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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

#431

Post by spoonjim »

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

Prosecutors are shaped by an environment that equates “the right thing” to “punishing the guilty.” It’s like any profession... a surgeon will think you need surgery and a prosecutor will think the guy in handcuffs needs to go to jail.

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

#432

Post by devlopr »

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

You're version of the right thing and the prosecutors version might not align.

The right thing for them is to put as many criminals behind bars. They review cases and pick ones they can win. They will attack and find unrelated weak points in your character to win. They believe they are doing the right thing and will use whatever they can legally against you. You being innocent and going to court is means someone made a mistake. To confess to a mistake loses you credibility, to confess to an ongoing process mistake could open up other cases where dangerous people could be set free.

Is that your version of the right thing?

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

#433

Post by bigiain »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #244
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.

The numerics in Matlab are far better than pretty much any developer can produce in production. This is why Matlab is used in production - it's vastly more reliable than people rebuilding the things it is good at by hand for bespoke solutions.

"I could whip this up in JavaScript in about NaN or [object Object] hours over a weekend!"

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

#434

Post by bigiain »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #114
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.…

> Second, even if it did take a full 8 years, is that a good reason to deny the defendant due process? No, but the person that wants to have it analyzed will have to either spend the time themselves, or pay the expert witness for their time; it could be a costly affair. But I think it's warranted. An independent software review, and a double blind assertion with the exact version of the software used in the convictio…

> but the person that wants to have it analyzed will have to either spend the time themselves, or pay the expert witness for their time; it could be a costly affair.

Sure.

And the prosecution using the company claiming to have "totally reliable DNA evidence" should be totally on the hook for those costs (plus damages) when that analysis or expert witnesses show up "reasonable doubt" flaws in the software or the processes in which that software is used, including then risking retrials or mistrials of all other cases in which it was used.

If the prosecutors want to play high stakes games with defendants lives and liberty using "evidence" from proprietary software or devices, they need to be held to the consequences of losing their stakes.

[Edit: I wonder what the legal system would think of a CyberGenetics competitor funding the expert witness analysis of their software on behalf of the defence???]

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

#435

Post by bigiain »

edgyquant wrote: post #414
contingencies wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be audited by science.

Yes there should be teams comprised of people whose expertise is in biology (specifically whatever field is responsible for DNA matching) and other people who are programmers that review the code and make sure there’s no mistakes. That would do it and I’m surprised this isn’t already a thing.

It should totally be available to be "red teamed", like the researchers who exploit fingerprint readers with gummy bear moulds made with laser prints of fingerprints, or who hold up photographs to face recognition systems.

The government should send a half a dozen to DefCon/CCC and let attendees loose trying to fool them.

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

#436

Post by willis936 »

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.

I’ve made 4 decent sized gui based tools before. I would never use GUIDE. At minimum it uses eval.

If you want a terrible gui-based gui creation interface: labview awaits.

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

#437

Post by bigiain »

lopatin wrote: post #426
raldi wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

"With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow^h^h^h^h^h^h buried in the critical open source dependancy underpinning the entire internet maintained by that one guy who's holding down a day job and doing it in his spare time." -- with apologies to Linus

(As always, XKCD beat me to this gag: https://xkcd.com/2347/ )

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

#438

Post by edbob »

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?

Not all poor people are stupid.

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

#439

Post by willis936 »

cozzyd wrote: post #366
ashtonkem wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s actually a pretty good argument for banning such code from the criminal justice system. The idea that unreadable code is deciding who gets locked up is really worrying.

and depending on which MATLAB version they run it in, it might have completely different results if they haven't tested carefully...

This is not my experience. Could you share an example?

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

#440

Post by willis936 »

kenjackson wrote: post #336
edgyquant wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is this persons life we’re talking about. No amount of time is too much and it isn’t hurting anyone to let him do a code review.

No. You give a reasonable amount of time. What if he asked for 100 years?

The burden of proof does not suddenly fall on the defendant just because one for-profit conviction company can’t back up their product.
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