461–470 of 520 posts
These companies are disgusting. They peddle black box "models," that essentially ride the good reputation of DNA as infallible (which it is most certainly not) to get convictions on dubious or no evidence. The way it works is that if there is a sample from a crime scene, they send it to these guys and they analyze it with their software to detect "statistical" DNA from the sample. These samples are the ones that are…
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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.
Hardware and business process would also need review. Its no good having perfect code if you can insert the wrong sample. It's also no good having perfect code if a well-timed EMI burst or power level shift games the result.
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>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
Most people want to do the right thing wherein right thing is almost entirely defined by norms and customs of their environment. If the norms and expectations are high ethical and correct standards people will follow them to the degree they are able.
To what degree are such standards broken or defective in America though?
Lest we forget the head lawyer of Texas a state home to aprox 27 million people or around 8% of the nation is a man whose own prosecution has for years only been stymied by the difficulty of prosecuting the man at the head of the states justice department. Either 8 or 9 (I've lost track) directly beneath him have resigned and accused him of corruption.
This isn't even an isolated instance corruption is found in fact all over the united states.
Even when in theory we would like to do the right thing we have a hard time establishing what standards are even real. Look at the fact. For proof of that look no further than the science of hair analysis which the FBI spent decades using to convict the accused before we realized that they were incapable of differentiating dog hair from human hair.
Think of entire people going in to work producing work product about imaginary science they were pretending to do competently and sending people to death row in part because of their fake work product.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-fo...
The justice system in America is a bad joke that is primarily differentiated from say Cuba in that bribes are paid to your lawyer instead of directly to government officials.
> 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…
If its a multi million dollar affair like they claim its virtually impossible that every defendant will be able to fund such an affair.
In fact in the case that a disastrous flaw is found it may be advantageous to simply drop the case and hope that past and future defendants wont be able to each afford to press the point.
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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?
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The burden of proof does not suddenly fall on the defendant just because one for-profit conviction company can’t back up their product.
Who said they can’t back it up? The defendant claimed he needed to review it. The company presumably has done its own validation.
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As long as he’s actually reading the code, and still in jail unable to hurt anyone, let him have it. He’ll likely pass before that time is reached and if he’s just wasting time he’ll get bored having to spend hours a day looking at code that he doesn’t care to look at. I get what you’re saying but my point is him wasting time reading code isn’t hurting anyone and is a better use of an inmates time than sitting around…
If he’s in jail doing it then that’s fine.
We should either pay for multiple people to work on it so we can have the answer in less than 8 years or we shouldn't use it at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Hardware and business process would also need review. Its no good having perfect code if you can insert the wrong sample. It's also no good having perfect code if a well-timed EMI burst or power level shift games the result.
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
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That would be implying that the prosecutor would prefer taking the life of an innocent rather than having it hurt his career, making the prosecutor kind of a criminal.
>taking the life of an innocent The prosecutor isn't unilaterally deciding whether the DNA evidence is valid. There will be a public hearing where both the prosecution and defense show evidence about the validity of the DNA evidence, and a court will rule based on that evidence.
- Not revealing all information they are required to.
- Parallel construction (see above)
- Overcharging, with the goal of making the plea more palatable than the cost/risk of defending multiple absurd charges.
- Lying to you while getting to throw you in jail if you lie to them.
As a result, only 5% of federal cases go to trial.
None of behaviors these are rare. If your understanding of the legal system is based on popular culture, as most people’s is, it is basically law enforcement propaganda that has little relationship to reality.