In an recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Judge Kozinski spoke out strongly against the proposals. Judge Kozinski likened the monitoring of court employees to “the way we treat prison inmates”. He added: “like most judges, I had assumed that keeping case deliberations confidential was a bedrock principle of our judicial system. But under the proposed policy, every federal judge will have to agree that court communications can be monitored and recorded if some court administrator thinks he has a good enough reason for doing so.”
It will be interesting to see whether this outcry will affect judges’ views on future cases concerning employee surveillance. Until now, US judges have generally favoured increased monitoring of workers’ internet activities.
For example, a federal judge in Philadelphia dismissed a case concerning an employee who claimed his privacy had been invaded after his employer fired him as a result of an e-mail he had sent to one of his supervisors. An ex-employee of the Pillsbury Company brought the case against his employer because he had been assured that all e-mails would remain privileged communication. The court ruled that the assurances were meaningless and that an employee should have no reasonable expectation of privacy in his workplace.