Ryan Shapiro

Politico has called Shapiro “a FOIA guru at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” leading open government site Muck Rock has called Shapiro “a FOIA super hero,” and Marsh Professor of Journalism at Michigan University, author, and TED Senior Fellow Will Potter has called Shapiro “The FBI’s Worst Nightmare.”

In November 2016, Shapiro and Washington, DC-based FOIA specialist attorney, Jeffery Light, founded the non-profit transparency organization, Property of the People. One project of Property of the People, Operation 45, seeks transparency and accountability from the Trump/Pence administration. As of that month, Shapiro had 12 ongoing FOIA lawsuits against several U.S. government departments and agencies, including the FBI, CIA, IRS, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Justice, Secret Service and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He said he is "genuinely worried about the survival of FOIA itself as a tool under President Trump." Shapiro told The Nation in February 2017 that Light and himself were working full-time on the project since the election of President Trump.

Shapiro and the other parties to the suit acquired new representation from the Center for Constitutional Rights and appealed the decision, arguing their cases before Judges Lynch, Thompson and Kayatta. There was widespread support for the plaintiffs. An amicus brief was filed on their behalf by the New York State Bar Association that confirmed the original arguments in the case and also held that the terrorism provisions robbed AETA defendants of their Fifth Amendment rights to due process. The ACLU also filed an amicus brief, arguing that the terms used by the AETA are not properly defined and as a result the law is so vague it cannot be properly enforced. Despite the arguments, on March 7, 2014, the appellate court affirmed the case's original dismissal based on standing. The court's published opinion elaborated that the case brought by Shapiro and his colleagues was "based on speculation that the Government will enforce the Act" and that "such unsubstantiated and speculative fear is not a basis for standing."

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"). As of March 23, 2014 the case remains before the court.

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 pro-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.

Alongside other notable animal-rights activists, Ryan Shapiro was a co-plaintiff in the high-profile Federal lawsuit Blum v. Holder. Alexander Reinert of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and David Milton and Howard Friedman of Howard Friedman PC represented the plaintiffs. The case challenged the constitutionality of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act 18 U.S.C. § 43-2006 (also known as the AETA) which criminalizes certain forms of protest and other actions against animal-using enterprises and their employees that the law purports to be "acts of terrorism". Shapiro and the other plaintiffs argued the measures are draconian violations of First Amendment freedom of speech and freedom of the press protections. Department of Justice lawyers representing the defendant Eric Holder argue that because the plaintiffs were never prosecuted under the AETA, they failed to meet the standard of an "aggrieved party" that would grant them standing to bring the suit. The plaintiffs contended that as animal rights activists, their work depended upon their ability to speak freely about issues impacting animal rights, and that fear of prosecution under the AETA chilled their speech and as a result negatively impacted their ability to perform their work. The case was dismissed on March 12, 2013 after the presiding Judge Joseph L. Tauro sided with the defense and confirmed the plaintiffs lacked standing.

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.

In 2005, Stephanie Bain answered a want-ad for a roommate posted by Ryan Shapiro. Although initially platonic, Shapiro would eventually propose to Bain at Ellwood Butterfly Preserve and Beach in Santa Barbara, five years after they first met. In 2011, the Shapiro married Stephenie Bain at Brookside Gardens. The reception was vegan and was covered in the "Vegan Weddings 2012" section of VegNews Magazine.

Ryan Noah Shapiro (born 1976) is a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Doctoral Program in History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS), a U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) researcher, and an advocate for animal rights.

Ryan Shapiro was born in 1976 in New York City. Ryan is the brother of Paul Shapiro, former vice president of farm animal protection for the Humane Society of the United States.

Shapiro's baccalaureate and graduate studies have dealt extensively with the history of vegetarianism and the animal rights movement. His first publication was an in-depth review of James Gregory's seminal "Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement In Nineteenth-Century Britain". His forthcoming doctoral dissertation is titled "Bodies at War: Animals, The Freedom of Science, and National Security in the United States, 1899-1979" and will focus on the conflict between ethical concerns over animal rights and U.S. national security concerns. In addition to the dissertation, he is also developing a historical map of how the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has handled the animal rights movement. Both projects rely on large amounts of information that, while not necessarily classified, is usually only be made public once formally requested under the Freedom of Information Act.