Long before the leak of a draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade, some Supreme Court justices often used personal email accounts for sensitive transmissions instead of secure servers set up to guard such information, among other security lapses not made public in the court\u2019s report on the investigation last month.
\nNew details revealed to CNN by multiple sources familiar with the court\u2019s operations offer an even more detailed picture of yearslong lax internal procedures that could have endangered security, led to the leak and hindered an investigation into the culprit.
\nSupreme Court employees also used printers that didn\u2019t produce logs \u2013 or were able to print sensitive documents off-site without tracking \u2013 and \u201cburn bags\u201d meant to ensure the safe destruction of materials were left open and unattended in hallways.
\n\u201cThis has been going on for years,\u201d one former employee said.
\nThe problem with the justices\u2019 use of emails persisted in part because some justices were slow to adopt to the technology and some court employees were nervous about confronting them to urge them to take precautions, one person said. Such behavior meant that justices weren\u2019t setting an example to take security seriously.
\nThe justices were \u201cnot masters of information security protocol,\u201d one former court employee told CNN.
\nIn a statement attached to the final report, the court called the leak a \u201cgrave assault\u201d on the court\u2019s legitimacy and the marshal of the court issued a road map to improve security.
\nThe report and the new revelations of weak protocols come as the court is trying to protect its own legitimacy after an embarrassing leak and allegations (prompted by the recent rash of high profile cases breaking along familiar ideological lines) that it has simply become another political branch. The 20-page report and its still secret \u201cAnnex A\u201d raised some questions as to whether the entire investigation should have been outsourced to someone without close ties to the court.
\nFormer Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff reviewed and endorsed the Supreme Court\u2019s internal investigation into the leak. However, the court\u2002did not disclose Chertoff had been paid at least $1 million in recent years to perform security assessments for the court.
\nThe court declined to comment.
\nOpen \u2018burn bags\u2019 left lying around
\nIn her report last month, Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley noted that the \u201ccourt\u2019s current method of destroying court sensitive documents has vulnerabilities that should be addressed.\u201d
\nThree former employees told CNN of loose security around burn bags that are supplied to chambers to deal with sensitive documents. A burn bag is a security bag that holds sensitive documents which will ultimately be destroyed by fire or shredding.
\nThere was no uniform rule that established a procedure for these paper bags with red stripes. Instead, the justices each have their own protocols. According to a source familiar with the court\u2019s security practices, employees have the option to use the burn bags which are later taken to the basement of the building and emptied into locked bins so that they can be retrieved by a shredding company.
\nAnother source questioned how the burn bags were handled before they were collected. The source said some colleagues would staple a burn bag shut. Others simply filled them to capacity and left them near their desks. But some burn bags were simply left in the hallway outside of chambers, presumably so that they could be taken to the basement. It would not have been difficult, the source suggested, for someone with access to the non-public area of the court to access sensitive documents.
\nRemote access let employees print docs from anywhere
\nAnother vulnerability outlined by Curley was printer logs meant to track document production. A former employee highlights something that Curley did not detail: employees who had VPN access could print documents from any computer, making it difficult to track copies. Curley made an important concession in the report that some locally connected printers only logged the last 60 documents printed.
\nA look at the timeline of the leak reveals how such a system would be problematic for investigators.
\nThat\u2019s because the initial draft was distributed internally on February 10, 2022. But the leak investigation only started in May when Politico published the draft opinion. Some of those print logs would almost surely no longer exist because the 60-document threshold had been reached.
\nCurley did not go into great detail, but she did suggest the court \u201cinstitute tracking mechanisms\u201d in the future.
\nAnother potential problem revolved \u2013 especially during Covid \u2013 around the possibility that opinions could leave the building. According to the report, Court Information System User Guidelines prohibit \u201cattempting to leave facilities with Court Sensitive Information (hard copy or electronic) without proper authorization.\u201d
\nBut during Covid many such regulations were necessarily relaxed. And even with the rule in place, one source said, there were no mechanisms to check what was actually being taken from the court. To be sure, the hallways in the areas of the court that are closed to the public were guarded and protected by doors with a numerical code necessary to enter, but the code wasn\u2019t necessarily changed very often.<\/p>\n
Cnn<\/p>\n
Tags\uff1a personal emails<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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