KLEINBERG RECEIVES
ACM DATA MINING AWARD
Tisch University professor of
computer science Jon Kleinberg
received the 2013 ACM SIGKDD
Innovation Award at the 19th
ACM SIGKDD International
Conference on Knowledge
Discovery and Data Mining.
Kleinberg’s work on
social and information
networks includes the hubs
and authorities algorithm for
computing importance scores of
nodes in a graph (an important
part of Google’s ranking of
search results), methods for
predicting the occurrence of
new links in networks, and an
algorithm for maximizing the
spread of influence through a
social network.
Kleinberg received a
MacArthur Foundation
Fellowship in 2005 and the
Nevanlinna Prize (the premier
distinction in computational
mathematics) in 2006. He
also has received an NSF
CAREER Award, an ONR Young
Investigator Award, a Packard
Foundation Fellowship, and a
Sloan Foundation Fellowship.
IEEE AWARDS JACOBS
2013 MEDAL OF HONOR
The Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers (IEEE)
recently honored Qualcomm co-
founder Irwin Jacobs, 79, with
its 2013 Medal of Honor, the
organization’s highest award.
The award is given to an
individual “for an exceptional
contribution or an extraordinary
career in the IEEE fields of
interest.” Jacobs was selected
to receive the award “for
leadership and fundamental
contributions to digital
communications and wireless
technology.”
IEEE chief executive Peter
Staecker said Jacobs was awarded
the medal not just for his
innovations—he holds 14 wireless
industry patents—but for “the
ability to translate innovation into
industry applications time after
time after time.”
Jacobs co-founded
Qualcomm in 1985. He helped
lead revolutionary developments
such as Code Division Multiple
Access (CDMA) technology, and
was instrumental in Qualcomm’s
development of satellite
communications and tracking
for the trucking industry.
An IEEE Life Fellow, former
chairman of the U.S. National
Academy of Engineering, and
Fellow of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences American
Association for the Advancement
of Science, Jacobs’ received the
U.S. National Medal of Technology
in 1994 and the inaugural IEEE
Vehicular Technology Society
Hall of Fame Award in 2009.
Milestones
Computer Science Awards
want to appoint. Judges are not appointed for life terms, as U.S. Supreme
Court Justices are, and given the more
complex selection and appointment
process involving a disparate group of
EU members, it would stand to reason
that these judges and advocates generals are more likely to be current on a
greater variety of technologies.
Meanwhile, Japan took the novel
step of establishing an Intellectual
Property High Court in April 2005
to deal with patent and intellectual
property cases. The interesting aspect of this court is its use of judicial
research officials and technical advisors, full-time court officials who assist judges by conducting research on
technical matters necessary for hearing and resolving IP cases.
Judge Posner has suggested a similar approach to handle highly technical cases at the Supreme Court,
which would involve hiring an ad
hoc impartial expert agreed upon by
both parties in a case to advise the
justices about the technology in the
case. However, Posner says the likelihood of this occurring is slim, given
that the Supreme Court justices are
unlikely to agree to any system which
puts a focus on the technology, and
likely will seek the safe harbor of focusing their decisions based on prior
legal rulings and principles.
“As Supreme Court justices, I’m sure
rather because they are not confident
that they can predict the future of tech-
nology and the development of social
norms that will surround its use,” ac-
cording to Papandrea. “Furthermore,
the Court is generally hesitant to revisit
its prior decisions and preexisting doc-
trinal framework and often chooses to
issue more narrow decisions to avoid
the difficult jurisprudential questions
new technology can present.”
Meanwhile, technology cases are
being addressed in the high courts
around the world. The European
Union’s highest court, the European
Court of Justice, has issued rulings that
barred embryonic stem cell patents,
struck down a requirement of social
networks to install an anti-piracy filter-
ing system, and is currently address-
ing a case involving the legal sale of
products that can modify Nintendo
consoles, which could allow users to
bypass certain copyright protections.
The EU’s Court of Justice has not
been subject to as much scrutiny as
the U.S. Supreme Court, perhaps due
to how the court is structured, with
one judge per EU country, assisted by
nine ‘advocates-general’ whose job
is to present opinions on the cases
brought before the Court. Each judge
and advocate-general is appointed
for a term of six years, which can be
renewed, and the governments of EU
countries must agree on whom they
they’re very conscious of the impor-
tance of their being respected,” Posner
says. “How does the Court maintain its
prestige? It makes them risk-averse.
They don’t want to grapple with some
technical case and make some terrible
mistake; they want, consciously or un-
consciously, to operate on a level at
which their decisions will be seen as
applications of legal principles and le-
gal reasoning, rather than as solutions
to technological issues.”
Further Reading
Mary-Rose Papandrea
“Moving Beyond Cameras in the Courtroom:
Technology, the Media, and the Supreme
Court,” 2012 BYU L. Rev. 1901 (2012),
at http://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/
lawreview/vol2012/iss6/7
Mark Grabowski
“Are Technical Difficulties at the Supreme
Court Causing a ‘Disregard of Duty’?”
Journal of Law, Technology, and The
Internet, 2011, at http://law.case.edu/
journals/JOLTI/Documents/Grabowski% 20
-%20new.pdf
Technology, the Supreme Court, and the
Fourth Amendment: Balancing Government
Power and Individual Privacy, http://www.
soc.umn.edu/~samaha/bill_of_rights/
Supreme Court of the United States Blog:
http://www.scotusblog.com/
Keith Kirkpatrick is principal of 4K Research &
Consulting, LLC, based in Lynbrook, N Y.
© 2014 ACM 0001-0782/14/05 $15.00