251–260 of 520 posts
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That the eyewitness account would be discarded, they make for terrible evidence anyway.
I think it is REALLY hard to overstate how dangerously naive a view of the american justice system that is
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If their argument is that their codebase is basically unreadable, then I see why they're scared someone might find some bugs here and there.
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.
Sounds really expensive.
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i think we can all agree that black boxes are not desirable. But let's not jump the gun here, and assume ill-intent.... to explain something that can be attributed to negligence, or simple human error.
When your negligence results in people wrongfully spending decades in prison I would argue that it ought to be criminal negligence. If your software does not produce results that are accurate, precise, and have confidence intervals included, how OK are you with people going to prison based on them?
No software is perfect. It's unreasonable for any bug to be considered criminal negligence, or else the entire software development profession would be in prison.
Instead, software that can result in life or death or prison scenarios needs to have tested, documented, verified quality controls, just like we do for vehicles.
But that means courts or the legislature have to decide what those standards are.
Here in Germany we have somewhat similar cases, but where the accusation is way less damaging than the case of this article, in which a false positive would have the drastic result of being labeled a murderer. The cases are related to new speeding cameras which work with laser, where the defendants are complaining that these new devices are black boxes, and that they demand access to the raw data which these devices…
Well then the probability that it works correctly is zero.
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_?
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Ok, maybe I’m naive, but why is that obvious? Not arguing just trying to understand. My rationale is: prosecutors have to weigh an “easy” conviction vs the possibility that labs that always guarantee results may be biased. In the event that they get caught up with a biased lab, wouldn’t it look bad for their reputation? As in, they can’t even perform due diligence on their sources, how can you trust them in a promote…
> In the event that they get caught up with a biased lab, wouldn’t it look bad for their reputation? As in, they can’t even perform due diligence on their sources, how can you trust them in a promoted role? I am not a lawyer but as I understand the U.S. criminal justice system (which is adversarial between defense and prosecution with the judge officiating and the jury picking the winner) prosecutors are not experts…
How can the truth-finding benefits of the adversarial system be preserved while leveling the playing field by equalizing resources?
My naive thought is that both parties pay into a common fund that is split equally between the prosecution and defense. But that seems like it has it's own set of pitfalls. Are there other models we can look to for ideas?
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> The whole thing, from top to bottom, is just a long chain of poorly aligned incentives. Field sobriety tests are even worse. The fact that your license can be revoked for refusing the test under the above grounds is nothing short of an end-run around the 4th amendment by declaring driving a "privilege, not a right" I agree and I wish I had a better solution. >They need to force people to go in for a blood draw to e…
Many jurisdictions would have enough cases come through to justify employing someone trained to draw a blood sample. Btw here (Sweden) the breathalyzer is only used to help decide whether someone gets picked up for a blood draw or not. Only a blood test can be used to convict someone.
There are historical and current issues that cause this distrust, having an adversarial or multiple third parties is probably the best option for the US.
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Draeger requires calibration prior each use for temperature and humidity. It is easy to get it thrown out as evidence.
When the officer shows up and swears under oath that he "calibrated it that morning" it's not so easy. :shrug:
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I'd like to encourage you, 5 minutes after you learn about someone's existence, not to wish for their death, execution, imprisonment, and /or disenfranchisement. The real world is too complicated to judge correctly in that time. As well, please remember that the comment guidelines exist at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html