US Court Judges Mostly Clueless About Technology

[From article]
“We’re getting new permutations of this issue because the iPhone came out, what, two months ago, and everyone’s using fingerprints to lock their phone,” he said. “The new technology is going to be unlocking the phone with your eyes, or who knows what. And again the courts are moving slow on this.”
[. . .]
“Judicial opinions rely heavily on analogy and tying old cases to new cases, and that becomes very difficult when technology is evolving rapidly,” said Alan Butler, the appellate advocacy counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
[. . .]
Last year, before Snowden’s leak, the Supreme Court ruled in a surveillance case that the individual couldn’t prove they had been the subject of surveillance, and thus had no ability to challenge the government’s programs.
[. . .]
Justice Antonin Scalia told an audience he believes the courts will ultimately have to decide on government surveillance, although he said he believes they are not the ideal body to make the call. Scalia didn’t address who should decide, but called the courts the branch of government “that knows the least” about the high-tech and security issues at stake.
[. . .]
Often, federal judges are selected for their esteemed and lengthy careers and while those decades of experience mean judges of a certain age know the law, they may not know about the most modern technologies.
“Justice [Elena] Kagan a couple weeks ago was talking about how the Supreme Court struggles to use email, which is kind of funny but kind of scary at the same time,” Fakhoury said. “We had a case involving a guy charged with cyberstalking on Twitter, and we had to explain to the judge in his 60s what Twitter was.”

In his book, Thinking About Crime, James Q. Wilson (page 234) says, "governments are run by men and women who are under irresistible pressure to pretend to know more than they do." This can be seen every day among local, state and US officials who say the most remarkable things. On the other hand are those who recognize they know little about some subjects and are quick to spend taxpayer money to hire "experts." Often the experts may know more about a subject but there is no guarantee that they are presenting evidence in a factual manner, or that they know what should be done because they know more about a subject. This is especially troubling about education and psychiatry.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/digital-era-technology-supreme-court-cases-100410.html

Digital era confounds the courts
By TAL KOPAN

11/30/13 3:59 PM EST