Brand New Privacy Threat: Federal Court Documents
First: A Firefox plugin is rolled out that automatically downloads to a free public archive all documents that a lawyer or other consumer uses. The access charge for each document averages around 8 cents.
Second: Public Citizen’s lawyers start using it to circumvent having to pay the charge per document view and provide greater and free access to information.
Third: The Federal courts respond with a very weak, obtuse warning about the plug-in in an apparent attempt to discourage its use.
Fourth: The contractor and vendor and Federal Court system budget relies upon the 8 cents to run the system. Without it, the “PACER” system will likely be decommissioned and no one will have online access to the court files.
Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen blogs about the issue and makes fun of the Federal Court’s position on the use of the plug-in. Well, I suggest the federal courts modify their user agreement to prohibit the use of the plug-in and then deal with this as a contract and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act unauthorized access matter. It’s another attack on our legal system and on our adminstration of justice by Public Citizen. First attack the lawyers, then the Judges, now the Court system itself. It’s the bully effect in action. And as you read Google Bomb and learn about Public Citizen and Paul Alan Levy, this latest development will unfortunately come as no surprise.
And given my comments in the book about the role law professors are playing in the free speech expansionist movement and attacks on property rights, it will likewise come as no surprise that this tool was developed and made available by the Princeton University team headed up by Edward Felton. Mr. Felton, a computer science and public affairs professor at Princeton University and is the Director of The Center For Information Technology Policy. He has blogged on the controversy and attempts to justify the circumvention of the billing process but wholly fails to recognize that the cost of developing the PACER system is paid back over time through revenue derived from the system usage. It’s no surprise that those who reside in the Ivory Towers of academia have little understanding of the economics of business. Even when that business is technology and you are a computer science professor.
And this new open and free access to documents certainly opens up all kinds of privacy threats that did not exist when people actually had to register to see documents and information, often personal in nature, in court filings. See the chapter in Google Bomb titled “Information Yearns To Be Free: Protecting Evidence in Litigation”.
