Court Records

 

Judges Want Criminal Cases Pulled From Web Court Records.(Government Activity) Author/s: Brian Krebs Criminal cases and any "personal identifiers" in federal court filings - such as birth dates and Social Security numbers - should not be made available online, a judicial panel urged today. The recommendations were handed down today by a panel of eight federal judges who examined the privacy and security issues raised by the government's plan to link files from all federal courts under a single Web-based system, known as PACERNet (Public Access To Court Electronic Records). The panel recommended that online public access to criminal records should not be available at this time, with the understanding that the panel would revisit the issue within the next two years. To minimize the chances that personal data in court records might be used for marketing purposes, stalking or identity theft, the panel recommended that documents in civil cases should be made available online to the same extent that they are available at the courthouse. However, the committee urged that Social Security cases be excluded from online access, and that "personal data identifiers" - including Social Security numbers, dates of birth, account numbers and names of minor children - be omitted from online and offline documents alike. In addition, the panel recommended including only the last four digits of a person's Social Security number in a federal court record. The report also suggests the same protections for data in bankruptcy filings, with a codicil that the Bankruptcy Code should to allow for the sealing of a filing based solely on privacy and security concerns. The recommendations were not supposed to be released until the Judicial Conference meets on Sept. 11 to vote on the report. But a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the Courts said the conference opted to release the findings in advance due to the "enormous level of public interest in the matter," that drew responses from more than 200 interested groups and parties earlier this year. One of the witnesses who testified at a hearing on the issue in March, Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the panel's report exceeded her expectations. She added that the recommendations could come as welcome guidance for many courts at the state and local level that are struggling with implementing their own online court document systems. "The statement that documents in civil cases should be made available online to the same extent that they're available at the local courthouse is a very important statement, and we're going to be able to use that philosophy in all 50 states as they consider this issue also," Dalglish said. Dalglish said the panel's findings on criminal cases was an indication that the federal judiciary may one day soon consider making indictment documents available online. "I'm holding out hope that means they understand they've got some issues they need to address and that they're willing to be reasonable about this in the future," she said.

While many federal appeals, district and bankruptcy courts already place case documents online using the PACER system, users searching for a particular case must log on to the PACER site for the court in which those documents were filed. By 2005, the Administrative Office of the Courts will have completed work on a new PACER system, which will allow users to search virtually all court documents from a single site for a nominal fee. So far, only a fraction of the 200 U.S. Federal, district and appellate courts have converted to an all-digital court document database that is open to the public. Chris Hoofnagle, legislative counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), called the report a "remarkable outcome," and said his organization was generally pleased with the report. "I think they implemented about 80 percent of our recommendations in the final product," he said. "It's clear that the judiciary understands the nature of the problem and has thought long and hard about the issues." EPIC is somewhat concerned, however, over a portion of the report that would require PACERNet to log IP addresses and match them with the files obtained. "On the one hand, it's good to have an audit trail, because it could give individuals some recourse if commercial groups are going in and aggregating data in these records," Hoofnagle said. "But it could have an impact on individuals or journalists who want to access this public information privately." The 27-member Judicial Conference is scheduled to vote on the report and recommendations when it meets Sept. 11. The report is at http://www.uscourts.gov/Press_Releases/att81501.pdf . Reported by Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com . (2001815/WIRES ONLINE, LEGAL, BUSINESS/)

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