Tag Archive for: Courts

Russian hack brings changes to courts | US

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PHILADELPHIA – Trial lawyer Robert Fisher is handling one of America’s most prominent counterintelligence cases, defending an MIT scientist charged with secretly helping China. But how he’ll handle the logistics of the case could feel old school: Under new court rules, he’ll have to print out any highly sensitive documents and hand-deliver them to the courthouse.

Until recently, even the most secretive material – about wiretaps, witnesses and national security concerns – could be filed electronically. But that changed after the massive Russian hacking campaign that breached the U.S. court system’s electronic case files and those of scores of other federal agencies and private companies.

The new rules for filing sensitive documents are one of the clearest ways the hack has affected the court system. But the full impact remains unknown. Hackers probably gained access to the vast trove of confidential information hidden in sealed documents, including trade secrets, espionage targets, whistleblower reports and arrest warrants. It could take years to learn what information was obtained and what hackers are doing with it.

It’s also not clear that the intrusion has been stopped, prompting the rules on paper filings. Those documents are now uploaded to a stand-alone computer at the courthouse – one not connected to the network or internet. That means lawyers cannot access the documents from outside the courthouse.

Fisher is defending Gang Chen, a nanotechnology researcher fighting charges that he defrauded the U.S.

“It would be cumbersome if we do have to start filing pleadings during the litigation on paper. That’s going to be more difficult,” Fisher said. “Particularly during COVID. Most of us are working from home.”

The Russian intrusion through the SolarWinds software has President Joe Biden in an early tussle with his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin, and U.S. senators are worried about the “grave risk” to U.S. intelligence.

The Administrative Office of U.S. Courts confirmed the court system breach on Jan. 6, joining a victims’ list that includes the State Department, the National Institutes of Health, tech companies and an unknown…

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Texas courts sign $98M contract with Tyler Technologies for case filing

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Written by Benjamin Freed
Jan 25, 2021 | STATESCOOP

Tyler Technologies, a major seller of government software, announced last week a new five-year contract with the Texas court system to run its electronic filing services.

The agreement, worth $98 million, is the largest in Tyler’s corporate history, and will keep the company as the e-filing vendor for criminal and civil courts across all of Texas’ 254 counties through at least 2027. The Texas Office of Court Administration has partnered with Tyler since 2012, when the state first implemented its e-filing requirements, which went statewide for civil cases in 2015 and for criminal proceedings in 2019.

Tyler’s initial contract was due to expire in 2022. The five-year agreement announced last week also includes an option to extend the e-filing system another five years through 2032.

Since Texas required electronic filing in all cases, the Office of Court Administration says it has reduced paper waste by about 420 million sheets, according to a press release.

““Electronic filing has been key to the Texas Judiciary’s ability to overcome disasters from hurricanes, to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to a ransomware attack,” David Slayton, the Office of Courts Administration’s administrative director, said in the press release.

The ransomware incident Slayton referred to occurred last May, prompting officials to take down individual courts’ websites and shut off internal file servers. However, the cloud-based electronic filing system was not impacted and allowed parties to continue submitting documents through the outage.

Tyler itself was the victim of a ransomware incident last September, though no evidence has been presented that it was related to the Texas courts attack.

The new contract beginning in 2022 also includes several upgrades to the filing system, including new self-service administrative tools for its roughly 425,000 users, reporting capabilities for court administrators and clerks and document checks to reduce the number of court filings that are returned to the filing party for corrections. It will also expand the variety of file formats…

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Sudbury hacking case still before the courts

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“There was no maliciousness, nothing was disseminated,” said Lalande. “It was an effort of some curiosity, a classroom activity on your part, and that project ended there.”

The case was almost not resolved as it came out in court that Brydges thought he had permission to test Laurentian’s computer system following the lecture, but had pleaded guilty to the mischief charge just the same.

“I don’t mean to sound difficult, Mr. Brydges,” said Lalande. “I just have to be satisfied the elements of the offence have been met.”

Assistant Crown attorney Kenrick Abbott also told the court that “it is the Crown’s position a professor giving a general lecture can’t be seen as giving permission (to try and hack a computer system).”

Brydges “is in agreement with what the Crown said,” said defence lawyer Roberta Bald.

She said the plea agreement came about after discussions with the local Crown’s office and that had the case gone to trial, there would have been legal issues, including how Brydges was arrested by Greater Sudbury Police.

“Mr. Brydges is remorseful,” she told the court. “He will, I believe, never do that again. He is very good at finding inadequacies in computer systems. But now, he will, after doing this (ethics) course and going through this ordeal, he knows exactly what he must do to do his job.”

Bald said the bottom line is that Brydges had no malicious intent in hacking the Laurentian University computer system.

“He only wanted to show that the computer system was vulnerable to those who wanted to hack into it for personal gain,” she said.

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Twitter: @HraoldCarmichae

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Copyright Troll Richard Liebowitz Says It’s Really Unfair That He Should Have To Tell Clients And Courts How Frequently He’s Been Caught Lying In Court

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Last month we wrote about the ultimate benchslap against noted copyright troll Richard Liebowitz. Judge Jesse Furman in the Southern District of NY published a 61 page opinion that goes into massive detail on Liebowitz’s longstanding pattern and practice of lying to courts over and over and over again. Beyond going into the cringe-worthy details of many lies told in this specific case — Arthur Usherson v. Bandshell Artist Management — it includes an appendix with 40 examples of Liebowitz lying, misrepresenting, and/or being sanctioned in other cases. It’s pretty stunning. The order dumped over $ 100k in sanctions on Liebowitz, but much more damning, it referred Liebowitz to the Court’s Grievance Committee, required Liebowitz to give a copy of the order to all of his clients, and said that it needed to be filed along with any new lawsuits he filed — which is notable, since Liebowitz seems to file new lawsuits every other day or so. Read more