Court Records Should Be Free(eff.org) |
Court Records Should Be Free(eff.org) |
If congressional votes are private, you never REALLY know if your congressperson is actually voting in your best interests. You only see certain bills pass and if they are in your favor, you can probably make some assumptions if they voted or not.
If the votes are public, now EVERYONE can see who they voted for. That sounds great! Then you realize that lobbyists can also see who the congressperson voted for. Lobbyists that have a lot more money and influence than you do. Lobbyists that can hold back millions if the vote is against their interests.
My point isn't that one format isn't better than the other. My point is that there are "no solutions, only tradeoffs"
It is one thing for the records to be publicly available, as they must be. It is a very different thing for every speck of material in them to be instantly available to anyone, anywhere, worldwide, for any purpose.
Recap takes any PACER document you purchase and automatically adds it to CourtListener for others to see/download.
Hopefully it will become obsolete soon!
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
The full dataset will be in private hands and available everywhere to everyone to do anything the moment this goes live.
I protect data for a living, cost asymmetry and proof of work are really the only tools we have.
If this goes live, the next time I get subpoenaed to testify for something I'm going to throw in so many random but couched accusations at people just to screw them over when the data goes live at scale via data brokers and torrent dumps.
Bill Jones (accused in court testimony of killing puppies) is requesting the HOA get off of his back.