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Privacy Awareness

In response to recent concerns about personal data appearing in court filings, the courts have modified the login pages of CM/ECF to "display a message to remind filing attorneys of their obligation to redact personalidentifiers."
A recent letter from Senator Lieberman to the Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure asked the courts to review their processes:

I have concerns that not enough has been done to protect personal
information contained in publicly available court filings, potentially violating
another provision of the E-Government Act. A recent investigation by Carl
Malamud of the non-profit Public.Resource.org found numerous examples of
personal data not being redacted in these records.

The court policy states that the redaction responsibilities for filed documents rest with the filer. The courts' official response to Senator Lieberman's letter outlined the complexity of the privacy issue in court records, and restated the courts' committment to educating lawyers about the need for privacy redactions. The notice in CM/ECF is designed to remind filers of their responsibilities.

Full post as published by Utah District Court Blog on April 09, 2009 (boomark / email).