Monday, December 28, 2009

09-12-28 Filed paper for review by comptuer science/legal scholars - in re PACER and CM/ECF

[] CM/ECF LogoAdministrative Office of the U.S. Courts: PACER Service Center


Notice of Electronic Filing (NEF) of the United States Courts

Computerized infrastructure, a massive project, newly concluded at the United States courts established dual docketing/access systems – PACER & CM/ECF, separate and unequal digital litigation environments, where parties are arbitrarily segregated. It enabled widespread schemes to deprive persons of liberty and property, and undermined the integrity of banking institutions and financial markets. Examples are provided, which demonstrate the urgent need for publicly accountable validation (certified functional logic verification) of case management systems (CMSs) at the courts. 




Notice of Electronic Filing (NEF) (Figure 1) is part of the system established by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts [1] through the dual docketing and access systems of PACER [2] & CM/ECF.[3] [4] NEFs provide the authentication of the service [5] of an electronically-filed papers by parties, and also – the authentication of service of the electronically-filed orders and judgments of the courts. However, NEFs are electronically provided only upon attorneys, who have been permitted by the court to participate in electronic filing in CM/ECF in a given case. Therefore, for permitted parties, the NEF replaced the traditional certificate of service or proof of service. Likewise, the graphic hand-signatures in traditional certificates of service (Figure 2) were replaced in NEFs by digital signatures, which visibly appear as RSA [6] encrypted alphanumeric strings (Figure 1). Therefore, an NEF bearing a valid RSA-encryption is today the critical instrument, which provides the authentication of court papers - as such that should be given "full faith and credit".[7] However, access to this critical instrument is restricted only to those permitted   access to CM/ECF, the NEFs were omitted from PACER – the public access system. In practice – such set up amounted to redaction from all publicly accessible United States courts papers any evidence of authentication. This and other features of the dual systems do not lend themselves to any plausible explanation that is consistent with honest conduct, consistent with due process of the law in United States courts.  It is further claimed that conditions, which were thus established, amounted to two separate and unequal digital litigation environments, where parties were arbitrarily segregated, with no authority at all.  Such segregation created the computerized infrastructure, which was routinely used by US courts to deprive persons of liberty and property (Figures 3,4), to undermine the integrity of the US banking system and financial institutions (Figures 5, 6).[8] 




 

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