Legalities
Life, Politics and the Law From ABC News Correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg
Jan Crawford Greenburg is a correspondent for ABC News' bureau in Washington DC. She covers politics, the Supreme Court and provides legal analysis for ABC News. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago's law school and is a member of the New York bar.
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Nothing is Private: Judges and "Porn"
June 16, 2008 11:48 AM
It’s one of those stories that make you say: WHAT?
Renowned federal appeals court Judge Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, outed for keeping so-called “sexually explicit” materials on his home computer. And here’s the kicker, timing-wise: It was reported in the LA Times while Kozinski was presiding over an obscenity trial, which made it a Big News Story.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the California-based Kozinski, he’s one of those judges whose opinions command immediate attention and respect—in an elite intellectual class with the Posners and Easterbrooks of the world. He’s now suspended the trial and turned the matter over to an ethics panel.
This has the legal world, as Larry Lessig put it, “a twitter.” But as Lessig suggests—there’s more to this story—maybe a lot less.
Yesterday, Patterico posted a lengthy email from Kozinski’s wife of more than 30 years. She says her husband didn’t maintain a “porn” website, which is what a lot of the reporting has suggested, but instead stored on his home computer a bunch of sophomoric cartoons and videos---the kind of things that people think are funny enough to email around and clog up your inbox.
The Judge kept it all on the family’s file server, which can be accessed remotely—and was. The Kozinskis believe a nemesis got access to it and did some digging to see what was there.
“In fact, of the several hundred items in the “stuff” folder, the vast majority was cute, amusing, and not in the least bit sexual in nature,” Kozinski’s wife said.
Like this:
“For example, there’s a program that lets you build a snowman (no private parts involved). There’s a “stress reliever” that lets you take a virtual hammer to your desktop (which I’ve been using a lot lately). There’s a picture of freshly painted double-yellow lines that go right over road kill, with the caption “not my job award,” she writes. “There’s something called “cool juggle” that shows a video of a guy juggling who drops a ball outside the frame and becomes a stick figure when he goes to pick it up.
“There are over 300 individual items in the “stuff” folder, the vast majority of which are of this nature. In addition, this folder contains about a half-dozen items that, while humorous, also have some kind of sexual aspect.”
Whatever Kozinski was linking, the Seattle Times raises a YIKES! point this weekend. Nothing is private in this Internet/Email age.
“So the roiling water in which Judge Alex Kozinski finds himself should be a lesson for every Internet user: Nothing is private,” the paper says. “That this learned man, one of the highest-ranking federal judges, sometimes mentioned as a worthy candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court, would be stung by an all-too-common pitfall of the online world should make everyone rethink their online habits.”
The paper goes on to talk about how the Internet is like one big party line—anyone can listen in much of the time, and they do.
June 16, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (4)
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The attorney who went into the Kozinski server should be disbarred. There is no ethical difference between what was done here and walking through the unlocked door to a home and rifling through a file cabinet.
Posted by: Tom J | Jun 17, 2008 9:49:54 PM
If a person did access his server without permission, then that would translate into jail time for violating the law against unauthorized computer access. (Regardless if the server was password protected or not)
Posted by: tdkyo | Jun 17, 2008 11:58:32 PM
I hope all this Foof-er-Roo about privacy, porn, the Internet, courts, the Law, integrity, sincerity, and 'morality' evolves into a much more mature perception and perspective of all this for adults and teens in America
Posted by: Robert Cecil Hanna | Jul 4, 2008 4:03:21 PM
THANKFULLY, IT HAS.
Posted by: ROBERT CECIL HANNA | Sep 20, 2008 5:05:21 PM
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