Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon Technology

What happened to the exclusive Club Mac?
Is Jobs' new Internet strategy turning Apple into a playground for newbies?
By Donna Ladd
[01/21/00]

Technology: View from the top
Brand builder
Lycos chief executive Bob Davis argues that Yahoo's single-brand strategy is the Web star's Achilles' heel.
By Scott Kirsner
[01/24/00]

"Excuse me, are you human?"
How do you know your new e-mail pen pal isn't an intelligent agent?
By Simson Garfinkel
[01/25/00]

Column
Taste-testing Aqua
Experts wonder whether Apple's Mac OS X will be the New Coke of computer-interface design.
By Scott Rosenberg
[01/26/00]

The best game ever
No graphics, no sound, no razzle-dazzle -- but Nethack is still one of the finest gaming experiences the computing world has to offer.
By Wagner James Au
[01/27/00]

Complete archives for Technology

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Why don't judges want their financial interests revealed online?
When a news service attempted to post public records, federal judges blocked it.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Maura Kelly

Jan. 27, 2000 | Early last fall APBnews.com, a "crime, justice and safety" news site, applied for copies of the financial disclosure forms that federal judges must file each year. As its lawyer indicated to the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts, APBnews planned to publish the documents online to give the public easy access to them. But a 15-member committee representing the nation's 1,600 federal judges quickly responded -- by blocking the release of the forms, on the grounds that making them available on the Net represented a security threat.

Federal judges have been threatened by angry members of the public in the past. Three were even murdered in years past (but not since 1989). So, at first glance, it might sound reasonable that judges should be concerned about making their personal information widely available.

No way, say First Amendment proponents like APBnews senior editor Bob Port. "A committee of judges ... has said, in effect, you can have our financial disclosures unless you intend to publish them on the Internet -- then, you can't have them," he says. "That's unconstitutional, plain and simple. It violates the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of the press, and it violates the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law."

It does seem odd that the judiciary can keep supposedly public records from being made public. And some opponents of the judges' block say the security argument doesn't make sense, since the forms don't require the disclosure of any identifying information -- like a home address or Social Security number. (A sample disclosure form is posted on the APBnews site.) Besides, they say, an attack or threat made on a judge's life has never been linked to information found on a disclosure form.

But there is evidence that judges have ruled in cases concerning companies in which they own stock or in which their financial interests may have been at stake in other ways. "Federal judges [in Kansas City] and elsewhere repeatedly have presided over lawsuits against companies in which they own stock," Joe Stephens reported in a 1998 Kansas City Star series. "That's not supposed to happen. U.S. law requires judges to withdraw from any lawsuit in which they know they have a financial interest, however small. So does the judicial Code of Conduct."

So, are the judges who are trying to block the dissemination of these forms trying to protect themselves from physical attack -- or to protect their assets from prying eyes? Either way, the crazy thing about this legal battle between APBnews and the judges is that the information in question is already publicly available -- by written request. The thing the judges are resisting is putting it online, where anyone can poke through it without going through the bureaucratic hassle of making a written request.

APBnews thinks it -- and the public it serves -- has a legal right to the forms; the company filed a lawsuit to get them in December. "This is a fight to gain access to public records for all Internet users," Mark Sauter, chief operating officer of APB Online Inc., APBnews' parent company, told reporters shortly after his company filed the lawsuit. "The Internet is not just a legitimate but a superior means to disseminate these documents to the public," he continued. The case is working its way through the court, with a scheduling conference set for March 3.

Next page | Would the judges have released the forms if APBnews hadn't mentioned that it wanted to post them online?