On Thursday, July 18, MIT filed a motion intervening in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit by Wired editor Kevin Poulsen against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, filed on April 12. Poulsen had requested the release of any Secret Service documents regarding the late internet activist Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide in January following a federal indictment in July 2011 for using MIT's network to download millions of JSTOR documents. Filed in the U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C., MIT's motion asked the court to allow MIT to review and propose redactions, and will delay the release of the documents. JSTOR filed a similar motion on Friday.
The motions are similar to MIT and JSTOR's March 29 requests that information including the names of employees be redacted, which U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton's May 13, 2013 order in U.S. v. Swartz agreed with.
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