Editor’s note (10/3/25 - 2pm ET): The story has been updated to reflect the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts’ declining to comment.
Despite being the target of two large-scale hacks in the last five years, the U.S. Courts are resisting a congressional call for an independent cybersecurity review of its online court records database. In its place, the judiciary is implementing an antiquated approach, which seeks to limit the impact of future cyber incursions but severely restricts the public’s access to court-approved unsealed documents in the process.
Congressional Oversight
Ron Wyden, a U.S. senator from Oregon with a history of oversight on judicial issues told Court Watch on Thursday that “Chief Justice Roberts continues to stonewall Congress and cover up the judiciary’s gross negligence that has enabled these hacks.”
In an August letter, Wyden wrote to Justice Roberts expressing his frustration with the U.S. courts response to the latest hack and calling for an “independent, public, expert review” of the two hacks. He also requested that the outside commission explore “the judiciary’s cybersecurity practices, and the judiciary’s mismanagement of its own technology.”
On Tuesday, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which maintains PACER, the online court record system, responded to Wyden’s request on behalf of the Chief Justice. In the letter, which has not been reported on previously, the office sidestepped Wyden’s call for an independent review and stated, in part, “The AO [Administrative Office] remains at work in modernizing CM/ECF to bring it in line with current technology practices. Substantial planning for the modernization effort began in 2022, and we are now approaching the development and implementation phase of the project. We expect implementation will begin in the next two years in a modular and iterative manner.”
In a statement in response to the latest AO letter, Wyden announced plans to force the U.S. Courts to make the necessary cybersecurity changes, noting that “It is long past time for the courts to follow the same minimum cybersecurity standards as the executive branch, but since Chief Justice Roberts and the Judicial Conference refuse to set such requirements, Congress must step in and legislate.”
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts declined to comment on Wyden’s legislative announcement.
Impact of New Procedures Reduces Transparency
The hack, which reporting has indicated was perpetrated by Russia, highlighted the outdated system’s numerous vulnerabilities and set off a scramble by judges and court administrators to protect sensitive documents. Unsure of which systems are still safe from foreign spies, judicial officials have elected to revert to paper filing in cases with sensitive implications such as national security and public corruption. Yet, it’s unclear how these filings will ever become public in their paper form, creating concerns for transparency in court cases that have significant public interest.
In an August 7th press release, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, noted, “To better protect them, courts have been implementing more rigorous procedures to restrict access to sensitive documents under carefully controlled and monitored circumstances.”
Following the Administrative Office’s press release, district courts around the country moved quickly to protect sensitive case filings, and the public got a look at what “more rigorous procedures” look like. The Chief Judge of the Eastern District of Washington issued a new general order that required all sealed and ex parte documents to be filed by paper. In Maryland, a new standing order only applied to sealed criminal cases, going slightly narrower than Washington and New York, which included civil cases.
The prior week, the chief judge of the Eastern District issued a new standing order, noting, “the best way to secure our case management system and ensure continued constitutional and common law access to all public Court records is to require that all sealed documents be filed only in paper format.”
A Court Watch review of the new standing orders issued by district courts post-hack revealed no uniform procedures to require that continuous review of whether sealed paper documents should be ultimately unsealed or how court-ordered unsealed documents will systematically be made available to the public through PACER.
Instead of the filed documents, federal courts around the country have entered into PACER a one page document, which simply states, “sealed documents are no longer available in CM/ECF or via PACER. Please contact the court directly to request access to the document.” The PACER system, which charges a fee for each item downloaded, does not exclude the required payment for the clerks’ placeholder document.
After several federal judges across the nation moved to unseal dockets and documents, a Court Watch reporter contacted clerk’s offices in a dozen federal districts to gain access to documents which would in the past be available on PACER. In half of the instances, the clerk removed the placeholder document and uploaded the proper filing. In the remaining instances, the reporter received no response. The current process also affects the ability of journalists to cover breaking stories of national importance. The placeholder document was still on the PACER system for Ian Roberts’ docket, a former superintendent for Des Moines Iowa school district, whose recent immigration-related arrest made national headlines. The correct charging documents were uploaded into PACER nearly an hour after the judge had unsealed the docket and Roberts had already presented at his initial appearance in federal court. The documents were corrected after an inquiry from reporters.
Gabe Roth, the executive director of Fix The Courts, a non-profit which advocates for more a more transparent judicial system told Court Watch, “The response from the AO is not much more than the usual "trust us," which, based on past experience, is something none of us in the courts space should be doing.”