Latest news with #judicialbranch
CNN
3 days ago
- Politics
- CNN
Federal judiciary says it is the victim of ‘escalated cyberattacks'
Federal court officials said Thursday that the judicial branch is taking steps to improve online security – including for sensitive case documents – after 'escalated cyberattacks' aimed at its case management system. 'The federal Judiciary is taking additional steps to strengthen protections for sensitive case documents in response to recent escalated cyberattacks of a sophisticated and persistent nature on its case management system,' court officials said in a statement. The judiciary is 'further enhancing security of the system and to block future attacks.' The statement from the judiciary's administrative arm came a day after a report in Politico detailed a breach of its case management system, which attorneys use to file documents and the public uses to access them. The extent of the hack and who was behind it was not clear and officials declined to answer follow up questions. Most of the information in the federal case management system is public but criminal dockets, in particular, often include sealed material, including some indictments and search warrants. Companies often are often allowed to shield from view proprietary information that works its way into federal courts in the course of litigation. The judiciary statement did not say if such sensitive information had been accessed, but it devoted considerable attention to efforts to further protect those documents. 'These sensitive documents can be targets of interest to a range of threat actors,' the statement read. 'To better protect them, courts have been implementing more rigorous procedures to restrict access to sensitive documents under carefully controlled and monitored circumstances.' US court officials have warned about vulnerabilities in the unwieldy case management system for years, and those systems have been breached in the past. Earlier this summer, US Circuit Judge Michael Scudder told lawmakers that the systems were 'outdated, unsustainable due to cyber risks, and require replacement.' 'We continue to face unrelenting security threats of extraordinary gravity,' Scudder told a House subcommittee. 'We expect the risks and potential damages from these attacks will keep intensifying into the indefinite future.' Scudder, who chairs a committee within the court system reviewing technology, did not respond to a request for comment from CNN. Chief Justice John Roberts, who serves as the chief administrative officer for the federal courts, has also publicly warned of the vulnerably of the online systems. 'In other cases,' Roberts wrote in a report last year, 'hackers steal information – often confidential and highly sensitive – for nefarious purposes, sometimes for private benefit and other times for the use of state actors themselves.' The judiciary's case management and electronic case filing system, known as CM/ECF, is used by attorneys, judges and court staff to catalogue and access court documents as well as to post court orders and opinions. A related system, PACER, is used by the public and other entities outside the judiciary to access those records. But the system, which is actually a patchwork of different systems controlled by different courts, has long been criticized as out of date. Gabe Roth, executive director of the watchdog group Fix the Court, predicted on social media that without an update 'this is going to happen again.' The statement from the federal judiciary on Thursday did not detail what specific steps court officials have taken to shore up their systems. 'As other federal government and private entities likewise continue to experience, cyber risks continue to evolve as threat actors grow more sophisticated and change and adapt their tactics, and safeguarding legacy systems poses a particularly difficult challenge,' the statement read. 'In tackling cybersecurity threats, the judiciary embraces its security obligations and remains committed to leveraging all available resources to include collaboration with law enforcement, national security and cybersecurity organizations, and other information sharing entities.' CNN's Devan Cole and Holmes Lybrand contributed to this report.
