4 ms·

I actually approve of the something closer to the status quo here. Court filings contain a lot of sensitive information about the litigants. It is one thing fo

I actually approve of the something closer to the status quo here. Court filings contain a lot of sensitive information about the litigants. It is one thing for the records to be publicly available, as they must be. It is a very different thing for every speck of material in them to be instantly available to anyone, anywhere, worldwide, for any purpose.

monooso 4mo ago
Isn't that basically the same as saying court filings should be available, but not to poor people?
- anon373839 4mo ago
  No. Indigent users can already request fee exemptions, and that can be expanded. Access can be provided at courthouses and public libraries. (I don’t know if that is already a practice for PACER specifically, but it should be.)
  - DangitBobby 4mo ago
    There's "can't afford" and "can't justify the expense". I'm certainly not poor and at basically no amount above free would I justify the expense. So any cost is completely unacceptable, especially given how much the public pays to produce these results. No more excuses, no more lame justifications, no more hiding.
  - mjd 4mo ago
    PACER fees are waived if they are under $15 per quarter. That's about 150 pages of material.
    - BenjiWiebe 4mo ago
      $30/quarter, so ~300 pages. Also noticed that the fee is capped at $3/document, but I don't know how often a single document is longer then 30 pages.
      - mjd 4mo ago
        Thanks, I think they raised the limit in the last few years and I forgot. I have definitely gone over the limit for single documents in the past, although I've never been over the quarterly waiver limit. Judicial opinions and hearing trancripts often exceed 30 pages.
  - calebio 4mo ago
    You can easily burn through hundreds of dollars researching one or two relatively small court cases. I don't think you should be indigent or go to the courthouse/public library to avoid spending hundreds of dollars for that small amount of research.
- IncandescentGas 4mo ago
  No. They should be available for legit use cases and not available for data scrapers who will use it to facilitate algorithmic housing and employment discrimination. Especially not available for scammers who make mugshot extortion websites.
  - bsder 4mo ago
    Agreed. The issue isn't with individuals having access to the data but with aggregation of said data.
nonethewiser 4mo ago
Then why do you think they should be public?
- anon373839 4mo ago
  Because “publicly available with some friction” has a fundamentally different character than “indexed on Google/available to AI scrapers”. That type of information access wasn't even fathomable when the concept of public records was born. It enables a lot of uses where I would argue that the harms outweigh the benefits.
  - fellowniusmonk 4mo ago
    Yeah, I think this is a bad take on the part of the EFF. The full dataset will be in private hands and available everywhere to everyone to do anything the moment this goes live. I protect data for a living, cost asymmetry and proof of work are really the only tools we have. If this goes live, the next time I get subpoenaed to testify for something I'm going to throw in so many random but couched accusations at people just to screw them over when the data goes live at scale via data brokers and torrent dumps. Bill Jones (accused in court testimony of killing puppies) is requesting the HOA get off of his back.
    - Zak 4mo ago
      I see a valid point here, however, some court rulings create binding precedents. As I understand it, those can be paywalled in PACER. Binding precedents are part of the law everyone within the relevant jurisdiction is required to obey, and it is unjust for any part of the law to not be freely available. It may be reasonable to put limits on free public access to records where there's a privacy concern.
      - eurleif 4mo ago
        At least within the federal court system, binding precedent is already freely available. Only circuit courts and SCOTUS can create binding precedent, and the opinions of those courts are freely available on their respective sites, outside of PACER. E.g., here's the 9th circuit: https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/decisions/opinions/ https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/decisions/opinions/
EMIRELADERO 4mo ago
Material that shouldn't be published for any reason is already subject to a sealing process. What else is needed?
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- anon373839 4mo ago
  Just one example: PII of third parties is frequently attached in evidence supporting motions. In theory, careful redaction should be done, but it isn't, and those third parties aren't around to assert their privacy interests.
  - p_j_w 4mo ago
    So wealthy people can go ahead and violate your privacy interests, but not really anyone else? I’m sorry, but this is a bad answer to the problem. The solution is to fix the redaction process, not to go with some awkward indirect solution that creates its own set of problems WITHOUT solving the original stated problem.
carlosjobim 4mo ago
In these cases a heavily redacted sentence is made public, and it is common in sensitive cases to keep the names of victims and/or witnesses concealed. Think crimes involving children and such.
- cindyllm 4mo ago
  [dead]
tptacek 4mo ago
That's orthogonal to PACER fees. There's already a system in place for redacting and sealing documents that aren't suitable for public consumption. To a first approximation, ~everything on PACER is available to anybody, for free, because the billing threshold (before which there's no charge) is pretty high.

