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December 18, 2008Ms. Debra P. Hackett, Clerk of the CourtUnited States District Court for the Middle District of AlabamaPO Box 711Montgomery, Alabama 36101-0711
THIRD AND FINAL NOTICE
Dear Ms. Hackett:I am writing in the matter of the privacy audit of selected courts, including the UnitedStates District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. The preliminary audit was sentto the Honorable Mr. Du
f 
at the Administrative O
ce of the Courts by Federal Expresson October 3, 2008. I confirmed with Ms. Redmond of the Public Information O
cethe contents of this preliminary audit. The final audit was delivered, again by FederalExpress, on October 24, 2008.You will find enclosed a second copy for your convenience of the October 24 finalaudit, including a DVD containing both redacted and unredacted documents. I amassuming you havd received these materials promptly from the Administrative O
ce of the Courts on October 3 and October 24 given the extremely pressing nature of thematerials uncovered.As you are of course aware, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama is in substantial violation of the E-Government Act and the consequent Rulesand Practices promulgated by the Judicial Conference. These violations are non-trivial,including exposure of the medical records and social security numbers of minors,illegal identifying information such as birth dates and social security numbers for courtemployees and law enforcement o
cials, and numerous unredacted tax and otherforms.In the course of our audit, we examined 956,991 pages of documents made public bythe United States District Court for the MIddle District of Alabama. A total of 171problem documents were uncovered. In addition we provided for your convenience ananalysis by judge of these issues. As you can see in Figure 5 of the attacheddocument, 83% of the very numerous problems uncovered in your court can beattributed to 3 of the judges. As we note in our audit, case loads vary both in volumeand composition, so these “red flags” should be considered a first step for furtherinvestigation.
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Letter to the Clerk of the Middle District Court of Albama

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living4justiceleft a comment

It is absolutely absured that the Middle District court of Alabama could subject individuals' private information to exposure on thier public website without regard for the individual's privacy and the threat of identity theft and further consequences which await such exposure. As it stands it is egregiously careless of the court to not safeguard the private informaton of individuals as a matter of pactice and procedure, but they are also in violation of the Code of Alabama, 41-13-6, which prohibits the display of individual's personal social security numbers on documents available for public inspection. This is quite the oxymoron for our court system which is responsible for protecting and adjudicating the law to be found guilty of breaking the law, and doing so capriciously considering the number of times the Public Resource.Org has contacted them to request that they correct this problem. What? Do they think they can not be held accountable for this violaton?! Think again.
05 / 25 / 2009
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