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1 George Cort & Joe Cecil, Social Security Numbers in Federal Court Documents: Memorandum 1 (2010)

handle is hein.congcourts/ssnumfec0001 and id is 1 raw text is: THE FEDERAL JUDICIAL CENTER THURGOOD MARSHALL FEDERAL JUDICIARY BUILDING ONE COLUMBUS CIRCLE, N.E. WASHINGTON, DC 20002-8003 April 5 2010 Memorandum To: Hon. Reena Raggi, Chair, Privacy Protection Subcommittee From: George Cort and Joe Cecil, Federal Judicial Center Subject: SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS IN FEDERAL COURT DOCUMENTS Summary of Findings: The Center identified 2,899 documents with one or more unredacted Social Security numbers among the almost ten million documents filed in federal district and bankruptcy courts in a recent two-month period. Seventeen percent of these documents appeared to qualify for an exemption from the redaction requirement under the relevant privacy rules. An unknown number of the remaining documents may qualify for a waiver of the privacy protection under the rules, but we could not determine whether such a waiver applied to the documents identified in this study. Search Methodology: Your Subcommittee asked the Center to identify unredacted Social Security numbers in recently filed federal court documents.' We first identified almost ten million unsealed documents filed during November and December 2009, in all 94 district courts and 92 of the 94 bankruptcy courts.2 We 1 The Federal Rules of Civil, Criminal, Bankruptcy, and Appellate Procedure were amended in December 2007 to protect privacy of individuals identified in court documents by requiring redaction of Social Security numbers, taxpayer-identification numbers, birth dates, the names of minors, and financial-account numbers. Our study sought to identify only documents containing Social Security numbers, including Social Security numbers designated in the document as taxpayer identification numbers, employee identification numbers, and financial account numbers. Generally, the privacy rules include exceptions from the redaction requirement for filings made under seal; official records of a state court; administrative or agency proceedings; financial account numbers identifying property that may be subject to forfeiture; court records filed before December, 2007; pro se filings in actions seeking a writ of habeas corpus or to set aside a criminal sentence; and actions for Social Security or immigration benefits or detention. The criminal privacy rule includes additional exceptions for documents related to a criminal investigation prepared before filing of a criminal charge; charging documents and affidavits prepared in support of charging documents; and arrest or search warrants. The bankruptcy privacy rule includes an additional exception recognizing the statutory requirement that the Social Security number of a non-attorney bankruptcy petition preparer appear on the proper form. All of the privacy rules recognize that a filer waives the protection as to the filer's own information by filing it without redaction and not under seal. These rules appear in Appendix A. This study did not examine documents filed in appellate cases or documents filed in paper form. 2 One bankruptcy court did not maintain its documents in a format that permitted an electronic search of the text. A second bankruptcy court was not included in the study because of a miscommunication in our office that delayed our access to the court's data.

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