10 ms·

Relevant excerpt: > “The undersigned finds that a biometric feature is analogous to the 20 nonverbal, physiological responses elicited during a polygraph test,

Relevant excerpt: > “The undersigned finds that a biometric feature is analogous to the 20 nonverbal, physiological responses elicited during a polygraph test, which are used to determine guilt or innocence, and are considered testimonial.” So it's analogous to a passcode because you're divulging something stored by your body, as opposed to e.g. a metal key which is artificial. Tangentially related, it's astounding to me that polygraphs are still considered valid evidence given how widely they've been discredited.

tick_tock_tick 8y ago
Look up studies on the reliability of witness testimony if you want to get really scared on how courts run.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  Even forensic science can be used questionably. Really, once you're in the court room it's entirely rhetoric and fudge-factor.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Agreed. Pretty much everything in forensic science turns out to be junk science over a long enough timeline. Hair, bite marks, fire progression, all junk. There's even a few cracks in the fingerprint wall. Don't get me started on all the field test kits of various types that LEOs use. The only things that seem to be reliable are things that don't have their roots in forensic science (e.g. using DNA to identify people) and even then you still have to depend on a crime lab (run by the people doing the prosecuting) to not be sloppy.
    - ColanR 8y ago
      And along those lines, I've heard that DNA tests aren't reliable either.
      - sjwright 8y ago
        DNA tests prove a very specific narrow fact, and it’s up to lawyers to string together a hypothesis in order for it to have relevance. Unfortunately all too often the DNA test result is used as proof of a hypothesis, not of the mere presence of surprisingly similar DNA in a swab sample.
      - mjevans 8y ago
        The problem with the DNA tests we use today, assuming even perfect cases with zero contamination or mistakes (whole other argument there), is that (in my non-expert understanding): * Taking the samples and using several solutions to snip them at given patterns. * Taking another solution and promoting replication of the fragments. * Using some dye and a weight sorting channel to bin the fragments by weight. This results in a kind of 'bar code' that graphs the distribution of weights as a VERY crude hash of samples of DNA. It's pretty useful for determining things like IF it is LIKELY that individuals are related. It's also pretty good at confirming negatives (We're sure someone is NOT related to X). It's not that great at confirming positives. That is, the results are both subjective and ambiguous given the hashing. A "positive" result here is really more of an "OK, it's likely we should run the real and expensive check, evaluate if someone might be a suspect by other merits, etc." I would, offhand, consider a "positive" above to be enough evidence to produce /suspicion/ and /warrants/ to locate other specific evidence to ascertain an actual guilt or innocence based on harder evidence. If an actual "sequence the whole set of samples" option enters the realm of feasible tests then it would also warrant actually doing that. Come to think of it, I'm not sure how the Ancestry/etc novelty DNA tests work. I'd assume they've isolated a few specific markers they're looking for and the processes are optimized towards identifying those and comparing combinations for those specific traits.
        samatman 8y ago
        You’ve described electrophoresis DNA fingerprinting correctly, then jumped to the unjustified conclusion that it’s a VERY crude hash. Not so, it’s a fairly excellent hash, one with few collisions. Better than a fingerprint. If it looks like your DNA, it most likely is. Source: was an electrophoresis tech (not forensic) in a previous life. And yes, the usual genetics sites do SNP tests, which are cheaper than full sequencing but mean that they only find what they’re already looking for. The price of full sequencing is dropping rapidly, I look forward to it being a standard part of medical practice, it will save a lot of lives and improve quality of care.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      > and even then you still have to depend on a crime lab (run by the people doing the prosecuting) to not be sloppy. Which CSI has done a wonderful job of turning into super-cops in the eyes of jurys.
      - rjf72 8y ago
        This has had the opposite effect of what you seem to be implying. It's something that's come up quite frequently in discussions of jury nullification [1]. Jury nullification being when a jury ends up voting not guilty, even when they believe the defendant guilty, generally because they do not find the law (or possibly the punishment) just. For decades a rate of about 5% for hung juries was typical. In more recent years some jurisdictions have seen more than 20% of cases end in hung juries. [2] Some have seen this as evidence of a rise in jury nullification, but others have argued that it's due to the 'CSI Effect' [3] with these individuals believing that, because of shows like CSI, the standard of proof required for a conviction seems to be rising - along with a reduced weighting given to things like circumstantial evidence. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification [2] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/jury080299.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/jury080299.ht... [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect
        6nf 8y ago
        That sounds like a good thing to me to be honest
        pseudalopex 8y ago
        The article about the CSI effect says it's believed to work both ways. Jurors expect more forensic evidence but put more faith in it.
    - njarboe 8y ago
      High quality video can be quite useful for getting closer to the truth in many cases. Fits under your tech not developed for forensic science category though.
    - xkcd-sucks 8y ago
