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.
Full story here. Hat tip to @joshuakeating.
Update: A commenter points to a take-down of the original blog post.
One Response
Copy/pasted comments from the linked source:
Magnus The Destroyer Says:
April 21st, 2010 at 1:24 pm
(…)
What he was most likely asking is what is the DIFFERENCE between a text message and an e-mail, since they both convey a written message. This is an important legal distinction to elicit, because if it’s found that there is no difference (and legally there probably isn’t) then it could affect the outcome of the case.
People should try to understand how the legal process works rather than making fun of them. This is your life on the line. Your liberty and your freedom are decided by these people. Laugh at them if you will, hate them if you must, but what they do affects your lives. It would behoove you to understand what they are doing first, then determine if they are worthy of derision and ridicule. Underestimating them based on out of context quotations does nobody any good, least of all the people deriding and ridiculing. In this case, you all made yourselves look like asses.
Don Says:
April 21st, 2010 at 2:53 pm
It took me five minutes to open the transcript and find the section where Roberts makes the comment in question. You’re either only listening with 10% of your attention when you took it the way you portray it or you’re deliberately misconstruing his statement.
Here is the statement in context:
JUSTICE GINSBURG: But my question is, an employee reads this policy and says, oh, my e-mails are going to be subject to being monitored –
MR.DAMMEIER: Sure.
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Wouldn’t that employee expect that the policy would carry over to pagers? When you think of what’s the reason why they want to look at the e-mails, wouldn’t the same reason apply?
MR. DAMMEIER: Well, I’m sure the same reasons could apply but the – the city is the one who writes the rules here. The – if they want to make it clear on what it applies to, it certainly should be on them to write them clear so the employee understands it.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Maybe – maybe everybody else knows this, but what is the difference between the pager and the e-mail?
MR. DAMMEIER: Sure. The e-mail, looking at the computer policy, that goes through the city’s computer, it goes through the city’s server, it goes through all the equipment that – that has – that the city can easily monitor. Here the pagers are a separate device that goes home with you, that travels with you, that you can use on duty, off-duty.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: You can do that with e-mails.
So not only have you portrayed this exchange dishonestly, you even misquoted him!