Russ Kick's abiding interests [were] crusading against government secrecy and holding powerful people and institutions accountable. "I'm certainly not a journalist in the normal sense of the word," he once told the Times. "I'm more of an information archaeologist. I'm trying to get the stuff that's either been purposely buried or just covered over by time."

Mr. Kick was "omnipresent" in the FOIA community, "the person you'd turn to every time there was a question about document arcana or the ins-and-outs of obscure filings." Mr. Kick was also known as one of the first to regularly publish original documents in full, rather than to simply share quotes or transcriptions, according to Washington Post FOIA director Nate Jones.

"He influenced this generation of FOIA requesters by showing the power of posting the records unvarnished and letting them speak for themselves . . . His sites were completely dedicated only to that," Jones said. "I suspect the hosting fees were quite high, yet nonetheless he was a declassified document posting machine."