      >crime lab (run by the people doing the prosecuting) to not be sloppy Oh yeah. Not just incompetence, but actual malice. Recently in Massachusetts there were two high profile state forensic drug lab scandals: One where a chemist was functionally incapacitated by taking all the drugs she should have been testing [0], and one where the chemist was falsifying positive tests (!!!!!!) [1]. More recently, the state police are known to be falsifying overtime records [2]. I can't even begin to imagine what it's like in "stereotyped as corrupt" states. [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/6000-drug-cases-linked-to-rogue-chemist-at-mass-crime-lab-to-be-dismissed/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/6000-drug-cases-linked-to-rogue... [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-than-21000-drug-convictions-officially-thrown-out-after-chemists-tampering/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-than-21000-drug-conviction... [2] https://www.masslive.com/expo/news/erry-2018/12/1fc00a24868812/massachusetts-state-police-ove.html https://www.masslive.com/expo/news/erry-2018/12/1fc00a248688...
    - int_19h 8y ago
      While we're at it, most of "ballistic fingerprinting", as well.
  - derekp7 8y ago
    My favorite case was where someone was accused of arson because the wood floor was found to contain traces of gasoline, even though none was found on the carpet or padding on top. Turns out that further testing by the defense showed lead also. Which means that the gasoline came from a cheap contractor several decades ago that used (at the time leaded) gasoline as a lacquer thinner for the hardwood floor. And the burn patterns on the floor which indicated an accelerant, were due to wear patterns on the carpet above which allowed more heat to penetrate.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - pdabbadabba 8y ago
    > Really, once you're in the court room it's entirely rhetoric and fudge-factor I agree with all the skepticism of particular types of evidence in this thread including witness testimony and forensic evidence (I'd also add even confessions to this list). But this rather extreme conclusion doesn't follow. Evidence can be uncertain and hard to interpret, but still lead us to truth. You just need more than one data point. In a typical criminal trial (assuming the defendant is guilty) the prosecution generally will not hang on a single dubious piece of evidence. They will often assemble a veritable mountain, if they can, because they know that a competent defense attorney will make sure that the jury knows better than anyone the various ways in which evidence can mislead. This is not to say that everything is rosy in the criminal justice system, and that juries always get it right. There are lots of big problems: Juries are often mysterious and unreliable. Defense attorneys often do a bad job (meaning, among other things, that the prosecution can get sometimes get away with presenting a weak case based on shoddy evidence). And, lest we forget, huge numbers of criminal prosecutions end in a guilty plea, and never go to trial in the first place (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad). But I want to push back on the extreme notion that the outcome of every trial is all about rhetoric. Sure, it plays a role and some cases are better than others. But I've never seen one that was "entirely rhetoric and fudge-factor." (I'm sure it happens, but not often enough that I've ever seen it.)
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    "Forensic science" has a long history of being flagrant psuedo-science, very often being a morally bankrupt abuse of statistics.
    - lightbyte 8y ago
      My favorite example: >In one case, West claimed to have matched the bite marks in a half-eaten bologna sandwich to the defendant. The jury convicted. (The conviction was overturned on appeal when defense lawyers discovered that the autopsy report recorded a partial bologna sandwich in the stomach of the victim.) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/02/17/it-literally-started-with-a-witch-hunt-a-history-of-bite-mark-evidence/?utm_term=.ca0abb0dc2ce https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/02/17/...
  - rayiner 8y ago
    There is a lot of sketchy evidentiary techniques that get in, for sure. That said, the vast majority of prosecutions are based on extremely strong evidence. Reading the news gives a misimpression because you only see the edge cases. But for every “making of a murderer” there are ten guys who are convicted based in being caught on security cameras, and credit card reciepts tying them to the scene of the crime, and witness testimony.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  And jurors. This one's my favourite: The jurors who used a Ouija board to find a murderer guilty - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-08/ouija-board-juror-misbehaviour-murder-trials/9734868 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-08/ouija-board-juror-mis...
- Buttons840 8y ago
  The Drunkards Walk talks about the misuse of statistics in court as well. Not only do they get the math wrong easily, or make common mistakes ("the odds that it's raining given the ground is wet, is the same as the odds that the ground is wet given it's raining"), but if someone accurately states there is only a 1 in 100,000 chance of something happening by chance, the jury will think that means the "something" was not by chance, instead of "oh, so it happens by chance to thousands and thousands of people" like they should.
- cmplxconjugate 8y ago
  I once had to go to court as an individual had attempted to stab myself and another (we had tried to stop them from escaping the police). During the suspect identification process I failed completely; the suspect was bald and had a spider tattoo on their face. I realised that I couldn’t even remember how they looked, it shocked me quite a lot. I assume it was the adrenaline.
derekp7 8y ago
I thought that polygraphs were not accepted as evidence in court, but are still used by some government and private agencies. Also, just curious, have they been discredited as in that double-blind trials show no more than a 50/50 chance of being correct (i.e., flipping a coin)? Or is it that a high enough percentage of people will fail them even if innocent, or pass them even if guilty? The thing I don't like about them is the method of reading them, where it is up to the subjective judgment of the examiner. That is, there isn't an algorithm that can be written down so that, for example, an untrained person or computer program can read it (and therefore be subjected to large enough random tests).
- Retra 8y ago
  What does it mean for a polygraph to be "correct?" They're not lie detectors, they are stress detectors. You can't "fail" a polygraph in any reliable sense.
- chooseaname 8y ago
