Kennedy’s question about a busy message is still pretty bad though.

Cute, but there’s a distinction made in the law (or was) between intercepting cell phone communications and portable phone transmissions, so that kind of fine slice-n-dice is pretty much par for the course.

In fact, it’s my preferred way of quickly getting up to speed on a topic that i’m not an expert on.

The bloggers who are mocking them are no different from Sarah Palin

Oh really? “the bloggers”? You mean, Mark Frauenfelder?

No different? Show me Sarah Palin’s corrections she issues? You must have some links, yes?

Here’s a link for you:

See Mark’s UPDATE (in red and all caps).

Ah, if the world was so simple that Sarah Palin was no different than Mark Frauenfelder and for that matter democrats were all the same as republicans, etc.

What a strange (but maybe easier to understand?) world it would be, I suppose.

The quotes are all out of context as far as I can tell. Put back into context, they make sense. The Roberts remark refers to the difference in legal status of e-mail and pager messages. The Kennedy remark was ironic: he was concerned that the non-work messages involved were interfering with work messages. The Scalia remark was underscoring the existence of a service provider.

This is a smear.

Croak!

First, the briefs for the court all inadequately described the technologies in the case.

Second, Roberts was NOT asking a rhetorical question, nor was he trying to sharpen the legal analysis. He was asking about the difference between the technologies, not specifically as it relates to the policy in question.

Third, when Scalia said, “You mean (the text) doesn’t go right to me?” he was most likely being sarcastic; he was poking fun at Roberts. (I’ve heard this from people who were there, and if you read the transcript, it makes sense.)

Fourth, a more troubling part of the transcript is this:
“CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Do any of these other people know about Arch Wireless? Don’t they just assume that once they send something to Quon, it’s going to Quon?
MR. DAMMEIER: That’s — that is true. I mean, they expect -
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, then they can’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy based on the fact that their communication is routed through a communications company.
MR. DAMMEIER: Well, they — they expect that some company, I’m sure, is going to have to be processing the delivery of this message. And -
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, I didn’t — I wouldn’t think that. I thought, you know, you push a button; it goes right to the other thing.”

Fifth, they haven’t handed down any opinions — they haven’t even decided on how they’re going to vote (with the exception of Justice Thomas, of course!) So it’s not really that big of a deal if they haven’t figured out the technology yet — they are going to have many more discussions with their law clerks, they are going to have a conference between the Justices, and then they are going to draft and exchange opinions. If they were to ultimately make a decision on the basis of factual misunderstandings about the technology, then that, of course, would be a problem.

Sixth, the Court messes up the facts quite often during oral arguments — in fact, the same day as City of Ontario v. Quon was argued, the Court was hearing arguments for Christian Legal Society v. Martinez and they were similarly confused about the facts. At about 5 minutes remaining in the one of the lawyer’s time, and Justice Sotomayor tells him that she is confused about the factual record.

This is a smear.

Go home and wash out your beaver, refresh your browser, or whatever you need to do to get that gunk out of your eyes. This isn’t a smear campaign, it was a mistake.

See Mark’s UPDATE (in red and all caps).

This isn’t correct.
“CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, I didn’t — I wouldn’t think that. I thought, you know, you push a button; it goes right to the other thing.”

This is the whole point of having a careful dialectical approach like this.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Do any of these other people know about Arch Wireless? Don’t they just assume that once they send something to Quon, it’s going to Quon?
MR. DAMMEIER: That’s — that is true. I mean, they expect -
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, then they can’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy based on the fact that their communication is routed through a communications company.
MR. DAMMEIER: Well, they — they expect that some company, I’m sure, is going to have to be processing the delivery of this message. And -
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, I didn’t — I wouldn’t think that. I thought, you know, you push a button; it goes right to the other thing.

Be cautious when portraying the “profound ignorance” of the Supreme Court justices as ignorance. It is possible, and even likely, that the ignorance of the public’s inability to understand legal linguistics is more of a factor at play.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article1805663.ece

A judge overseeing the trial of three alleged Muslim “cyber-terrorists” has been given a basic lesson in the internet – after admitting that he did not know what a “website” was.

I do find it a little disconcerting, though, that the lawyer arguing the case doesn’t know for certain.

Thanks for pointing that out.