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Perl's Chip Salzenberg Sued, Home Raided
Chip continues: "The key evidence in the search warrant was so ridiculous as to be surreal: CVS logs indicating that I downloaded more than I uploaded, and that I sometimes accessed the company network from home. Apparently, for company management, the police, and a judge, working at home through a gateway the company set up for that very purpose, and refraining from editing every source file for every code change, is a sign of nefarious behavior.
My behavior in accessing the company network was entirely within my job description and in no way involved misappropriation of anything. For the more than two years that I worked at HMS, I used ssh and CVS to access company files with my laptop both from work and home, with management knowledge and approval.
What would lead management to such a sudden action? Days beforehand, I had made an internal report of unethical and apparently illegal behavior by the company: Use of open proxies for web harvesting to avoid blockage by web site operators. HMS apparently decided that working with me to address their use of open proxies was not an option.
Health Market Science is a large corporation with, compared to me, effectively infinite resources. My legal bills have topped $40K already over just two months. If HMS succeeds in tarring me with their false accusations, what's to stop your employer or client from doing the same to you, should your relationship sour?
Friends have set up GeeksUnite.net, an informational web site and Legal Defense Fund. The site includes the search warrant, my letter about open proxy abuse, and court documents.
Please contribute to my Defense Fund to fight this attack on the normal and legal work practices of millions of tech workers. Every little bit counts! If every person who visits the site contributes only ten dollars, that will make a huge difference. Only through community effort can we protect ourselves."
If his version of events is true, then wouldn't there exist whistleblower protection laws he can seek refuge under?
The person in charge of maintaining the Perl code used to have (still has?) a stuffed pumpkin they used to pass around. Project manager is a good parallel.
The superior officer of a Squash Squire?
Any time you're going to be challenging the mental giants that are in charge, ALWAYS have a lawyer in your pocket and all your ducks in a row. And offsite backups.
Seriously, what the hell did he expect - if they can use open proxies like this, that they would play nice with him?
Gosh, I could google it faster than slashdot will let me finish a post: http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/P/pumpking.html
Retain, and have a very long chat with a very good lawyer before you threaten your bosses with police action.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
You should take your original letter to the police who raided you. Hopefully they will then prosecute your employer for filing a false police report.
2) Working for obvious scumbags is going to burn you in the end.
(Assuming his version of the story is accurate -- I realize there's another side. I also realize that both of my suggestions are frequently easier said than done.)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
What did you think they were going to do, make you an SVP?
If it were me? Well, there would be a wide number of possible responses I could expect from the employer, but producing false information to police and courts to produce illegitimate legal action and have my private property unreasonably seized-- property which I may or may not ever see again once it disappears into the "evidence" system-- is not one of them.
Anyway if he had resigned how would it have helped him one iota? He'd still be facing a frivolous and expensive lawsuit and have all his stuff jacked.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
IANAL, and I know this varies by state, but this kind of retribution and harassment for filing a complaint may be very illegal, and the company may have opened themselves up to liability for it. I know reporters of sexual harassment or discrimination are protected from retribution, and it would be interesting to know what protection a whistleblower for unethical behavior has under state and federal laws.
Regardless, no one deserves this treatment for stating their beliefs the company is doing something wrong.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Friends have set up GeeksUnite.net, an informational web site and Legal Defense Fund.
and slashdot has blasted it off the web.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Yes but how is it that a judge or magistrate (I'm sure under intense pressure from the police department) will issue a search warrant without hard evidence of any illegal activity? Strongarm tactics like this are what is wrong with our judicial system today.
This is your tax dollars at work!
--
Fairfax Underground: Fairfax County and Northern Virginia message board
If anyone else was as confused as me about the intro, there's a town called "King of Prussia" in Pennsylvania. Go figure.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Based on the evidence at hand there was no probable cause for the search.
:-) or a nice juicy settlement favoring the plaintiff.
If he didn't keep any of the company's information, they likely have no case.
