Aaron Swartz was a brilliant American computer programmer, activist, writer and more. In January 2011, Swartz allegedly hacked into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Building 16 to download over 4,000,000 articles from JSTOR (a digital archive). On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested by the FBI for his connection in the alleged theft of academic journals on the JSTOR server. The charges for his actions could have amounted to 50 or more years behind bars if the U.S. Attorney sought the maximum punishment. On January 11, 2013, Aaron Swartz was found dead in his apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, after having taken his own life. Some believe that one of the reasons for his suicide was due to the stress and weight of the impending charge.
On January 14, 2012, Kevin Poulsen filed an FOIA request relating to “any documents held by the U.S. Secret Service concerning Aaron Swartz.” On February 26, 2013, the Secret Service issued its initial determination to deny Poulsen’s FOIA request. The request was denied under section 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(7) “since disclosure could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings”. On March 1st, Poulsen appealed the agency’s decision and has been in battles ever since for access to the information.
The plaintiff in the case is Kevin Poulsen, a former black hat hacker and news editor for Wired.com. The defendant is the Department of Homeland Security, a cabinet department that develops and coordinates national strategies to secure the United States from threats or attacks. Nearly three weeks ago, the U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered the release of Aaron Swartz secret service file. However, that order was suspended on July 18th when MIT urged the court to stop the disclosure of information in order to make an argument against the release of some of the material. On July 19, a court order stated: “the party’s position on MIT’s request that the Court permit it to review and redact each of the following categories of information from any documents that originated from MIT, discuss information obtained from MIT, or contain information regarding MIT employees or networks: (a) the names, job titles, departments, telephone numbers, email addresses, and other identifying information of MIT employees; (b) references to vulnerabilities in MIT’s computer network security systems.”
As Poulsen points out “I have never, in fifteen years of reporting, seen a non-governmental party argue for the right to interfere in a Freedom of Information Act release of government documents”. Furthermore, his DC-based FOIA litigator “has been litigating FOIA for decades, and he’s never encountered it either. It’s saddening to see an academic institution set this precedent” (Ibid). 
