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Hi, founder of Free Law Project here. Actually, the DOJ is the biggest PACER user and they pay a ton of money on PACER each year. Somebody FOIA'ed it a few years back, and it totals about $3-4M/year. https://free.law/pacer-facts/#what-if-i%E2%80%99m-a-governme...

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There is a difference between defense attorneys having to pay out of pocket (and being reimbursed a few years later) and the DOJ paying the bill for their prosecutors.

Yes, very true, thanks. Another interesting angle is how DOJ can subpoena tech co's for, say, location information, but defense attorneys can't. So if you want exculpatory data, you have fewer avenues for getting it. The deck is stacked in a lot of ways against the defense.

What prevents defense attorney's from accessing that data? Would it be possible for a defendant to download his own location history and use it?

Does the DOJ use RECAP? If not, could they be convinced to? It’s effectively free money for them to just push out the RECAP browser extension over a group policy to their entire user base.

That'd be a win, but to our knowledge, no.

I will put the ask forth. Thanks for the context.

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