Crossing your fingers for summary judgment, a directed verdict
Pretty scary though that the judge would authorize grabbing all your equipment with no genuine evidence of theft/misappropriation of trade secrets. There ought to be a high bar set for the kind of disruption that causes. There's no reason discovery couldn't have been allowed to proceed in a less violent manner unless he wasn't cooperating.
Every company I have ever worked for has violated all sorts of labor laws. Start giving them a pile of minor regulatory headaches.
Then make sure you have a good shark for a lawyer. Make sure he has a technologically savy partner or associate that can understand the CVS and gateway issues.
Then countersue. They may have infinite resources compared to you, but they also have much deeper pockets to go after. If they are vunerable on this point, your lawers will be more than happy to go after that big paycheck.
If all you do is try and defend yourself, then they will steamroll all over you.
Here is where these slease balls brag about their customers. Contact them:o mers.html
http://www.healthmarketscience.com/customers/cust
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
What is it with people high up in the Perl community and legal troubles?? Didn't Randal L. Schwartz also get into trouble with a past employer?
This should be reason #1 to use Python.
I'm just joking everyone...nothing to see here...carry on.
It might be a violation of the terms of service with their ISP, but I'm not sure it's illegal... In any case, if what he was doing turns out to be illegal then it really doesn't matter if he has the goods on the company or not.
Depends on which "what he was doing" you mean: if what the company is accusing him of doing were true, whistleblower laws would not protect him. But the charges they are leveling reek of retaliatory accusations with no substance. He is protected from that.
If the actions he took at the company's behest (ie, developing software to work around ISP blocks of their spyders) is illegal, whistleblower laws do protect him, provided he reports the illegal actions to the proper authorities when he becomes aware of their illegality.
I think a legion of slashdot readers blasting these contact details and sending trollish e-mails will only worsen this guy's situation: "Then he got his legion of goons to come to his defence, causing massive problems with our e-mail infrastructure and bringing our website to a crawl, before this had even got to court." That cannot be good.
I would advise any slashdot readers considering trolling this e-mail address to think carefully about the implications their messages might have on this guy, and refrain from contacting HMS unless they have something worthwhile and appropriate to contribute.
Chip complained internally. That's allowed. That's ethical. He was giving his employers a chance to sort out a problem. The open proxy scam might have been in contravention of company policy.
Unlikely with hindsight, I'll grant.
OK, I'm missing your point, I know. I don't even disagree with your advice. All I'm saying is let's watch the terminology. A lot of people will thing "Whistleblower, pah! He had it coming!" when nothing is further from the truth. He got into this mess because he gave his employers the benefit of the doubt.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
None of the views expressed in the website constitute the views of the Armstrong & Carosella PC law firm, or any
principals or employees, or agents or experts who have been retained in any capacity in connection with the case.
Information on this site is for educational purposes. Case Caption: Health Market Science, Inc. v Charles H. Salzenberg, Jr..
Court of Common Pleas of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Case Number: 05-11918
Donate today, to the
Chip Salzenberg Defense Fund. Over $40k in legal defense fees incurred since April 23, 2005.
Protect yourself from the same thing happening to you. Learn from this site, mirror it. Please donate. We thank you for your help.
OMITTED from the Company's Pleadings,
UN-INVESTIGATED by the Detective,
it caused IMMEDIATE ACTION by the CEO,
READ the LETTER that started it all!
Why care?
We didn't ask for this fight but we do hope that the telecommuting community learns from it. As a well known contributor to OpenSource and perl for many years, Chip continued his efforts to protect the spirit of opensource and the internet by attempting to inform his employer...sadly it brought on serious consequences in the form of an ugly legal battle with results that can affect all employees and consultants who hook up to an employer's network. We urgently need your help. The Chip Salzenberg Defense Fund is an escrow account sponsored by the law firm of Armstrong and Carosella to help pay the mounting legal defense fees for Chip Salzenberg and his family. The funds will only be used for legal costs to defend Charles Salzenberg and his family against Health Market Science, Inc. Donations are NOT tax deductible. Thank you in advance. We would love to hear from you.
