E-filing.

• Author: Siddiqui, S.A.
• Position: Letters - Letter to the editor

The purpose of this letter is to voice serious and legitimate concerns regarding Mr. Diner's proposal(s) on mandatory e-filing in Florida courts (July/August President's Page). I'm firmly in the opposition camp, and posit the following:

1) I have been practicing in family, criminal, and civil law for four years (not a "master" but not a "rookie" either).

2) I have worked approximately 20 to 25 of Florida's 67 counties from "huge" counties like Palm Beach and "small" counties like Union.

3) I have enough computer science experience to provide a reasonable opinion. (I worked for the University of Florida's Center for Instructional Research and Computing Activities from 1993 to 1995 in addition to performing code programming on my own.)

4) I do not practice in federal court and have never filed a scanned document into the PACER service.

Nonetheless my concerns follow:

1) Mr. Diner suggests that the cost "savings" alone are a good reason for e-filing, yet the additional costs of required Internet connections, scanners, scanning software, and other computer-related expenses are merely passed off to the clients of private attorneys or taxpayers for government attorneys. (No savings here.)

2) Preventing counterfeit filings is not addressed. An unscrupulous individual could use a key log to find the attorney's password, then with tape and scissors literally cut and paste a photocopy of the victim's signature block to a fake document before scanning.

3) The column does not address hackers. A savvy computer user or hacker could upload what appears to be a scanned document which in face is a virus which could infect not only the clerk's computer, but the court's.

4) Nothing in the article addresses compatibility and cross-platform issues. Will a document scanned in Word...