  > I thought that polygraphs were not accepted as evidence in court... Only if you "pass". Fail one and admissible or not, it'll be brought up.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - brianpgordon 8y ago
    I thought this smelled like totally useless Reddit-style cynical speculation, and 30 seconds of Googling confirmed my suspicion. No state allows admitting polygraph results without both parties' consent. Federal courts may or may not allow them depending on the judge, but if the judge allows them then the defendant is free to submit their passed polygraph (for whatever that's worth) just as equally as the prosecution is free to submit a failed one.
    - davvolun 8y ago
      That's my understanding as well. https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/is-a-polygraph-test-admissible-as-evidence-31737 https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/is-a-polygraph-test-admiss...
Retra 8y ago
My understanding is that the police use polygraphs simply as a 'primed' question-asking session for people who agree to take them. It is no different from sitting down and asking someone questions, except maybe they will believe you can tell that they are lying, and so might be more honest. The polygraph doesn't have to be evidence because your answers to questions are evidence by themselves. Whether you are hooked up to a polygraph is irrelevant.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  > Whether you are hooked up to a polygraph is irrelevant. I'm going to go with strongly disagree here.
  - Retra 8y ago
    So you're willing to argue that the output of a polygraph is evidence of something in absence of any responses you give during questioning?
    - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
      I'm arguing that the idea that anyone is allowed to connect anything to me while they ask me questions is perverse, reprehensible, and absurd.
      - hannasanarion 8y ago
        The comment you replied to pointed out that they are voluntary.
        TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
        Voluntary is the sense of someone(s) in a position of authority or power asking if you're willing to submit to a voluntary procedure. I've be interviewed by police twice after being charged with crimes that carry potential prison sentences. The interviews are voluntary in the sense you're not required to answer any of the questions, and I could have chosen to wait in a cell for my lawyer to turn up days later ... but I volunteered to respond to each question by making a mockery of their questions and processes. These people in authority, they are not there to help you, with their badges and their guns and their attitude problems, and I don't believe it's possible for someone to "volunteer" when such a power imbalance exists. It's an absurd use of the word. You can't "volunteer" when the other person is carrying a gun.
DannyBee 8y ago
"Tangentially related, it's astounding to me that polygraphs are still considered valid evidence given how widely they've been discredited." They generally are not considered valid evidence.
- DannyBee 8y ago
  (to expand, they are not admissible without consent of both parties, and even then, the court would likely find it not relevant)
bootlooped 8y ago
I'm not sure how the courts will differentiate between biometric data related to authentication and biometric data from blood tests, breathalyzers or DNA tests. The latter are, in a sense, examples of forcing you to divulge something stored in your body.
- rando444 8y ago
  The only difference I can see is that in the case of alcohol, biometric data is the thing you are looking for. In the case of telephones, biometric data is being used to get access to something else.
- checkyoursudo 8y ago
  Implied consent (the authority the police use to try to force you to divulge your blood alcohol content) is a well-established area of law. The courts can differentiate it by saying that the legislature has written implied consent laws that cover what you are deemed to have consented to when operating a motor vehicle, and that the legislature has not written implied consent laws for cell phones/etc. Right now it's a pretty easy case for the courts, though higher courts have justified much worse with much less. It's possible a legislature could write implied consent laws for cell phones, but I don't think they have yet. Not sure if they'd withstand court review, but I am afraid they might.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    > Implied consent (the authority the police use to try to force you to divulge your blood alcohol content) is a well-established area of law. Indeed - warrantless blood tests have been found unconstitutional by SCOTUS three years ago (Birchfield v. North Dakota).
- tialaramex 8y ago
  The UK fixed this for drink driving by making it an offence to refuse to submit to the alcohol tests. So they don't force you to implicate yourself for drink driving, you can choose instead to be prosecuted for refusing to provide a sample and have everybody assume (not at all unreasonably) that you refused because you knew you'd fail badly. Sometimes people are _so_ drunk they refuse to provide a sample without really comprehending that this will itself directly lead to getting arrested and prosecuted but minus any opportunity to get the results thrown out for any reason since it'll just come down to "Officer, did the suspect refuse consent to the required sample?". You couldn't do that exact workaround in the US because of the Constitution, but I'm sure a creative work around can be invented.
burtonator 8y ago
> considered valid evidence They're considered a valid tool for coercion. Stupid criminals who watch too much TV think they work and some cop comes in and says he failed a lie detector test and they confess. In that way they actually do work. Assuming all you want is a confession but if the person actually provides evidence of their own guilt they so be it.
amelius 8y ago
> So it's analogous to a passcode because you're divulging something stored by your body, as opposed to e.g. a metal key which is artificial. Also, shouldn't the act of entering someone's phone be analogous to entering someone's house? I.e., wouldn't a search warrant/court order be required?
- mcv 8y ago
  The article is about the warrant. The warrant was for forcing unspecified non-suspects to be forced to unlock their phones so they could be searched for evidence. The judge judges to be "overbroad".

