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Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

He is willing to admit that it goes over his head, which presumably also means that he'd be willing to read up on it or seek advice if necessary.

The biggest problem isn't judges who doesn't know everything - they have to deal with cases covering every possible discipline and can't possibly know everything about everything put before them. The problem is when they believe they do, or don't care, or don't want to admit it and decides to just trust law enforcement blindly instead.

I'd like to think that a judge that readily admits what he doesn't know will make sure to learn or seek suitable advice when necessary.

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Or when a judge is given a request with missing information and he can't ask an expert, do research, or say, "Wait, what is a Tor Exit Node and why did you mention it in your report?"

The point of this article is given the fact that they left that off then he can't reasonably ask for more information.

Right. This is somewhat the point of the oppositional trial system; we can't expect a biased party to bring up all facts relevant to the case, so we bring in someone else with the opposite bias to give the judge the rest of the facts.

In these expedited judicial-request hearings, there isn't an explicit defendant, so there's no oppositional counsel to bring in. Maybe we need to bring back the concept of a "devil's advocate"...

...Or more simply, the concept of an 'advocate'.

prosecutors have a duty to 'justice' not simply to deliver the strongest result against the defendant. This is why they have to disclose information that suggests innocence.

Brady violations are taken very seriously:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/opinion/sunday/rampant-pro...

http://www.prosecutorintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/Epidem...

Exactly. It's the job of the police to present exculpatory evidence in their possession and it is the job of the judge to understand it.

... which is absurd and why the US Constitution provides for a better system, which sadly does not extend to protection for invasions short of prosecution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assistance_of_Counsel_Clause

If I were in the position of that judge I would like to be able to bring experts on my own. Is that possible?

(I wouldn't trust either the defense nor the prosecution to provide me with neutral information via their selected experts.)

Although I agree with you, but if I was on trial, I wouldn't want to trust a judge who brought in "his friend who knows a lot about computers". I'd want to make sure they were vetted first.

But would you have suspected the existence of a tor node if nothing in the warrant suggested it? Would you have stopped the investigation to call some experts?

Clearly the missing step is for the judges to announce their tech cases on reddit and ask for ideas.

Only half joking.

There's other problems, such as not having enough knowledge or context to know if what the paid for expert is telling is resonable.

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