MIT Moves to Intervene in Release of Aaron Swartz's Secret Service File
Lawyers representing MIT are filing a motion to intervene in my FOIA lawsuit over thousands of pages of Secret Service documents about the late activist and coder Aaron Swartz. — Two weeks ago U.S. District Judge …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Secret Service file being sought dates back years before the case that made Swartz famous: Threat Level reported in 2009 that the FBI investigated him for liberating paywalled court records, and his January 2011 arrest grew out of a webcam stakeout MIT ran to catch the downloader on its network. After his suicide this past January and the Anonymous hack of a U.S. government site threatening leaks, public pressure has focused on how much investigators and MIT knew.
Now the reporter behind this FOIA lawsuit says MIT's lawyers are moving to intervene in the release of those thousands of pages — putting the university, already under criticism for its role in the prosecution, in the position of formally contesting disclosure of its own surveillance-era records.
First-order effects
- The FOIA plaintiff's request for the Secret Service file now faces an institutional opponent inside the courtroom, not just agency redactions — MIT intervention typically means delays and exemption fights over thousands of pages.
Second-order effects
- If MIT succeeds in narrowing or blocking the release, other organizations named in law-enforcement files gain a template for asserting their interests in third-party FOIA suits, raising the cost of journalism that relies on such requests.
Third-order effects
- The dispute tests whether institutions can litigate their way out of transparency when the subject of a file is dead and cannot object — a question likely to recur as prosecutors' handling of the Swartz case stays under public scrutiny.
The trend: Institutions facing post-mortem scrutiny are increasingly turning to procedural intervention in FOIA litigation rather than relying on agencies alone to withhold records.