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Federal Judges Take a Stance Against Workplace Monitoring
parvati writes: "The NYTimes is reporting that federal judges on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (the largest of the 12 regional circuit courts) disabled software on their office computers that monitored downloading of music, streaming video, and pornography--software that had been installed by the Washington-based Administrative Office of the Courts after a survey showed that 3-7% of the judicial computer traffic included streaming video and the like. The judges say that they are concerned about "the propriety and even the legality of monitoring Internet usage." The AOC is not pleased."
Not to seem argumentative (because for the most part, I agree with you), but you don't need technical savvy to understand privacy violations. Your average human being understands what it means to have your every move watched. Your average human being (at least, the ones who were raised in the United States) also have a problem with being needlessly watched. Even with all the grief we tend to give federal judges, they are people as well and I'm sure they want the same basic rights as any one else, privacy being one of them. This stuff is just common sense. Understanding what the caveats are in an anti-trust case when you've got lawyers and experts throwing legal and technobabble at you...now that takes a special kind of judge.
My sigs always suck.
I work for a consulting firm that does a great deal of work for the government. If I'm surfing porn or whatever during their time, then that's not a legitimate use.
Mass downloading on the other hand is something else entirely. As I type, I have slackware 8.0 downloading and I regularly listen to streaming radio feeds while I'm doing my work. Those are the uses that I think are the most important. IMHO, It's no different from having the radio on or listening to a cd.
Except you are using some of their finite amount of resources to do this. Listening to the radio takes no resources (except for the tiny amount of electricity, which they give you permission to use by saying you can listen to the radio). Downloading Slackware and listening to streaming audio uses a piece of their bandwidth.
I work at a company that only has a partial T-1 (768 kb/s). If we had people downloading Slackware and listening to streaming audio, it could potentially impact our bandwidth for legitimate work related activity. Should we be able to monitor and make sure people aren't using our (limited) resources for things they shouldn't and thereby negatively affecting the productivity of others? Of course we should, so how is this any different? If you are continually on the phoen making personal calls, you can be disiplined (they can't monitor the content of your calls, but they can monitor how much you use the phone). That is because it is a limited resources (there are only so many lines) and if you are using then for non-business related activities, you could impact people trying to use then for business.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Well, if they notify you upon receipt of employment
Except that NOBODY notifies employees of policy concurrently with the offer. The policy notification only happens *after* you have started the new job, when they have you over a barrel. And they change policies freely during your employment, leaving you no choice but to accept or walk out. This is a significant power differential, and it suggests that these are not "contracts freely entered into", but that there is some measure of coercion involved.
For further proof, imagine asking for a copy of the employee handbook in an interview. Do you think you'll get that offer? I'll bet it wouldn't help your chances. That says volumes about the coercive nature of this so-called "contract".
"the days before the software was disabled, there were hundreds of attempts at intrusion into the judiciary's network from places like China and Iran. "
How does Monitoring Software == firewall software all of a sudden? Please don't tell me that their monitoring software is also a "personal firewall" package. If they're relying on firewalling at the workstation level then all of my faith in the judicial system is lost. "We didn't have the staff to support a redundant SOHO system so we ordered up a few copies of Norton's Personal Firewall". Oh, the humanity!
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
"Don't try to make this out to be more than it really is. This is just a bunch of co-workers using their own smarts to get around the IT department"
Everywhere I've worked, I've BEEN in the IT department, and we are the first ones to by-pass any blocks/filters for ourselves. After all, we're responsible for maintaining them...
This also as DMCA implications. The DMCA would seem to create an open season on placing bugs in software that monitors browsing, collects information, etc, and "phones home", yet disabling this or even breaking into the code to find out WHAT it's doing would be a DMCA violation.
I guarantee soon monitoring software will be appearing in closed-source programs, like games, etc before long, when the Doubleclicks of the world start spreading the $$$ around. And it'd be nice to have judges who are aware of the implications.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
is that the higher-ups only begin to question the legality/ethics of software monitoring when it happens to them directly.
Although I'm not a big fan of workplace monitoring, this instance smacks of that guy whose neighbor told him about the how p2p likes to find kids, give them pr0n and take their bikes.
In a perfect world, the folks in D.C. would listen to the concerns of those of us who are bugged by privacy intrusions when they first start. I guess I'm not really one to complain, since I've never written a letter to my congressdude.
Maybe we should start writing. That way we'll be justified in complaining when congressmen/judges only care about things affecting them directly, or when they hear it from their neighbor's kid's cat.
If you'd bothered to read the fascinating article, you'd have seen that the NYT explicitly says: "There is no evidence that any alleged abuse involves judges." Just so you know.
And in fact, the issues they are worried about are :
- Judge Alex Kozinski, a member of the Ninth Circuit appeals court, [argues] that the monitoring was a violation of anti- wiretap statute.
- "Aside from my view that this may be a felony, it is something that we as federal judges have jurisdiction to consider. We have to pass on this very kind of conduct in the private sphere."
- "In fact, the issues of what is permissible by employers have produced a patchwork of legal rulings and the matter has never been addressed directly by the Supreme Court."
That's what they are worried about. And as for using their tech smarts: they just ordered their sysadmin to disable monitoring software. Try reading the article, mmmkay?"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."