Donate by email
You may send us your email address, name, phone number and pledge amount. We will email you back a "Request for payment".
You'll be able to pay by credit/debit card or using your Paypal account. Send email to: gifts@geeksunite.net.
Donate by Mail
If you would prefer to mail your donation, please send it to the following address:
Chip Salzenberg Defense Fund Escrow
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882 S. Matlack Street
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Make Checks payable to Chip Salzenberg Defense Fund Escrow" (NOT tax deductible).
If you have questions or need additional information about making a gift to the Chip Salzenberg Defense Fund,
please call 925-457-6634 or email gifts@geeksunite.net.
I am continually shocked and dismayed to see people write test cases, install scripts, and other random hackery using Perl. Perl is seductive because of the abundant CPAN modules and its TIMTOWTDI philosophy, so the path of least resistance is followed and a Perl script is written. Sadly, programming in Perl inevitably leads to one's employer taking legal action against the programmer.
The most common problem encountered with Perl programmers is pointing out embarrassing things about their employers. All they are able to do is white-hat hack or whistleblow. While some educators have fixed some of Perl programmers' flaws (closed-minded disciplinarians do much better here), many have added new ones. Most of their problems can never be solved because they're not inadequacies per se, but rather the direct consequences of intelligence and free-thinking.
English is easier said than done.
June 21, 2005 Intervener's Too Late? - DA Gives Away Computers Early. Company Already Imaging.
June 20, 2005 Emergency Stays Filed by All Parties - In an Attempt to Keep Property from falling into the Wrong Hands
June 17, 2005 Judge Awards Personal Property to Company - Admits to NOT Reading Salzenberg's Opposition.
June 16, 2005 Company Runs Interference - Files Motion to Intercept Released Computers Contrary to the May 2, Order and the "Return of Property" laws.
June 6, 2005 DA Drops Criminal Investigation - Annouces Return of the Seized Property to Salzenberg.
May 2, 2005 Company Agrees Not to Enforce Exparte Orders - Property to be Returned to Salzenberg unless another motion is filed.
April 26, 2005 Company files Exparte - Receives orders to intercept equipment from police to start imaging.
April 25, 2005 Salzenberg receives back dated letter from company "accepting his resignation"
April 21, 2005 Salenberg's Property Seized within hours of police report made by CEO.
April 20, 2005 Salzenberg and CEO exchange emails and faxes in an attempt to negotiate a face to face conversation. CEO finally gives the OK to Salzenberg bringing an attorney with him.
April 19, 2005 Salzenberg sends compliance letter to CEO. Salzenberg also sends follow up message to COO that he has "not resigned". CEO immediately locks Salzenberg out of company email and network.
April 18, 2005 Another employee leaves company after voicing compliance issues.
remember when it was {of|for|by} the people?
Charles H. Salzenberg, Jr.
P O Box 537
Southeastern, PA 19399
Health Market Science
2700 Horizon Dr. Ste 200
King of Prussia, PA 19406
Attn: Mark Brosso, Matt Reichert, Rich Ferris, Rob DiMarco, Dorothy O'Hara
Re: Legality and Morality of Harvesting Operations
It has recently come to my attention that that HMS is continuing the illegal and immoral web harvesting operation that I brought to Rich Ferris's attention over a month ago, in a conversation including Tim McCune. HMS's continued harvesting operations are a threat to me legally, morally, and professionally.
That HMS systematically collects data from web sites without the express permission of their owners is well known (inside HMS). Some web site operators are not pleased when (if) they figure out that their sites are being harvested. They sometimes respond by blocking the network addresses of the harvesting machines. This was a common problem in harvesting when I hired on to HMS in December of 2002. At that time, the accepted strategy for getting around such blocks was to obtain multiple web hosting accounts to act as proxies for HMS's harvesting systems. I did not then realize that knowingly bypassing blocks placed by web server operators was illegal. (As a result of other research, detailed below, I now know that has been illegal all along.)
