Homework: Why does Ryan Shapiro have so many documents?

Ryan Shapiro is a Ph.D. candidate at MIT and a research affiliate at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He is an historian of national security specializing in governmental transparency and the policing of dissent. Politico has referred to Shapiro as “a FOIA guru at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology”, while the FBI has declared Shapiro’s FOIA research methodologies themselves to be a threat to national security.

Shapiro will speak to us about his research and journey from animal rights activist to FOIA-powered-scholar and transparency activist.

Table of contents
Thursday, November 3 at 9:00 AM
5 Homework points
  • In an email to dun@stanford.edu, provide the following short answers (include URLs as needed).

  • Google around for news articles on Shapiro, find 3 examples of Shapiro’s FOIA requests not mentioned in the required readings (hint: He’s got some opinions about Trump).

  • Write 3 non-yes/no questions to ask Shapiro in class.

  • Finally, answer any 3 of the following questions, the answers of which are somewhere in the required readings:

    1. What was the first thing that Shapiro FOIAed?
    2. How did Shapiro respond to his first rejection? How did he get better at FOIA requests?
    3. Why did the FBI label Shapiro’s dissertation on animal rights a threat to national security?
    4. Explain in your own words the “mosaic theory” and why the FBI is using it to stonewall Shapiro’s requests.
    5. What is the most interesting tip about records request that you learned from the various readings?
    6. In peak times, about how many FOIAs per week does Shaprio claim to file?
    7. How did Shapiro convince a judge in January 2016 that the FBI had acted “fundamentally at odds with the [FOIA]” statute?
    8. What 3 categories of records does Shaprio say that the FBI routinely refuse to release?