back to article Judge used personal email to send out details of sensitive case

Concerns have been raised over a British judge's use of his personal email address to send out a ruling in a family court case, which contained sensitive personal information. The Register has seen evidence that the judge in question used two personal accounts to send out a draft ruling and final ruling: one using a domain …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    > This article raises a number of concerns and questions. The fact that the article references sensitive personal data indicates that this judgment could be a family court judgment

    No it doesn't. Sensitive Personal Information (SPI) also includes information relating to commission of a crime, medical data, sexuality, union membership etc.

    So it could be any court.

  2. adam payne

    When I read the title I thought it was going to be another AOL account.

    I thought all the criminal justice system had a secure email system that they had to use.

  3. Bob Hoskins
    Mushroom

    This is clearly the end of the world as we know it

    This guy might as well have been peddling illegal pornography! Meanwhile it was unencrypted on his hard and that of the recipient.

  4. Paratrooping Parrot
    Headmaster

    An idea

    Why don't they have specific training and certification for those who are doing things like health or social or judicial work on using the computer systems? This way they can be approved to use said systems and it can be definitely known that they know how to use the computer systems required.

    The judge or healthcare professional will know not to use hotmail or whatever.

    1. storner
      Unhappy

      Re: An idea

      They were called "secretaries" in the good old days. They are all gone now, thanks to the beancounters and efficiency experts.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Many legal people are hide-bound

    So many law firms regularly send confidential stuff in plaintext. Their rationale is that it is marked "privilged & confidential" so encryption not needed. This may give some protection over introducing the contents in court but, of course, says nought about damage outside court. (Sigh)

    1. jabuzz

      Re: Many legal people are hide-bound

      The way it works is like this. Lets assume you get some confidential information wrongly via email that has those sorts of legal warning things. Lets assume to make this example easier to understand it included the details of a divorce settlement for a premier league footballer. You think to yourself I can get some money for this and ring up "The Sun" offering to sell the information you have come by to them. You think that you didn't ask for it be sent, you did nothing illegal to obtain it so no come back when you convey that information to a third party. Problem is you would be dead wrong and your life could now be made a complete misery. At least that is what my brother has told me and he is a Judge.

      Oh and few things here the court email system is actually crappy IMHO, and my personal email server which my brother (along with the rest of the family) uses but not for court stuff is not crappy being a fully patched and secured CentOS7 Postfix/Dovecot based system. Not everyone running a home email system is incompetent. Heck to get working secure remote email sending I *HAVE* to run my own email system because Plusnets SMTP servers don't understand secure authentication!!!!!

  6. JimmyPage Silver badge
    Stop

    Elephant in the room ...

    if one judge has be *caught* doing it, there stands a good chance there are a greater number who haven't been caught yet. (The iceberg view)

    This leads on to the much more worrying suggestion that some judges might be communicating behind the court (or more precisely one party in the court)s back.

    Or don't we care about justice being seen to be done anymore ?

    1. Peter2 Silver badge

      Re: Elephant in the room ...

      The judge is the court in family cases. No jury involved.

      And look, he emailed the draft and final judgements instead of having his clerk print them and posting them snail mail by second class post two weeks later. This is not a case of there being a miscarriage of justice. Nobody is even alleging that.

      Frankly, I think that most people with contact with a court would rather that the judge be able to email judgements quickly, preferably in a more regular noreply@ email address that's not monitored by anybody to prevent any accusation of wrongdoing.

      If one party wants to communicate behind the other parties back then you quietly have a word with the judge, and don't leave records of it. You wouldn't do it in writing, and definitely not by email.

  7. Stevie

    Bah!

    Oh dear.

    The problem is that non-techies (and increasing numbers of techies who are "in the zone") are not really thinking about the technology they are using. To paraphrase Mr Jobs, when they are using email "they just want it to work". Hence all the illicit Blackberries in Congress.

    The convenience blinds them to the danger. We all do stuff like this. Poke a knife in the toaster while it's plugged in. Drive with the tax disc out. Put off rewiring the house because you can't smell fizzing wire today and there's the roof to fix. Some of us even admit to doing so. Doesn't make you stupid, just distracted. That can kill you, but hey-ho, that's the human condition.

    What a shame we don't routinely encrypt everything so there would be no harm, no foul.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Bah!

      "Drive with the tax disc out."

      Tax disc?

  8. theyellowbear

    But... Hillary said it was O.K.

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