Public input sought on access to court records

BANGOR – A judicial task force considering how to allow public access to electronic court records while balancing concerns for public privacy and safety will seek input from the public beginning next week.

The Judicial Branch Task Force on Electronic Court Records Access or TECRA will hold six hearings during the next month.

Although court records in Maine now are not available on the Internet, the task force was formed to look at the issue and propose a policy that can be in place when court information is available online, Maine Superior Court Justice Andrew Mead said Friday.

“We suspect we know what the public concerns are, but we don’t know for certain,” he said. “Someone could suggest something that we’ve never thought of.”

The 20-member task force includes judges, attorneys, journalists, private investigators, legislators and victim advocates. Its report is due in May.

“TECRA is dealing with two powerful rights: the right to access to public information and the right of private individuals to keep personal information confidential,” Zachary L. Heiden, staff attorney for the Maine Civil Liberties Union and task force member, said Friday. “Government aggregation and dissemination of personal information is a great threat to our personal privacy and our individual liberty, one of the greatest that we face today.”

The two biggest concerns that have emerged, Mead said Friday, are concerns for the safety and privacy of individuals involved in civil and criminal matters. Domestic violence victims don’t want their addresses accessible, the justice said. Advocates have urged that the names of children who have been sexually abused not be available to protect them from becoming victims again.

Whether all the information now available in court documents such as names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers should be available electronically also is being considered, Mead said.

Journalist Mal Leary, president of the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition and task force member, said Friday that the group should not create separate policies for paper and electronic records. The same information that can be read in a paper document at a court clerk’s office should be available electronically, he said.

“One of my big concerns is that an electronic record and paper record should be the same,” Leary said. “Why make a distinction between them? It should be that a public record is a public record is a public record.”

The Augusta-based journalist also pointed out that judges have the power to seal information they decide should not be made public. Other information, such as birth dates, are routinely redacted or removed from court documents in federal court, he said.

One of the distinctions the group is wrestling with, according to Mead, is that the Internet “broadcasts” information and provides worldwide access while going to the clerk’s office requires some effort.

“Individuals file all sorts of information with the government with the knowledge that the information may not be kept secret but with the understanding that the information is not going to be broadcast around the world on the Internet,” Heiden said.

Mead and Leary agreed that the state is a long way from having court information available on the Internet. Computers throughout the judicial system are not networked with one another, so it is impossible to tell if a defendant facing charges in one county has charges pending in another. There also is no integration between county jails and the Department of Corrections that oversees the state prison system.

Judges have said that internal communication should be improved before information is made available to the public via the Internet.

“The reality is, it’s going to take a lot of resource for our court system to become part of the computer age,” Leary said, “but in the long run, it will save the taxpayers money.”

The task force also is accepting comment from the public via e-mail at courts.tecra@

maine.gov.

The task force’s public hearings are scheduled for:

. 9 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 21, at District Court in Portland.

. 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 21, at District Court in Augusta.

. 9 a.m. Thursday, Dec. 30, at District Court in Bangor.

. 10:30 a.m. Monday, Jan. 3, at District Court in Farmington.

. 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 13, at District Court in Houlton.

. 9 a.m. Friday, Jan. 14, at Hancock County Superior Court in Ellsworth.