Georgia, Enhanced Security, and Other Goodies

This release lands a few small changes we've been working on as well as a big fix for PACER version 6.3.

The big fix addresses an issue in version 6.3 of CM/ECF/PACER, which was recently rolled out in the Northern District of Georgia. In that version, PDFs now have an additional level of redirection that we must capture and follow before you can download them. This type of redirection happens automatically in your browser, but requires that we take explicit steps in the extension. To our fans out of Georgia, thanks for your patience as we've addressed this.

Small updates include:

• A new search engine — Look for RECAP search within your browsers search options! This provides full text search of all of the dockets and PDFs that you send us. (Unfortunately, this is not available for Chrome on Linux due to a limitation by Google.)

• Enhanced protections against uploading sealed documents — We cannot detect with 100% certainty whether a PDF is sealed and we rely on our users as the first line of defense to both preventing that from happening, and working with us to promptly correct it if it does. That said, we now have a simple system in place to prevent some types of sealed documents from being uploaded automatically.

  If you regularly work with sealed documents, you will begin seeing notifications that we are not uploading those documents. This method is not fail-safe; we continue to rely on our users as the best defense against accidental leakage of these documents, but it should help.

• Improved accessibility in the options panel for blind or otherwise vision-impaired users.

• Improved testing coverage, code organization, and an editorconfig for our intrepid developers.

IDB Support in CourtListener

CourtListener will soon have metadata about millions of additional PACER dockets. This data is coming from the IDB database hosted by the Federal Judicial Center:

https://www.fjc.gov/research/idb

Unlike dockets that we currently have in the RECAP Archive, these dockets will not have docket entries or parties, and so should not appear in PACER when people are looking at dockets. This version ensures that that is the case and that the links to RECAP dockets that appear in PACER are only the highest quality versions.

In a future update, we hope to provide links to the IDB data for particular dockets as separate links provided by the RECAP Extension.

Fixes permission request for localhost

Code in a developer's local system got released, so releasing a new version to fix that. The code is harmless, but prompted for access to localhost, which we never actually used outside of development environments.

Block Training Sites

Small release today to ensure that people don't upload things from the RECAP training sites. This was enabled historically so our developers could use the training sites while doing their work. However, the risk that this content could get integrated into the RECAP Archive is really just too high and so we're clawing back this functionality from our developers (and from everybody else).

Otherwise, no notable changes here.

Making RECAP advertise itself

This release makes it so a small list of websites can detect if RECAP is installed. Currently that list includes only one website, CourtListener.com, and adding more will require an update to our privacy policy (which we'll advertise). CourtListener.com is run by Free Law Project, the makers of RECAP.

Letting CourtListener.com know if RECAP is installed will let us encourage more people to install RECAP. The thought is: If you're using the RECAP Archive on CourtListener.com, you should probably be using RECAP to contribute documents you purchase.

No other changes in this release.

Security enhancements

This release makes the extensions more secure in the event that the CourtListener server is hacked by a sophisticated adversary. This is a "belt and suspenders" kind of fix that provides additional security beyond what was previously in the extension. If you are an average user of RECAP, there's no need to be concerned — this is just us making things more secure than they already were.

For the technically curious, this change provides a default dataType to every jQuery request that we send to the CourtListener server. This makes it so that if the CourtListener server were hacked, it could not be used to send RECAP users JSONP data. JSONP is dangerous because it can be used to send arbitrary JavaScript, so the scope of this is that if the server were hacked, it could be used to send arbitrary JavaScript to RECAP users when they were on PACER websites. That would not be good, and we're happy to eliminate this possibility.

This new version will be rolling out to Chrome and Firefox (and hopefully Opera) over the next 24 hours.

Bugfix for bankruptcy court issues

This release fixes two issues that were identified in bankruptcy courts:

1. The first issue was that on the Claims Report, it was not possible to download documents and the extension would crash. This issue is now fixed, though at this time, we do not support claims documents and they will not be uploaded.

2. The second issue applies to some dockets which do not follow the normal format in PACER. We had a parser that assumed a certain format, but failed when that format wasn't applied. This is now fixed so that either format is supported by the extension.

   So far, we have only seen one docket that did not follow our expected format, so we expect this is a very limited issue.

Appellate Upload Support

This release follows the successful beta period of 1.2.4b, and has the beginnings of appellate PACER support for Chrome and Firefox. This is the first time Chrome has had any appellate support. As we work to get the Firefox extension back to its former glory, we're bringing Chrome along for the ride.

At this point, several parts of appellate support do not work, however we do expect the following to work on appellate courts:

• You should see blue [R] icons on any appellate PDF that was uploaded prior to November 14 (using the old Firefox extension).

• Dockets will be uploaded to the RECAP Archive, but for now you will not see blue [R] icons for these items.

  These dockets will be properly parsed and added to the database soon.

• PDFs from appellate courts are not yet being uploaded to us in this version.

Additional changes in this release include:

• We have re-added our testing framework with 89 automated tests that must pass before release.

• Better documentation for developers.

Thank you for your support of the RECAP Project.

Beginnings of appellate support

This release has the beginnings of appellate PACER support for Chrome and Firefox. At this point, the goal is to ensure that we don't cause any regressions on district court PACER. Several parts of appellate support do not work.

We do however, expect the following to work:

• All features on the district court sites should continue working.
• You should see blue [R] icons on any appellate PDF that was uploaded prior to November 14 (using the old Firefox extension).
• Dockets will be uploaded to the RECAP Archive, but for now you will not see blue [R] icons for these items. They will be properly parsed and added to the database soon. PDFs are not being uploaded to us in this version.

If you notice anything out of the ordinary, please let us know, and thank you for your support of the RECAP Project.

Fundraising release

This is just a small release. When it is installed, it will pop up a tab pointing to https://free.law/fundraisers/2017/recap/. That page talks about the successes we've had in 2017, and requests a donation from our users.

No other functional changes included.