Sunday, August 31, 2014

FOIA: PACER, federal courts' records site, deleting old records

Such are the perils of the digital age and our collective memory. The one thing that should be available for a very long time, the nation's court records, are now being deleted in some jurisdictions from the federal courts' PACER database.

(We can have a long discussion later about whether court records delivered digitally should be charged the usurious price of 8 cents a page.)

Together with efforts to broaden expungement of criminal records in some states, I fear we every so steadily are being overtaken by the philosophy of presentism, a dangerous thing.

Update 9/19:
Ars Technica reports the courts will restore the documents. 

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