As bad as HMS's past harvesting practice was, current practice is worse ... much worse.
HMS has taken a page from the spammer playbook and is, deliberately and under
management direction, hijacking thousands of vulnerable machines all over the
Internet, using them and their network bandwidth without the knowledge or
permission of their owners as unwitting accomplices in HMS's data harvesting
operation.
I have confirmed these facts in conversations with several people with first-hand knowledge, including Tim McCune and John Marquart. I asked Tim McCune about HMS's proxy hijacking in the presence of Rich Ferris, a vice president of HMS and a company founder. In that conversation, Tim McCune confirmed to Rich Ferris and me that proxy hijacking was standard practice. Shocked, I informed Tim and Rich that proxy hijacking is very illegal and immoral. They were unmoved. I also have witnesses for other conversations.
I have also confirmed that the Harvester source code - which I, as a Senior Programmer, am authorized to access - includes Java code which collects lists of such vulnerable computers, called "open proxies," from web sites that maintain lists of them. I have also found the Java code which uses such proxies, without the permission of their owners, to connect to the sites that HMS harvests. The offending source code was written by Rob DiMarco, Tim McCune, and Jason Franklin.
This deplorable activity by HMS has serious legal, moral, and professional implications.
First, the legal.
I am not a lawyer, but I can read the plain English of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, and it is clear to me that hijacking the computers of random people is a crime in Pennsylvania. Under PSC 3933, every instance - every single instance - of hijacking an open proxy is a misdemeanor of the first degree.
HMS is committing these misdemeanors by the tens of thousands, under explicit management direction, and in accord with corporate strategy. One petty theft may draw little attention; but tens of thousands of petty thefts, all made by one company, at explicit management direction, and in accord with company strategy, might well lead to unpleasant legal consequences. Even a small fine is painful when multiplied by a hundred thousand.
HMS thus makes itself an attractive target for prosecution by a state's attorney who wants to show himself tough on corporate crime. HMS could be a stand-in for the spammers who commit the same crimes.
HMS's legal exposure is not limited to Pennsylvania. A number of the sites that HMS harvests are run by governments of other states who would be
They got caught with their hand in the cookie jar and immediately attempted a smear campaign to draw attention away from themselves.
Further, on nothing more than the company's say-so, they got a search and seizure warrant from a judge who was obviously unfit for service by the very fact of his signing it. Actual investigation and evidence is required usually for this kind of thing and it seems to be a case of "he-said, got the warrant, screw what the other guy said" sort of thing. Having been the victim of this myself, I am not surprised. Saddened that it continues, but not surprised. People who love increasing the powers of the state for their political aims can just as quickly be the nail getting pounded down by that same state.
What is so shocking is that they think they will get away with it. All that are needed are logs from servers harvested by this scumbag outfit despite their attempts at a polite no through robots.txt, etc., and it will become a landslide against them with the first lawsuit for the intrusion.
If I had any money, I'd send some.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
You will want to check your local law, but MOST states permit a concealed recording device on a person when there is no "perceived expectation" of privacy (don't record anything in the bathroom) or when more than 2 people are party to the conversation.
I've only had to resort to this tactic once, but it saved my job and cost the Veep his....
was it worth the $20????
d*mn straight it was.....
My name is Douglas Muth, and I live not too far from King of Prussia, PA.
Back in 2001, I was laid off from my previous job and looking for work. I interviewed with Health Market Sciences sometime around that July for a Software Engineer position, and it was an interesting experience. I met some of the people from that company and was finally interviewed by one of the Vice Presidents, a guy by the name of Rich Ferris. Rich seemed pretty impressed with my resume and said something to the effect of "we'll get you an offer by the end of the day".
So, I went home and gave Rich a call at the end of the day. But suddenly his story changed, and it was, "I had problems getting the offer through HR (or somesuch), I'll have one for you on Wednesday".
Wednesday came, and I was told, by Rich, to call back again on Friday. Friday came, and they were having money issues and would get back to me on Wednesday. Finally, next Wednesday rolls around and I'm suddenly told, "Well, we really want to hire you, but we don't have the money right now, so we cannot make you an offer".
