I never even thought he was that funny on the radio.

I predict that Londoners will regret this, although not as much as we regret Bush — but only because the Mayor of London doesn’t have as much power as even the Mayor of New York.

It is reported that after the second time that a mobile phone had rung in the public gallery the Judge put down his pen, and glared across at the flustered-looking owner of the phone. “If that happens again” said His Honour, “you may discover why they are known as cell phones”.

Greetings. Given the CCTV surveillance fetish in the UK these days, it seems somehow sickly appropriate that British ISPs are in the forefront when it comes to spying on the content of their subscribers’ Web browsing — and it appears that Google users are in the bull’s-eye.

Most of the related media attention so far has revolved around the manner in which the three largest UK ISPs have gone to bed with “Phorm” — toward the goal of monetizing Web browsing habits of subscribers and providing targeted ads ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_roundup/ ).

Of course, there’s a lot “soothing” promotional blather on the BT site claiming that the data collected regarding the sites that you visit is quickly deleted or anonymized. And while officially the ISPs claim that they haven’t made a decision about opt-out vs. opt-in, the current British Telecom limited deployment — they call the “service” “Webwise” ( http://webwise.bt.com/webwise/index.html ) and promote it as mainly an anti-phishing system — appears to be opt-out (requiring either maintaining a special cookie in your browser or blocking all cookies from a particular site).

Third-party tracking of the Web sites that you visit is bad enough, but Webwise (and presumably the other incarnations of the Phorm system) go one big step farther — they actually spy on your Web content and extract for their own use the search terms that you enter into search engines:

“We [Webwise] use the website address, keywords and search terms from the page viewed to match a category or area of interest (e.g., travel or finance).”

Given that the vast majority of searches these days are conducted with Google, it’s obvious that this ISP-based system will be attempting to monetize the vast number of search transactions between users and Google, in a technical manner that seems eerily similar to wiretapping.

What is this, an epidemic?

Details of the request are at Judge may sit alone in drugs case deemed too dangerous for a jury. England long ago dispensed with the civil jury for the large majority of cases (libel being one notorious exception) and the Brown government is apparently contemplating using the Parliament Act 1949 to force through a law allowing the most complex fraud cases to be tried without a jury.

The power to waive a jury in criminal cases is relatively new and so far never used. And, it appears, despite the prosecution’s request, this time the UK has dodged the bullet:

A judge has rejected the first attempt in England and Wales to hold a big criminal trial without a jury. Prosecution lawyers applied for the case to be tried by a judge alone because of fears that jurors could intimidated or bribed. The judge ruled that steps could be put in place to ensure the jury was protected, and that he could still discharge the jury and hear the case if evidence of tampering emerged.

Good for both of them.

England (allegedly) does. See the (pseudonymous) The Magistrate’s Blog. [In fact, I’ve just realized as I was editing this post, there’s more than one, as the View From The Bench plausibly claims to “Being the thoughts, rants, speculations and anecdotes of a magistrate on a northern bench.”]

An English magistrate is a judge of limited jurisdiction, mostly petty offenses punishable by up to six months in gaol. Interestingly, many magistrates are not trained lawyers, although they do have legal advisers. (See the Wikipedia entry for more comprehensive, and perhaps even accurate, information.)

Whoever “Bystander” is, real magistrate or not, The Magistrate’s Blog is an erudite and interesting blog. Yet there are some obvious ethical issues raised by a judge commenting on things that touch on past cases; these concerns are perhaps lessened by the magistrate’s historical role as something of a representative of community values, or (traditionally) at least of the values of the better and rather more upper-crust elements of the community.

The magistrate, if that s/he be, deals with these with this self-description and disclaimer:

Musings and Snippets from an English Magistrate This blog is anonymous, and Bystander’s views are his and his alone. Where his views differ from the letter of the law, he will enforce the letter of the law because that is what he has sworn to do. If you think that you can identify a particular case from one of the posts you are wrong. Enough facts are changed to preserve the truth of the tale but to disguise its exact source.

And perhaps that is enough.

Even so, I don’t think that a sitting US judge would dare do anything like this. We’ve seen a prosecutor get in trouble for blogging. And of course there was the defendant who blogged about his own case pseudonymously — and lost the case when opposing counsel figured out who he was.

There are also a host of juror-bloggers. There’s nothing wrong with a (petit) juror blogging after the trial is over, but it’s obviously a ground for major concern if it happens during the trial as it provides a conduit for juror to lawyer/party communications which (a) might give one side an unfair advantage if only one side is learning what arguments are working ; (b) facilitate jury tampering; (c) provides fertile grounds for appeals. (More on blogging jurors here and here and no doubt elsewhere.)

