In a letter to the Chair, Hon. Lee Rosenthal, of the Committee on Rules of Practice & Procedure (Judicial Conference of the U.S.), Senator Joe Lieberman observes that “The goal of [Section 205(e) of the E-Government Act ] . . . was to increase free public access to these records,” and demands to know why access to PACER isn’t free and also why “not enough has been done to protect personal information contained in publicly available court filings.”
Further reading: John Schwartz, An effort to upgrade a court archive system to free and easy, New York Times (Feb. 13, 2009)”