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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

#421

Post by belorn »

Spivak wrote: post #265
bdavisx wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also give every person convicted using their software an incentive to open an appeal.

I like how this is considered a bad thing. Like we can’t let this guy point out that he’s being convicted by an unauditable black box that suddenly isn’t worth using if it has to stand up to scrutiny because then everyone would want to. The horror. Like I’m actually kinda shocked this is the reality. I would have assumed that DNA evidence would have some blessed methodologies and tools/algorithms, with a strict defin…

Here in Sweden, there is a legal practice that you can't find someone guilty based on DNA evidence alone. Probabilistic evidence is nice to point law enforcement in a direction, but there is always a risk of false positives.

In this case we are also dealing with probabilistic genotyping involving DNA Mixtures with DNA from several individual contributors, and most likely degraded DNA. It is the tool the police can use when other more traditional methods is not possible because of the mixture. That should mean the qualitative value of the DNA evidence is lower, requiring even stronger additional evidence from other sources.

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

#422

Post by kart23 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #310
kart23 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The last time I looked, breathalyzers have a ~50% margin of error Source on this? I know the portable ones are like this, but I thought the actual court-admissible ones are more accurate, and the calibration procedures need to be followed to get a conviction. Also, FSTs are quite good for preliminary screening, a proper HGN test especially. And if you ask for a blood test, they are required to give you one and consi…

> [Cops] don't want to be bothering normal people, they want to be taking real dangerous and irresponsible drivers off the road. That's the nice theory we all wish we lived in, but the reality all over the world is that police will extremely often do things for their own petty reasons, often systematically. Police departments often have quotas for tickets, they can often extract a bribe by threatening someone with a…

I agree. The solution is to make people aware of their rights and know what to do when a cop is doing something shady, not weaken the tools that the justice system has for going after things like DUI. Most departments have bodycam requirements now, and citizens have the power to impose steep penalties upon dirty cops.

I stand by that statement though, giving bullshit tickets and fines means that cop will likely just have to spend more time in court trying to defend hopeless cases and eventually get investigated for this kind of activity.

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

#423

Post by kovac »

I don't think it's meaningful to let defendant review the code each trial. Such code reviews should have been done before it was ever allowed to be used in the legal system.

On the other hand, there's always the more practical option of getting the dna testing done by a second, third or even a tenth different approved company if the defendants want to pursue this line of reasoning. From what I understand, dna testing is statistical which means even if they find some bug in the code there will have to be extended debates on whether or not a particular bug affected the credibility of this test result. This is just bullocks.

Having said that, the excuse the software company is giving is a bit lame.

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

#424

Post by Gustomaximus »

roywiggins wrote: post #206
vmception wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People sometimes ask me what my “number” is, like how much net worth or “money” I want, what would I do with it I say “I want to be able to afford appeals court where my rights matter” Infinite appeals court! Most people plea out, cant make bail, dont have counsel buddy buddy with the judge enough to get you bail, and lose the ability to keep good counsel for more and more motions and appeals I want that, there is al…

Appeals? Only ~3% of people charged even go to trial, the rest plead out. Just giving everyone a substantive right to trial would amount to a revolution.

I've wondered what would happen if jail culture expected people to go to trial.

So similar to how snitches are targeted, if criminals in jail start violently targeting people that didn't go to trial they might be able to tear down the system...maybe?

And to be clear this is a loose idea as I don't really know the system but it seems courts would be so flooded if everyone took this route. Prosecuters would have to stop with these rediculous threats of trial jail time vs plea deal as jails would become too full. And authorities would be forced to stop charging people for smaller crimes as they simply couldn't handle the case load in courts.

Even getting juries might be tough and start the rest of society pushing back if people were regularly being called for jury duty and disrupting their own lives.

...or something else but this would be an interesting 'fight back' by criminals.

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

#425

Post by MereInterest »

belorn wrote: post #421
Spivak wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how this is considered a bad thing. Like we can’t let this guy point out that he’s being convicted by an unauditable black box that suddenly isn’t worth using if it has to stand up to scrutiny because then everyone would want to. The horror. Like I’m actually kinda shocked this is the reality. I would have assumed that DNA evidence would have some blessed methodologies and tools/algorithms, with a strict defin…

Here in Sweden, there is a legal practice that you can't find someone guilty based on DNA evidence alone. Probabilistic evidence is nice to point law enforcement in a direction, but there is always a risk of false positives. In this case we are also dealing with probabilistic genotyping involving DNA Mixtures with DNA from several individual contributors, and most likely degraded DNA. It is the tool the police can us…

Interesting. What does Swedish law consider non-probabilistic evidence? Even something like eye-witness testimony I would consider to be probabilistic, given how easy it is to manipulate memories, even unintentionally.

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

#426

Post by lopatin »

raldi wrote: post #321
maceurt wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't take 10 lines an hour should it? I don't have experience reviewing professional code of this size, so please correct me if my assumption is wrong, but that number doesn't seem right.

I'd say more like ten lines a second, if you're skimming it to look for something. And of course, the work can be parallelized.

Is this satire?

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

#427

Post by sudosysgen »

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 an hour seems quite low.

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

#428

Post by sudosysgen »

heavyset_go wrote: post #252
carlmr wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I'd get an expert witness in there to testify basically that. Sounds really expensive.

Not necessarily. I'd happily do it for a reasonable hourly rate + transportation. It would end up costing not more than a few thousand dollars, which is very reasonable given our legal system.

Hell, if it seemed outrageous enough I'd probably do it for transportation costs alone.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with this outlook.

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

#429

Post by dragonwriter »

Aachen wrote: post #210
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.

> 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…

> Validating scientific methods and validating a program is different in that the program is proprietary and the science (usually) merely behind a paywall.

Or completely fictitious.

Have you heard the story about the FBI crime lab and the “science” of fiber analysis that they developed, and not only used in federal criminal trials but also provided as a service for state and local agencies for decades?

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

#430

Post by sudosysgen »

hastradamus wrote: post #110

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. This is hilarious. As if you need to read every damn line and you can’t skip blank lines? You can skip whole files that aren’t relevant. Weak excuse

And of course, as soon as you find an issue (which you probably will given that it's 170k lines of MATLAB), you can stop then and there.
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