{"id":23850,"date":"2014-09-14T08:34:18","date_gmt":"2014-09-14T12:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=23850"},"modified":"2014-09-14T08:34:18","modified_gmt":"2014-09-14T12:34:18","slug":"its-easier-to-rewrite-history-if-you-delete-the-actual-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=23850","title":{"rendered":"It’s Easier To Rewrite History If You Delete The Actual Records"},"content":{"rendered":"

I never thought I would agree with Patrick Leahy<\/a> {Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman<\/a> Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont<\/a>)}, but in this case he is absolutely right. Eastman’s Online Geneology Newsletter<\/a> posted an article yesterday about Senator Leahy’s fight to preserve court records that have recently been erased by the government due to a computer update.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

\u201cWholesale removal of thousands of cases from PACER<\/a>, particularly from four of our federal courts of appeals<\/a>, will severely limit access to information not only for legal practitioners, but also for legal scholars, historians, journalists, and private litigants for whom PACER has become the go-to source for most court filings,\u201d Leahy wrote Friday to US District Judge<\/a> John D. Bates<\/a>, the director of the Administrative Office of the Courts (AO).<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span>A spokesperson for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts<\/a> said the removals were due to technical differences between the archives maintained by local courts and a new electronic case file system being adopted by the judiciary. The documents are still available on paper but were deleted from online access \u201cwithout any warning to the public, and without prior notification or consultation with Congress,\u201d according to Senator Leahy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This may be a totally innocent event, but it is an example of how history can easily be rewritten because so much of our records are digital. When information was in printed books, revising that information was more complicated than it is today. The downside of record books is that there was a period in American history<\/a> when courthouses would catch fire, burn quickly because of all the records in them, and those records would be lost. Now, in the electronic age, we face the challenge of losing electronic records<\/a> because the electronic platforms change. When was the last time you watched a videotape rather than a DVD?<\/p>\n

Thank you, Senator Leahy, for trying to save the deleted records. I am sure there will be many lawyers and genealogists who will be grateful for your efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I never thought I would agree with Patrick Leahy {Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont)}, but in this case he is absolutely right. Eastman’s Online Geneology Newsletter posted an article yesterday about Senator Leahy’s fight to preserve court records … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8100,8098,8099,2488,3619,1455,2444],"class_list":["post-23850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-john-d-bates","tag-leahy","tag-pacer","tag-patrick-leahy","tag-united-states-district-court","tag-united-states-senate-committee-on-the-judiciary","tag-vermont"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23851,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23850\/revisions\/23851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}