So what it boiled down to is that I was led on by that company for over a week with the promise of employment, only to have it yanked out from me because they didn't have their stuff together. It was a total waste of my time, and the time of the job recruiter I was working with. If they didn't have the money, they shouldn't have been hiring in the first place. The whole experience left me rather bitter.
I hope Chip sues that company into oblivian.
Anyway if he had resigned how would it have helped him one iota? He'd still be facing a frivolous and expensive lawsuit and have all his stuff jacked.
Well, aside from the wrongfull lawsuit, if he had resigned under threat he could have applied for unemployment benifits and get his employer embroiled in arbiration (a free and apparently abritrary by some standards method of dispute resolution.) Not only would that help tie up the company and give backing to his (potential) counter-suit, but he might make some money to help with the bills.
<PARANOIA>
Finally, if I were a high-profile FOSS developer, I'd invest in a wireless adapter and a decent SOHO SAN box. Put that baby inside a wall with a UPS. It's impressive what you can do with a drywall knife, some 12 gauge homegrade wire, and a decent amount of drywall patch. Let them raid all his stuff, his data would have had remained 'safe' and all his HD's clean (save any cache/tmp/~ files.) Hell, get paranoid and setup the SAN to re-encrypt the drives and shut off if certain files aren't touched every X minutes.
Chip's problem now is that 100% of his admissable evidence is in the hands of a known immoral and hostile agent. There is no practical way to back up his claims without more money. Any 'evidence' he gets back from those machines may be unreliably tampered after the police's uber-windows nerd gets done trashing his probablly non-windows boxen.
</PARANOIA>
Save Chip, Sink Heath('s legal team)
"You cannot have a General Will unless you have shared experiences. You cannot be fair to people you don't know."
Ok, the Pennsylvania Common Pleas Court is partially online, and the docket sheets are available with a little digging. Too bad the full text isn't available.
5 -11918. Looks like a motion for a temporary restraining order and for expedited discovery and preservation of documents was filed on April 26, and was granted ex parte (without the defendant being able to argue) by Judge Joseph J. Smyth. The latest emergency motions appear to be filed to reinstate this order, presumably as a result of the computers being released after the criminal matters were dismissed. I am very curious to know what's going on with the intervenors - Radian Guaranty and Lisa Perdichizzi. It's Perdichizzi who filed a motion for sanctions against the Plaintiffs on June 22, and there's nothing on the docket sheets since then.
CRIMINAL MATTER: Docket Number: CP-46-MD-0002495-2005. Filed 4/27/2005. CASE STATUS: CLOSED. Last event was a hearing on the return of property, on 6/10/2005 before Judge William J. Furber, Jr.
CIVL MATTER: Docet Number: 05-11918 (Judge Hodgson). A deep link to the docket sheet is http://12.40.122.125/FCP2.WEB8/0/P12DIS?CASE-NO=0
honestly, people- if your company's financial success is built on illegal behavior, and the guy who owns the majority of the company set it up to be that way, why would you think he's going to change anything just because you were bright enough to notice? The best you could hope for is that, when you try to blackmail him into splitting the profit with you, it's not just cheaper to have you killed.
Picture this: Vince Coll walks into Dutch Shultz's office.
I can understand why Chip had the moral problems that he did, but he sure picked a naive way to try and resolve them. There IS a federal whistleblower statute, so if he went to the Feds with his first letter he would have been legally protected from retaliatory action from his employer... but keeping your job after you've turned them in doesn't do you any good if the company's only revenue stream depends on illegal activities.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
I really don't care about what's "expected" in this situation, and I don't care whether he was naive in his approach or not. What I care about is that if a company retaliates against someone for pointing out unethical behavior, files fradulent charges, and drags him through legal and financial hell, that they get their ass nailed to the wall.
(This is based entirely on conjecture. None of us really know what went down for sure.)
