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."

Comments

As it should be!

[YIAAL]

Nice to see that the good guys won. Now the big test: will these guys be as vigilant about protecting our privacy as they've been at protecting their own? At least they're aware of the issue.

Interestingly, on my InstaPundit.Com site, once I mentioned this issue I started getting a lot of traffic from the Administrative Office's domain. I wonder if they realized that I was watching them too?

Bad Link... Correction Below

[camusflage]

I noticed that there was a bad link to James Tyre's article. The proper link is here.

WebSENSE

[mlknowle]

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!

Re:WebSENSE

[Nurlman]

One of the categories that WebSENSE enables blocking of is "proxy avoidance systems." All of the anonymous surfing tools like Safeweb that I am aware of are blocked, as are many web page translators like Babelfish (and even the Dialectizer).

The Google cache is about the only bypass system that can be used reliably, and that's on a page-by-page basis. Sure, I suppose you could write up your own proxy and stick it on some inconspicuous website, but WebSENSE has filtered out most of the well-known ones.

corrected Summary links

[Alien54]

The Detailde summary goes an inspection of the Web Sense software that was being used by the court. The results were typical:

our tax dollars are being spent to protect judges, and library users, against Liza Minnelli, Jewish teens, a grocer, a speakers' bureau, a mortgage company--and some free speech advocates. All of these sites are blocked by WebSENSE under the Sex1, Sex2 or Adult Entertainment categories, the settings used in the federal courts and in libraries.

The actual article is here

The letter is which AO Director Mecham Blinked is here.

Nice article, btw.

- - -
Radio Free Nation
an alternate news site using Slash Code
"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"

Re:Not right.

[camusflage]

As long as my employer is allowed to watch everything I do on my connect at work, these judges should be watched as well.

There's a big difference between you and me, and federal judges. Judges interpret laws in a binding fashion. You and I don't. If it's put to a judge to determine whether or not DeCSS infringes DMCA rights, I want them to be able to get out on the net without fear that some administrative pinhead (like you or me) is going to be watching what they're doing. This becomes even more vital in areas of more questionable nature, but of more far-reaching legal importance, such as computer generated porn, for example.

That being said, if they abuse the privilege, downloading MP3's, surfing for pr0n, or anything else outside their job, then by all means, stick it to them.

In all, this is a Good Thing. The issue of workplace privacy has been raised in a very personal way to them. Realize that it wasn't the monitoring that raised their hackles. It was that they were being monitored without being explicitly told it was being done.

Oh, SURE!

[Greyfox]

They rule time and again that employers have the right to monitor every aspect of their employees existance while at work, but they get their judicial panties in a bunch the moment someone suggests that the same standard should apply to them. Do you think this will change anything for the average Joe? Quite frankly, I don't see this as a victory at all. I think every federal employee, from the lowliest secretary to the President should be subjected to the same standard the rest of us have to follow. Moreover, since those employees are essentially my employees, I want full access to their web logs and archived E-Mail.

Re:Oh, SURE!

[RWarrior(fobw)]

The last time Slashdot ran this story, with a link to a WSJ editorial (that, regrettably, I can no longer find), I wrote an email to the author of the WSJ editorial, Judge Kozinski, at the address provided at the bottom of the editorial, which I will not reproduce here. My letter, in its entirety, said:

Judge Kozinski --

I read your WSJ editorial online after it was posted to Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org, "News for nerds. Stuff that matters."), and while I must say that I agree with your sentiments about workplace monitoring, your ire is perhaps indicative of why mere mortals see all government employees, and ones in dark robes especially, as disconnected from the citizenry they serve.

While your points about how inappropriate workplace monitoring is in the federal judiciary are well taken, and while I agree with them in principle, I can only shake my head and say, welcome to the real world, Your Honor.

Workplace monitoring of the sort you decry in your editorial is a fact of life for most Americans, and has been for many years. Some private-sector employers are more fanatical about it than others, but it remains extremely common that an employee checks his rights at the door. Random drug screens (even for employees who do not perform hazardous jobs like driving or operating heavy machinery), keystroke monitoring (how many keys per hour do you punch), email scanning, phone monitoring, and even log-in log-out to track your bathroom usage are common.

