Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Free Law Project ⚖ Profile picture
@FreeLawProject
May 25, 2021 • 11 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
Scrolly
The judicial branch commissioned @18F to do an 11-week study of PACER/CM/ECF. The result is a monumental leap forward in the effort to fix the PACER problem. Finally, we have some details about what's happening with this vital resource. A few notes…
First, if you're in the legal, technology, or government space, you should read this thing. From technology to contracting to how PACER/CM/ECF works, we've never seen so many best practices in one place. Dip this document in bronze so it'll last forever: free.law/pdf/pacer-path…
Now, some highlights (but go read it!). First, the bottom line: "The judiciary should build a new system."
"There is the potential for many cybersecurity vulnerabilities."
CM/ECF is in maintenance mode and has been for two years. The backlog has 15,000 requirements and bug fixes.
Delivering a new feature take "years and requires work by hundreds of people." 🤯
There was a partial outage over the weekend that took down "almost 100 court systems."
It takes years of experience for admins to become comfortable with their version of CM/ECF due to the number of customizations and local modifications.
There are thousands of customizations a court can make to their installation of CM/ECF/PACER.
One representative module of CM/ECF consists of 1,100 perl scripts and it's so complex they can't really touch it anymore.
We can go on like this all day — The document is a marvel. But the bottom line is that a new system must be built and the sooner the better. The current one was great for its time, but is now a complete disaster waiting to either fall apart or explode into pieces.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Free Law Project ⚖

Free Law Project ⚖ Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @FreeLawProject

Free Law Project ⚖ Profile picture
Feb 12, 2022
We just deleted thousands of court records from our servers because the PACER fee schedule is an unethical racket. A few words in a weekend thread....
We scraped these records for a researcher using a fee waiver they got. According to the fee schedule, any content that you get while using such a waiver cannot be shared. This is the extremely absurd official policy: A screenshot of the fee schedule, stating that, "If the
So what happens is first we download the content, then instead of sharing it with the public, we delete it.

Once, in a fit of honesty, a high-level member of the AO explained that the reason for this was because otherwise it would undermine the fee schedule.🤯
Read 7 tweets
Free Law Project ⚖ Profile picture
Dec 2, 2021
There's a lot going on with this bill to enhance judicial security. The Senate Judiciary Committee just voted on it and, yeah, no politician is going to vote against a bill literally named after a judge's horrifically murdered son. But there's cause for concern here. 1/
We'd hoped not to get involved with this bill, but it affects us directly. It makes it illegal for a site like CourtListener to post certain kinds of information about judges online. We'd have to start taking down information if this passed (or fighting @uscourts in court). 2/
If that sounds like a #1A violation to you, you'd find yourself on a lonely podium. The bill is being pushed by @uscourts, is endorsed by the American Bar Association, and the major associations for judges. It gained half a dozen co-sponsors in the Senate today. 3/
Read 7 tweets
Free Law Project ⚖ Profile picture
Oct 14, 2021
Today is a two-steps-forward-one-step-back day for the Judiciary. They finally took our 2017 advice and established a policy for good guys to report security problems in their websites. This is really good — in principle, anyway. uscourts.gov/news/2021/10/1…
The general idea is that online systems are always under attack, so you want to encourage good hackers by saying things like:
1. These are the rules for trying to break our stuff
2. If you break those rules, here's what we'll do
3. If you don't break those rules, you're a friend
Sometimes you even have a "bug bounty," where you say, "If you find a problem and tell us, we'll give you money." Most of the Internet giants do this. Some will pay LOTS of money for a vulnerability. Great. Our policy is here: free.law/vulnerability-…
Read 10 tweets
Free Law Project ⚖ Profile picture
Sep 28, 2021
Four years in the making, today we are announcing a new one-of-a-kind database containing the investment and conflict information for every federal judge. Spanning 17 years, this database was extracted from over 250,000 pages of judicial financial records. free.law/2021/09/28/ann…
In tandem with developing this new data, we collaborated with a team of investigative journalists at The Wall Street Journal.

They spent the past several months diving into the data. The first of their groundbreaking reports is out today: wsj.com/articles/131-f…
To build this database, we collected over 27,000 financial disclosure forms filed by federal judges, magistrates, and justices. We are releasing over 1.5M investment transactions, 29,000 reimbursements, 1,700 gifts, and more. Details here: courtlistener.com/coverage/finan…
Read 11 tweets
Free Law Project ⚖ Profile picture
May 26, 2021
Big new feature today: Tagging! You can now use tags on CourtListener to create private or public collections of dockets! courtlistener.com/help/tags/
We plan to allow you to tag documents or other resources soon. At launch you can tag dockets however you please, and then create detailed webpages for your tags. The help text has the details: courtlistener.com/help/tags/
In addition to this great new feature, we've got a few bonus features. First, CourtListener just got faster. You should notice it a bit, particularly on slower connections.
Read 7 tweets
Free Law Project ⚖ Profile picture
Sep 15, 2020
The House Judicial Committee just came out strongly in favor of the "Free PACER" bill. The quotes are just incredible. We'll put some here....
Nadler: "Judiciary records systems have long lagged behind modern standards of accessibility and openness."

"It is a disservice that in today's digital age the public's access to public records and public proceedings is so resource-intensive and burdensome."
More Nadler: "This does not reflect the modern standards the public deserves"

"it is indfensible that the public must pay fees...to know what is happening in their own courts."
Read 14 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(