Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 520 posts

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

#501

Post by michaelmrose »

kenjackson wrote: post #496
willis936 wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the jury agrees the evidence is there beyond a reasonable doubt. No one should trust any black box when it comes to criminal prosecution.

So the prosecution can present its case and say they gave the defendant the code for 9 months and here are five other independent reviews. The defense can argue they needed more time. The jury then decides if there is reasonable doubt.

If the company can't show that the process has been independantly validated it probably should be tossed before the jury hears it.

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

#502

Post by JacobSuperslav »

gorgoiler wrote: post #459
frongpik wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is going to change until this software convicts a 10M net worth dude for something he didn't do.

This is pretty depressing unless you can elaborate on your take. Yes, the system is stacked against the poor, but there are people fighting that. If they are fighting and failing then we need to know why. If they aren’t fighting at all then (in part, but it’s still a significant part I’m afraid) it’s because of attitudes like this.

I think the point is that they are fighting but they are losing. Some 1st world countries are really bad at seemingly basic human rights for the poor. Doesn't mean they shouldn't fight, just an observation.

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

#503

Post by kenjackson »

michaelmrose wrote: post #501
kenjackson wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the prosecution can present its case and say they gave the defendant the code for 9 months and here are five other independent reviews. The defense can argue they needed more time. The jury then decides if there is reasonable doubt.

If the company can't show that the process has been independantly validated it probably should be tossed before the jury hears it.

There are papers that do validation of TrueAllelle. I don't know the product well enough to know if it is the same one used in the article, but there isn't info in the article to know if independent validation was done or not.

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

#504

Post by appleflaxen »

abandonliberty wrote: post #448
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also similar to how Toyota hilled people with control software that would cause car to accelerate randomly. The software audit team concluded that they could not find the bug, but the code was totally unreadable and terrible. They settled. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/26/business/toyota-agrees-to... . Also let's remember that a company in UK was selling fake bomb detectors to Israeli and other militaries,…

Every attempt to replicate this has failed, and other vehicle manufacturers have just as many 'sudden acceleration events'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unintended_acceleration Occam's razer points to people just hitting the wrong pedal or people's floor mats getting stuck. The reason Toyota ate it in the press for this was competitive.

> The reason Toyota ate it in the press for this was competitive.

can you explain what you mean? I don't understand this sentence.

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

#505

Post by jfengel »

XorNot wrote: post #335
gidan wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The prosecutor doesn't see it that way. They see it as just "knowing" the guy is "definitely guilty". It's just like, a feeling you know? And a win will look great when they go for re-election (why is that even a thing?). Presuming rational actors in this case is missing the general problem with the system: people very easily convince themselves they know the truth despite how the validity of the evidence changes. Wh…

And a win will look great when they go for re-election (why is that even a thing?).

You would prefer that they not be elected? That they would be appointed by some politician, with the public having no recourse?

The fact is that the public like prosecutors who convict people. That's deeply unfair. But it's also deeply democratic.

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

#506

Post by jfengel »

ncallaway wrote: post #320
sdflhasjd wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still believe Hanlons razor applies. I've seen products that have serious performance affecting bugs caused by similar mistakes.

I still think—even when applying Hanlon's razor—there's an imbalance in incentives that leads to a weight in favor of the interests of the party paying for the test. Take the store pricing example. Suppose the store's pricing & labeling process produce an equal number of bugs at checkout in favor of the store and in opposition to the store. The store is heavily incentivized to detect the errors that are opposed to th…

Most store managers get as grumpy about overages as undercounts. They mean that some customer got shortchanged. For $500, it probably means a lot of customers got shortchanged, or something even worse is going on. That makes customers grumpy, and it affects your future.

There are plenty of lazy managers who would sweep it under the rug once. But if it happens more than once, it can become their job on the line. They start looking for who's counting wrong. And if they can't figure that out, they get really worried.

I have no idea about police officers and prosecutors. But store managers care about accuracy of counts, not just profits.

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

#507

Post by nickodell »

afthonos wrote: post #470
nickodell wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

You should read up on the rates of plea bargaining, as well as the methods prosecutors use to push defendants to do so, which include: - 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…

Believe it or not, I was already aware of all of those things, having followed a number of criminal defense blogs.

If you read the article and appellate decision which is linked, it says what I just said:

>On Wednesday, the appellate court sided with the defense [PDF] and sent the case back to a lower court directing the judge to compel Cybergenetics to make the TrueAllele code available to the defense team.

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

#508

Post by nickodell »

ahepp wrote: post #347
nickodell wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My prediction: this firm will probably try to get removed from the case, rather than open source their shitty code. That isn't necessarily their choice. The prosecutors will make the decision about whether to withdraw the DNA evidence. They probably won't, given that they would need to give the defendant a new trial, which could lead to an accused murderer getting off. A bad look for any prosecutor. More to the poin…

My understanding is that (some) law enforcement agencies have been more than happy to drop cases rather than subject investigative tools to proper scrutiny[0]. They have no qualms resorting to "parallel construction"[1], and simply using the inadmissible (sometimes illegal) evidence to find admissible evidence. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/fbi-would-rather... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paral…

Stingrays are more useful as an investigative tool than an evidentiary tool. DNA is the other way around.

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

#509

Post by roryokane »

appleflaxen wrote: post #504
abandonliberty wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every attempt to replicate this has failed, and other vehicle manufacturers have just as many 'sudden acceleration events'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unintended_acceleration Occam's razer points to people just hitting the wrong pedal or people's floor mats getting stuck. The reason Toyota ate it in the press for this was competitive.

> The reason Toyota ate it in the press for this was competitive. can you explain what you mean? I don't understand this sentence.

I think they mean this: Toyota “ate it” (an idiom meaning to take losses) in the press by having bad stories written about them. These stories were written for a reason. This reason was not that Toyota deserving those stories, but that Toyota’s competition encouraged those stories.

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

#510

Post by jrm5100 »

rland wrote: post #235

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…

Issues with source code access aside, your description is mostly wrong. These programs take a DNA profile as input- it's just that the DNA profile is mixed (i.e. from multiple people). It reporting no DNA would be nonsensical. Figuring out exactly how many people are in a mixture isn't quite nailed down statistically (last I knew of), but it's usually pretty clear for up to 4 or so people.

Yes, you could run different models and get different probabilities. For example, the likelihood that the sample is a mixture of the suspect, the victim, and some unknown person vs victim and two unknown people compared to saying the victim isn't in the sample. However, the specification of those models is part of the trial process.

And the output probabilities (at least when being used to determine guilt) are usually quite high, orders of magnitude higher than 90% or even 99.99%.

My point is that the science behind these calculations is well developed- validation studies get published all the time. Whether or not the specific software has errors (or isn't coded exactly as modeled) is an entirely different matter, but it still isn't all that likely. All of these cases rely on expert witnesses anyway- it's not the prosecutor pressing some buttons and printing a report.

There is far more concerning quackery that gets used in forensics- bite marks, hair matching, etc.

Post reply on HN