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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

#401

Post by vkou »

gowld wrote: post #384
vkou wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not like you review all scientific evidence and re-do the experiments that lead up to the discovery of in the first place. Validating all that would also take years and much of it can be established as generally accepted by all parties. Similarly, there will be some trust involved with this source code as well There are a few important differences between a generally accepted method, and some Matlab black-box…

In USA, accurate to 1 in a million means you can convict 300 innocent people for every guilty one. Bad stats, especially around DNA, has convicted many innocent people. BTW, law and Order did an episode on bad DNA science convicting someone.

As an innocent person, I'd much rather take a 1 in a million chance at a wrongful conviction, than risk a jury trial.

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

#402

Post by mattkrause »

pvitz wrote: post #82

I have worked with MATLAB code with 20,000 lines of code. Only over the past years, OOP and unit-testing has become properly available and usable. My guess is that this 170,000 lines are written in the old procedural way (also for performance reasons) and are full of bugs, also thanks to the lack of supporting tools. Most likely, this grew out of a research prototype that just worked too well to be reimplemented in a…

Matlab has had classes (both types!) for ages. The unit-testing stuff dates back to at least 2013, and there were toolboxes to do similar things even before that.

The language certainly has some warts, but IMO, the bigger problem is that it's usually learned/used in contexts that focus on code quality: the goal is the resulting number or plot rather than the software that generates them.

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

#403

Post by breischl »

knolan wrote: post #316
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.

170,000 lines of Matlab code for a project is not a good sign. Unless they’re also including the source of various Matlab toolboxes which are already tested by the Mathworks. It’s such a high-level language it’s hard to imagine what the hell they’re doing with all that code. It’s probably mostly useless cruft from GUIDE.

How that number was probably arrived at...

PHB: Hey, how many lines of code do we have? CodeMonkey: You want a high estimate or a low estimate? PHB: High CodeMonkey: Well, including unit tests, comments, whitespace, build scripts, integration test harness... 170k

At least I hope they have enough testing code to be signficant...

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

#405

Post by themeiguoren »

carlmr wrote: post #194
wdobbels wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If their argument is that their codebase is basically unreadable, then I see why they're scared someone might find some bugs here and there.

I'd get an expert witness in there to testify basically that. I also don't think you should code anything mission critical like this in Matlab. It's a decent language for prototyping, not for production.

Laughs in autocoded control systems

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

#406

Post by SilasX »

vkou wrote: post #351
Aachen wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's not like you review all scientific evidence and re-do the experiments that lead up to the discovery of in the first place. Validating all that would also take years and much of it can be established as generally accepted by all parties. Similarly, there will be some trust involved…

> It's not like you review all scientific evidence and re-do the experiments that lead up to the discovery of in the first place. Validating all that would also take years and much of it can be established as generally accepted by all parties. Similarly, there will be some trust involved with this source code as well There are a few important differences between a generally accepted method, and some Matlab black-box…

>The actual solution to your quandary is to require that forensic analysis services must pass an annual, independent, double-blind analysis of the accuracy of their methods, before they are used in a courtroom - and that the results of those audits are made available to the defense.

Agreed! But if that's the standard, it still doesn't involve letting the defendant see the source code.

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

#407

Post by breischl »

unishark wrote: post #378
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.…

A lot of bashing over a vague third-hand quote without a source. In the very next paragraph they say: > The company offered the defense access under tightly controlled conditions outlined in a non-disclosure agreement, which included accepting a $1m liability fine in the event code details leaked. But the defense team objected to the conditions, which they argued would hinder their evaluation and would deter any expe…

Maybe, or maybe that's just the smokescreen they put up to prevent anyone looking at it.

I notice that they didn't say "here's the results of our last independency audit and verification of correctness", which I think would be a fantastic counter-argument... if they had one.

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

#408

Post by josefx »

nolok wrote: post #263
qwertox wrote: post #201

Here in Germany we have somewhat similar cases, but where the accusation is way less damaging than the case of this article, in which a false positive would have the drastic result of being labeled a murderer. The cases are related to new speeding cameras which work with laser, where the defendants are complaining that these new devices are black boxes, and that they demand access to the raw data which these devices…

Now all you need is the proper amount of collusion/corruption between the certifying agency and the manufacturer to have a magic box that does whatever the one paying the bills want. Might seem far fetched in a developped country, until you read about the Boeing/FAA thing happened.

As far as I could find the courts basically decided that there has to be a way to examine how a result was reached if there was any doubt about it. That the PTB still allowed their use didn't change that and if a case got to court the results could get thrown out. The PTB probably doesn't care because only a small percentage of speeding cases end up in court.

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

#409

Post by ClumsyPilot »

vkou wrote: post #401
gowld wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In USA, accurate to 1 in a million means you can convict 300 innocent people for every guilty one. Bad stats, especially around DNA, has convicted many innocent people. BTW, law and Order did an episode on bad DNA science convicting someone.

As an innocent person, I'd much rather take a 1 in a million chance at a wrongful conviction, than risk a jury trial.

the point he is making that 1 in a million was an outright lie used by prosecutors to secure convictions on innocent, while the real criminals are still out and about

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

#410

Post by canadianfella »

ahepp wrote: post #347
nickodell wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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/Paral…

You seem to imply there is a problem with parallel construction.
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