Secrecy rules may set courts back decades

When the Oklahoma Supreme Court adopted a five-year plan for the state's court system in 1995, technology was its No. 1 goal.

A chief component of that goal was to make records from all 77 counties available to the public through the Internet.

"We wanted to come into the computer age for the third branch of government,” Supreme Court Justice Joseph Watt said in 2000.

Critics say Watt and a majority of his colleagues took a giant step backward last week by ordering documents removed from the court system's Web site, www.oscn.net.

While only 13 of the state's 77 district courts can be found there, that still represents a majority of all the lawsuits and criminal cases filed in Oklahoma, because it includes Oklahoma and Tulsa counties.

At www.oscn.net, the public can access briefs, motions, rulings and other documents from those 13 district courts and the appellate courts.

But perhaps not for long.

Effective June 10, individual pleadings won't be available online. Docket information from court cases will still be accessible on www.oscn.net and a separate site, odcr.com.

In addition, court clerks will be required to redact personal identifying information from filings, such as home addresses, dates of birth and Social Security numbers.

The March 11 order, approved by five of the nine justices, was motivated in part by fears of identity theft, according to the court's majority opinion.

‘A step backwards'

The Supreme Court's order regarding online pleadings "seems like a step backwards,” especially since the state spent millions to make the records more accessible, said Mark Horvit, executive director of

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