Comment by Irregardless | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Irregardless | Hacker News Reader

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I hate to rock the bandwagon, but this will accomplish nothing and it's pretty tactless. As rayiner has already pointed out, PACER is a source of court documents, not case law. 99% of the public would have no use for PACER documents even if they had completely free, open access. The people who truly have a legitimate need to access PACER documents are able to afford the fees, although that still doesn't mean the current fee structure is justified or fair.

Many lawyers who use PACER also rely heavily on the fact that it's updated almost immediately -- a project like this could never accomplish that, and could lead to malpractice if used in its place. For example, you can't sue people for certain things if they've declared bankruptcy, so you need a reliable, up-to-date way to verify they haven't (a common strategy is to wait until the last minute to file bankruptcy just to delay legal proceedings).

What's worse is that this project seems to be encouraging some kind of witch hunt:

> Now he wants to make "every U.S. Attorney and AUSA's full career as a prosecutor available to the public to examine in its entirety." So those are the links queued up in Project Asymptote.

That's how you want to honor Aaron? By using PACER and an army of volunteers to pursue someone's personal vendetta? I can't even begin to describe how tasteless that is; to take one of Aaron's projects and turn it into some kind of misguided inquisition, then call it a "poetic tribute to Aaron Swartz's memory".

If you really want to make court documents available to everyone for free, then do that. Don't use Aaron as an excuse to target US prosecutors.

> 99% of the public wouldn't know what to do with PACER

99% of the public wouldn't know what to do with the YouTube API[1] but the fact that it's readily accessible means the 1% can do interesting things for the 99%. Don't be so presumptuous about the value of this information being freely available. Neither you nor I can envision all of the possible use cases.

[1] Replace with government data, open source code, etc.

My point was that PACER documents are not inherently useful to the public -- edited to make that more clear.

Several people have already pointed out that there are also malicious uses for this data that could negatively impact normal people. Do you want all your neighbors and potential employers to know you've filed for bankruptcy? And would you want to give them completely open access to all court filings in your name?

>Do you want all your neighbors and potential employers to know you've filed for bankruptcy? And would you want to give them completely open access to all court filings in your name?

Isn't that a completely separate question? You can argue that things like that should be sealed, but if they're not sealed then they're a matter of public record and the government should publish them for free on the internet.

> Do you want all your neighbors and potential employers to know you've filed for bankruptcy? And would you want to give them completely open access to all court filings in your name?

Yes. Isn't this supposed to be public information? Corporations know more about us from our credit rating and other private DBs than this information.

> Do you want all your neighbors and potential employers to know you've filed for bankruptcy?

That's a fair point and I certainly wouldn't but that's really a different matter as AnthonyMouse pointed out. My personal opinion is that I don't want this data readily accessible but I do see value in it being so.

We don't really know that they're not inherently useful to the public, though. As parent points out, there may be use cases that only become feasible once the information is freely available.

That's how you want to honor Aaron? By using PACER and an army of volunteers to pursue someone's personal vendetta? I can't even begin to describe how tasteless that is; to take one of Aaron's projects and turn it into some kind of misguided inquisition, then call it a "poetic tribute to Aaron Swartz's memory".

I don't know who you are, but I'm pretty sure Aaron Greenspan was a personal friend of Aaron Swartz, who hosted a lot of people who came from out of town to Aaron's memorial service.

I don't think making public officials' public records public in order to make them accountable to the public is "tasteless" or a "witch hunt" or a "vendetta"; it's the kind of transparency that is basic to a democracy. Aaron Swartz spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours doing just that.

99% of the public wouldn't know what to do with PACER even if they had completely free, open access

You could say the same about having free open access to your server's source code though.

Not really as a lot of the PACER content relates to matters -- divorce, custody disputes, etc -- that is of no direct interest to you. Unlike your server source code.

Who's to say what you're interested in. Most people would not know what to do with either PACER content or server source code, but in the hands of someone that does know what to do both are quite valuable. We have the ability for all this information to be free, I don't see why it shouldn't be taken advantage of.

We are talking about divorce cases (amongst other things). These should be private matters and there is no public benefit in this being made available for free via Google. To take your argument to its natural conclusion, all your interactions with publicly funded entities should be freely available as well. For example, maybe your medical records, your school transcripts, transcripts of complaints made to police about you, etc.

I think most people who are lionising Aaron's efforts in "freeing" the PACER data really do so because they are in love with an idea rather than because of any considered assessment of the value (and harm) that this content could bring if made freely available.

Again, who's to say what's useful? They're not private matters by rule, it's all public record. I could think of a bunch of uses for the data.

I don't have any problem with public record actually being public (and I do have a problem with public records that aren't actually public). Medical records and school transcripts are not public records. 911 calls are public, but you have to know how to request them and that usually means they aren't released unless it's a newsworthy story and a local media outlet jumps through the hoop. Visitor logs should be public (like they are for the White House). You can request anyone's FBI file after they die, but that system could be quite a bit more efficient.

The fundamental question is who decides what is a public record and what is not? Why are your medical records private but your ex-wife's court-room accusations that you were sexually promiscuous, impotent, or secretly homosexual to be considered public records that must be "freed"?

Are you really asking this? The answer is obvious--the law. If you are offended that court records are public, start lobbying to get a bill passed that protects them. Healthcare has HIPAA which is why medical records are private.

This seems pretty analogous to Facebook's Timeline and Graph Search features: once released, everyone is outraged over privacy implications, though the information was always there if you wanted to find it.

It's the difference between 'free to all' and 'free to anyone willing to spend $0.10/page'. It may make it harder for someone to exploit, but it is a false sense of security.

I agree.

It would be better of this content was anonymised so that it cannot be associated with the participants since the names of the people involved are, for the most part, irrelevant to lawyers who need to read this content.

As for the costs, then charging for it does provide a barrier to entry that would hopefully dissuade people from using it for nefarious purposes. A better model would be to recognise that the 'owners' of this content are the people involved in the case and perhaps allow them to license the content of their case and derive income from when it is used. This would address a large number of issues that exist with this system, including privacy.

PACER is the federal system of records. Divorce and family law matters, by contrast, are filed in state court.

Some state court systems provide excellent access to dockets and documents (WI); others have access policies that make PACER's look open (UT).

Aren't there some important cases in family law that would need to be referenced by a self-represented litigant?

PACER content relating to divorces, custody etc are no interest to me, but would be to a lawyer working in that field.

Divorces typically cost thousands of whatever currency you're in, and are a long drawn out painful process even where there is no animosity between the parties.

Making the raw materials that lawyers need to work with free as in beer as well as free as in speech will reduce the barriers to entry, bringing down costs and times, and letting people get on with their lives.

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