Judges Want Criminal Cases Pulled From Web Court Records.
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/)
COPYRIGHT 2001 Newsbytes News Network
in association with The Gale Group and LookSmart. COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale
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