When to keep the camera on and when to turn it off is a complicated one that involves balancing transparency with privacy.

Twelve of us sat together in a small courtroom upstairs at the court, including First Justice Mark Coven, Clerk Magistrate John Dalton, Assistant District Attorney Jason Mohan, members of the Norfolk County Bar Association, including public defenders and private lawyers, and a representative of the domestic violence advocacy group, DOVE.

We had our long awaited all-court meeting on Wednesday December 15th. In a First Session packed to the gills, First Judge Mark Coven said he had always believed in promoting the openness of the court and that if the public could see what was happening, they would have more confidence in the judicial system. Coven introduced Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Justice Robert Cordy, who told of a recent dinner he’d had with retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter — where they spent the whole time debating electronic access to the courts.

Tuesday was a big day. We threw in the towel on designing the site completely by ourselves and met with BU’s Creative Services to get possible design help. They got the project immediately and had a lot of good suggestions for WordPress specific web hosting and other such things that would help. Joe and I…

We’ve been spending more and more time at court — just hanging out and trying to decode the arraignments, meeting with the JAVS audio guys to figure out how to tap into the feed (very easy, for them), meeting with Judge Coven about the all-court meeting, getting situated in our new basement workspace with nicely…

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court announced a major proposal to update the state’s “Cameras in the Courtroom” statute, SJC Rule 1:19, to fit modern-day journalistic and technological realities. In a nutshell, it gives registered journalists the ability to use their computers and smartphones from the court, for coverage and for transmission. Yes to Twittering, Facebooking,…

Progress is being made in building the website. We picked a name & Joe commenced the domain purchasing process. Then we started putting together a few of the gazillion pieces of the website. Joe explored Ustream and Livestream, websites that can provide live video streaming. He is looking into User Interface Design Framework, a collection…

On Friday, Joe and I visited the court and met with First Session Clerk Richie Saitta and Assistant Court Clerk John Dalton. Richie ran us through his usual day — he’s a kind of air-traffic controller between the judge, the lawyers, the defendants, the court officers and the probation officers as they run through arraignments…

On the morning of Wednesday November 10, John, Joe and I met with First Judge Mark Coven (just before he went on the bench), Court Clerk Arthur Tobin and Assistant Court Clerk John Dalton. We determined that in December we would hold an all-court meeting with all of the judges, clerks, court officers and administrative…