Reeling with the news that the draft opinion has been secretly shared with the news media in the case that will overturn Roe v. Wade last spring, the Supreme Court ordered an internal investigation to find the leaker. After more than half a year, the investigators returned empty-handed.
According to a report from CNN on Friday, a lax security culture may be to blame for the matter.
A Supreme Court judge allegedly used his personal email account for sensitive judicial matters instead of a secure account created by a government professional. Staff can print documents on machines that don’t generate activity logs, and can even use printers off-site with VPN access, CNN reported. (A VPN, or virtual private network, allows people to access data on a secure network from home or anywhere.)
In the hall of the court’s office, “burn bags” were opened for staff to place sensitive documents intended for destruction, according to three former employees who spoke to CNN.
The draft opinion that would overturn the 1973 Roe decision and reduce abortion rights in the US was written by Justice Samuel Alito in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Politico published it in May.
The staff were reportedly nervous about telling the judge that they should take information security more seriously. As a former employee told CNN, “This has been going on for years.”
Investigators’ 23-page report on the leak, written by Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley and released last month, criticized poor security practices in more general terms. Curley acknowledged that some printers had “very little logging capability at the time,” saying existing logs often only tracked the printing of the most recent 60 documents. Months passed between the time the draft opinion was circulated internally and the day it was published by Politico.
“If [the leaker] … as an employee of the Court, or a person who has access to the employee’s home, the person can act with impunity due to inadequate security regarding the movement of hard copy documents from the Court to the home, there is no mechanism to track print jobs in the Court printer and photocopier , and other gaps in security or policy,” Curley’s report stated.
They then made recommendations to improve security, which were not released to the public.
Investigators, however, received sharp criticism for failing to ask every judge to sign a sworn affidavit on the matter, unlike regular court employees.