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Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA testing kit

theregister.com

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Re: Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA testing kit

#121

Post by abfan1127 »

bagacrap wrote: post #113
chadlavi wrote: post #89

While this may lead to more transparent technology use in the justice system, a more realistic outcome is that everyone accused of any crime where a technology was used in the process of determining guilt (which could get quite picayune; did the prosecutor's office use Excel? Is that something the defendant could demand to check the source code on?) will use this as a way to slow-roll the process indefinitely.

Definitely if an excel macro determined my guilt based on a dataset, I would like to be able to read that macro.

or at least double check the math.

Re: Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA testing kit

#122

Post by thgaway17 »

pelliphant wrote: post #92
kortilla wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the question is what is the incentive for lying and claiming guilty? Do prosecutors choose different labs?

That seems plausible. I would argue that if prosecutors and/or cops get to pick the tool, false positives would result in more sales. Just as false negatives would result in more sales if the defendant gets to make the pick.

false positives would result in more sales.

That seems highly unlikely. Prosecutors, like all attorneys, talk. It wouldn’t take too many getting burned by a false positive before word would get out (regardless of any nda).

For example, once an expert gets Dauberted, you’ve got to think long and hard about being the next guy to use them.

Re: Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA testing kit

#124

Post by Scandiravian »

natechols wrote: post #95
gww wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so little emphasis in production software development in bioinformatics and biostatistics. Despite a lot of groups open sourcing their code it's is nearly unusable and not reproducible due to hard coding, ignoring edge cases, and dumping the majority of the code on a single giant R or python function.

It's a real problem, and I've been struggling with it for two decades, but even so I am legitimately impressed (and not in a good way) if they have 170,000 lines of Matlab code in their production software. That takes a really special combination of productivity and cluelessness, even for academic specialists. Regardless of the facts of this particular case, it should be absolutely horrifying that anyone's freedom is…

Choosing MATLAB as a language for software that could potentially lead to people dying (in areas where they still have the death penalty) is a gigantic red-flag

I don't know how many job postings ask for a software engineer who knows MATLAB, but I can't recall any

Re: Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA testing kit

#125

Post by watwut »

Scandiravian wrote: post #84
watwut wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do code review on every single commit while not being able to make overall analysis of the massive codebase.

I completely agree, but if the reviewer isn't able to (with some amount of accuracy) predict the impact the committed code will have on overall behaviour, then there's very limited value on doing the review in the first place

In any larger project, the reviewer are not able to predict impact from reading commit.

More importantly, typical reviewer have only small partia area where he has good idea about which commit is bad idea. He however does not understand whole codebase.

Knowing what the whole does and knowing what my module does are two different things.

Re: Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA testing kit

#126

Post by [deleted] »

calciphus wrote: post #50
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, just like voting machines. But how do we confirm that the software which was vetted is the software that was actually _used_?

Compile it, run it with the same inputs the prosecution claims was provided, and see if you get the same result. That's sorta the point of computers, right? Same inputs on the same program, same output?

[deleted]

Re: Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA testing kit

#128

Post by lwigo »

throw2838 wrote: post #98
ChrisRR wrote: post #12

This is similar to a case a few years back where someone asked to see the source code of a breathalyser that had found them guilty. AFAIR, the breathalyser was incorrectly averaging the readings, giving disproportional weight to the first reading. I don't know if it was enough to rule in their favour, but I'm sure it called the data into question Edit: Looks like it was a Draeger breathalyser https://www.schneier.com…

Draeger requires calibration prior each use for temperature and humidity. It is easy to get it thrown out as evidence.

When the officer shows up and swears under oath that he "calibrated it that morning" it's not so easy. :shrug:

Re: Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA testing kit

#129

Post by slickQ »

Nightshaxx wrote: post #62
badRNG wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm a juror, and the evidence presented happens to have a false positive rate of 1%, that certainly meets my understanding of "a reasonable doubt."

A murderer kills less than 1% of all the people they meet. Does that mean we should just accept their behavior?

A murderer who kills 1% of the people he meets has certainly committed a crime. A person who has a 99% chance of being a murderer has not certainly committed a crime.

That is depending on your threshold of certainty. 1% is not that high considering that, according to the OJJDP, 5 milion people were arrested for serious charges in 2019 so with a 1% false positive rate that would be 100,000 people falsely imprisoned every year.

It does not have to be and really can't be 0% but 1% is unreasonably high in my opinion. If it can't be helped then it can't be helped but that isn't necessarily the case with these devices.

Re: Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA testing kit

#130

Post by Spivak »

chadlavi wrote: post #89

While this may lead to more transparent technology use in the justice system, a more realistic outcome is that everyone accused of any crime where a technology was used in the process of determining guilt (which could get quite picayune; did the prosecutor's office use Excel? Is that something the defendant could demand to check the source code on?) will use this as a way to slow-roll the process indefinitely.

Yes? I mean the intimate details of how cell networks work have been the difference between guilty and not before when the only evidence is some black-box report generated by AT&T that seems more accurate than is actually guaranteed.

This wouldn’t be necessary if the expert on the stand was a geneticist who ran the test. But when the expert literally is the software you can’t really cross-examine the company’s sales rep.

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