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Big Brother Won't Watch Judges
The good guys win! You may remember
Tuesday's story
about whether internet surveillance should extend to judges and their staff. Good news. As James Tyre writes in a
detailed summary
over on our website at censorware.net,
"How can we be at the end when today is September 7, but the Judicial Conference does not meet until September 11? Because the AO [the Administrative Office of the Courts] blinked, caved, gave up, threw in the towel, that's how."
The software in question, WebSENSE, is used at my school. Basically, how it works is that the admin chooses which catagories to block (sex, violence, etc). There is one catacory called "tastless" which blocks everything related to anime, for some reason.
In any case, there are certinly sites that are blocked that shouoldn't be. The school has the option of selectivly un-blocking sites, but its policy is to do so only if there is a valid academic intrest in the site - not if the site is simply used for recreation. This is done, suposidly, to save the IT staff's time.
What is particularly distressing is that this is a boarding school (9-12th grades), and the school blocks phone accsess to all ISPs, so the only way to go online is with their network. Thus there are a large number of sites which few parents would object to that are blocked simply because they have no academic value. One example is ESPN, which is blocked in the "chat" catagory because of its message boards. The yahoo stocks site is blocked for similar reasons. Can't have those studentes exchanging views!
Charming. Ever hear of this thing called "reductio ad absurdem"? Just because I can't surf for porn at work doesn't mean I can't at home.
The difference here is that it is part of a judge's job to look at things that may not be socially acceptable. As an example, my employer blocks access to many hacking sites. It is not deemed part of my job function to visit hacking sites. Yes, there is information that is very useful to me as a team lead developer and architect, but such information can usually be found elsewhere, in places I am allowed to access, and I'm always free to browse them in my off time, on my own equipment. OTOH, our data security folks, whose core job function it is to protect against such things have unfettered access to them.
This doesn't even approach the issue of non-judicial personnel having access to the thought processes going into making judicial decisions. If I was a judge, you're damned right I wouldn't want someone looking over my shoulder while doing it. If I found a cogent nugget, I'd cite it in my ruling. Defense attorneys don't have the right to go sifting through the books used in forming a ruling that aren't cited. Why should they have access to web logs for the same?
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Privacy is probably the most important new (well, technology continually makes it new) social issue that we will be dealing with over the next several decades. I don't think that this result is a positive one at all! The Judicial Conference has basically had the issue temporarily deflated by a single bureaucrat (supposedly) caving at the last minute. The result is that we will not have a thorough debate and there will be no precedent set. A ground-breaking decision from the Judical Conference could have gone a long way toward influencing the Judiciary's position on other privacy issues (facial recognition, etc) in the future, but instead we see a slight blip and we are right back to the status quo.