Providing electronic access to court records has been a long-term, complicated process, court officials say, and is being phased in in stages.
State prosecutors, public defenders and law enforcement officials now are able to view court records online, according to Doug Bakke, chief deputy clerk over court operations in Hillsborough County. The next step will be for private lawyers and “pro se” litigants, or people who represent themselves in court, to have access to their case documents.
Bakke said the goal is for the public to be able to view certain kinds of documents online by the second quarter of next year. The change is requiring a lot of testing and configuration of the computer network and case management system, Bakke said. The courts moved from three different case management systems to one.
Bakke said officials also phased in different kinds of court records, adding new users as dictated by the type of records. For example, they started with mental health cases. State attorneys have little involvement in those kinds of cases, so they were not given access. But public defenders were allowed to view the cases because they sometimes handle them.
When felony misdemeanor cases were added to the system, law enforcement agencies were given expanded access, Bakke said.
Registered users will be given remote access to some juvenile, family and probate records on request. Anonymous users will not have any access to those records.
Bakke said he expects most civil lawsuits to be automatically run through redaction software, which hides sensitive information such as Social Security numbers, and be readily viewable to the general public. Other documents will be redacted when someone asks to view them and will be viewable to anyone else once that’s done. Bakke said he doesn’t know long it will take to view a document after it’s requested, saying that will depend on the number of requests.
There will be two different types of access for members of the general public - anonymous and registered.
People who register for an account and provide certain information to the courts will have a slightly greater level of access to some records.
For several years, the courts have granted online access to documents on a limited number of criminal cases designated by the chief judge as “high profile.”
Bakke said he expects the process for determining high profile cases will expand to allow online access to more criminal case documents.
As online access becomes real, one of the biggest concerns is the possibility of inadvertent release of confidential information.
There are 22 categories of information required to be stricken from any court record before it is publicly released. These include Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, drivers license numbers, passport numbers, email addresses and telephone numbers.
Court clerks have the obligation to keep those types of information confidential, said Dale Bohner, legal counsel to the Hillsborough County Clerk. And those who file documents with the court, including attorneys and people representing themselves, are obligated to notify clerks of the presence and location of confidential information. Filers are also required to minimize the amount of confidential information in the documents.
So who is responsible if someone’s Social Security number, for example, is mistakenly made public?
That’s a question being hashed out now.
The organization representing court clerks in the state is asking the state bar to require lawyers to indemnify clerks if the attorneys fail to notify them of confidential information in documents and that information is later released.
The stakes are fairly high, as county clerks can be sued for up to $200,000 in damages. “It is substantial,’’ Bohner said. It would result in “public funds being diverted to pay plaintiffs for damage.”
Lawyers are also having to learn more about technology than they may have expected. The bar recently notified attorneys they’re responsible for stripping confidential information contained in metadata for electronically filed documents. The bar was referring to a layer of background data not readily visible that contains information like when a document was created and any changes that were made. If the information is left intact, tech-savvy individuals could gain access.
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