tick_tock_tick 8y ago

Look up studies on the reliability of witness testimony if you want to get really scared on how courts run.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
Even forensic science can be used questionably. Really, once you're in the court room it's entirely rhetoric and fudge-factor.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Agreed. Pretty much everything in forensic science turns out to be junk science over a long enough timeline. Hair, bite marks, fire progression, all junk. There's even a few cracks in the fingerprint wall. Don't get me started on all the field test kits of various types that LEOs use. The only things that seem to be reliable are things that don't have their roots in forensic science (e.g. using DNA to identify people) and even then you still have to depend on a crime lab (run by the people doing the prosecuting) to not be sloppy.
  - ColanR 8y ago
    And along those lines, I've heard that DNA tests aren't reliable either.
    - sjwright 8y ago
      DNA tests prove a very specific narrow fact, and it’s up to lawyers to string together a hypothesis in order for it to have relevance. Unfortunately all too often the DNA test result is used as proof of a hypothesis, not of the mere presence of surprisingly similar DNA in a swab sample.
    - mjevans 8y ago
      The problem with the DNA tests we use today, assuming even perfect cases with zero contamination or mistakes (whole other argument there), is that (in my non-expert understanding): * Taking the samples and using several solutions to snip them at given patterns. * Taking another solution and promoting replication of the fragments. * Using some dye and a weight sorting channel to bin the fragments by weight. This results in a kind of 'bar code' that graphs the distribution of weights as a VERY crude hash of samples of DNA. It's pretty useful for determining things like IF it is LIKELY that individuals are related. It's also pretty good at confirming negatives (We're sure someone is NOT related to X). It's not that great at confirming positives. That is, the results are both subjective and ambiguous given the hashing. A "positive" result here is really more of an "OK, it's likely we should run the real and expensive check, evaluate if someone might be a suspect by other merits, etc." I would, offhand, consider a "positive" above to be enough evidence to produce /suspicion/ and /warrants/ to locate other specific evidence to ascertain an actual guilt or innocence based on harder evidence. If an actual "sequence the whole set of samples" option enters the realm of feasible tests then it would also warrant actually doing that. Come to think of it, I'm not sure how the Ancestry/etc novelty DNA tests work. I'd assume they've isolated a few specific markers they're looking for and the processes are optimized towards identifying those and comparing combinations for those specific traits.
      - samatman 8y ago
        You’ve described electrophoresis DNA fingerprinting correctly, then jumped to the unjustified conclusion that it’s a VERY crude hash. Not so, it’s a fairly excellent hash, one with few collisions. Better than a fingerprint. If it looks like your DNA, it most likely is. Source: was an electrophoresis tech (not forensic) in a previous life. And yes, the usual genetics sites do SNP tests, which are cheaper than full sequencing but mean that they only find what they’re already looking for. The price of full sequencing is dropping rapidly, I look forward to it being a standard part of medical practice, it will save a lot of lives and improve quality of care.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    > and even then you still have to depend on a crime lab (run by the people doing the prosecuting) to not be sloppy. Which CSI has done a wonderful job of turning into super-cops in the eyes of jurys.
    - rjf72 8y ago
      This has had the opposite effect of what you seem to be implying. It's something that's come up quite frequently in discussions of jury nullification [1]. Jury nullification being when a jury ends up voting not guilty, even when they believe the defendant guilty, generally because they do not find the law (or possibly the punishment) just. For decades a rate of about 5% for hung juries was typical. In more recent years some jurisdictions have seen more than 20% of cases end in hung juries. [2] Some have seen this as evidence of a rise in jury nullification, but others have argued that it's due to the 'CSI Effect' [3] with these individuals believing that, because of shows like CSI, the standard of proof required for a conviction seems to be rising - along with a reduced weighting given to things like circumstantial evidence. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification [2] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/jury080299.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/jury080299.ht... [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSI_effect
      - 6nf 8y ago
        That sounds like a good thing to me to be honest
      - pseudalopex 8y ago
        The article about the CSI effect says it's believed to work both ways. Jurors expect more forensic evidence but put more faith in it.
  - njarboe 8y ago
    High quality video can be quite useful for getting closer to the truth in many cases. Fits under your tech not developed for forensic science category though.
  - xkcd-sucks 8y ago
