Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 131 posts

Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts

#61

Post by ptaipale »

andrewla wrote: post #36
ptaipale wrote: post #25

The headline is somewhat clickbaity and sensational. Yes, it is bad that there are clerical errors in justice system. But, if information is lost due to faulty software or user errors or even user error helped by bad UI design, it's still fundamentally just a clerical error. Those errors should be fixed and perhaps some people should be eligible for compensation for being mistreated due to error, but there is no sini…

It definitely seems like more of the blame here should be shouldered by the police and the courts, who, knowing that the system has problems (and hopefully assured that those problems will be resolved in the future) should put less faith in them, and double-check (against filed papers, for example) potentially dubious results. This is more expensive in terms of people's times, but it's just part of the cost of adopti…

Indeed. The "Computer says no" or "Computer says catch him" attitude should change: particularly if you know it's a new system, check twice before making drastic actions based on data it gives.

Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts

#62

Post by fataliss »

I don't get why such software isn't an open source initiative. I wish the government would give more legitimacy to orgs like "code for america". Who wants a proprietary closed janky software to rule wether you are a criminal or not? Nobody, that's who. The only beneficiaries in that story are the people on the other hand of the contract, making $5M for an half baked piece of software!

Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts

#63

Post by acbabis »

noir_lord wrote: post #21
panic wrote: post #6

Tyler Technologies acknowledged in a statement that the upgrade process had been “challenging” - but said poor training was to blame for bad inputting of data and integration with third-party applications that often introduce glitches into the system. People writing software need to take responsibility for how the software is used, especially when it can impact people's lives to this degree. You can't just blame thir…

> People writing software need to take responsibility for how the software is used There is an old joke that it's almost impossible to get someone to understand a problem that would result in a threat to their livliehood. I don't think people need to "take responsibility" I think organisations need to be made to take responsibility. In the UK when you purchase a physical good from the retailer the warranty for that g…

I'm not saying it's not a good idea, but that system's gonna be really tough on the software industry. Consider what would happen when a famous third-party API has security flaw. Most third-party libraries' licenses have an "as-is" clause and even mature third-party software has exploits sometimes (e.g. Java applets).

If you wanted to use a library in a project, you would have to

  - a) read the entire thing to see if you can find any bugs that the devs missed, or
  - b) roll your own solution which will probably have even more bugs, or
  - c) find an equivalent library that has a paid version without the "as-is" clause.
Imagine paying a monthly subscription fee just so you can offset the liability when Angular has a security hole. This would run a lot of small shops out of business.

Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts

#64

Post by jonathankoren »

treehau5 wrote: post #55
jdietrich wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need formal codes of practice, we need good institutions, but we also need a cultural change. We no longer have the luxury of saying "oh, it's just a CRUD app, it doesn't matter if things go wrong". Software has become too important, it has become too deeply intertwined in our daily lives. Errors and leaks from trivial little apps can have life-changing consequences for users. If your software handles personally i…

Meh. That's all I have to say about that. We already have the distinction between software that can actually affect people's lives in a negative/positive way and software that is merely a nuance or inconvenient. The former is heavily regulated. Mistakes in financial accounting software, healthcare software, or mission critical software such as industrial automation or say launching satellites cause companies to vanis…

No we don't have that distinction. We have places where outsiders, typically from heavily regulated industries like finance, like medicine, like areospace, have imposed testing and validation procedures and best practices onto the software industry. Left to our own devices, we get IoT bullshit like Nest thermostats that randomly turn the temperature down because they turn off[0], security exploit via unneeded running service part 2028, the 9382nd installment of security exploit via default credentials, the 11 millionth edition of buffer overflow security exploit, and the list goes on. These problems screw up not just it, but other systems (see mirari dns ddos, see ransomware, see ransomware on MUNI, see all the other effects from people that coded up things that relied on a ubiquitous persistent internet connection)

[0] http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/fashion/nest-thermostat...

Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts

#65

Post by strictfp »

dkarl wrote: post #17

Similar problems have been reported in Tennessee and also in Indiana - where prosecutors have had a perhaps more troubling issue of inmates being mistakenly released early. It seems backwards to describe this as more troubling.

Better sorry than safe?

Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts

#67

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

briandear wrote: post #51
0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can one of the standards be that if the software costs money it should perform proportionally better than a free alternative?

What difference does that make?

Well usually if you pay more for something like a manufactured good or art work you get more value, but the rule for software seems to be the more you pay for it the less value you get.

Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts

#68

Post by djrogers »

briandear wrote: post #52
dkarl wrote: post #17

Similar problems have been reported in Tennessee and also in Indiana - where prosecutors have had a perhaps more troubling issue of inmates being mistakenly released early. It seems backwards to describe this as more troubling.

Not at all. Do you want a rapist getting out of jail earlier? That would be troubling.

Not as troubling as a government depriving a citizen of their inalienable rights. That is by far the more troubling outcome - especially given the greater societal implications.

Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts

#69

Post by brewdad »

briandear wrote: post #52
dkarl wrote: post #17

Similar problems have been reported in Tennessee and also in Indiana - where prosecutors have had a perhaps more troubling issue of inmates being mistakenly released early. It seems backwards to describe this as more troubling.

Not at all. Do you want a rapist getting out of jail earlier? That would be troubling.

But a person with a traffic ticket getting jailed and registered as a sex offender is better? Both are equally troubling. In my mind, the latter moreso.

Re: People’s freedom jeopardised by new software adopted by California’s courts

#70

Post by dispose13432 »

noir_lord wrote: post #19

Software is currently in a strange place legislatively, in the 18th century Civil Engineering exploded (sometimes literally) and the number of disasters went up in radically (for an interesting case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Bridge_disaster ), over time professional standards bodies grew alongside the maturing industry to both ensure that people working in the industry where adequately trained and adequately…

The threat model of code is different than that of bridges, and legislation won't help.

Civil engineers have to make sure that bridges won't naturally collapse.

Software "engineers" have to ensure that no one will break their code, from the privacy and anonymity of their house, with millions of dollars in payoffs.

If bridges held millions of dollars and would be accessible from around the world, they would be breaking all the time also.

Post reply on HN