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

Wrong branch.

[InfinityWpi]

I don't want the government keeping track of what judges do online... I wanna know what congressmen do online. Which sex sites they go to. Which interns they're emailing about affairs. Which corporations they're getting email from. Stuff like that. Judges should be able to take care of themselves. Congressmen are far more expensive to buy.

Judges vs Prisoners

[Thomas M Hughes]

The op-ed article spends some time referring to people who are constantly watched as prisoners, which indirectly implies that its perfecally okay to continue the monitoring the private conversations of prisoners. This in and of itself, creates a problem, as you are divinding up society into two camps. Those who are permitted to be watched at all times, and those who are not permitted.

I should probably address those who will tell me that I shouldn't be defending prisoners. In fact, I would suspect that the first thing people will say is 'Prisoners give up their right to privacy when they break the social contract that our society agrees to', ie, when they break laws. However, not all prisoners are gulity, nor are all prisoners truly that dangerous. Giving a prisoner who commited a minor offense private access to a phone is hardly endangering the community.

Prisoners are people, and judges are people. We should treat all people as much like people as we can. And I think that involves giving them as much privacy as we can. Unless we suspect something hoakey is going on, we should never, ever be permitted to monitor anyone's private messages. If you think a judge is corrupt and you've got some resemblance of evidence, get a warrant, and start listening. If you think a prisoner is trying to hire a hitman to kill a judge, and you've got evidence, get a warrant and start listening. If Joe Prisoner says he wants to call his wife to make sure she knows how to properly do the laundry and just to talk to her, if he's got phone rights, by all means let him have his private time.

By creating artifical lines between humans, and allocating rights to some and not others, a greater divide is created. If judges can't be monitored, but prisoners can, does that mean entry level workers can be monitored for no reason, and CEO's can't? Or does it mean that all criminals (past and present) be watched in the workplace, and no one with a completely clean record?

Why not just make it easy and flat forbid it except in the most extreme of circumstances?

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

Anything Goes

[KelsoLundeen]

This is an interesting question: why would *anyone* be entitled to privacy when you're using equipment that someone else has paid for?

The question is interesting for a couple reasons. First, it assumes that money -- cash, whatever -- negates privacy considerations. I'm entitled to privacy only with stuff -- phones, faxes, computers -- that I *pay* for. If I haven't paid for it, then anything goes.

Second -- and this is derived from the first point -- is the resulting "anything goes" mentality. This seems to be the real point of the WSJ article. Even though I'm getting paid for working -- and certainly expect to be given the money I'm entitled to -- why must I give my fundamental right of privacy up?

(The logic here, then, if I'm *not* getting paid -- on my lunch hour -- then does that give me the right to surf? In some places, yes. In most places, no. Because -- and some junior manager will be quick to explain this -- the fact that you surf means not only wasted productivity [which is, of course, dubious] but also liability.)

Which brings me to my third point -- and one that I have yet to receive an explanation for: the digital paradox. Why does a company fear the internet more than it does idle chatter in the bathroom? Or idle phone conversation? Why aren't my telephone calls monitored -- yet every site I visit is.

Why aren't there video cameras in the bathroom? (Because, well, that would be ... disturbing. Employees wouldn't stand for that. Yet they -- we -- stand for web monitoring?)

I'd really like an explanation as to why the web -- more so than the phone, more so than the break-room during "work" time -- is so feared by management.

The reason, of course, is power. Skippy the mid-level manager can *see* you yabbering away in the break room.

Britney the just-out-of-Keller-with-an-MBA-I-worked-real-hard- for can *see* you yabbering when she passes your cubicle on her way to yet another important meeting.

Ah well. It's all power. Britney needs to commandeer what little power she is and make sure the power remains inviolable. I think that's what managers fear most -- loss of power. There is this illusion among the worst managers that somehow power -- their own, tenuous power -- will increase productivity. Because that means money -- the real reason the web is monitored.

It's crazy -- the surveillance. Everybody's watching, watching to make sure you don't do something to decrease productivity. Fucking absurd.

Because I'm a person

[PiEquals3]

The right to privacy falls under the umbrella of humane working conditions, like the rights to a decent wage and a limited workday. To invade someone's privacy without a compelling, situation-specific motive is to insult their dignity as a free human being. Many "rights" for which people clamor amount merely to spoiled selfishness (a fellow I know once told me of our "right" to a department coffee maker), but to invade someone's privacy is a worse insult and a deeper exploitation than is sexual harassment.

It's not my right to use someone else's resources to surf the net at work, granted. But if I am allowed the privilege of doing so, it _is_ my right to have my privacy untrammelled while I'm at it. If a guest at your home asks to use the telephone, you are not obligated to let them. But if you _do_ give them permission, a basic respect for human dignity demands that you not eavesdrop on their conversation by using another phone without their knowledge. And I haven't met the person yet with enough ill-advised chutzpah to inform his guests that all calls made from his phones will be monitored by him without specific permission (which is exactly the stance many companies take in their anti-privacy policies that explicitly warn employees that everything they do is being watched.)

Personal use of company equipment is a privilege. To have my privacy respected while I exercise that privilege is my right.

IHBT (I think)