Judicial conference "recommits" computer monitoring proposal.

A proposal that would have stripped "judicial branch employees," apparently including judges, from an expectation of privacy when they use the judiciary's data communications network has been shelved --or "recommitted," in the words of the Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts--in the face of opposition.

The proposal, which was to have been voted on by the U.S. Judicial Conference in September, came from the conference's Committee on Automation and Technology, headed by Edwin L. Nelson, U.S. District Judge of the Northern District of Alabama. It would have requested each U.S. court "prominently to display on screen prior to access of the DCN [data communications network] and the Internet, a banner notice clearly and conspicuously disclosing ... that the contents of the use may be viewed and recorded, that the employee's use of the system constitutes consent to such viewing and recording, and that uses inconsistent with the applicable use policy may result in disciplinary action."

The opposition to the proposal seems to have been centered in the Ninth Circuit. In May, the circuit's judicial council directed its staff to disable the DCN intrusion detection software at the San Francisco national gateway, which also serves the Eighth and 10th Circuits. The report of the Automation and Technology Committee states that the detection software had discovered and logged "transfers of large music and movie files." The impasse was resolved a few days later when, according to the committee's report, the detection software sensors were modified to eliminate the movie and music signatures.

When the Automation and Technology Committee declined to circulate his objections to the proposed policy, Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit authored an op-ed piece in the...