Courts

Federal Judiciary Asked To PLEASE Not Crash The Servers Watching March Madness

Good to know the gears of justice can jam up over a 5-12 upset.

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Close up view of burning laptop

We told you not to watch the Baylor game!

Technically the tournament started last night, but the real madness gets started tomorrow at noon and productivity across the country will take its customary nosedive as millions of people become painfully aware through a nonstop tirade of CBS commercials that, somehow, NCIS is still on television.

It turns out the federal court system is not immune to the lure of the NCAA Men’s Tournament, prompting the Chief Enterprise Operations Officer of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts to send a little reminder to all the executives, staff, and clerks in the system.

This week marks the start of the NCAA Basketball Playoffs known as “March Madness.” While these games are widely available via links on the internet, the Judiciary’s Data Communications Network (DCN) is for judicial business. Viewing these games while on the DCN can cause network latency that may affect essential business functions. To mitigate this, we advise that you disconnect from the VPN or use other means to view the games such as a television.

“Such as a television.” OK, Boomer.

Unless I’m missing something, the actual judges are technically excluded from this edict, though passive aggression is a hell of a thing. Maybe they don’t want to encourage the judges to access stuff off their personal servers because… well… that’s been an issue in the past.

But take a second to consider that the federal court system’s computers are at risk over clerks streaming TruTV for an hour. Remember that this is the same system that says it takes $2 billion to keep PACER working. Maybe it’s time for the Chief Justice to consider tech modernization in his next annual report.

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I mean… he’s not writing about anything else important.

Full memo on the next page.

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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