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After Security Warnings, a Recap on RECAP

By Carolyn Elefant

Last week, I wrote about RECAP, a Firefox-based software plug-in that automatically sends documents downloaded by a user through PACER to an online Internet repository where they are made available to the public. Though RECAP doesn't appear to violate any of PACER's terms and conditions of use, some federal courts are warning lawyers who have installed RECAP to exercise caution in use. Last Friday, Paul Levy of Public Citizen's Consumer Law & Policy Blog noted that the United States District Court for the District of Michigan e-mailed the following notice to lawyers who use the courts electronic filing system: The court would like to make CM/ECF filers aware of certain security concerns relating to a software application or ?plug-in? called RECAP, which was designed to enable the sharing of court documents on the Internet. Once a user loads RECAP, documents that he or she subsequently accesses via PACER are automatically sent to a public Internet repository. Other RECAP/PACER users are then able to see whether documents are available from the Internet repository. At this time, RECAP does not appear to provide users with access to restricted or sealed documents. Please be aware that RECAP is ?open-source? software, which means it...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on August 25, 2009 (boomark / email).