I’m a Judge. Big Tech Just Turned Public Truth Into a Subscription Service
Across the country, local county courts face high storage costs and aging systems. To solve this, many local governments are moving their records to private, out-of-state cloud networks. The North Carolina Judicial Branch recently shifted its entire statewide court system to the cloud. While this is sold to taxpayers as a simple efficiency upgrade, it is actually a major shift in public governance. It turns essential public history into a profit-driven corporate asset.
TL;DR
- Local courts are outsourcing public records to private, out-of-state cloud networks, which creates convenience fees and subscription rates for citizens.
- This migration to private clouds creates structural vulnerabilities, making legal systems fragile and susceptible to cyberattacks and vendor errors.
- The integration of AI tools into these private platforms poses risks of errors, misinterpretations, and the distortion of legal documents due to proprietary algorithms.
- Current federal and state safety measures are insufficient to prevent this commercialization of public records.
- A formal public utility model for local judicial data storage is proposed, requiring permanent un-paywalled and universally accessible records.
- Funding local public court registries to develop internal, open-source digitization networks is suggested as a solution.