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Basically these trade secret laws let big guys with resources or connection punish small guys (us) without any legal process. We're out tens of thousands of dollars just from the moment the process begins, without a court or a judge even having seen the issue.
There's also the emotional factor. It's terrifying. If I got a criminal trade secret conviction, I would never be able to work in the programming field again. What else could I do? My life would be ruined even if I got probation only. The fear is incapacitating. It's like someone telling you "you have cancer." Even if the cancer is treatable, it is terrifying.
Anyone in the programming field needs to be aware of these risks. You don't think about it because a) these things usually do not result in convictions (in TFA's case, if his telling is accurate, there is no evidence of any wrong-doing) and b) when they go away without a conviction, we're all scared to talk about them (like I am posting as AC right now). But even if the case goes nowhere, running into a $40k legal bill is disastrous. That's a downpayment on a house. That's 100% of your after-tax income for more than a year (probably). That's your new-car and vacation fund for several years. That could cause so much financial stress as to lead to divorce, family estrangement, etc. That's "liquidate all of your assets right now and borrow from all of your relatives" disastrous. That's a penalty this guy is suffering without any trial or judicial overview. That's (possibly) without even having a grand-jury rubber-stamp the police side of the story.
I'm afraid to even post this lest it have some bearing on my situation, but I'm posting because I want all of us Slashdot crowd to be aware of it.
I don't really have a solution, but one thing that seems to help is to put up a very aggressive and determined defense from the very beginning. Let everyone involved know, "there will be no plea bargain. There will be a vigorous defense. Trying to bring a civil matter into the criminal system will not work and I'm not going to beg for mercy. If it gets to a trial, we're fighting all the way and there will be an acquital."
This guy is brave to even be talking about this publicly. I'm sure his lawyer advised him not to (mine did). Most of us who are victims of this are silent victims like me.
...they lead me to lean towards thinking he did nothing wrong. But I don't know. And I'm not dishing up my cash until I do.
The purpose of a legal defense is not to exonerate the guilty. It is to ensure a fair trial. Whether you believe he is guilty or innocent, or whether you don't know, makes no difference. He has the right to a fair trial. At present in the United States, that means having a lot of money to pay a competent lawyer.
TTFN
Hah! First job I worked after college we had 3 developers sharing a Polyforth development system running multiuser in 12K of RAM with no memory protection. When you dropped out of the editor to test something you yelled "save your buffers"... because Polyforth didn't even use stack sentinels so just about any syntax error meant the system crashed and had to be rebooted.
I moved out West in 1997 to work for a company (heading up a software division for Windows) that a friend had bought into. Long story short, he and I found massive corruption (embezzlement) within weeks. He brought it up at a board meeting, and the next day was kicked out of the building, voted off the board (illegally it turns out) and his stuff left on the curb. I quit the same day.
At 7 AM the next morning, the sheriff was at my door with their lawyers in tow. Fortunately for me, they screwed up the warrant and were unable to seize my hardware, but they took a very detailed inventory of everything. Even more fortunately, my friend HAD consulted a lawyer before confronting the board and he (the lawyer) had the whole thing search/seizure suspended. The courts finally found the company's motions meritless (and fined them!!) They ended up with a huge lawsuit against them from several board members once the whole picture came to light, the BSA came down on them like the wrath of God (thanks to a cover your ass maneuver by the CIO) and the whole thing went into the crapper within 8 months.
ALWAYS consult a lawyer when doing any sort of confrontation with your employer. You need something to back you up. If they are doing something scummy, there is NOTHING that will stop them from doing something scummy to you in return. I should have done so before the board meeting, even though I wasn't directly involved. But my friend saved my ass. He lives 2000 miles away now, but I still send him thank you notes.
For, who the good fortune to be able to vote AGAINST someone who would issue a warrant for the seizure of computer equipment based on the affadavit of someone who couldn't even use a word processor to edit the request (see for yourself! It's obviously copied from a drug-related case, with the drug parts CROSSED OUT), without any actual basis of suspicion other than one man's un-sworn complaint against another, the issuing judge is the Honorable Jeremy Blackburn. Remember that when his term is up. Unfortunately, I think his district is in Chester County (where the property was seized), not in Montgomery County (where Salzenberg works, and where I live), so I don't think I get to vote for him.
