A US District judge has suspended the release of Secret Service documents on the late Internet activist Aaron Swartz after MIT filed a motion to intervene, asking to review and redact the files that contain names of the institute’s staff.
US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Friday ruled to suspend the publication of Swartz’s
records which were to be “promptly” released following
“an off-the-record conference call” from lawyers
representing the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
MIT demanded to review and redact thousands of
pages of Secret Service files, arguing that their public release
might endanger the institute’s employees who helped the Secret
Service and federal prosecutors pursue felony charges against
Swartz for his bulk downloading of academic articles from MIT’s
network in 2011.
“MIT has reason to believe that encompassed within the records
sought by Plaintiff’s is information that, if released in
unredacted form, could jeopardize the safety of MIT community and
make its network more vulnerable to cyberattacks,” the MIT’s
motion said.
A journalist for Wired Kevin Poulsen, who is the plaintiff in the
lawsuit against the Secret Service’s parent
agency – the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – said he
will attempt to block the MIT request in court.
“We’ll be in court to oppose MIT being granted any right to
redact the documents, and to oppose any further delay in filling
this seven-month-old FOIA (Freedom of Information Act)
request,” Poulsen stressed in a statement posted online.
He also said it’s “saddening to see” an academic
institution setting the precedent of a non-governmental party
interfering in a FOIA release of government documents.
The journalist initially filed a FOIA request for investigators’
data on Shwartz shortly after the well-known coder and activist
committed suicide while awaiting trial. The Secret Service – the
main agency pursuing Swartz before he was indicted on violations
of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 2011 – denied the request
citing a FOIA exemption that covers sensitive law enforcement
records that are part of ongoing investigations.
But after Poulsen and Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney
David Sobel initiated a lawsuit against the DHS, the US
government was forced to respond. On July 9 Judge Kollar-Kotelly
ordered the DHS to “promptly release to the Plaintiff all
responsive documents that it has gathered thus far,” as well
as to “continue to produce additional responsive documents
that it locates on a rolling basis.”
Poulsen has said that he will publish the released data.