    >crime lab (run by the people doing the prosecuting) to not be sloppy Oh yeah. Not just incompetence, but actual malice. Recently in Massachusetts there were two high profile state forensic drug lab scandals: One where a chemist was functionally incapacitated by taking all the drugs she should have been testing [0], and one where the chemist was falsifying positive tests (!!!!!!) [1]. More recently, the state police are known to be falsifying overtime records [2]. I can't even begin to imagine what it's like in "stereotyped as corrupt" states. [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/6000-drug-cases-linked-to-rogue-chemist-at-mass-crime-lab-to-be-dismissed/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/6000-drug-cases-linked-to-rogue... [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-than-21000-drug-convictions-officially-thrown-out-after-chemists-tampering/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-than-21000-drug-conviction... [2] https://www.masslive.com/expo/news/erry-2018/12/1fc00a24868812/massachusetts-state-police-ove.html https://www.masslive.com/expo/news/erry-2018/12/1fc00a248688...
  - int_19h 8y ago
    While we're at it, most of "ballistic fingerprinting", as well.
- derekp7 8y ago
  My favorite case was where someone was accused of arson because the wood floor was found to contain traces of gasoline, even though none was found on the carpet or padding on top. Turns out that further testing by the defense showed lead also. Which means that the gasoline came from a cheap contractor several decades ago that used (at the time leaded) gasoline as a lacquer thinner for the hardwood floor. And the burn patterns on the floor which indicated an accelerant, were due to wear patterns on the carpet above which allowed more heat to penetrate.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- pdabbadabba 8y ago
  > Really, once you're in the court room it's entirely rhetoric and fudge-factor I agree with all the skepticism of particular types of evidence in this thread including witness testimony and forensic evidence (I'd also add even confessions to this list). But this rather extreme conclusion doesn't follow. Evidence can be uncertain and hard to interpret, but still lead us to truth. You just need more than one data point. In a typical criminal trial (assuming the defendant is guilty) the prosecution generally will not hang on a single dubious piece of evidence. They will often assemble a veritable mountain, if they can, because they know that a competent defense attorney will make sure that the jury knows better than anyone the various ways in which evidence can mislead. This is not to say that everything is rosy in the criminal justice system, and that juries always get it right. There are lots of big problems: Juries are often mysterious and unreliable. Defense attorneys often do a bad job (meaning, among other things, that the prosecution can get sometimes get away with presenting a weak case based on shoddy evidence). And, lest we forget, huge numbers of criminal prosecutions end in a guilty plea, and never go to trial in the first place (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad). But I want to push back on the extreme notion that the outcome of every trial is all about rhetoric. Sure, it plays a role and some cases are better than others. But I've never seen one that was "entirely rhetoric and fudge-factor." (I'm sure it happens, but not often enough that I've ever seen it.)
- darkpuma 8y ago
  "Forensic science" has a long history of being flagrant psuedo-science, very often being a morally bankrupt abuse of statistics.
  - lightbyte 8y ago
    My favorite example: >In one case, West claimed to have matched the bite marks in a half-eaten bologna sandwich to the defendant. The jury convicted. (The conviction was overturned on appeal when defense lawyers discovered that the autopsy report recorded a partial bologna sandwich in the stomach of the victim.) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/02/17/it-literally-started-with-a-witch-hunt-a-history-of-bite-mark-evidence/?utm_term=.ca0abb0dc2ce https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/02/17/...
- rayiner 8y ago
  There is a lot of sketchy evidentiary techniques that get in, for sure. That said, the vast majority of prosecutions are based on extremely strong evidence. Reading the news gives a misimpression because you only see the edge cases. But for every “making of a murderer” there are ten guys who are convicted based in being caught on security cameras, and credit card reciepts tying them to the scene of the crime, and witness testimony.
TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
And jurors. This one's my favourite: The jurors who used a Ouija board to find a murderer guilty - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-08/ouija-board-juror-misbehaviour-murder-trials/9734868 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-08/ouija-board-juror-mis...
Buttons840 8y ago
The Drunkards Walk talks about the misuse of statistics in court as well. Not only do they get the math wrong easily, or make common mistakes ("the odds that it's raining given the ground is wet, is the same as the odds that the ground is wet given it's raining"), but if someone accurately states there is only a 1 in 100,000 chance of something happening by chance, the jury will think that means the "something" was not by chance, instead of "oh, so it happens by chance to thousands and thousands of people" like they should.
cmplxconjugate 8y ago
I once had to go to court as an individual had attempted to stab myself and another (we had tried to stop them from escaping the police). During the suspect identification process I failed completely; the suspect was bald and had a spider tattoo on their face. I realised that I couldn’t even remember how they looked, it shocked me quite a lot. I assume it was the adrenaline.

