Privacy Groups, Journalists Clash Over Court Records
Database.
Author/s: Brian Krebs
A plan to launch a new nationwide database that will allow anyone
with a computer to look up court records has stirred debate between
privacy rights advocates and journalist groups over the government's
role in disseminating sensitive and personally identifiable information.
The Administrative Office of the Courts recently solicited public
comment on its effort to link files from all federal courts under a
single system, known as PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic
Records).
As the official deadline for comments rolled around last Friday, the
comments began pouring in, many of them from privacy rights and First
Amendment advocates, a spokesman for the Administrative Office said.
In comments filed on Friday, the Denver-based Privacy Foundation
urged the Administrative Office of the Courts to come up with a method
of editing sensitive information from publicly accessible records,
saying instant access to court records raises "monumental privacy
issues for US citizens." The group also suggested that each court
"retain complete supervisory power over all court records,"
with the authority to deny public access to files.
"This technology should be appropriately available to the
American public as we enter the new millennium," said the comments'
author, John Soma, a law professor at the University of Denver.
"The potential for improper use of personal information, however,
is substantially heightened by this technology."
The Privacy Foundation said its comments were aimed in particular at
curbing the growing menace of identity theft, which often is aided by
such easy access to personal information such as names, addresses and
Social Security numbers.
A group or journalist organizations, including The Reporters
Committee, the Society of Professional Journalists, the D.C. Chapter of
SPJ, and the Radio-Television News Directors Association, countered that
current law already permits public access to the physical paper records
found at any courthouse.
"For some reason, privacy advocates believe that electronic
filing and storage of court records somehow transmogrifies them into
private documents," said Lucy Dalgish, executive director for the
Reporters Committee "If a record is available in a file cabinet at
the courthouse, it should also be easily available to the public when it
is filed and stored electronically - preferably via the Internet."
In a separate filing, the Electronic Privacy Information Center
(EPIC) noted that the Administrative Office could appease both sides by
creating two sets of documents for civil cases, one accessible only to
court officers and parties to the case, and another set of publicly
accessible documents with the most sensitive personal information
redacted.
EPIC said while the courts may have difficulty determining what
information should be redacted for privacy interests and which data is
necessary for a comprehensive understanding of a given case, an
unrestricted database would be easy prey for data mining and marketing
firms.
"Data aggregators and marketers may take advantage of compiled
records to target advertising at former litigants and witnesses,"
EPIC said. "The disclosure of certain personal information
necessary in the context of litigation could unfairly stigmatize a
litigant in the pursuit of employment or educational
opportunities."
With respect to criminal cases, the Administrative Office of the
Courts should consider giving public access to indictments and final
court decisions, and limiting access to pre-indictment, plea agreements,
and unexecuted warrants to court officials and parties to the case, EPIC
said.
While many federal appeals and district courts already place case
documents online using the PACER system, users searching for a
particular case must log onto the PACER site for the court in which
those documents were filed. The Administrative Office of the Courts will
soon complete work on a new PACER system, which will for a nominal fee
allow users to search all courts from a single site.
The Administrative Office's consideration of the issue is likely to
be informed by a recent report issued by a trio of federal watchdog
agencies, which found that even though bankruptcy documents have long
been publicly available to anybody who wanted to dig through files at
the local courthouse, the likelihood that those documents will soon be
available online to millions of Internet users raises major privacy
concerns.
On the last day before the Bush administration took power over the
Office of Management and Budget as well as the Justice and Treasury
Departments, officials from those agencies released a study that found
substantial privacy concerns surrounding existing bankruptcy rules.
Commissioned by President Clinton in April 2000, the study found that
"new bankruptcy information policies should limit the amount of
highly sensitive personal financial data available in public case files
to prevent identity theft and other abuse."
The Office of the Courts is expected to hold a public hearing to give
advocates and opponents of the PACER system a chance to air their
comments and concerns.
Dick Carelli, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the
Courts, said the agency received more than 200 comments since it posted
its request for comment notice late last November.
"I'd say the volume is probably higher than some here would have
expected," Carelli said.
Carelli said the agency plans to post all of the comments it has
received on its Web site, http://www.uscourts.gov , within the next
week.
Reported by Newsbytes, http://www.newsbytes.com
13:25 CST
(20010129/WIRES ONLINE, LEGAL, BUSINESS/PRIVACY/PHOTO)
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