A blogger has published once-classified FBI files that show how the agency tracked and collected information on internet activist Aaron Swartz.
Swartz, who killed himself in January aged 26, had previously requested his files and posted them on his blog, but some new documents and redactions are included in the files published by Firedoglake blogger Daniel Wright.
Wright was given 21 of 23 declassified documents, thanks to a rule that declassifies FBI files on the deceased. Wright said that he was told the other two pages of documents were not provided because of freedom of information subsections concerning privacy, "sources and methods," and that can "put someone's life in danger."
The FBI's files concern Swartz's involvement in accessing the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (Pacer) documents. In pursuit of their investigation, the FBI had collected his personal information and was surveilling an Illinois address where he had his IP address registered.
One page reads: "Washington Field Office requests that the North RA attempt to locate Aaron Swartz, his vehicles, drivers license information and picture, and others. Since Swartz is the potential subject of an ongoing investigation, it is requested that Swartz not be approached by agents."
The FBI also collected information from his social networking profiles, including Facebook and Linkedin. The latter proved to be a catalog of his many notable accomplishments, which include being a co-founder of Reddit, a founder of a website to improve the government, watchdog.net and as metadata adviser at Creative Commons.
Information from a New York Times article about his Pacer hack was also included in the files, though strangely, since the article can still be read online, the name of the article's other subject, Carl Malamud, was blocked out.
Hacking collective Anonymous released a State Department database Monday in memory of Swartz. The files included employees' personal information such as addresses, phone number and emails.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/19/aaron-swartz-fbi-tracked-classified-documents
Just because we think we can, does not always mean you should
Ready or Not: Mutant H5N1 Research Set to Resume
One year after public uproar forced them to pause, researchers
who study H5N1 avian influenza by designing new, extra-virulent strains are set
to resume their work.
In a letter published Jan. 23 in the journals Nature
and Science, 40 virologists, including leaders of the most high-profile
experiments, declared that their voluntary moratorium is now over.
Though the virologists might be ready, other experts say
concerns about the experiments — overhyped benefits, a lack of independent
review, dangers of accidental release — have not been addressed, raising the
chances that the first pandemic H5N1 strain will come from a laboratory.
“There has been no substantive progress in the past year,” said
microbiologist Richard Ebright of Rutgers University. “An independent and
transparent determination needed to be made that risks were outweighed by
benefits, and that appropriate biosafety precautions were in place.”
No such determination was made. Ebright called the decision to
lift the moratorium “dangerously irresponsible.”
In their letter, the virologists asserted that the year-long
moratorium gave public health experts and the public a chance to discuss the
H5N1 research and its conduct. Now it’s time to continue, they say.
“Transmission research benefits public health,” said Yoshihiro
Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin at a press conference announcing the
moratorium’s end. “The greater risk is not doing research that could help us be
better equipped for a pandemic.”
It was research led by Kawaoka and Ron Fouchier of Erasmus
University in the Netherlands that originally sparked the controversy late in
2011, when it was reported that they’d engineered H5N1 strains capable of
passing airborne between ferrets, a common animal model for flu infections in
humans.
For now, naturally-occurring H5N1 strains, though highly
lethal to humans, don’t pass easily between us. Infection requires prolonged
physical contact rather than a passing cough. If H5N1 should go pandemic,
scientists say that millions of people could die.
News that experiments had enhanced H5N1 transmissibility was
largely greeted with horror by the public and many scientists, who feared that
an experimental strain might accidentally be released, or even inform the design
of H5N1 by bioterrorists.
Fouchier, Kawaoka and their colleagues argued that fears were
overblown and surpassed by possible benefits: influenza surveillance that
catches infectious strains early, better drugs, better vaccines. Faced with the
outcry, though, they agreed in January 2012 to temporarily halt the research so
that fears could be allayed.
“We declared a pause to this important research to provide
time to explain the public-health benefits of this work, to describe the
measures in place to minimize possible risks, and to enable organizations and
governments around the world to review their policies,” they wrote in the Jan.
23 letter. “Because the risk exists in nature that an H5N1 virus capable of
transmission in mammals may emerge, the benefits of this work outweigh the
risks.”
Other scientists don’t necessarily agree with that estimation
of risk and benefits. Some argue that lab-engineered strains may not reflect the
course of evolution in the wild, potentially confusing the search for dangerous
strains.
'We’re at the same place we were a year
ago, and that’s definitely not a place where it’s appropriate to resume this
work.'
Even if the engineered H5N1 insights do hold, alternate approaches
might arguably have produced the same information, but with far less potential
risk.
According to Roger Brent, a molecular biologist at the Fred
Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and David Relman, president of the Infectious
Disease Society of America, virologists could study transmissibility using
so-called attenuated H5N1 strains, which have had their virulence genetically
reduced.
“It’s perfectly possible to study how a virus will become more
transmissible without doing so in a virus that is also lethal to its hosts,”
said Brent. “Biologists who study pathogens frequently study attenuated strains
in order to reduce the risks.”
Whether this approach is a safer, equally useful alternative
is something that has not been independently evaluated. “One year on, an
irreproachable, independent risk–benefit analysis of such research, perhaps
convened by a body such as the World Health Organization, is still lacking,”
wrote the editors of Nature in an editorial accompanying the
moratorium’s lift.
Though multiple meetings were held in the United States and
internationally during the moratorium, many observers say they were driven less
by a spirit of open discussion than a desire to promote the research.
“The benefits of the work are mainly advanced by assertions.
To some extent, the substance to give them a fair evaluation has been lacking,”
said Brent. “The sessions have been designed to reinforce the conclusion of the
community of researchers who wish to pursue this work.”
“There still has not been a robust discussion between funders,
scientists, policy-makers, and the rest of the public,” said Relman. “An
insufficient breadth of the scientific community has been involved.”
Similar charges were made last year after a federal review
committee urged that Kawaoka and Fouchier’s results not be published in full so
as to prevent the risk of misuse, only to reverse their decision after pressure
from the virologists.
At the time,
committee member Michael Osterholm, an influenza epidemiologist at the
University of Minnesota, charged that ostensibly objective meetings were “designed to produce the outcome that occurred.”
According to Fouchier, his own H5N1 research will resume in
the next several months, as could other research programs outside the United
States. Within the United States, where federal guidelines for have yet to be
finalized, it will take longer for research to resume.
One outstanding
issue is how engineered H5N1 strains will be classified under the federal Select Agent program,
which determines whether research on certain pathogens demands extra oversight
and should be limited to just a handful of labs.
The National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of the
engineered H5N1 experiments, is also considering whether to establish a review
committee to determine when proposed experiments are too risky to conduct. For
now, however, that’s just a hypothetical.
“A proposal has been announced, but the proposal hasn’t been
finalized or approved,” said Ebright. “It’s a step forward, but it’s unclear if
it will move beyond the proposal stage, and if so, when that will happen.”
Ebright believes the moratorium’s lift sets the stage for
research to resume soon in the United States, where virologists will chafe at
restrictions.
“Substantively we’re at the same place we were a year ago,”
said Ebright, “and that’s definitely not a place where it’s appropriate to
resume this work.”
In an interview with the Washington Post, NIH chief
Anthony Fauci said he expects the U.S. guidelines to be finalized within weeks.
Had those guidelines existed when the H5N1 engineering
experiments were first suggested, Fauci told the Post, “Our answer
simply would have been, yes, we vetted it very carefully and the benefit is
worth any risk. Period, case closed.”
Said Relman, “The efforts made so far to establish an
oversight process and risk assessment have not achieved the desired goals.”
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