SEC Employees Inappropriately Accessed Restricted Legal Records: WSJ

According to an agency notice, employees at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) improperly accessed documents prepared for litigated cases in the agency’s administrative court system, writes Wall Street Journal.
The disclosure highlights concerns about the independence of the SEC’s in-house court system.
The notice said some workers in the enforcement division in 2017 downloaded legal memos restricted to the commissioners and lawyers who advise on orders and opinions.
Instead, the documents were uploaded to a database that all SEC enforcement attorneys could see.
“This breach reinforces the problem with the SEC’s administrative process in which the commission has total discretion to deprive parties of their ability to have matters litigated in federal court,” said Nick Morgan, an attorney at Paul Hastings LLP who defends people in SEC investigations.
The SEC’s notice didn’t disclose when the agency identified the breach. The agency has hired an outside consulting firm to investigate the impact on cases.
The SEC said its systems “lacked sufficient safeguards” when employees accessed the restricted material in its notice.
But the agency said it hadn’t found any evidence that SEC enforcement attorneys got an unfair advantage from the information.