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Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

judyrecords.com

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Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

#161

Post by EvanAnderson »

vintermann wrote: post #108
alangibson wrote: post #6

This site will be the first stop for anyone wanting to harass another person online. Some times a little friction is a good thing. I love projects like these, but they're the digital equivalent of "dual use technologies". They can be used for good or evil. That said, nice work.

On the other hand, powerful people who wanted to harass you or hurt you have had access like this for a long time. It's how I feel about facial recognition technology or other ML-based technology too. The worst people who could ever have access to it, already had access to it. Giving everyone access to it is just leveling the field.

I'd love a world where the "powerless" have the same ability to leverage surveillance as the "powerful".

I'd love it if we could achieve that balance by eliminating surveillance, but I don't see that as a realistic outcome (at least initially).

In the absence of eliminating surveillance I'll take full public transparency. Maybe such transparency would even drive the elimination of surveillance.

Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

#163

Post by stefan_ »

gitgud wrote: post #129

Is this what Aaron Swartz was trying to achieve [1] here? [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/the-inside-story...

No, this is just "metadata" more or less - who was sued by whom over what and what were the individual events in the case. PACER has the individual filings - the complaints, briefs and orders and so on.

Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

#165

Post by ameister14 »

zomglings wrote: post #76
kyboren wrote: post #3

This is... not great. It's crucial that these records be open to public inspection. But instant full-text search of the entire dockets of 630M cases feels wrong, invasive, and dangerous to me. It's yet another instance of panopticon surveillance now being too cheap to meter. I think our society needs to come to grips with this new reality and figure out what to do about it. Or are we all just cool with this?

I don't see any problem with this. These cases are in the public record, why should the public not have the ability to search them for free without requiring access to expensive legal indices?

The public has always had the ability to search them, it's just been more difficult to do in the past.

Lowering the barriers to this is not necessarily a good thing. For example: if I have to drive to the county clerk's office to get records, I am unlikely to do so. This means that if I need the information, I will go get it, but if I do not need it, I won't bother.

The patent section being so easily searched is very useful and I see no downsides there.

Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

#167

Post by ramoz »

richardbarosky wrote: post #159
ramoz wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How large is the index? How do you manage that between RAM or SSD?

Search - Index is ~373GB. AMD Epyc 7371 - 16c/32t - 3.1 GHz/3.8 GHz. 512 GB ECC 2400 MHz. 2×1.92 TB SSD NVMe Highlight - Index is ~620GB. Xeon-D 2141I - 8c/16t - 2.2 GHz/3 GHz. 64 GB ECC 2133 MHz. 2×1.92 TB SSD NVMe Search and highlighting handled async from queue.

Awesome insight, and site. Thanks

Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

#168

Post by asimilator »

heavyset_go wrote: post #139

Cool, I guess. I'm not really a fan of anything that can be used to further persecute people who have already paid their debts to society. I know this is public information, but the information itself has been relatively opaque for generations. Beyond mild curiosity, the only paying customers for a service like this will be groups like employers, schools, creditors, landlords etc. It removes the pain around paid back…

Legal research services (access to dockets, case text, etc.) tend to be extremely expensive. I think making that more widely available is a good thing for people with limited resources. It's kind of nuts how impenetrable the legal system is if you don't have any resources.

Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

#169

Post by nanidin »

heavyset_go wrote: post #139

Cool, I guess. I'm not really a fan of anything that can be used to further persecute people who have already paid their debts to society. I know this is public information, but the information itself has been relatively opaque for generations. Beyond mild curiosity, the only paying customers for a service like this will be groups like employers, schools, creditors, landlords etc. It removes the pain around paid back…

Our legal system is built on case law. Reading the law as it was passed is not enough - one must consult rulings in the relevant jurisdiction for precedence. I think the benefits of making this type of information widely available outweighs the potential downsides.

Re: Show HN: Full text search on 630M US court cases

#170

Post by richardbarosky »

heavyset_go wrote: post #139

Cool, I guess. I'm not really a fan of anything that can be used to further persecute people who have already paid their debts to society. I know this is public information, but the information itself has been relatively opaque for generations. Beyond mild curiosity, the only paying customers for a service like this will be groups like employers, schools, creditors, landlords etc. It removes the pain around paid back…

When you say used to persucute, that's not accurate in any legal sense. Many states have statewide repositories of court data. Also, when you say "can be used for", that's extremely broad and as far as a standard for taking a position on something, I don't think that makes a lot of sense. Do you mind clarifying?
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