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Sunday, March 01, 2009

Courts - More on: Carl Malamud fights to improve Pacer

Updating this ILB entry from Feb. 13th, this story Feb. 27th from Wired, by Ryan Singel, reports a step in tthe right direction. From the story, headed "Lieberman Asks, Why Are Court Docs Still Behind Paid Firewall?"

The head of a powerful Senate committee wants the federal courts to explain why its online database still charges 8 cents a page for court documents, and why many of those documents still contain Social Security numbers and other sensitive information.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut), who helms the Senate's government affairs committee, is annoyed enough that he bypassed the administrators of the system and sent a letter Friday straight to the Judicial Conference of the United States.

He's asking Judge Lee H. Rosenthal to explain why in the age of Google the Public Access to Court Electronic Records, or PACER, system isn't free for citizens. He'd also like to know why federal courts still aren't blacking out sensitive information in court documents as required in the 2002 E-Government Act (a piece of legislation dear to Lieberman).

Here is a lnk to Senator Lieberman's letter.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 1, 2009 08:47 AM
Posted to Courts in general