The Guardian
01-08-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Joe Biden says US is facing ‘existential' fight with marginalized groups ‘dramatically under attack'
Former United States President Joe Biden took the stage at the National Bar Association's 100th Annual Awards Gala in Chicago to deliver remarks honoring the United States civil rights legacy, and the state of the country. Speaking amid continual scrutiny around his physical and mental health, Biden played up the importance of a strong judicial branch, and characterized the US as at a moment in time that 'makes us confront hard truths.' 'So many of you have fought to make this country live up to its highest ideals,' Biden said. 'Not since the tumultuous days of the 1960s has this fight been so existential to who we are as a nation, with marginalized groups so dramatically under attack.' Founded in 1925, the National Bar Association is the largest and oldest network of law professors, judges, and lawyers in the US. Biden's speech focused heavily on the contributions of Black lawyers to America's civil rights history, and the need to continue that legacy, in light of an administration that he said 'seeks to erase history, erase quality, erase justice itself. 'We see the apparent glee of some of our politicians while watching immigrants who are in this country legally torn from the arms of their family, dragged away in handcuffs from the only home they've ever known,' Biden said. 'My friends, we need to face the hard truths of this administration.' Law firms representing those opposing the Trump administration's agenda have been targeted with executive orders by the administration. Some have capitulated to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Federal judges, increasingly on the receiving end of harsh rhetoric and threats to their safety, have weighed creating their own security forces. 'We see the law firms, bowing to pressure, bending to bullies, instead of staying rooted in justice of the law,' Biden said. The gala is not the first speaking engagement of the summer that Biden has used to take aim at current US President Donald Trump. In June, he offered oblique criticism of the Trump administration during a Juneteenth celebration service at the Reedy Chapel AME Church, one of the places in Texas where an order proclaiming the end of slavery was read on 19 June 1865. Earlier this month, Biden delivered a keynote address at the Society for Human Resource Management conference in San Diego. During a question and answer session, Biden said he was 'working like hell' to finish a memoir of his presidency as he contends with his prostate cancer diagnosis. In his book, a reflection of the 46th president's four years in office, Biden will probably attempt to shape his legacy – and to confront questions about his mental health and physical fitness that clouded his final years in office and ultimately forced to end his bid for re-election. While Biden heaped praise on former vice-president Kamala Harris during his speech, he did not reference his decision to step down mid-election. In sporadic public appearances since leaving the White House, Biden has hit back against new reporting that alleges a 'cover up' by the then-president's closest aides to hide his frailty and decline from an American public who polls showed believed he was too old to serve another four years. Biden's speech did not directly address these allegations, although he did note his two of his claims to fame in US politics – being the youngest person ever elected to the US Senate, and the oldest person elected to the presidency. The White House and congressional Republicans have amplified the claims, opening investigations into whether Biden was in control when he made a series of notable clemency decisions at the end of his presidency. In an interview with the New York Times this month, Biden said he orally authorized every pardon and commutation issued during his term and called Republicans who said his staff abused the presidential autopen 'liars'. Hours before Biden spoke, Mike Donilon, one of the former president's top advisers and longest-serving aides, gave a closed-door interview to the House Oversight Committee as part of the Republican-led panel's investigation into Biden's cognitive decline. On Wednesday, Steve Ricchetti, another top adviser to the former president, also appeared before the committee.
The Guardian
01-08-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Joe Biden says US is facing ‘existential' fight with marginalized groups ‘dramatically under attack'
Former United States President Joe Biden took the stage at the National Bar Association's 100th Annual Awards Gala in Chicago to deliver remarks honoring the United States civil rights legacy, and the state of the country. Speaking amid continual scrutiny around his physical and mental health, Biden played up the importance of a strong judicial branch, and characterized the US as at a moment in time that 'makes us confront hard truths.' 'So many of you have fought to make this country live up to its highest ideals,' Biden said. 'Not since the tumultuous days of the 1960s has this fight been so existential to who we are as a nation, with marginalized groups so dramatically under attack.' Founded in 1925, the National Bar Association is the largest and oldest network of Black law professors, judges, and lawyers in the US. Biden's speech focused heavily on the contributions of Black lawyers to America's civil rights history, and the need to continue that legacy, in light of an administration that he said 'seeks to erase history, erase quality, erase justice itself. 'We see the apparent glee of some of our politicians while watching immigrants who are in this country legally torn from the arms of their family, dragged away in handcuffs from the only home they've ever known,' Biden said. 