What’s a website … for the record?
Internet, that’s the one with the email right? Is anyone else concerned that the judge presiding over a case of alleged cyber-terrorism doesn’t know what a website is? Read on…
A judge who asked the meaning of a “website” has insisted that he is entirely “computer-literate” and that he was seeking an explanation “in the interests of justice”.
Mr Justice Openshaw, who is in the fifth week of presiding over the trial of three alleged “cyber-terrorists”, issued a swift response to reports yesterday, maintaining that his comment had been taken out of context. A statement said that trial judges “frequently ask questions on behalf of those following a case, in the interests of justice”.
Mr Justice Openshaw had astonished prosecutors at Woolwich Crown Court when he said: “The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a website is.”
Yesterday the Judicial Communications Office said that the judge was “entirely computer-literate”, adding that he “indeed has taken notes on his own computer in court for many years”. The statement said that the judge was presiding over a trial largely based on computer-generated evidence. “Evidence is being provided by expert witnesses that will inevitably be of a specialist nature,” it said.
source Tags: website, judge, cyber terrorism, devil’s advocate
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