David Joyce Asks Witness How The Threat Environment For Federal Judges Has Evolved Over Last Decade

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During a House Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Rep. David Joyce (R-OH) questioned  Robert Conrad, the Secretary of the Judicial Conference, about the threat environment for federal judges.

Transcript

00:00I first ran into the red, yellow, green when I worked in the federal court, so

00:06I know you've seen this before, but we try to make sure that everybody has a

00:12chance to answer questions. People will be moving in and out, so please don't let

00:15that bother you as you follow up. And a former defender and prosecutor myself, I

00:22understand that the publicity that sometimes comes to a judge whether they

00:27want it or not. They're randomly selected. However, technology, social media, and the

00:3024-7 news cycle have increased the likelihood that a judge's name will be

00:34reported on all media sites. This now leads to an unprecedented amount of

00:39attention on an individual who is responsible for overseeing a federal

00:42case. Would you describe the threat environment and how it has evolved over

00:46the last decade or so with respect to federal judges? What is the federal

00:50judiciary doing to ensure that tragedies like the murder of Daniel and Darrell

00:54don't happen again? The federal the threat environment is dynamic and complex and

01:04it's important and essential for us to have our court security account funded to

01:09address this. Not just outside of the home but in the courthouse as well. There

01:15have been since 2020 a lot of attacks on courthouses and damage to courthouses. The

01:22court security account funds our court security officers who are really the

01:27front-line officers at courthouses who screen individuals coming through and

01:33make sure that the judges when they're there are safe. It also funds the essential

01:39equipment at the courthouses, the screening equipment, the video equipment, the

01:44magnetometers, and it funds our vulnerability management program. The

01:50vulnerability management program is something that the courts have taken on to

01:56help get personal identifying information or PII of judges off of the

02:04internet. As you indicated it's very hard easy to find things out including home

02:09addresses of judges off of social media or the internet and our vulnerability

02:15management program is an easy way to help judges pull that information off of the

02:22internet. As of April 77% of our active federal judges have enrolled in the

02:31program and work with the specialists to help get this information off. In addition to

02:38the delete me program which attempts to remove personal identification information

02:45of judges from the internet and Judge St. Eve said almost 80% of judges have

02:51signed up for. We have taken steps to enroll judges in home intrusion detection system to

03:04protect them when they're at home and also are engaged in hardening projects across the

03:10country with respect to our our courthouses. So the threat environment is real it's

03:16been present for a number of years and the judiciary in the United States

03:21Marshals Service takes it seriously which is why we're asking for this funding. I can

03:28attest to the fact that bomb threats and having my home swatted and using the

03:34programs you're talking about didn't take my home address off because we still

03:38have to put it down on places like where you put in our application to run for

03:43office the title of my home and that's unfortunate I understand you're going

03:49through the same problem but as you realize if this administration has made cost

03:53savings a priority across the federal government how would you elaborate on the

03:57judiciary ensuring that this fiscal response on the activities are

04:01undertaking with cost containment in mind and are there internal and groups or

04:06programs to ensure that that is taking place. Yes thank you Mr. Chairman the as I

04:13indicated in my opening statement the budget committee has an entire subcommittee

04:17devoted to cost containment and at any given time we have various measures that are

04:24in place in different in a different place. Recently one such engagement we had was to

04:32put in place a cap on spending that individual chambers can have on library books

04:39encouraging more the use of electronic research and sharing of library materials. We

04:47are looking into the use of technology for detainees who are housed far away from federal courthouses so

04:57that probation officers and pretrial services officers and attorneys who are

05:02representing them don't need to travel sometimes significant amount of miles to go and visit with them that they can do it

05:11electronically through equipment and that would save quite a bit of money and time for all

05:18three of those categories. We are also looking at shared resources. My courthouse in Chicago we have the Court of Appeals the

05:29District Court the magistrate the bankruptcy all in the same courthouse so

05:32something that we recently instituted was we're sharing among the district court the

05:37magistrates and the Court of Appeals HR now so we've combined those and we're

05:42looking at doing the same for IT. Other courthouses are looking at shared

05:47resources that they can engage in so at any given time we have different things in

05:53place as you know we've had the no net new in place on our space that courts

05:59cannot expand their space without giving up some and we are focusing on space which is

06:04quite expensive for us in a chunk of our budget we are looking at other ways that

06:09we can save with space. Thank you. As I said before people are gonna be moving in and

06:15out I'm going to run down to a T-HUD hearing

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