a couple of questions

[Carl Malamud <xxxx@media.org>]

Hi -

Can you tell me more about how access to the pacer data was secured?   
You said a cookie ... clear-text password transported in the cookie or  
somehow encrypted?  How did one get to that point?  Was https involved  
at any point?

Second, do you believe that for the districts you have, you are  
complete?  Or are these incomplete snapshots?  How would one estimate  
what portion of a district we have in that case?

I will be finished with my redaction death march sometime tomorrow.   
I've personally redacted all the 32 districts, so I'll be able to  
present the judicial conference with a dvd that lets them compare  
clean to original copies, plus there is a ton of summary data I'll be  
able to present.  After I'm done with redaction, it will take me a few  
days to prepare the summary tables, burn the DVDs, write the letters,  
and fedex the whole mess out.  After that is done, the data gets  
released.

So, one final question ... do you want to do this with attribution or  
do you want to be anonymous whistleblower?  The former is potentially  
dangerous to you, but that is totally your call.  Let me know if you'd  
like me to list the pros and cons of the two approaches.  We're doing  
some of the anonymous whistleblower routine in any case, as I'm  
assuming your sacramento contact does not want to be identified.

Carl

P.S. I'm counting the total number of pages, but it is taking  
*forever*.  I will have final count in about a week, but what we have  
so far is:

./summarize.sh pacer*txt ; date
Dist            Files   Pages   "Value"       Pages/Files
akd       54434   276841        $  22147.28     5.09
almd     139471   930379        $  74430.32     6.67
azd       27775   185876        $  14870.08     6.69
gud       32889   150607        $  12048.56     4.58
hid       47448   278832        $  22306.56     5.88
ilcd      76860   571377        $  45710.16     7.43
ilnd      71730   352181        $  28174.48     4.91
nysd     157506  1386153        $ 110892.24     8.80
         608113  4132246        $ 330579.68

The value number is one we're not going to publish and you and I  
should not talk about it.  If others want to do the math, that is  
fine, but we should avoid that.