<story><title>MIT Moves to Intervene in Release of Aaron Swartz’s Secret Service File</title><url>http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/mit-swartz-intervene/all/1</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>cowsandmilk</author><text>(Note, this is purely informational, I completely disagree with what MIT is doing in this case)&lt;p&gt;It is interesting that they have never heard of third party&amp;#x27;s intervening in FOIA cases because it actually is a common occurrence in academia.&lt;p&gt;Many times, a professor at another university will file a FOIA request for your grant application. If you feel your research plans are threatened by having the details of your grant passed along to this other professor, your university will intervene on your behalf in the FOIA request. This is especially true if there is patentable material in the grant that they fear will be threatened by wide dissemination of the contents of the grant. Even if they fail in blocking the FOIA request, they usually can at least delay the release long enough to file a preliminary patent on the material described in the grant application.&lt;p&gt;I can understand reporters not having heard of this tactic, but I&amp;#x27;m surprised an expert FOIA litigator would be unfamiliar with these cases.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tzs</author><text>&amp;gt; It is interesting that they have never heard of third party&amp;#x27;s intervening in FOIA cases because it actually is a common occurrence in academia.&lt;p&gt;They didn&amp;#x27;t say thy never heard of a third party intervening. They were more specific: he says &amp;quot;I have never, in fifteen years of reporting, seen a non-governmental party argue for the right to interfere in a Freedom of Information Act release of government documents.&amp;quot; The key here is GOVERNMENT documents.&lt;p&gt;The example you give:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Many times, a professor at another university will file a FOIA request for your grant application. If you feel your research plans are threatened by having the details of your grant passed along to this other professor, your university will intervene on your behalf in the FOIA request&lt;p&gt;is a third party intervening to try to stop a FOIA request involving their own documents. By &amp;quot;their own documents&amp;quot; I mean they wrote the documents. The documents were then submitted to the government, which is why they can be reached by FOIA, but they are not &amp;quot;government documents&amp;quot; in the sense that the writer intends, I believe. The documents MIT is trying to get involved with were written by the government. They are partially about MIT, but they are not MIT&amp;#x27;s documents in the way a grant application from MIT would be.</text></comment>
<story><title>MIT Moves to Intervene in Release of Aaron Swartz’s Secret Service File</title><url>http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/mit-swartz-intervene/all/1</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>cowsandmilk</author><text>(Note, this is purely informational, I completely disagree with what MIT is doing in this case)&lt;p&gt;It is interesting that they have never heard of third party&amp;#x27;s intervening in FOIA cases because it actually is a common occurrence in academia.&lt;p&gt;Many times, a professor at another university will file a FOIA request for your grant application. If you feel your research plans are threatened by having the details of your grant passed along to this other professor, your university will intervene on your behalf in the FOIA request. This is especially true if there is patentable material in the grant that they fear will be threatened by wide dissemination of the contents of the grant. Even if they fail in blocking the FOIA request, they usually can at least delay the release long enough to file a preliminary patent on the material described in the grant application.&lt;p&gt;I can understand reporters not having heard of this tactic, but I&amp;#x27;m surprised an expert FOIA litigator would be unfamiliar with these cases.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jmharvey</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a reasonable explanation, but &amp;quot;we have scientific knowledge that we&amp;#x27;d like to hide, an we&amp;#x27;re asking the government for more money to further our understanding of the subject&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t much of an excuse.  Isn&amp;#x27;t the entire rationale for providing government funding for academic research premised on the idea that scientific knowledge is a public good, to be shared freely?</text></comment>