Court Stays Cautious on Electronic Bail Checks
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Nine people, including one charged with murder, have applied for electronically monitored bail in the Waikato since it was introduced late last year, but only one application has been granted.
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Things just aren&#39;t going well for Timothy Scott Short. Just days after a pair of tech support calls he made to printer manufacturer Digimarc&#160;resulted in his arrest, he now finds himself on the receiving end of a data breach with his Social Security number and birthdate accidentally made public via the federal court&#39;s Electronic Case Files (ECF) system.It&#39;s an ironic development, because Short, 33, was arrested in connection with the Oct. 5 theft of a Missouri Department of Revenue printer and a PC containing data on as many as 500 state residents.Short&#39;s personal information was discovered by the IDG News Service, listed on a court document called a Criminal Case Cover Sheet, which was publicly available to users of the ECF system. Normally, this document should only be accessible to those involved in the case, but it appears to have been inadvertently made public, according to a clerk with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, who asked not to be identified because she was not authorized to speak with the press. &quot;It&#39;s something on our side,&quot; she said, adding that technical staff is now looking into the problem.The U.S. Judicial Conference, which sets policy for U.S. courts, has said that this kind of information should be removed from publicly available electronic court records, but actually removing all the sensitive information has proved difficult.&quot;If you went online to various court systems, you could find social security numbers of many individuals,&quot; said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. &quot;It&#39;s a really, really difficult question to answer, just because you&#39;re dealing with so many jurisdictions.&quot;Social Security numbers are the building blocks of identity theft crime because they can be used to secure credit cards. &quot;Any time you are placing Social Security numbers online, your are subjecting that person to identity theft,&quot; Stephens said.With the push to make public documents available online, other government databases have had similar problems. Earlier this year, the states of California and Colorado were forced to take their Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) databases offline after privacy advocates pointed out that the Social Security numbers and other data they contained could be misused by identity thieves.Short, however, may have bigger problems to worry about. He&#39;s facing $250,000 in fines and 10 years in prison on charges of possession of &quot;document-making implements&quot; in connection with the theft. He was arrested after U.S. Secret Service Special Agent John Bush recognized his voice in calls placed to a tech support line of the company that makes the stolen printer.&#160;
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Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot has ruled that the posting of sensitive data online by county and district clerks is illegal. But the clerks are fighting back by pushing for a state law that would allow them to continue to do so.
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By Dana M. Nichols, The Record, Stockton, Calif.  Jun. 4--SAN ANDREAS -- An obscure change in rules for federal courts soon might make it easier for the general public to find and obtain copies of local governments' electronic records, such as e-mail and even voice messages.
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A federal judge said Wednesday that she would not immediately dismiss charges against four men accused of distributing steroids to top athletes.
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(InfoWorld) - A California judge is likely to order a Berkeley city initiative back on the ballot because of local officials' mishandling of electronic voting machine data, a public-interest lawyer arguing the case said Friday. In a preliminary ruling Thursday, Judge Winifred Smith of the Alameda County Superior Court indicated she would nullify the defeat of a medical marijuana proposal in Berkeley in 2004 and order the measure put back on the ballot in a later election. A hearing on Friday morning in advance of a final ruling brought out nothing that indicated Smith would deviate from her preliminary decision, said attorney Gregory Luke, who is representing Americans for Safe Access. The medical-marijuana advocacy group is suing the county, assisted by the technology rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation. The case points to the dangers of electronic voting systems, which make it harder to ensure fair elections, Luke said. Electronic voting machines have been widely adopted in the U.S. since the disputed presidential election of 2000. Laws in California and some other states now require paper records of all votes, but the California law wasn't in place for the Berkeley election. Both sides argued their cases before Smith on Friday in a last-ditch hearing on the proposed sanctions, according to Luke. The hearing brought out nothing new that suggested Smith would change direction, he said. Americans for Free Access sought a recount of the vote on Measure R, which would have established procedures for opening marijuana dispensaries in Berkeley. It lost by fewer than 200 votes. A recount wasn't possible because the city didn't share the necessary voting records, in violation of election laws, Judge Smith ruled in April. In May,Â the county agreed to share some data. The county reused voting machines from Diebold Election Systems without saving sufficient data to carry out a recount or review the election process, Luke said. Officials failed to save key evidence even after the suit was pending, he said. Data from the vote in question has only been found on 20 of the hundreds of machines used in the election, according to Luke. In addition to ordering another vote on Measure R, Judge Smith's preliminary ruling called for the county to pay the $22,604 cost of the recount as well as attorney's fees and the cost of a trip to Diebold offices in Texas. Ordering a new vote is a rare move for a court, Luke said. "This is a very severe sanction. ... and it's warranted," he said Friday. Luke expects a final ruling in the case within two weeks. The county could appeal to a higher court if the ruling goes against it, he said. Attorneys for the county were not immediately available for comment.
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A lawsuit demanding touch-screen voting machines be made to produce paper records will not be heard until Oct. 18, a judge ruled Friday, raising doubts that any significant changes to the system used by about half of Florida's voters will happen before the election.
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The Justice Department is urging federal courts to make fundamental changes in access to electronic court files.
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Judge tells jury to continue deliberations after it issues note saying it is unable to reach verdict.
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The announcement yesterday by Attorney General John Ashcroft that the Justice Department had executed search warrants on five homes and one ISP in connection with alleged illegal copying and sharing of music and movie files didnât necessarily send
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The state will not be forced to create a paper record in case of recounts in elections on touch-screen voting machines, a federal judge ruled Monday.
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Deadline extended while the software maker waits for a ruling in Justice Department's antitrust case.
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A federal judge on Tuesday refused to accept a guilty plea from a former America Online employee accused of selling the Internet provider&#39;s customer list to a &quot;spammer,&quot; saying he was unsure a crime had been committed.
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A High Court judge says thousands of court claims for the return of overdraft charges should stay on hold.
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A US judge refuses to lower the $1million bail for a woman accused of stalking Catherine Zeta Jones.
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The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Wednesday that an Indiana law on voter identification prevented voters from having their ballots counted.
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A judge has delayed his ruling allowing felons to vote until after the Nov. 7 general election and until the state Supreme Court can review the issue.