Free Pacer Sites Shut Down After Mass Download by Open Records Advocate
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A trial of free Pacer service at 17 public libraries shut down last fall after public records advocates downloaded an estimated 20 percent of the entire database.
At the time, an official from the Government Printing Office told librarians that Pacer security had been compromised and the FBI was conducting an investigation, the New York Times reports. A government notice said the program was suspended “pending an evaluation.”
Aaron Swartz, a 22-year-old Stanford dropout, did the mass download from Pacer at the behest of open records advocate Carl Malamud, who wants to make the court documents available for free on the Internet, the story says. Last year, Malamud used $600,000 in contributions to buy and post 50 years of federal appellate papers. Now he wants to post lower court records.
