Ryan Shapiro
 Ryan Shapiro    (activist) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Ryan Noah Shapiro 1976 New York, NY |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Spouse | Stephanie Bain |
| Exposed | Dallas occupy plot |
| Interests | Freedom of Information Act |
Ryan Shapiro is a FOIA activist whose work helped expose the Dallas occupy plot. At one point the FBI wanted to stop to respond to his FOIA requests.[1]
Shapiro is regarded by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) as the "most prolific" FOIA requester,[2] and the FBI has claimed that his requests for information through the FOIA are "irreparably damag[ing] to national security."[3]
Work
A doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Doctoral Program in History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS), Shapiro's baccalaureate and graduate studies have dealt extensively with the history of vegetarianism and the animal rights movement.[4]
Ryan Shapiro's first lawsuit was directly related to his dissertation research. After in-depth study of FOIA regulations, Shapiro was able to determine that processing a request for information that names a specific individual, an investigation of a group that individual is affiliated with and includes a privacy waiver from that individual forces a response when provided to the FBI. Shapiro's technique initially worked and he began processing hundreds of FOIA requests formatted in that manner. After initial success, the FBI eventually refused to provide further information in a timely fashion. FOIA decisions are typically provided within 20 days from receipt of a request. The FBI told Ryan Shapiro that his requests would take seven years to review before he would be told if his request would be rejected. Shapiro decided to sue the FBI and retained the services of Jeffrey Light, a Washington, D.C. appellate attorney with an extensive background in pro bono civil rights and FOIA cases.[5]
In court, the FBI claimed that due to the volume of requests that they were receiving from Shapiro, there was no way for them to effectively redact the content of released records. Because of the sheer number of requests, even heavily redacted records could be assembled to create a "mosaic", a complete view of the FBI's ongoing investigations into animal rights groups.
Shapiro and investigative journalist Jason Leopold filed a joint lawsuit on July 26, 2013 against the FBI for ignoring their FOIA requests concerning a possible file on Michael Hastings, a Rolling Stone journalist who died in a fiery high-speed automobile crash on June 18, 2013 in Los Angeles, California. As the result of the lawsuit, the FBI publicly released 21 pages of internal documents it had compiled on Hastings on September 21, 2013. The documents are available directly through the FBI's website. None of the documents provided allude to Hastings as the target of an investigation, and the FBI claims that the documents represent all of their records on Hastings.[6]
In addition, Shapiro is the sole plaintiff of a lawsuit seeking for a Federal court to force the Department of Justice to comply with an FOIA request for documentation concerning a Federal Bureau of Investigation threat assessment of an alleged plot to assassinate Occupy Houston protesters. On March 12, 2014, the presiding Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ruled that, while the FBI may have a right to refuse some documents to Shapiro, the justification they have provided to the court is incorrect (in a series of briefs filed between June 16 and June 30, 2013, FBI FOIA chief David Hardy maintained that the documents are exempt from the FOIA because they were compiled for "law enforcement purposes").[7][8]
In January 2014, Ryan Shapiro sued the Central Intelligence Agency after they failed to respond to a FOIA request he processed for documents related to Nelson Mandela. The request was processed in order to determine whether the US intelligence community played a role in Mandela's arrest and subsequent imprisonment by Apartheid forces in South Africa. In addition to the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency also received FOIA requests from Shapiro. Every other agency responded to the request, although the NSA refused to admit the existence of any records pertaining to Mandela and the DIA responded without processing the request.[9][10]
References
- ↑ https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131118/01542825271/fbi-stops-responding-to-most-prolific-foia-filer-because-he-might-actually-learn-something.shtml
- ↑ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/14/fbi-foia_n_4270021.html
- ↑ http://www.salon.com/2013/11/13/fbi_calls_phd_foia_research_a_national_security_risk/
- ↑ https://www.academia.edu/337975
- ↑ http://www.bordc.org/newsletter/2010/12/#gr1
- ↑ https://vault.fbi.gov/michael-hastings/michael-hastings-part-01-of-01/view
- ↑ https://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/hardydeclaration.pdf
- ↑ https://vault.fbi.gov/explanation-of-exemptions
- ↑ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/08/cia-nelson-mandela_n_4559058.html?1389193634
- ↑ http://freebeacon.com/cia-sued-for-mandela-records/
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