The Story of Alex's Stuff: A Cautionary Tale for the Internet Age

Last year, a federal obscenity trial was underway when the Los Angeles Times made a startling revelation. It seems that the judge presiding over the trial maintained a website with pornographic pictures on it. A mistrial was declared and an investigation was commenced. Now that the investigating committee has released its report, the actual facts are a lot tamer than they originally appeared. However, it makes for a good cautionary tale about privacy in the internet age.

Alex Kozinski is a federal judge. As a matter of fact, he is the chief judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Sometimes appeals judges are assigned to conduct trials. When Judge Kozinski was tasked with conducting an obscenity trial, he found that his personal computer files received a lot of attention. It turns out that Judge Kozinski, like most people, receives email. Back in the dial up age, it took a long time to download attachments from emails. Because of this, Judge Kozinski set up a folder on his personal computer to store email attachments. He called this folder "stuff." Like many of us, Judge Kozinski sometimes received colorful emails. Some of the files downloaded to the "stuff" file included a naked woman on all fours painted like a cow and a half-naked man with a sexually excited farm animal. No doubt, someone thought these pictures were funny. The email attachments, whether innocuous or ribald, all went into the "stuff" folder.

At some point, Judge Kozinski decided that it would be good to be able to access his personal computer files from the internet. His son, who was more computer savvy than he, set up a website, alex.kozinski.com. This way, the good judge could access his files from the internet. This was not a website in the traditional sense. It had no home page. It was just a way to get to his home computer. Unfortunately, the general public could get to this home computer as well. Things began to unravel when Judge Kozinski sent a video of himself bungee-jumping to a blog. Rather than posting the video, the blog posted a link to the judge's website. As a result, the general public could figure out that there was a website called alex.kozinski.com that contained the judge's files.

The judge and his computer savvy son took steps to try to protect his privacy. One thing they did was to put up a notice on the opening page saying "Nothing to see here pardner, move along." However, they were ultimately unsuccessful. As a result, a lawyer who was unhappy with the judge managed to penetrate his ineffective security measures and notified the newspaper. On June 11, 2008, the Los Angeles Times published an article entitled “9th Circuit’s Chief Judge Posted Sexually Explicit Matter on His Website.” The article stated that the Judge, “who is currently presiding over an obscenity trial in Los Angeles, has maintained a publicly accessible website featuring sexually explicit photos and videos.”

To his credit, the judge did the right thing. He declared a mistrial in the criminal case and reported himself to the federal judiciary to be investigated. The investigation ultimately concluded that he had failed to heed repeated warnings that his personal files were at risk, but that he had taken responsibility after the email attachments hit the fan. The judge had to hire a lawyer and give testimony under oath. He had to explain why he didn't delete certain files that the public might find prurient. In the end, it was no doubt expensive and embarassing for the judge.

However, for the general public, the message is clear. Whether it is incriminating photos on myspace or email attachments stored on a personal website, very little is private once it hits the worldwide web. While you may regret it, you can't always make it go away. If someone is unhappy with you or just curious, you could find yourself, like Judge Kozinski, facing a lot more attention than you would like.