EAST ST. LOUIS – Federal judges scrambling to keep Russia from stealing secrets of their courts seek safety through paper.
As of Jan. 15, the Southern Illinois district court will receive “highly sensitive” documents from civil and criminal cases only by hard copy.
Previously, confidential documents passed between parties through the court’s nationwide electronic filing system.
Parties may continue electronic exchanges but not on the court’s system.
The rule applies automatically to applications for electronic surveillance and search warrants.
Parties may move to designate documents as highly sensitive, and judges may order designation on their own.
Chief District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel wrote, “Satisfying the legal criteria for filing under seal is a necessary condition, but not solely sufficient to merit treatment as a highly sensitive document.”
Designation would occur when disclosure could jeopardize national security or place human life at safety or risk.
Designation would occur when disclosure to a foreign power could substantially assist in development of competing products or military products.
Rosenstengel adopted the order after the national Judicial Conference directed federal courts to add procedures for protection of sealed documents.
On Jan. 19, court clerk Margaret Robertie said, “It sounds worse than it actually is.”
She said designations would be rare.
She said designation could occur in civil litigation such as a patent case involving a defense contractor.
She said there was no evidence of local impact from a cyber attack on Solar Winds, a software developer in Austin, Texas.
California consultant Fire Eye released a statement on Dec. 13, that it discovered a global intrusion campaign.
"The attacker’s post compromise activity leverages multiple techniques to evade detection and obscure their activity," it stated.
“The campaign is the work of a highly skilled actor and the operation was conducted with significant operational security.”
On Jan. 4, Steven Vaughan-Nichols of Zero Day called the attack the Pearl Harbor of American information technology.
“Russia, we now know, used Solar Wind’s hacked program to infiltrate at least 18,000 government and private networks," Vaughan-Nichols wrote.
On Jan. 6, the Department of Justice issued a statement that its chief information officer learned of malicious activity on Dec. 24.
“This activity involved access to the department’s Microsoft O365 mail environment," it stated.
It stated that the information officer eliminated the method by which the actor accessed the O365.
It stated that the department would continue to notify the appropriate federal agencies, Congress, and the public as warranted