Don’t get me wrong, as a reader, I’m a fan. And I’m prepared to agree that the world is better off with the Magistrate’s Blog than without it — so long as it’s being true to its promise to change enough facts “to preserve the truth of the tale but to disguise its exact source”. But that is very difficult to do consistently over a long period of time. How, I wonder, was it done in this post, for example? (In the comments, Bystander even states that counsel read a particular case to the court!) If indeed the blog is by an actual Magistrate, the danger of slipping, or even of discovery over time without any slipping, is all too real.

Would discovery be that bad? In principle there’s no difference between a judge writing an academic article about law reform and a magistrate blogging about legal issues that come up in and around the court s/he serves on. Were I a judge, however, I don’t think I’d blog, and I certainly wouldn’t do it pseudonymously if only because people would be sure to see that — however unfairly — as a sign of a guilty conscience. More importantly, print usually has editors and always takes time, which gives one opportunities for reflection. Blogging is quick and usually unedited. Risky….

But meanwhile, I’m going to be reading what “Bystander” writes.

Sammy Duddy was a colourful Belfast character who combined membership of one of the city’s most lethal paramilitary groups with a career as “Samantha”, a highly suggestive drag act.

Maybe my life is just boring. And maybe that’s a good thing.

By the way, this guy is for real. There’s also an article about him in an Irish newspaper,

ALMOST every journalist who covered the Troubles in the North has a story about the Ulster Defence Association spokesman, Sammy Duddy who died of a heart attack last week, aged 62.

As well as his role in the UDA, Duddy was a cabaret comedian, often dressing in drag, whose lewd acts were a great draw in loyalist drinking clubs across Belfast in the 1970s. He took serious exception to one New York-based journalist who innocently described him as a transvestite, thinking it suggested he was homosexual. Duddy was married at the time and had five children.

He was also a serious terrorist whose day job involved gathering intelligence and directing attacks against suspected republican terrorists.

“I will use the role to demand answers from the Government on their role on the BAE Systems scandal and will fight for electoral reform as well as taking part in debates on criminal justice and the reform of the legal system.”

Another smart move by the LDs.

On Saturday we walked a few blocks to a local park which was the setting for the annual village fair. In addition to rides for the kids, there were dozens of booths either raising funds for good causes (mostly local schools) or publicizing good causes (everything from local history to Amnesty International and helping Darfur). What particularly struck me, however, was the large sign on the booth that had the most prominent location by the entrance, “Free the Miami Five”.

The booth, it seems, belonged to the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, a group that sports three web sites, and which has gotten very worked up about the trial of five Cuban agents convicted in 2001 of conspiracy and being foreign agents. From what I recall of the trial — being here on a slow and expensive dial-up link I’m not going to look up the details (but invite commentators to do so) — there were valid questions about whether a Miami jury could give alleged Cuban agents a fair trial, or whether the trial should be moved elsewhere. And, if I recall, not all the judges who looked at the issue were of the same view. And although, from what I recall, the basic mechanics of the trial were fair, a reasonable person could question the decision as to the jury. In fact, my knee-jerk reaction — not knowing the facts of how the actual jury was selected, which I’m sure might change my mind — is that a change of venue to somewhere less reflexively anti-Castro might have been a pretty good idea to ensure the fairness of the jury pool.

What’s odd, though, is to pick on this case, of all the justice-related issues in the USA (much less the world), as the one to make an issue of in a park in East Didsbury. If I were going to try to get the good people of Didsbury worked up about a US justice issue, or a Cuba-related justice issue, I might start with Guantanamo. Somewhere not too far down the list we might have the treatment of political dissidents in Cuba itself. Or maybe the move in Florida to cut the pay of court-appointed defenders in order to save a buck and make sure that they can’t afford to mount much of a defense. The “Miami 5,” for all that there may be a question about the underlying fairness of the jury selection for their trial, would not be near the head of my list.

I have no idea to what extent the “Cuba Solidarity Campaign” represents something genuine among the British soft left, or to what extent it is funded by the Cuban government or whatever remains of the Communist International. Despite its location, their booth didn’t seem to be nearly as popular as the ones offering used books, or the various tombolas, or the one selling very good Indian snacks. Still, “Free the Miami 5” was a funny first thing to see at at the Didsbury fair.

The big news, in the Guardian at least, for the last few days, has been the role of the British government in what appear to be a series of giant quarterly payments, more than $2 billion in total (yes, two billion) to Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia. The payments have both domestic and international ramifications. Domestically, here in the UK there are issues about who lied to whom to coverup what. There may not be domestic Saudi legal issues if, as Bandar claims, the money flows were blessed by the Saudi defense ministry … conveniently run by his dad. (Here’s the Guardian version and the NYT version).

Internationally, there are issues about why the UK is paying off Saudis (aren’t they the ones with the money?) — although we know the reason is to get arms sales. And what it meant for the man who was for a time thought to have been GW Bush’s prime adviser on foreign affairs (during his first Presidential campaign, and early in the first term) to have been on the UK take. How this ties into the decision to invade Iraq, I’m not quite sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me.