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Comment by jeroenhd | Hacker News Reader

I think it's quite valuable to know how technically illiterate the judge is in a case that could have very real effects on the employment of people visiting these websites.

Tracking, trading of personal information and profiling are very important topics in computer ethics but when these topics hit the courts, the judge can get hung up by just the wording of the incognito mode, which, as we all know, opens with a page that explicitly states, in non-technical terms so as many people as possible can understand, that this information will still be collected.

All of the well thought-out narratives on these topics can be worthless when a judge bans a practice because they didn't read the instructions when they opened incognito mode.

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It’s strange that people are dismissing this judge as technically illiterate.

> Koh, 45, has become the de facto face of law in Silicon Valley. "She has an almost peerless reputation for fairness and efficiency in judging the issues of the 21st century," said Tracy Beth Mitrano, director of the Internet Culture, Policy and Law Program at Cornell University. "She gets the Internet in a way that other judges just don't," she said. "Our laws are so out of sync with current social norms and technology. What Koh represents is the hope that somebody gets it."

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/In-Silicon-Valley-Luc...

If the judge is technically literate, then why can't she understand basic aspects about web browsers and tracking? I have an alternative hypothesis for you: the judge is not technically literate.

The only quotes attributed to the judge are:

– ‘Koh said she’s “disturbed” by Google’s data collection practices’

– ‘Koh said she finds it “unusual” that the company would make the “extra effort” of data collection if it doesn’t use the information to build user profiles or targeted advertising‘

– ‘The judge demanded an explanation “about what exactly Google does,” while voicing concern that visitors to the court’s website are unwittingly disclosing information to the company. “I want a declaration from Google on what information they’re collecting on users to the court’s website, and what that’s used for”’

None of this implies that this judge, who has specialised in litigation involving SV tech companies for a decade, can’t understand “basic aspects about web browsers.”

> None of this implies that this judge, who has specialised in litigation involving SV tech companies for a decade, can’t understand “basic aspects about web browsers.”

The quotes make it clear that the judge is confused about what incognito mode is supposed to do. The judge appears to think incognito mode is supposed to somehow prevent tracking scripts from loading. Like Google is supposed to add a fingerprint to web requests in incognito mode which reveals to web servers that the user has incognito mode, and then all the web tracking companies are supposed to detect this fingerprint and stop tracking when they detect it. That doesn't sound like a person who understands basic aspects about web browsers.

Is it just me or are none of these related to incognito mode? Is the title just bait?

Nope, it's not just you, the judge is confused about what incognito mode means.

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