Jason Leopold, who uses FOIA requests so frequently and so effectively that the DOJ once labeled him a „FOIA Terrorist,“ submitted a similar request with the Justice Department — specifically targeting the US Attorney‘s Office in Massachusetts — which is the office out of which Swartz‘s case was prosecuted. Obviously, they have plenty of such documents. In fact, in Poulsen‘s DHS Swartz files there are emails between DHS and DOJ folks. But, an astounding three years and 11 days after Leopold submitted his FOIA request, the DOJ has told him it has no responsive documents.

That‘s obviously bullshit. There‘s simply no way that the office that was prosecuting Swartz has no responsive documents on the case.

(14.Januar 2013) Es ist nicht unwahrscheinlich, dass wir die Auseinandersetzungen um das Urheberrecht in Zukunft einteilen werden in „die Zeit vor Aaron Swartz‘ Tod“ und die danach. Die Urheberrechtsextremisten haben mit ihm jemanden zum Opfer gemacht, der in seinem Leben sehr viele Menschen berührt hat. Diese werden seinen Tod nicht als Ende und nicht als Niederlage akzeptieren.

According to Demand Progress executive director David Segal, “Aaron, the tens of thousands who signed this petition, and the countless more who cared about his cause deserve much better than this meaningless rhetoric.

Last summer, MIT tried (weakly) to defend what it called its „neutral“ stance on Aaron Swartz, allowing the case to proceed even though the only party that had a legitimate claim to „harm,“ JSTOR, had come out almost immediately after Swartz‘s indictment to say that it did not support the prosecution. Around the same time, we noted that MIT was in the midst of a legal fight to block the release of Swartz‘s Secret Service file. Some found this effort a bit odd — but the reasons are now becoming clear. An investigative report by the Boston Globe, scouring 7,000 pages of discovery documents in the case, found that some employees at MIT appeared to gleefully support going after Swartz with all of the powers of the DOJ.

As we recently announced and participated in, a group of websites, companies, consumer advocacy groups and digital rights organizations all joined forces for a day of action last Tuesday against mass surveillance. That protest, dedicated to the memory of Aaron Swartz, involved participants and websites running banners that urged visitors to head over to the protest website and contact their representatives. An underlying goal was to harness some of the outrage against SOPA/PIPA and direct it toward the NSA‘s ongoing surveillance abuses, since online protest have been proven to help move the needle, even if they can‘t all be on the scale of SOPA.

Not everybody was impressed. Because the NSA and friends didn‘t immediately admit fault and declare an end to all surveillance before crying a lot, launching balloons and committing coordinated seppuku on the steps of the Capitol building, Nicole Perlroth at the NY Times took to penning a slightly-snotty article strongly suggesting the effort was a waste of time and „barely registered“:

Abby speaks to investigative journalist and best-selling author, Greg Palast about a document left behind at a Koch Brothers political fundraiser that reveals the dark money behind many right wing legislative campaigns in the US.