Nothing is private

THE roiling water in which Judge Alex Kozinski finds himself should be a lesson for every Internet user: Nothing is private.

Kozinski, the chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, last week suspended a trial on a Los Angeles obscenity case when the sexually explicit contents of his own Web site were reported by the Los Angeles Times. That this learned man, one of the highest-ranking federal judges, sometimes mentioned as a worthy candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court, would be stung by an all-too-common pitfall of the online world should make everyone rethink their online habits.

A 2006 Career Builder survey found that a little more than half of hiring managers who used Internet searches to screen job applicants eliminated candidates based on what they found. The rate was 63 percent for those using searches of social-networking sites.

School districts and law-enforcement officials, including Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna, repeatedly try to drive home the point about the vulnerability, especially of children, when too much is revealed on the Internet.

That leads to serious concerns about a federal judge maintaining a publicly accessible Web site. As the Los Angeles Times reported, the site contains sexually explicit videos and photos.

Kozinski says he thought the site, set up by his adult son, was private and used it to collect a variety of sexually explicit photos and videos. Among the photos, the newspaper said, were depictions of naked women painted as cows. The judge has acknowledged the site, but said his son posted some of the images.

A professional rival of Kozinski's has admitted to tipping the newspaper. To Kozinski's credit, he has invited the court's judicial-ethics panel to investigate his conduct.

Regardless of what the ethics panel concludes, Kozinski might well find his career cut short or future opportunities diminished because of revelations about his online image cache.

This episode should be a strong reminder to everyone to be careful whenever they consider posting something to the Internet.