Oxymoron of the Day: Sealed ‘Public’ Records

A proliferation of court records online on PACER—the pay-per-page portal run by the courts—-and smartphones have made it easier for criminal gangs to find files that could expose cooperators, according to judges and lawyers.

“Anonymous remote public access to PACER is a source of much of the information that gets into prisons about who is cooperating,” U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan of Manhattan told the Judicial Conference’s criminal rules committee in April, citing anecdotal and other evidence.

Federal inmates are restricted from accessing PACER themselves, but it is easy for them to ask people outside the prison to search the online system and report the information back into the prison by phone, according to judges.

Forgive my cynicism, but I’m sure that there’s no ulterior motive here.

//////////