The White House has responded to a petition calling for the firing of the federal prosecutor who led the case against Internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz — two years after the petition was created. More than 60,000 people signed the petition on WhiteHouse.gov calling for the firing of U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz for prosecutorial overreach against Swartz, who took his own life two years ago this Sunday, on January 11, 2013. Swartz’s suicide came just weeks before he was set to go on trial for downloading millions of academic articles with the intent of making them freely available. He faced decades in prison. The petition launched the day after Swartz’s death quickly passed the threshold of 25,000 signatures, which at the time was supposed to mandate a public response from the White House. Two years later, the White House has issued a statement refusing to “address agency personnel matters in a petition response.” In a statement, David Segal, head of the group Demand Progress, which Swartz co-founded, said, “A White House that truly cared about protecting Internet freedom would recognize the chilling effects that actions like those of Carmen Ortiz have on activists and technologists, and see to it that they were put to an end.”