cameras and
hard drive and PhD research notes, in a search for evidence of criminal
damage.

"I wasn't in the dock for anything I did, but because I wrote about what I
did," said the academic, who warned the prosecution could have "a chilling
effect" on research. "Researchers will feel they can't put themselves in
situations like this and, even worse, institutions could shut down research
that takes people into areas that are legally sensitive. That will lead to
the loss of a wealth of information about our society and especially groups
that are marginalised – and that is dangerous."

Police who investigated the case said their investigation revealed that
Garrett and another man, Christopher Reinstadtler, 32, who also pleaded
guilty to criminal damage, had systematically broken into Transport for
London property and accessed disused rail tunnels. "The railway, whether
disused or in operation, is a dangerous place for those not meant to be
there and access restrictions, which should not be taken lightly, are in
place to protect members of the public from harm," a police spokesman said.

If tried and found guilty, Garrett could have faced jail, but on Wednesday
following extensive pre-trial negotiations and the staying and dismissal of
cases against seven other colleagues, he pleaded guilty to five counts of
criminal damage to railway property. A judge gave him a three-year
discharge and ordered him to pay £2,000 costs. The damage included removing
a wing nut from a door and removing a board and replacing it again. Garrett
described the conclusion as a "face-saving" exercise for both sides.

He remains concerned that the prosecution exposed his sources and he called
for a debate about whether academic research material should enjoy similar
legal protection to journalistic material, which can only be accessed if
police obtain a court order.

"This case raises serious questions around academic freedom," said Danny
Dorling, professor of geography at Oxford, who supported Garrett. "There is
part of the state system that doesn't understand what academics do, just as
there is part of the system that doesn't understand the value of a free
press. We don't want to see people straitjacketed by fear of what might
happen if their behaviour has been slightly transgressive."

The author Will Self, who has written a foreword to Subterranean London:
Cracking the Capital, a book of photographs of the "place hacks" to be
published this September, has applauded the explorers' "willingness to
experience the city as it is, rather than being satisfied with the London
that only comes with a price tag".

Leo Hollis, Garrett's editor, said the collapse of the prosecution was "a
tremendous relief". "Academic adventurers have to find out what is going on
and we see increasingly that our young academics are being criminalised for
testing the boundaries and that is incredibly dangerous," he said. "It is a
way of stifling free speech and free thought."