Lubet called the delays "way too long," saying: "The information is either public or it isn't." Shaman described the slow responses as "terrible."
Douglas T. Kendall, executive director of Community Rights Counsel, a Washington-based advocacy group, said: "What takes minutes for other branches of the government takes months for the judiciary. The entire process seems designed to frustrate rather than facilitate public access. . . . Anyone with access to Google can easily obtain more information about most judges than these forms reveal."
In response to requests from the judiciary and the Marshals Service, the GAO said it is deviating from standard practice and making its study available only on specific request, because its findings are "sensitive." In a letter attached to the study, Marshals Service Director Benigno G. Reyna asked that it "not be made available to the general public via the Internet."
The GAO study found that during the four years examined, there were 661 redaction requests and they came from "about 10 percent or less" of the more than 2,000 judges who filed disclosure reports. The Judicial Conference granted nearly 90 percent of the requests, or 592 deletions.
The Judicial Conference's guidelines call for removing information that would identify "unsecured locations" of judges and their families, as well as "information that bears a clear nexus with specific security threats." A GAO review of material removed from the reports showed the conference "has generally applied these principles consistently," the report said.
Over the period studied, the report said, 28 judges made 63 requests to censor their entire financial disclosure report. The conference granted 55 of those requests, or 87 percent. In those cases, only the name of the judge was released. On reports examined by The Washington Post, even the judges' signatures were deleted.
One request came from a judge who said she and her husband "had received death threats and were the subject of protective investigations," the report said.
Judges made 278 requests to delete the name of the employer of a spouse; each was granted. The GAO study pointed out that this was done "regardless of whether current, specific security threats existed."
Of the 171 requests to redact the value of assets and related income, the conference agreed to nearly half, or 83 redactions.
One request came from a judge who said criminal defendants had filed false liens against him, the study said. Another was from a judge who argued that "reporting the value of income and assets made him an easy target for extortion."
The conference agreed to delete the names of one judge's family partnerships, the study said, because he argued someone could use the information to find addresses and phone numbers, which "might jeopardize his family's security," the study said.
The conference agreed in 14 cases to remove information about gifts to judges, including the names of the individuals and organizations that supplied them. One gift was a scholarship given to a judge's son, where the judge wanted to conceal the "unsecured location" of the university his son attended.