derekp7 8y ago

I thought that polygraphs were not accepted as evidence in court, but are still used by some government and private agencies. Also, just curious, have they been discredited as in that double-blind trials show no more than a 50/50 chance of being correct (i.e., flipping a coin)? Or is it that a high enough percentage of people will fail them even if innocent, or pass them even if guilty? The thing I don't like about them is the method of reading them, where it is up to the subjective judgment of the examiner. That is, there isn't an algorithm that can be written down so that, for example, an untrained person or computer program can read it (and therefore be subjected to large enough random tests).

Retra 8y ago
What does it mean for a polygraph to be "correct?" They're not lie detectors, they are stress detectors. You can't "fail" a polygraph in any reliable sense.
chooseaname 8y ago
> I thought that polygraphs were not accepted as evidence in court... Only if you "pass". Fail one and admissible or not, it'll be brought up.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- brianpgordon 8y ago
  I thought this smelled like totally useless Reddit-style cynical speculation, and 30 seconds of Googling confirmed my suspicion. No state allows admitting polygraph results without both parties' consent. Federal courts may or may not allow them depending on the judge, but if the judge allows them then the defendant is free to submit their passed polygraph (for whatever that's worth) just as equally as the prosecution is free to submit a failed one.
  - davvolun 8y ago
    That's my understanding as well. https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/is-a-polygraph-test-admissible-as-evidence-31737 https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/is-a-polygraph-test-admiss...