'My friends, we need to face the hard truths of this administration.' Law firms representing those opposing the Trump administration's agenda have been targeted with executive orders by the administration. Some have capitulated to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Federal judges, increasingly on the receiving end of harsh rhetoric and threats to their safety, have weighed creating their own security forces. 'We see the law firms, bowing to pressure, bending to bullies, instead of staying rooted in justice of the law,' Biden said. The gala is not the first speaking engagement of the summer that Biden has used to take aim at current US President Donald Trump. In June, he offered oblique criticism of the Trump administration during a Juneteenth celebration service at the Reedy Chapel AME Church, one of the places in Texas where an order proclaiming the end of slavery was read on 19 June 1865. Earlier this month, Biden delivered a keynote address at the Society for Human Resource Management conference in San Diego. During a question and answer session, Biden said he was 'working like hell' to finish a memoir of his presidency as he contends with his prostate cancer diagnosis. In his book, a reflection of the 46th president's four years in office, Biden will probably attempt to shape his legacy – and to confront questions about his mental health and physical fitness that clouded his final years in office and ultimately forced to end his bid for re-election. While Biden heaped praise on former vice-president Kamala Harris during his speech, he did not reference his decision to step down mid-election. In sporadic public appearances since leaving the White House, Biden has hit back against new reporting that alleges a 'cover up' by the then-president's closest aides to hide his frailty and decline from an American public who polls showed believed he was too old to serve another four years. Biden's speech did not directly address these allegations, although he did note his two of his claims to fame in US politics – being the youngest person ever elected to the US Senate, and the oldest person elected to the presidency. The White House and congressional Republicans have amplified the claims, opening investigations into whether Biden was in control when he made a series of notable clemency decisions at the end of his presidency. In an interview with the New York Times this month, Biden said he orally authorized every pardon and commutation issued during his term and called Republicans who said his staff abused the presidential autopen 'liars'. Hours before Biden spoke, Mike Donilon, one of the former president's top advisers and longest-serving aides, gave a closed-door interview to the House Oversight Committee as part of the Republican-led panel's investigation into Biden's cognitive decline. On Wednesday, Steve Ricchetti, another top adviser to the former president, also appeared before the committee.
New York Times
31-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Someone Is Defying the Supreme Court, but It Isn't Trump
Since President Trump returned to the presidency for a second term, legal scholars and political writers have wrestled with a particular preoccupation: What if he defies court orders? When actual examples of the administration violating court orders turned out to be hard to find, and contestable in any given case, some commentators broadened the notion of defiance to include so-called malicious compliance (or legalistic noncompliance). The idea here is that even if the president or his agents did comply with the terms of court orders, however unreasonable, they might be doing so in bad faith, with the covert motive of actually evading or circumventing the point of the order. The issue of defying court orders is still with us — but it has taken a twist. Now the defiance is coming from inside the judicial branch itself, in the form of a lower-court mutiny against the Supreme Court. District Court judges, and in some cases even appellate courts, have either defied orders of the court outright or engaged in malicious compliance and evasion of those orders, in transparent bad faith. In the past decade or so, increasing judicial overreach has caused harm to our constitutional order by limiting the ability of the executive branch to implement the program it was elected by the American people to pursue. It has been a scourge for both recent Republican and Democratic presidents, and it may provoke extreme measures to restore order. The recent defiance goes even further, threatening to damage the internal integrity of the judiciary, which ultimately relies on lower courts to follow the Supreme Court's direction. Consider Judge Brian Murphy of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts. Judge Murphy issued a preliminary injunction against the transfer of removable aliens to third countries, in cases in which the transfer was expressly permitted by federal law. So far, this was just an ordinary example of judicial overreach. But after the Supreme Court issued an order to stay — that is, to stop — the preliminary injunction while litigation proceeded (over a dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor), Judge Murphy went beyond overreach. He decided that his order enforcing the injunction that the court had stayed nonetheless remained in effect — a proposition for which his only cited authority was the dissent from Justice Sotomayor. This seemed to be malicious, whether or not it counts as 'compliance' at all. The Supreme Court, with the notable concurrence of Justice Elena Kagan, then had to stay this second order and explain that Judge Murphy's renewed effort was also illicit. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
