DOJ spying on Congress’ viewing of Epstein files echos tobacco company spying on researchers

On February 9, 2026, as required by Epstein Files Transparency Act, the Department of Justice gave members of Congress access to the unredacted Epstein files, but just made four computer terminals at available. This reminded me of a similar situation back in 1999, when the British American Tobacco (BAT) company opened its Guildford Depository to make the documents it produced in the Minnesota lawsuit against BAT and other tobacco companies public while allowing only one organization (up to just 6 people) allowed to search the documents at a time.

It turns out that was not the only similarity to the tobacco company’s behavior. Like BAT, the DOJ spied on members of Congress as they searched the Epstein collection by monitoring their searches.

The 2004 paper “Big tobacco is watching: British American Tobacco’s surveillance and information concealment at the Guildford depository” reported that, “With regard to intelligence gathering, BAT’s law firm reported to BAT on the daily activities of depository visitors. Despite assurances to the contrary, these depository visitor reports show that BAT apparently tracked the database searches of a visitor.”

Likewise, the Department of Justice spied on Rep. Pramila Jayapal to record what she was reviewing the nominally unredacted Epstein files. This is invaluable information should DOJ be seeking how to better protect Trump and his allies from prying eyes by increasing redactions or withdrawing documents in the Epstein files just as BAT did.

It took a huge amount collaborative work between UCSF and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (and money from the Wellcome Trust and Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute) to get copies of the documents in Guildford, but today anyone can freely — and confidentially — read them at the UCSF Industry Documents Library.

This experience points to the need to secure copies of all the Epstein files and maintain them at a library that will make all of them (subject to the reasonable redactions specified in the Epstein Files Transparency Act)