Retra 8y ago

My understanding is that the police use polygraphs simply as a 'primed' question-asking session for people who agree to take them. It is no different from sitting down and asking someone questions, except maybe they will believe you can tell that they are lying, and so might be more honest. The polygraph doesn't have to be evidence because your answers to questions are evidence by themselves. Whether you are hooked up to a polygraph is irrelevant.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
> Whether you are hooked up to a polygraph is irrelevant. I'm going to go with strongly disagree here.
- Retra 8y ago
  So you're willing to argue that the output of a polygraph is evidence of something in absence of any responses you give during questioning?
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    I'm arguing that the idea that anyone is allowed to connect anything to me while they ask me questions is perverse, reprehensible, and absurd.
    - hannasanarion 8y ago
      The comment you replied to pointed out that they are voluntary.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
        Voluntary is the sense of someone(s) in a position of authority or power asking if you're willing to submit to a voluntary procedure. I've be interviewed by police twice after being charged with crimes that carry potential prison sentences. The interviews are voluntary in the sense you're not required to answer any of the questions, and I could have chosen to wait in a cell for my lawyer to turn up days later ... but I volunteered to respond to each question by making a mockery of their questions and processes. These people in authority, they are not there to help you, with their badges and their guns and their attitude problems, and I don't believe it's possible for someone to "volunteer" when such a power imbalance exists. It's an absurd use of the word. You can't "volunteer" when the other person is carrying a gun.

DannyBee 8y ago

"Tangentially related, it's astounding to me that polygraphs are still considered valid evidence given how widely they've been discredited." They generally are not considered valid evidence.

DannyBee 8y ago
(to expand, they are not admissible without consent of both parties, and even then, the court would likely find it not relevant)

bootlooped 8y ago

I'm not sure how the courts will differentiate between biometric data related to authentication and biometric data from blood tests, breathalyzers or DNA tests. The latter are, in a sense, examples of forcing you to divulge something stored in your body.

rando444 8y ago
The only difference I can see is that in the case of alcohol, biometric data is the thing you are looking for. In the case of telephones, biometric data is being used to get access to something else.
checkyoursudo 8y ago
Implied consent (the authority the police use to try to force you to divulge your blood alcohol content) is a well-established area of law. The courts can differentiate it by saying that the legislature has written implied consent laws that cover what you are deemed to have consented to when operating a motor vehicle, and that the legislature has not written implied consent laws for cell phones/etc. Right now it's a pretty easy case for the courts, though higher courts have justified much worse with much less. It's possible a legislature could write implied consent laws for cell phones, but I don't think they have yet. Not sure if they'd withstand court review, but I am afraid they might.
- int_19h 8y ago
  > Implied consent (the authority the police use to try to force you to divulge your blood alcohol content) is a well-established area of law. Indeed - warrantless blood tests have been found unconstitutional by SCOTUS three years ago (Birchfield v. North Dakota).
tialaramex 8y ago
The UK fixed this for drink driving by making it an offence to refuse to submit to the alcohol tests. So they don't force you to implicate yourself for drink driving, you can choose instead to be prosecuted for refusing to provide a sample and have everybody assume (not at all unreasonably) that you refused because you knew you'd fail badly. Sometimes people are _so_ drunk they refuse to provide a sample without really comprehending that this will itself directly lead to getting arrested and prosecuted but minus any opportunity to get the results thrown out for any reason since it'll just come down to "Officer, did the suspect refuse consent to the required sample?". You couldn't do that exact workaround in the US because of the Constitution, but I'm sure a creative work around can be invented.

burtonator 8y ago

> considered valid evidence They're considered a valid tool for coercion. Stupid criminals who watch too much TV think they work and some cop comes in and says he failed a lie detector test and they confess. In that way they actually do work. Assuming all you want is a confession but if the person actually provides evidence of their own guilt they so be it.

amelius 8y ago

> So it's analogous to a passcode because you're divulging something stored by your body, as opposed to e.g. a metal key which is artificial. Also, shouldn't the act of entering someone's phone be analogous to entering someone's house? I.e., wouldn't a search warrant/court order be required?

mcv 8y ago
The article is about the warrant. The warrant was for forcing unspecified non-suspects to be forced to unlock their phones so they could be searched for evidence. The judge judges to be "overbroad".