Photo:
Getty Images/iStockphoto
Most courts of law have finally entered the computer age. Until recently, every case produced a mountain of papers that were eventually physically archived deep in the subterranean bowels of a courthouse. Now many courts require lawsuits to be filed online, where court papers are archived on publicly accessible websites. It’s all very convenient, but the convenience comes with a downside: Sensitive personal information and documents—including medical, psychiatric and financial records—are forever accessible to anyone with access to the internet.
Every court system has its own website. Most make it easy to determine who has been a party to a lawsuit. Searching by name will often lead directly to case dockets and papers that can be easily opened and downloaded. These records are typically unencrypted. They aren’t protected by modern data safeguards like two-factor authentication, such as you might find on a bank website. Accessing sensitive information filed as part of a case generally requires no permission or notice to the court, parties or attorneys. At most, the searcher may have to prove that he isn’t a robot by answering captcha questions.
Before electronic court filing, confidentiality was of little concern. There was no central or organized index of files, other than logs—often handwritten—of cases filed in a particular courthouse. Those lists could be viewed only by visiting the clerk’s office for the right court in the right county. Once physically present in the building, a researcher would have to do a line-by-line search of case filings in dozens, if not hundreds, of massive logbooks. Since these were logged in chronological order, there was no easy way to locate someone’s lawsuits. If a case was identified, the physical file, assuming it wasn’t destroyed or misfiled, would have to be located and retrieved by a court clerk. It would have to be reviewed in the courthouse during business hours. The inefficiency of that system and magnitude of the effort necessary to locate a…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RSSOpinion…