You're not real clued in to how criminal investigations work, huh?
When the police find something "suspicious", you don't just say "oh, I have this perfectly plausible excuse which sounds highly improbable to technical incompetents like you" and walk away. Trust me, I know. I had to jump through some pretty ridiculous hoops with a detective once just to prove that it was not, in fact, uncommon for a brand-spanking new hard drive to appear "wiped".
The justice system is a misnomer. It's not a "justice" system, it's a "legal" system. Justice would imply that all parties are acting in an informed, responsible, and full-capacity manner, which is probably the sickest joke one could make about our incompetent, bungling court system.
Chip Salzenberg is fucked. You would be fucked if you tried to right off your little hidden system with that excuse, and you'd probably get charged for trying to interfere with the investigation and giving false information to the police if you used it.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
It's all part of a wider corruption. Large corrupters spend huge amounts to get lazy judges elected, and work for the defeat of judges who do a good job.
Part of the way corruption of the courts is accomplished by not giving the courts enough money to operate. A 2003-06-24 op-ed article by Charles Williamson, then president of the Oregon State Bar, in The Oregonian, the Northwest's largest newspaper, said, "The crippling loss of nearly one-third of their staff have left our courts unable to hear criminal cases such as car theft, shoplifting, prostitution, fraud and identity theft."
The corruption of the patent office is part of the same thing. Large corrupt corporations want stupid patents because they can scare others away from coming close to their technology. They don't care if they lose a few court cases. Taking something to court is so expensive that they win just because of the threat.
The book Other People's Money discusses corporate corruption. It's excellent.
35 Books and 3 movies say the Bush administration is the most corrupt the U.S. has ever had: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
Many Americans don't want to know that their government has become corrupt, so you can expect hostile comments if you try to talk about corruption.
In my first job we had 132 developers working on a 128-bead abacus. If you had to leave the room, you gobbed on the abacus first so that noone else would touch it.
In the evening we used to sit round and play frogger with real frogs.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
If you have to put yourself up for election, you will be deciding cases with a view to what potential voters -- really, just people mobilised by issue organisations, given how uninterested the average member of public is about voting --might think. This is either playing to mob mentality, or playing to vested interest groups. Either way is a recipe for bad judging.
The whole point of judicial independence is that judges will only feel free to take courageous decisions, and to avoid knuckling under to the government in power at the time, in particular, if their jobs are secure. That is, they can't be fired, and they can't have their pay reduced so much that they have to quit. Having to be re-elected to office is very much a serious job insecurity.
I would hate to have any of my legal rights determined by a judge with an eye on the opinion polls, the lobbysists and the millions of dollars in the bank accounts of sleazy, smoke-filled backroom operators itching to replace them if they decide cases in a way of which they disapprove.
I know plenty of judges in a number of countries, and have been employed by one at a court. Invariably they are horrified by the system of election of judges. Basically: they cannot see how many elected judges would feel comfortable taking an unpopular decision. Unpopular decisions being ones that (i) are against the prevailing mob mentality at the time and (ii) invariably turn out to be correct when viewed after the event, when passion and emotion has cooled, and what is left is the objective facts.
We've seen what playing to voters does to politicians. Why inflict it upon the judges too -- who are usually the ones who have to keep the politicians in check?
Additional comment:
Note that outsourcing is the same kind of corruption as is thoroughly discussed in the book about corporate corruption mentioned above. Programmers in India can produce good work, that's not the issue.
The issue is that the corrupt corporate manager wants to put a distance between himself and managing programming. Managing programming is time-consuming and requires serious concern and considerable technical knowledge and teamwork. If the programming department remains inside the company, the corrupt manager will be responsible. If the programming is outsourced, a level of deniability is introduced.
That extra level of bureaucracy and distance has four results: