Technology and the law

Chief Justice John Roberts made a speech recently where he talked about how technology was going to be perhaps the most important area of the law.  Justice Alito has certainly echoed the same sentiments before discussing rules regarding search and seizure.  This all is pretty scarry if you think about it.  Alito and Roberts get pretty harsh coverage in the press as do many of the conservatives, but with respect to the concerns they brought up, I don't know that I've very comfortable with either side, although given a choice I'd prefer strict originalist interpretations here.  Remember, it wasn't the conservative side that gave use Kelo (they've given us many other bad rulings, but you can't blame them for Kelo).  There are so many areas that could get really ugly from a privacy perspective and if you think about money going totally digital, + GPS units, + black boxes in cars, + RFID - it's going to be very easy to aggregate most every move you make.  This of course won't matter --- until someone decides to bring charges against you or sue you. And God help the political opponents of the powerful.  From all your credit card transactions to the rest, it's going to be very easy to dig dirt on adversaries.  One can only hope that the court justices come out on the right side of these issues but there's a lot of reason to be worried.  Consider the case of the Expert Witness in LA who's sent hundreds of people to jail that was recently revealed as a complete dishonest fraud.  Many expert witnesses have suffered the same fate.  Well, if you think Justice Ginsburg and Alito (pick any two you want) are going to actually study up on the nuances of encryption or packet switching and make their own informed decisions, you're nuts.  So with technology in particular, there's going to be a lot of expert witnessing going on.  And that isn't very promising in my point of view. Even justices with good heads on their shoulders can be lead down some pretty dark paths if they have to rely on others and the history of such reliance isn't at all promising.