Big Brother To Watch Judges?

One week from today, the U.S. Judicial Conference will decide whether judges and their staff can handle grown-up responsibilities like ... using the internet. No, you did not click onto The Onion by mistake: after heated disagreement earlier this year, the issue is coming to a head. Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has a great Wall Street Journal opinion piece, today only. (It wants your email; try me@privacy.net.) Jeffrey Rosen's analysis in TNR is another good take on it. If you don't think the men and women who hold people's lives in their hands need daddy and mommy looking over their shoulder, you might take a moment to fire off a quick, polite email per the EFF's suggestion. If surveillance can invade a judge's workplace, it's for damnsure there's nothing keeping it out of yours.

Comments

Re:Hold the phone

[Ami Ganguli]

Just because it's legal doesn't make it right. I once refused to use company equipment for exactly this reason. I used my own laptop, my private e-mail (over a secure link), and my own cell-phone. The company didn't like this, but my contract didn't say I had to use their stuff, nor did it say I had to submit to monitoring.

I've contracted for many companies, and I've never had to submit to monitoring. I spend enough of my life (way more than 40 hours/week) at work that I feel quite justified in using some of that time for personal business.

My experience has been that the companies that insist on monitoring employees also tend to be the ones with the worst moral and the least compentent management. Of course that doesn't prove a causal relationship, but I doubt it's a coincidence.

Monitoring is bad but filtering would be worse

[hillct]

I can't support monitoring of the on-line activities of members of the judiciary, not because I have problems with monitoring in general (which I do, but that's another issue) but because it represents our first tentitive steps onto a slippery slope which has the potential of being the root cause of many great miscarages of justice.

Monitoring opens the door for filtering, which by definition operates with the sole purpose of preventing access to certain information. It is an exceedingly dangerour proposition, to suggest that Judges should be prevented from recieving certain information, as a matter of law, however this bears a little explaining. I'm not prtoposing that preventing judges from viewing pornography while they contemplate a legal decision is nessecerily a bad thing, but merely having the capability to filter what a judge sees opens the door to the potential risk of the abuse of the technology. Granted, monitoring is not filtering, but again, it's a slippery slope. Slippery slope arguments are difficult to make because you come off as though you're tilting at windmills, however, I think any technically knowlegable person can see the risks here.

This decision has been a long time in coming. Earlier this year Judge wrote an article in the Green Bag Law Journal called In Defense of the Hard Drive in response to proposals then to monitor the office PCs of members of the judiciary. It seems that proposal has been expanded to an unbelievable degree at this point.

On the bright side, there is a new grounds for appeal for every case brought before any court where this proposed system is implemented. Essentially, the argument could be made that undue influence was excerted over the court by those who monitor the proposed monitoring system; that judges will be hesitant to seek out information theough communications systems made available to him for that specific purpose in his/her chambers.

--CTH