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A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

arstechnica.com

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Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#131

Post by gblargg »

anigbrowl wrote: post #89
Aurornis wrote: post #15

> Nothing linked Klayme to the girl. No intimate images were found. Klayme did have a Kik account, but cops couldn’t even show that he had accessed the service during the period in question. > Still, Klayme was arrested and hit with three charges: > Luring a person under 14 years of age by means of telecommunication > Providing sexually explicit material to a child > Possession of child pornography > The case went to…

An unfortunate fact about the legal system is that it's much easier for lawyers to sway a jury based on emotions than facts. simply labeling someone as a child abuser and then recounting a sordid tale is enough to get most people to switch off their rational faculties completely. Another unfortunate fact is many defense attorneys start work from the premise that the client is both guilty and an idiot, accepting the f…

Why would people get jury trials if bench ones were better? Is it only when the person is innocent?

Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#133

Post by jojobas »

anigbrowl wrote: post #118
jojobas wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prosecution must still present evidence that proves guilt beyond reasonable doubt. "Something something IP address" sort of evidence that the article describes doesn't seem to cut it.

Indeed, but it's up to the defense to articulate what the basis of that doubt is. If you read jury instructions, they typically tell the jurors to only base their decision on the information presented in the courtroom and to set aside their own intuitions, prior life experience etc. Now this isn't universal; I've seen judges that encourage the jury to ask questions in open court (by submitting as notes to the judge w…

It's not even about asking questions, the judge is allowed just listen to the prosecution case and acquit without requesting any elaboration, or even challenge by the defense, isn't he? The prosecution didn't meet "no reasonable doubt" even before the defense started.

Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#134

Post by RichEO »

quantified wrote: post #52
Aurornis wrote: post #15

> Nothing linked Klayme to the girl. No intimate images were found. Klayme did have a Kik account, but cops couldn’t even show that he had accessed the service during the period in question. > Still, Klayme was arrested and hit with three charges: > Luring a person under 14 years of age by means of telecommunication > Providing sexually explicit material to a child > Possession of child pornography > The case went to…

It would take anyone reviewing the evidence noticing the double underscore. Part of what makes this infuriating is that it's the type of error we as individuals are prone to making or not noticing on some days. As the defendant, I'd have been terrified that all this seems to be me yet isn't.

The double underscore error was made on the subpoena/request to Kik, and may not have appeared in the evidence at all.

If the request was made before the defendant was charged, it’s entirely possible that the defendant’s lawyer was not given that document until it was expressly requested.

Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#136

Post by jibal »

nl wrote: post #57
crazygringo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is an atrocious article. It makes no sense as presented. The first thing the records should have shown was the full messaging history which would not have contained any of the incriminating messages. But even if the messages no longer existed, there was no actual evidence. Truly, what on earth did the defense argue? How on earth was the jury convinced he was guilty? Everything important about this story is…

> The first thing the records should have shown was the full messaging history which would not have contained any of the incriminating messages. I think the point is that the message history would show incriminating messages. He'd have been saying "this isn't me", but somehow no one noticed it was the wrong username.

The message history of what? Not his account name, the one they had throughout the investigation and trial.

Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#137

Post by kalleboo »

esafak wrote: post #105
marethyu wrote: post #103

> To identify this person, the cops contacted Kik, but their subpoena accidentally requested information about the Kik user “fus_ro_dah” (one underscore after “fus”). Kik provided Klayme’s email address in response. > Google records showed that this email address was used to access Google services from an IP address in Canada, so the Dane County investigators turned the case over to Halifax Regional Police. Halifax p…

Is it surprising? Every time you log in your IP is recorded, and the ISP can handle the rest.

And this is why IP addresses are often considered personally identifiable information under the GDPR, as impractical as that makes things like anti-spam/anti-bot.

Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#138

Post by paul_h »

Way back lots of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ore couln't bring cases against all because the expert witnesses (US law enforcement website trap-setters) wouldn't go to the UK to testify. How come Canada was able to press ahead without the expert winesses being cross examinable?

Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#139

Post by jibal »

gamblor956 wrote: post #77
Aurornis wrote: post #15

> Nothing linked Klayme to the girl. No intimate images were found. Klayme did have a Kik account, but cops couldn’t even show that he had accessed the service during the period in question. > Still, Klayme was arrested and hit with three charges: > Luring a person under 14 years of age by means of telecommunication > Providing sexually explicit material to a child > Possession of child pornography > The case went to…

Unless the article left something out, the only possible evidence they had was the wrong username. It did. The evidence against him were the messages sent to the girl and the unusual username. It's not like it was John_Smith. It was fairly unique. They couldn't even find evidence that this person used Kik at the time of the crime. The lack of digital evidence is not proof of innocence. It's not proof of anything eith…

> It was fairly unique.

Wrong.

And in any case, if they had looked at the message history of the account name that they used to track him down and that was entered into evidence at the trial, they would not have found any criminal messages.

> The lack of digital evidence is not proof of innocence.

Misplaced burden of proof.

> Lawyers aren't generally known for their grasp of computer technology.

Good lawyers are known for mastering the relevant details of a wide range of subjects.

Re: A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months

#140

Post by denkmoon »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #117
denkmoon wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insane. An LLM is just as likely to hallucinate a missing/extra underscore and ping the wrong person. A machine cannot be held accountable.

My LLMs frequently find subtle typos and never make subtle typos. I don't think that's equally likely at all.

Just today I had an incident review meeting resulting from a prod incident where the root cause was an LLM refactor stripping ! from the front of a boolean statement "for no reason". Not to mention how often I've seen garbled output from the LLM.

Lots of things failed for that to reach prod, but the assertion that LLMs do not make subtle typos... is not congruent with my experience.

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