Sharing and Highlighting

We learned via an article and video report from KSAT television news in San Antonio, Texas titled “Enormous justice system gap closed, allowing courts to communicate better” about a new system in Bexar County, Texas to make “firearm bans now more visible to more judges”. 

A Couple of Good Mobile Court Apps

Our friends in the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department have developed a couple of simple and easy to use court apps.  They are available in English and Arabic on the Apple App Store so you can download them to see how they work?

ODR 2019 Conference Agenda Released

The Online Dispute Resolution Forum  (https://www.ncsc.org/odr2019 ) agenda has been released and is shown below.  The conference will be held from October 28-30 with a special pre-conference event on October 28 in the home of the NCSC, Williamsburg Virginia.

The agenda includes reports and lessons from the real-world application of ODR in the courts both in the USA and internationally.  The agenda looks great!

Click here for registration.

2019 State Court E-Filing Program Status List

We compiled the following list of court E-filing program links in August 2019.  This is an update to the list we created in 2016.  We found information for every state and territory except Oklahoma and American Samoa.  Congratulations to all the courts for their
hard work.

Improving-Child-Support-Enforcement Outcomes with ODR in Michigan

https://www.miottawa.org/aboutottawa.htm

Our NCSC KIS group recently posted one of our "Trends" articles by Kevin Bowling and Jannell Challa of the Michigan 20th Circuit Court along with NCSC colleague, Di Graski on how ODR facilitated communications to improve child support outcomes for the participants and the court (PDF).  Please read more about this significant achievement below:

Punchline – Google Edition – And an Idea

This is a short note today due to travel regarding a CBS News report titled “CBS News investigation finds fraudulent court orders used to change Google search results” from July 25, 2019.  The report explained that:

“A Google search can reveal negative information about anyone or any company. Since it's difficult to change those results, many small businesses are paying thousands to so-called reputation management companies to make negative web pages disappear.”

They further explained:

“One of the only ways to get Google to permanently remove a link from its search results is with a court order from a judge. CBS News sorted through thousands of these court orders and spotted small businesses from all across America trying to clean up their reputations. But we also spotted a problem: Dozens of the court documents were fakes.”

If you get a chance to watch the video it shows that the fraudsters simply cut and pasted images of the court stamps and judges signatures.  Thus here is yet another example of how the authentication method of signatures and blue rubber stamps is outdated. 

We have posted many articles on this type of problem before. But, I want to offer another idea?  Why not set up a new “verified electronic copy” service with fees that Google and others could pay to the court to receive a verified copy … with ideally an electronic signature.  The fee would very likely be passed along by Google to the persons/companies who legitimately should have their web page/link removed.  And of course, the fee rule could allow for the court to issue a waver.

So accurate information, problems for the fraudsters, and fee to help courts pay for the service.  What’s not to like?

This and That in Court Tech - July 2019

http://bit.ly/2O0gxGA

This month’s summer basket of Court Technology news includes the CTC 2019 agenda announcement, Arizona’s new eAccess Online Portal, a note on savings created by the use of the Florida E-Filing Portal, an award for the Pennsylvania Court Guardianship technology program, a report for the England and Wales courts on legal technology, and a tutorial on how to use Microsoft Office 365’s e-discovery tools.

Virginia Public Access to Court Records Grows

Virginia State Capitol buildings

Thanks to some articles on Medium.com we learned that the Virginia courts have opened court records to online access and bulk download last week.  This follows years of litigation from news media organizations that resulted in a Virginia Supreme Court ruling in 2017 denying access.  However, in the interim political pressure resulted in first the Virginia Supreme Court announced on January 23, 2018, that they would “promulgate a court rule concerning public access to judiciary records on or before December 1, 2018, and later legislation requiring that “bulk data” be made available.

Free Security Awareness Kit

With the news of the Georgia Administrative Office of the Court's ransomware attack, I thought that it would be best to pass along Brian Krebs message about the free security awareness campaign for your staff.  You can access the Information Security Institute (InfoSec) “Marine Lowlifes Campaign Kit” (get it… dangerous phish?) here. 

There is also an introduction video to view to see what they are providing.  Be safe.

US Federal Judiciary Creates Public User Group for PACER

Via press release on June 26, 2019: The Federal Judiciary has created and is seeking members for a public user group to provide advice and feedback on ways to improve its electronic public access services. The Electronic Public Access (EPA) Public User Group membership will be selected from interested applicants who represent the legal sector, media, academia, government agencies, the public, and other entities that use the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system to access federal court records. The group will allow for the exchange of information about issues experienced by users, and it will recommend ideas for expanding and improving services.