Judge Tells Homeland Security To Shut Up And Release Aaron Swartz's File
from the about-time dept
After Aaron Swartz's suicide, Kevin Poulsen filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Department of Homeland Security, asking for the Secret Service's file on Aaron Swartz, since it was the Secret Service that handled the bulk of the investigation. Aaron, himself, was a big user of the FOIA process, including retrieving his own FBI file concerning his earlier run-in with the authorities over downloading PACER material. So it seemed bizarre that the Secret Service denied Poulsen's request, "citing a FOIA exemption that covers sensitive law enforcement records that are part of an ongoing proceeding." Considering that the case was closed and Swartz was dead, that seemed like a ridiculous excuse.Poulsen went through the official appeal process, which was ignored leading him to officially sue. In May, the government admitted that the law enforcement exemption no longer made sense, but then continued to do nothing about releasing the documents. However, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (a former FISA Court judge, and a name associated with various other high profile cases over the years) has now ordered the government to begin releasing the documents it has held about Aaron.
DHS claims that just last week it found a new stack of documents, and that it needs time to go through them all. The judge gave them a deadline of August 5th, but said it needs to already start releasing the documents it has already reviewed.
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Filed Under: aaron swartz, colleen kollar-kotelly, foia, homeland security, kevin poulsen, secret service
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Be prepared
(Sorry, I try not to be cynical but with Amerika in the current state it is in it is very difficult.)
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Re: Be prepared
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I wouldn't trust her judgement.
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Re: Be prepared
The courts, generally speaking, have very little patience for "FOIA games," and they aren't afraid to hit the government with hefty fines/damages for acting in poor faith.
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Re: Re: Be prepared
There should be no redactions.
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The point of my above summary is merely to point out that in many instances (not necessarily here, but perhaps) the turn around for FOIA requests is a time-consuming task that can take an inordinately long amount of time.
Have I seen some FOIA "games"? Yes, a very few, but they tend to be quite rare and the process should not be vilified entirely because of this minority.
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More concerning in this case is the allegation that the appellate authority ignored the appeal. Assuming the appeal was ignored, rather than closed on a procedural basis, this is extremely problematic. The point of the administrative appeal process is to ensure a cosistency of response across a FOIA program. Furthermore, appellate authorities tend to be actual lawyers and the entities involved in litigation should it come to that. So they have a compelling reason to get it right.
Also, I'd say that the processing time can actually range from less than a day (there are instances of same-day response) to taking several years, especially when dealing with records coordinated between several agencies. And that goes double (at least) for classified information.
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No one argued otherwise.
Federal agencies almost universally have a FOIA Office that is staffed by people well versed in law.
Overworked people.
They are generally mid-level civil servants who, when a FOIA request is received, send out a memo to the "world" asking agency groups to go through their files and identify any that appear to meet the types of files being requested
Yes. But that is unrelated to what happened in this situation.
Depending upon the scope of the request, action by the FOIA Office my run from only a few days to many, many months
As I assume you well know, that's actually not what the law allows. The FOIA has a deadline on it -- a deadline that is almost never met. I recently had a FOIA request take nearly 8 months, and then they sent me something entirely different than I requested.
But, again, that's got nothing to do with the situation above. You seem to be bitching about a post here for the sake of bitching and showing off that you think you have knowledge that people here don't have.
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Good to know.
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2. TOTAL BULLSHIT on the 'oh, only happens oncedest in a blue moon when it is a weally, weally hard request', i'd be willing to bet that there is a majority of requests/responses that do NOT meet their own rules/guidelines...
3. this dead horse bears flogging: chocolate jesus CLAIMED he would run the most transparent administration EVAH ! ! ! and is ABSOLUTELY turning that on its head...
4. as a matter of general principle, FORCING people to file FOIA requests (which will probably NOT get a responsive -if technically fulfilling their rules- answer) is the fascist tale wagging the democracy dog: AS DEFAULT, EVERYTHING SHOULD BE RELEASED UNLESS PROVEN OTHERWISE, instead of the other way around...
5. that is OUR SHIT, EVERYTHING 'our' (sic) gummint does is OUR SHIT, we shouldn't have to jump through hoops to have access to OUR SHIT...
6. you are simply an authoritarian apologist and status quo dickless wormtongued greedtard copymaximalist who is plumping for the 1% and ignoring the 99%...
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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They murdered Swartz
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