Technical difficulties at the Supreme Court

[meegbear]

During oral arguments today in the case City of Ontario v. Quon, which considers whether police officers had an expectation of privacy in personal (and sexually explicit) text messages sent on pagers issued to them by the city, the justices of the Supreme Court at times seemed to struggle with the technology involved.

The first sign was about midway through the argument, when Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. - who is known to write out his opinions in long hand with pen and paper instead of a computer - asked what the difference was “between email and a pager?”

Other justices’ questions showed that they probably don’t spend a lot of time texting and tweeting away from their iPhones either.

At one point, Justice Anthony Kennedy asked what would happen if a text message was sent to an officer at the same time he was sending one to someone else.

“Does it say: ‘Your call is important to us, and we will get back to you?’” Kennedy asked.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrangled a bit with the idea of a service provider.

“You mean (the text) doesn’t go right to me?” he asked.

Then he asked whether they can be printed out in hard copy.

“Could Quon print these spicy little conversations and send them to his buddies?” Scalia asked.

It wasn’t just the justices who had technical difficulties. When Justice Samual Alito asked Quon’s attorney Dieter Dammeier if officers could delete text messages from their pagers in a way that would prevent the city from retrieving them from the wireless carrier later, Dammeier said that they could.

A few minutes later, Alito gave Dammeier another shot at that question.

“Are you sure about your answer on deletion?” Alito asked.

Dammeier admitted that he didn’t know. “I couldn’t be certain,” he said.

http://lawyersusaonline.com/dcdicta/2010/04/19/technical-difficulties-at-the-supreme-court-2/

[uppityperson]

1. Is this The Onion?

[AndyA]

2. The 2010 America with all its current issues vs. 1960 SCOTUS.

:eyes:

[malaise]

3. I'm older than John Roberts

WTF???????????????/////

[Warpy]

5. You're not as privileged, though

You forget that these men live with tradition, not technology. They hire staff to deal with the technology.

It really is getting to the point that only the rich and powerful are allowed to have desks with blotters and desk sets. Their office drones are the ones with desks jammed with computers and peripherals.

[AndyA]

7. Has nothing to do with age.

It has everything to do with being in touch with reality.

[gratuitous]

4. To be fair (and you know I hate doing that!)

Sometimes the Justices ask questions when they already know the answer and they just want to make it part of the record or confirm that they have the facts right. Scalia's question (for example) implies that if a person's text goes through a central router or some other intermediary before it shows up on the recipient's phone, then the recipient may not have had an expectation of privacy, since the router's contents could presumably be read by an outsider if the router keeps a record of the texts it transmits.

[pscot]

6. Scalia sounded worried

:rofl: