Legal Research

Joe Lieberman Grills Federal Judiciary About PACER System

From The National Law Journal:Sen. Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., has asked the policy body of the federal judiciary why it continues to charge the public and lawyers for access to electronically filed documents and whether enough is being done to protect the personal data collected by courts.

The senator, who is head of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, expressed concern in a Feb. 27 letter that the federal judiciary had a $150 million surplus in its technology fund as of fiscal year 2006 yet continues to charge the public and lawyers $.08 per page for access to documents.

Lieberman also raised concerns "that not enough has been done to protect personal information contained in publicly available court rulings, potentially violating another provision of the E-Government Act." He referred to research from Carl Malamud's organization which found thousands of privacy violations in scanning documents.

Source: aall-advoc listserv

Full post as published by WisBlawg - From the UW Law Library on March 05, 2009 (boomark / email).