Should traditional rules of public access apply, without modification, to electronic court records?
As public records become so readily available on the Internet, members of the court community and many others are debating the privacy concerns that have subsequently emerged. There is a sharp contrast between traveling to the courthouse and tediously examining mountains of paper records to obtain one piece of information and viewing these same records on a desktop computer with a click of a mouse.Two recognized experts in the privacy and public-access debate are Susan Larson and Lawrence Webster. Ms. Larson’s article “Public Access to Electronic Court Records and Competing Privacy Interest” (February 2001) and Mr. Webster’s presentation materials “Caught in Converging Technologies: The Modern Court Administrator and the Privacy/Access/Security Conundrum,” from the Sixth National Court Technology Conference (September 1999), provide excellent insight into this important issue.
