Oh Dear.
April 21st, 2010 |
From the I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-The-Onion department:
It appears the most eminent tribunal in the land–which is currently hearing a case on privacy and pagers and will no doubt hear many more regarding the political consequences of new technologies–hasn’t used anything more advanced than a rotary.
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.
I sincerely hope Jon Stewart is all over this. (More here.)
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One Response to “Oh Dear.”
By Jay Livingston on Apr 22, 2010 | Reply
A blogger at NPR comes to Roberts’s defense . “couldn’t you make the case that he was getting at the differences in the way the law treats the two ways of communicating, as well as the technical differences in the way their messages are routed? Not that he didn’t know that pagers and e-mails aren’t the same thing?”
But the cluelessness revealed by some of the other questions is disappointing. I thought that the justices were supposed to inform themselves about the cases before they hear oral arguments.