The federal judiciary has backed down from ideas about banning public records from appearing on an online crime news site, ending a three-month battle between federal judges and APBNews.com over whether the judges' financial disclosure records should be posted online.
The judges' committee may have had a little sunshine blown into the right place - in February, Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the Supreme Court denounced the blockage and sent a six-page letter to the committee. The judges had argued that disclosure could stir security risks. "There are a large number of judges who feel strongly about security issues raised by financial disclosure," Rehnquist said in that letter. "But I also note that although Judicial Conference Committees fulfill a number of roles for the conference, they generally are not rule-making or policy-making bodies."
APBNews chief operating officer Mark Sauter says this will make federal judges more accountable to the public. "Many civil libertarians and many plain old citizens who have to appear before the judges should be excited about this decision," he tells CNET. But it's also a moral triumph for APBNews itself - the online crime news service is only nine months old.
APBNews will continue, however, with a lawsuit against the federal judges, questioning other practices like forcing news organizations to pay for public documents, CNET says.
APBNews expects now to post over 12,000 pages of federal judges' disclosure records online, including all active and semi-retired judges.
The battle began last fall, when APBNews asked for the financial disclosure records. That request was turned down, despite similar documents being given to the print media. However, the 1996 Electronic Freedom of Information Act mandates that federal records must be available to everyone once they become public.