Frequently, signing away any rights you might have to protest such treatment is a condition of employment. Especially in light of today's slowing economy (the Dallas Morning News [ed: which requires nasty registration to see anything off the front page] last Sunday reported on a well-qualified computer professional who has taken to holding a sign at the street corner to ask for work), employees typically sign such monsterous documents simply to get a paycheck rolling in.

In addition, courts typically uphold the rights of employers to perform these kinds of searches, especially in states where employee rights are weak, such as Texas, where you can be fired for sneezing too much. (In Texas, employers can even require you to sign away your right to sue over Workman's Compensation claims, as a condition of employment. Many do, and courts uphold these waivers when employees get hurt and employers then do not pony up the money.)

Just as public school students and prisoners check their rights at the door (despite courts' protestations to the contrary in a littany of cases I could cite), employees do as well. It's been a fact of life for many years, and will continue to be so. That it's been so slow in coming to the federal judiciary is not surprising to me, if only because of the public perception that the judicial process is slow, unwieldy, and expensively out of reach of your average citizen.

[Signature omitted. Use Slashdot to contact me.]

His response is reprinted below in its entirety.

Dear Mr. [censored]:

I agree with your entirely. In fact, one of my major concerns in this matter is that if we adopt the most intrusive policy for our employees, we're more likely to approve it for others as well, when the issue arises in cases before us. Check out the attached article, as well as

http://www.tnr.com/091001/rosen091001.html

If you wish to help in this struggle, please check out

http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010831_eff_judicial_mo nitoring_alert.html [hotlink omitted because Slashdot wouldn't unscrew it.]

Sending a letter as suggested there, and copying in relevant members of congress, would be a big help.

Once again, many thanx.

Ciao. AK

WebSENSE

[Anonymous Coward]

WebSENSE is also used at my school, but it did not do to much good, because all one had to do was visit WebSENSE's site and they showed you, with screen shot directions, how to disable their filtering. Our netadmin was not very happy.

goose

The Watchmen

[Helmholtz]

Seems like I remember a short lived comic book series from long ago whose mantra was ...

Re:The Watchmen

[Helmholtz]

Who watches the Watchmen?

(sorry for the double post ... killed by the tab button)

Here's why this sucks

[geophile]

Yes, the good guys won. But I'm not happy about it because the
solution is not scalable. How many of us can get immoral and probably
unconstitutional policies or laws changed by just throwing a tantrum
or carrying out some minor civil disobedience? If we have to rely on a
judge's or legislator's personal discomfort to get bad laws changed
then we're screwed.

Re:Animal Farm

[camusflage]

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?

How fast they cave!

[redelm]

I'm always amazed at how quickly and completely bad guys cave-in. Past a certain level of opposition, those who know they are doing wrong totally give up. A clear sign their motivation was opportunism and not principle.
Unfortunately, I don't believe anyone at MS understands they have done wrong.

Confusion

[nevis]

Some of you seem to be confused about all the facts surronding this issue. The article about WebSENSE was old. The AO stopped using WebSENSE over a year ago. They dropped the blocking in favor of monitoring. They now use RealSecure IDS.

Mecham's memo in not an all out win, it's simply a recommendation. As of today the 3 national AO gateways are still monitoring. Also Mecham goes on to say that is largely a local court issue. That means each Chief Judge in all 92 districts gets to make the choice to either monitor or not monitor their employees.

It's very likely that the Judicial Confrence will still vote on this issue. It's a little late in the game for Judge Nelson and his commitee to pull their recommendation.

Re:Not right.

[dlaur]

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.

Re:Not right.

[jcr]

>As long as my employer is allowed to watch everything I do on my connect at work, these judges should be watched as well.

Sorry, but the fact that your employer is heavy-handed in this way does not create a moral obligation for ANYONE else to put up with what you have to suffer. If you don't like it, leave, complain to your union, file a lawsuit, whatever, but the premise that because wrong is done to you that anyone else must share your burden is absurd.

-jcr

Just goes to show you

[mikethegeek]

That more bad things should happen to judges. That way, they'd be more in touch and would make better decisions....

If only a judge would have the DMCA affect him...