monooso 4mo ago

Isn't that basically the same as saying court filings should be available, but not to poor people?

anon373839 4mo ago
No. Indigent users can already request fee exemptions, and that can be expanded. Access can be provided at courthouses and public libraries. (I don’t know if that is already a practice for PACER specifically, but it should be.)
- DangitBobby 4mo ago
  There's "can't afford" and "can't justify the expense". I'm certainly not poor and at basically no amount above free would I justify the expense. So any cost is completely unacceptable, especially given how much the public pays to produce these results. No more excuses, no more lame justifications, no more hiding.
- mjd 4mo ago
  PACER fees are waived if they are under $15 per quarter. That's about 150 pages of material.
  - BenjiWiebe 4mo ago
    $30/quarter, so ~300 pages. Also noticed that the fee is capped at $3/document, but I don't know how often a single document is longer then 30 pages.
    - mjd 4mo ago
      Thanks, I think they raised the limit in the last few years and I forgot. I have definitely gone over the limit for single documents in the past, although I've never been over the quarterly waiver limit. Judicial opinions and hearing trancripts often exceed 30 pages.
- calebio 4mo ago
  You can easily burn through hundreds of dollars researching one or two relatively small court cases. I don't think you should be indigent or go to the courthouse/public library to avoid spending hundreds of dollars for that small amount of research.
IncandescentGas 4mo ago
No. They should be available for legit use cases and not available for data scrapers who will use it to facilitate algorithmic housing and employment discrimination. Especially not available for scammers who make mugshot extortion websites.
- bsder 4mo ago
  Agreed. The issue isn't with individuals having access to the data but with aggregation of said data.

nonethewiser 4mo ago

Then why do you think they should be public?

anon373839 4mo ago
Because “publicly available with some friction” has a fundamentally different character than “indexed on Google/available to AI scrapers”. That type of information access wasn't even fathomable when the concept of public records was born. It enables a lot of uses where I would argue that the harms outweigh the benefits.
- fellowniusmonk 4mo ago
  Yeah, I think this is a bad take on the part of the EFF. The full dataset will be in private hands and available everywhere to everyone to do anything the moment this goes live. I protect data for a living, cost asymmetry and proof of work are really the only tools we have. If this goes live, the next time I get subpoenaed to testify for something I'm going to throw in so many random but couched accusations at people just to screw them over when the data goes live at scale via data brokers and torrent dumps. Bill Jones (accused in court testimony of killing puppies) is requesting the HOA get off of his back.
  - Zak 4mo ago
    I see a valid point here, however, some court rulings create binding precedents. As I understand it, those can be paywalled in PACER. Binding precedents are part of the law everyone within the relevant jurisdiction is required to obey, and it is unjust for any part of the law to not be freely available. It may be reasonable to put limits on free public access to records where there's a privacy concern.
    - eurleif 4mo ago
      At least within the federal court system, binding precedent is already freely available. Only circuit courts and SCOTUS can create binding precedent, and the opinions of those courts are freely available on their respective sites, outside of PACER. E.g., here's the 9th circuit: https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/decisions/opinions/ https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/decisions/opinions/

EMIRELADERO 4mo ago

Material that shouldn't be published for any reason is already subject to a sealing process. What else is needed?

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
anon373839 4mo ago
Just one example: PII of third parties is frequently attached in evidence supporting motions. In theory, careful redaction should be done, but it isn't, and those third parties aren't around to assert their privacy interests.
- p_j_w 4mo ago
  So wealthy people can go ahead and violate your privacy interests, but not really anyone else? I’m sorry, but this is a bad answer to the problem. The solution is to fix the redaction process, not to go with some awkward indirect solution that creates its own set of problems WITHOUT solving the original stated problem.

carlosjobim 4mo ago

In these cases a heavily redacted sentence is made public, and it is common in sensitive cases to keep the names of victims and/or witnesses concealed. Think crimes involving children and such.

cindyllm 4mo ago
[dead]

tptacek 4mo ago

That's orthogonal to PACER fees. There's already a system in place for redacting and sealing documents that aren't suitable for public consumption. To a first approximation, ~everything on PACER is available to anybody, for free, because the billing threshold (before which there's no charge) is pretty high.