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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

#341

Post by owl57 »

klyrs wrote: post #328
lwigo wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rural small town judge probably doesn't have the best insight into that, just that Corporal Bubba said he calibrated it so it must've been right. I know, this is exceedingly cynical.

Your "Corporal Bubba" isn't just cynical, it leans heavily upon a harmful stereotype that folks in small towns are uneducated simpletons. Stop the polarization, please

Why wouldn't they be? I went to university with people from all over Russia. They don't tend to return to their home towns after getting educated. Does this work differently in America?

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

#342

Post by melq »

jabits wrote: post #334
melq wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>making the prosecutor kind of a criminal. Never met a lawyer before huh? Jokes aside, prosecutors pushing through cases they know to be unsound isn't exactly uncommon. Many prosecutors are more concerned with their conviction rates than they are in justice, because that's what they are measured and rewarded by.

I think you are wrong and that most prosecutors want to do the right thing, like most working people

I believe that's true as well, and I never said otherwise.

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

#343

Post by alistairSH »

meowface wrote: post #326
ineedasername wrote: post #324

If ever there was something that should be fully transparent it is the mechanisms by which a person might be found guilty of a crime. The defendant shouldn't even have had to fight for this. It should be a fundamental cornerstone of criminal prosecutions.

These cases also often come up with drug and alcohol detection tests, and as John Oliver points out in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f2iawp0y5Y , software used to select jurors. All of these companies claim that their source code is valuable intellectual property and that disclosing it can hurt their business. Even if this were true, when you're providing something that can be a significant factor in someone being…

...disclosing it can hurt their business...

And there's an entire body of law based around IP which they can use to protect their business, just like everybody else.

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

#344

Post by xirbeosbwo1234 »

abfan1127 wrote: post #120
phire wrote: post #93

> The co-founder of the company, Mark Perlin, is said to have argued against source code analysis by claiming that the program, consisting of 170,000 lines of MATLAB code, is so dense it would take eight and a half years to review at a rate of ten lines an hour. First, the defence doesn't necessarily have to evaluate all 170,000 lines. They just need to find one buggy line which could potentially overturn the result.…

10 lines per hour? doesn't that seem painfully slow?

Both 0.1 lines an hour and 1000 lines per hour would be equally wrong. That isn't how people would review that sort of code. They would test it and then thoroughly examine any areas of concern that crop up.

I've run into 300-line programs that have taken me a month to figure out because the math was hard and I've run into 100,000 line programs that have taken me a few hours to tear apart.

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

#345

Post by protomyth »

I do wonder if the next step is check the compiler / interpreter the code is running on. Is Matlab assumed to be error free in this situation? Will certified compilers and CPUs be required in the future? Looks like someone could end up reviving a modern version of the Viper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIPER_microprocessor

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

#346

Post by zymhan »

alistairSH wrote: post #343
meowface wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These cases also often come up with drug and alcohol detection tests, and as John Oliver points out in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f2iawp0y5Y , software used to select jurors. All of these companies claim that their source code is valuable intellectual property and that disclosing it can hurt their business. Even if this were true, when you're providing something that can be a significant factor in someone being…

...disclosing it can hurt their business... And there's an entire body of law based around IP which they can use to protect their business, just like everybody else.

Their business interests are also of minuscule importance compared to the impact to society these tools have.

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

#347

Post by ahepp »

nickodell wrote: post #158
breck wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. If it would take 8.5 yrs to review, it's probably god awful, and should never ever ever be used to convict someone of such a crime. My prediction: this firm will probably try to get removed from the case, rather than open source their shitty code. Source: I've worked on MATLAB codebases for various genomics research projects in the past.

>My prediction: this firm will probably try to get removed from the case, rather than open source their shitty code. That isn't necessarily their choice. The prosecutors will make the decision about whether to withdraw the DNA evidence. They probably won't, given that they would need to give the defendant a new trial, which could lead to an accused murderer getting off. A bad look for any prosecutor. More to the poin…

My understanding is that (some) law enforcement agencies have been more than happy to drop cases rather than subject investigative tools to proper scrutiny[0]. They have no qualms resorting to "parallel construction"[1], and simply using the inadmissible (sometimes illegal) evidence to find admissible evidence.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/fbi-would-rather...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

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

#348

Post by handoflixue »

rudylee wrote: post #338

Why can't just they run the DNA test again in 2 or 3 other different software ? If all of them come back with the same result then we can assume that the first software is not buggy right ?

It could be that they're all copying the same Stack Exchange answer, or making the same basic mistake - If 50% of programmers do averages wrong, it's not ridiculous to claim that 3 in a row got it wrong. Tripling your costs and still having a 12.5% failure rate isn't great.

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

#349

Post by zymhan »

owl57 wrote: post #341
klyrs wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your "Corporal Bubba" isn't just cynical, it leans heavily upon a harmful stereotype that folks in small towns are uneducated simpletons. Stop the polarization, please

Why wouldn't they be? I went to university with people from all over Russia. They don't tend to return to their home towns after getting educated. Does this work differently in America?

> Does this work differently in America?

No, not really.

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

#350

Post by zymhan »

klyrs wrote: post #328
lwigo wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rural small town judge probably doesn't have the best insight into that, just that Corporal Bubba said he calibrated it so it must've been right. I know, this is exceedingly cynical.

Your "Corporal Bubba" isn't just cynical, it leans heavily upon a harmful stereotype that folks in small towns are uneducated simpletons. Stop the polarization, please

I'd love it if more cops had college degrees in the US, but they don't. Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away.
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