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Group claims security flaw in federal courts’ online filing system

The federal courts’ system for electronic filing and access to case dockets contains a serious security flaw that could be exploited by hackers, according to a group devoted to making judicial records available for free on the internet.

The Free Law Project disclosed the existence of the security issue publicly in a blog post Monday afternoon but did not provide details about the problem with the online Public Access to Court Electronic Records/Electronic Court Filing system, better known to lawyers, journalists and court personnel as PACER/ECF.

“We run a service that helps academics and journalists gather content from PACER,” the project’s Michael Lissner said in a statement Tuesday. “As part of this work, we discovered a major vulnerability that we reported directly to the Administrative Office of the Courts. We hope they’ll urgently provide a fix for this issue so that PACER/ECF can be a secure tool for its many users.”

Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts spokesman Charles Hall declined to comment Tuesday on the reported flaw. “As a matter of practice, we don’t comment on alleged or potential IT security threats,” he told POLITICO.

Different federal courts operate different versions of the PACER/ECF software. It was not immediately clear if the issue flagged by the Free Law Project afflicts all the extant versions.

The Free Law Project and officials overseeing PACER have been at odds for years, due in part to the nonprofit group’s promotion of a tool that automatically transfers downloaded court documents into a public database, undercutting the estimated $145 million in fees the system generates every year for the courts. Some court websites contain warnings not to use the Free Law-sponsored plug-in, known as RECAP.

Despite those warnings, a source involved with the project said dealings with the courts’ administrative arm have been cordial in recent years.

“We’ve had, actually, a pretty respectful relationship,” the source said.

The federal court system is also facing lawsuits over claims that PACER erroneously charges users for more data than they actually receive and over claims that the fee structure is set too high, making the system a profit center in a way the law does not permit.

Last month, a federal judge in the nation’s capital certified a class action in a lawsuit alleging that the government is charging millions more than is needed to operate the system.