"We are in the process of receiving those ballots back, and hope to have them all received and tabulated by Wednesday afternoon," said Dick Carrelli, spokesman of the Administrative Office of the Courts.
The 26-member Judicial Conference was slated to vote last Tuesday on a plan to monitor the Internet use of all federal judiciary employees. The panel also was expected to approve a proposal to limit the amount of personal information in court documents that are made available online.
According to sources familiar with the process, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist ordered the mail-in balloting shortly after canceling last weeks Judicial Conference meeting.
The panel is expected to approve a slightly scaled-back version of the employee-monitoring proposal, thanks to vocal opposition from several federal judges and consumer groups concerned about the constitutionality of the new restrictions.
In August, the Judicial Conferences Committee on Automation and Technology issued a unanimous recommendation that federal courts monitor employee e-mail and Web usage for signs of inappropriate use, such as downloading music or pornography, or playing games.
The committee urged that each court immediately adopt an acceptable-use policy and that it be prominently displayed on an electronic banner that would appear each time an employee logs onto the Internet. The policy would clearly state that employees using the courts system are subject to monitoring and have no reasonable expectation of privacy when using court Internet systems.
In a Sept. 7 letter to the chair of the Judicial Conference Committee, the nonvoting director of the committee suggested that the committee should table the proposal in order to address concerns that such notices could lead to the monitoring of judges e-mail, opinions and other electronic communications. The panel subsequently voted to remove the offending notice from the policy recommendations.
The panel also is expected to approve a plan to allow most types of court documents to continue to be made available online. The proposal also would bar federal courts from posting documents related to criminal cases, and would mandate the removal of any personal identifiers -- such as birth dates and Social Security numbers -- in federal court filings.
Three judges on the Judicial Conference will hold a videoconference press briefing with reporters at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, to discuss the outcome of the mail-in vote.
Brian Krebs, Newsbytes
