Live Justice Comes To the Internet 85
Hugh Pickens writes "The Boston Globe reports that an experiment in live justice is coming to the Internet, uniting citizen bloggers with the public's right to know in one of Massachusetts's busiest courthouses, Quincy District Court. Dubbed Open Court, the project will operate live cameras and microphones during criminal sessions where the court's proceedings will be streamed live over the Internet at the Open Court website to give the public an unfiltered view of court proceedings while an operating Wi-Fi network serves citizen bloggers who want to post to the Internet. 'The idea is that people can live blog, but they can also tweet,' says John Davidow, executive editor in charge of new media at WBUR, who developed the idea for the project, adding that during the next year, the goal is to move the experiment outside the first session courtroom and to stream criminal and civil trials and small claims cases as well. The project was seeking a busy court and found it in Quincy, where last year the court handled more than 7,000 criminal claims and more than 15,000 civil cases, including more than 1,100 restraining orders, nearly 1,000 substance abuse and mental health cases and more than 1,200 landlord-tenant cases."
This will make iding informants a lot easier. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's only a matter of time before a website like whosarat.com moves in and takes advantage of this live court reporting idea.
Inquiring minds want to know who the snitches are.
The problem with openness (Score:5, Insightful)
One issue I see with this is that the average person is going to tune into a section of a criminal trial, hear the prosecution's side of things and tune out, having made up their mind that So-and-so is a criminal. Then they'll start talking about it among their friends, some of whom might blog or tweet about it, and before you know it the person is presumed guilty in the public eye. All that before the defense can cross-examine the first witness. When you're limited to being there in person, there's a barrier to entry that tends to weed out the casual gossiper whose only interest is the soap opera nature of a trial.
Much like how the internet used to be a place where civilized academics and corporate citizens would be able to communicate together, share ideas, and so on. Anyone who wanted to get on the internet had a natural barrier they had to go through -- attend a university, get a job at a connected company, etc. Then the floodgates opened and any yahoo could get online. Now the "lol, fag" level of communication is expected rather than something that trolls did 20 years ago only for the shock value.
Besides which, this isn't really an open court in that it's a one-way communication tool. A true open court should be two-way. Let's have a jury of a few million people who can Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down to decide the innocence or guilt of an accused.
Re:Do We Really Want This? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, we don't. That it comes from Massachusetts, home of Romneycare, and was the brain-child of some NPR guy, home of "Republicans are racist" fundraisers, should be enough to prove that.
But even if you don't care about that, the answer is still: No, we don't. Court rooms should be open to interested members of the public. It should be open to the press.
It should not be open to any idiot on the Internet, especially when a trial can badly damage people's reputations even if they are eventually found guilty. (Remember, as far as the public is concerned, it's guilty until magic CSI science proves otherwise. The police never make mistakes in public fairy-land.)
And, hell, just imagine the potential for witness and jury intimidation. Can you imagine being a witness testifying against a rapist? Can you imagine being on a jury, knowing that your "guilty" vote is being broadcast out to every gang member?
There's a difference between "public" and "broadcast to every corner of the globe." Court proceedings should be public so that interested observers can ensure they're fair. They shouldn't be broadcast to the Internet. That's a recipe for disaster.