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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

#131

Post by breck »

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.…

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.

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

#132

Post by mseidl »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #41
zyngaro wrote: post #39

This kind of software should be required by law to be open source.

Yes, just like voting machines. But how do we confirm that the software which was vetted is the software that was actually _used_?

Nobody should use electronic voting.

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

#133

Post by [deleted] »

calciphus wrote: post #50
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, just like voting machines. But how do we confirm that the software which was vetted is the software that was actually _used_?

Compile it, run it with the same inputs the prosecution claims was provided, and see if you get the same result. That's sorta the point of computers, right? Same inputs on the same program, same output?

[deleted]

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

#134

Post by vmception »

zupreme wrote: post #60

What is unfortunate is that it took going to appeal to force the judge to allow the code review at all. Without, at minimum, an independent review (and preferably open source code) the software and lab processes being used constitute an inscrutable "black box" process within which any judgment can be made, for any conceivable reason, with life-changing effects for the defendant (and for the victims of a crime if, for…

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 almost no pride in American rights if you cant afford them. People tie their whole identity to a system they arent even part of

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

#135

Post by isolli »

Scandiravian wrote: post #11
ABeeSea wrote: post #3

> 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. So it’s definitely riddled with bugs. And I can’t imagine that much matlab code following rigorous software engineering practices.

My exact thoughts. This sounds like a classic example of launching a prototype created by domain specialists (biostatisticians and bioinformaticians) as production software and skipping on the expensive stuff, like sound development practices

It also sounds exactly like Ferguson's Imperial College epidemiology model that apparently compelled politicians into imposing hard lockdowns (and was likely wrong by at least an order of magnitude):

- "a single 15k line C file that had been worked on for a decade" [0]

- code review of the model: [1]

- corresponding HN discussion: [2] (including sad appeals to authority: you're not an epidemiologist)

- other HN discussion [3] (including ridiculously blaming programmers for making C++ available to non-programmers)

[0] https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1254872369556074496

[1] https://lockdownsceptics.org/code-review-of-fergusons-model/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23093944

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23222338

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

#137

Post by Spivak »

londons_explore wrote: post #69
hirundo wrote: post #55

If an accused person has the right to see the source code that produced evidence against them, is it a violation of their rights for the source code to be obfuscated, or even just so spaghettified that not even an expert can understand it? I kinda think that should be a violation. But deciding whether a particular piece of code is so bad is so subjective that I'm not sure on how you'd make a legal standard out of it.…

You don't need a legal standard. You just need to put doubt into the minds of a jury. You can get an expert to stand up and say "I'm an expert in computers, and I couldn't understand how this DNA test works. I think it's likely there are mistakes in it that neither I nor the people that made it have discovered".

“This system is an absolute mess that is impossible audit and so there is no way that the company using could find bugs in it either.”

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

#138

Post by jimz »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #70
refurb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they get hired by the defense.

The defence can rarely afford their services.

Prosecutors aren't necessarily blessed with bigger budgets in a lot of places, they simply have a separately-funded (and very well funded at that) investigative body that is the police or sheriff's office doing the really expensive part that the defense, especially a public defender's office, will only have a skeleton crew to do. The problem is that defense may not have the resources or knowledge to use inadequacies of something like this as a defense in the first place, and may not be able to effectively cross or direct an expert because of the lack of specific expertise and the reactive nature of the job.

It's not that the venn diagram of tech-literate and criminal-defense lawyers are entirely separate circles, but having been "that guy" in a public defender's office for even basic stuff like cell tower triangulation accuracy to finding proprietary surveillance video codecs to decode exculpatory evidence, you really need to start at square one while the prosecution have the whole police department's resources, expertise, and initiative at their disposal. You can afford the expert, it just won't do any good when you don't know what questions to ask that will actually be effective. And unsurprisingly those who do have experience in technical, specialized fields tend to get poached into the private sector or out of trial (really plea) practice all together, so the knowledge/bullshit gap will still exist and there's no real consistent way to bridge it.

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

#140

Post by pelliphant »

thgaway17 wrote: post #122
pelliphant wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems plausible. I would argue that if prosecutors and/or cops get to pick the tool, false positives would result in more sales. Just as false negatives would result in more sales if the defendant gets to make the pick.

false positives would result in more sales. That seems highly unlikely. Prosecutors, like all attorneys, talk. It wouldn’t take too many getting burned by a false positive before word would get out (regardless of any nda). For example, once an expert gets Dauberted, you’ve got to think long and hard about being the next guy to use them.

But how would one actually know if a result is a false positive or not?

Sure, in extreme cases it might be obvious, but if you just know that one test gives more matches than another, not knowing which one is the one giving false results?

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