5 ms·

> “We cannot live with incorrect information sending people to prison.” Don't trust data given by third parties then.

penagwin 7y ago
> The authorities said that the problems stemmed partly from police I.T. systems and partly from the phone companies’ systems, although a telecom industry representative said he could not understand how phone companies could have caused the errors. It appears data came from the telecom companies and straight to the police's IT department. I'm not sure what parties you're referring to? Unless you're suggesting not to use data from telecom companies? In which case how would they get any records at all?
- lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  The telecom company is the third party. Yes, I'm suggesting to not use data from telecom companies, unless they have a way to prove that said data is real.
  - dagw 7y ago
    The problem in this case wasn't the third party data, but an error in how that data was analysed and presented. By all accounts the raw data from the telecom companies was both complete and correct.
    - lone_haxx0r 7y ago
      I'm talking about the general case. Maybe in this specific case the telecom data was correct, but can you assure the same for every datum ever provided? Trusting telecom data is essentially the same as trusting an eyewitness. The eyewitness says the truth sometimes, but you can't trust them as an infallible source of truth.
ben_w 7y ago
If you only trust first and second parties, you can’t get enough evidence for anything ever. Especially if one of those parties denies it. Even the police themselves are a third party, so by your standards even the police lab reports can’t be trusted.
- chopin 7y ago
  >so by your standards even the police lab reports can’t be trusted. There's some evidence that this is the case. In Germany we had a very high profile case where the police used contaminated swabs for taking DNA samples. There's also evidence that both DNA and fingerprint attribution is not trustworthy (from a strictly scientific perspective). This gets imho even worse with data. Even in good faith an ISP can't be trusted. There is no chain of custody for the location records, they are very likely faulty, not immutable and so forth. As an accused, I have no way of challenging the records, unlike other forensic evidence like DNA tests.
  - josefx 7y ago
    > contaminated swabs for taking DNA samples. Not only contaminated, the swaps weren't even rated for lab use. They spend years looking for a phantom serial killer active in half the country because several police labs were cutting costs. The mysterious killer was working in a swab factory. > There's also evidence that both DNA and fingerprint attribution is not trustworthy (from a strictly scientific perspective). Isn't the issue that they use so few markers that you would be guaranteed collisions the moment you tried to build a large scale biometric database?
goto11 7y ago
It seems the error here was not in the data received but in analysis by the police.

> The authorities said that the problems stemmed partly from police I.T. systems and partly from the phone companies’ systems, although a telecom industry representative said he could not understand how phone companies could have caused the errors. It appears data came from the telecom companies and straight to the police's IT department. I'm not sure what parties you're referring to? Unless you're suggesting not to use data from telecom companies? In which case how would they get any records at all?

lone_haxx0r 7y ago
The telecom company is the third party. Yes, I'm suggesting to not use data from telecom companies, unless they have a way to prove that said data is real.
- dagw 7y ago
  The problem in this case wasn't the third party data, but an error in how that data was analysed and presented. By all accounts the raw data from the telecom companies was both complete and correct.
  - lone_haxx0r 7y ago
    I'm talking about the general case. Maybe in this specific case the telecom data was correct, but can you assure the same for every datum ever provided? Trusting telecom data is essentially the same as trusting an eyewitness. The eyewitness says the truth sometimes, but you can't trust them as an infallible source of truth.

ben_w 7y ago

If you only trust first and second parties, you can’t get enough evidence for anything ever. Especially if one of those parties denies it. Even the police themselves are a third party, so by your standards even the police lab reports can’t be trusted.

chopin 7y ago
>so by your standards even the police lab reports can’t be trusted. There's some evidence that this is the case. In Germany we had a very high profile case where the police used contaminated swabs for taking DNA samples. There's also evidence that both DNA and fingerprint attribution is not trustworthy (from a strictly scientific perspective). This gets imho even worse with data. Even in good faith an ISP can't be trusted. There is no chain of custody for the location records, they are very likely faulty, not immutable and so forth. As an accused, I have no way of challenging the records, unlike other forensic evidence like DNA tests.
- josefx 7y ago
  > contaminated swabs for taking DNA samples. Not only contaminated, the swaps weren't even rated for lab use. They spend years looking for a phantom serial killer active in half the country because several police labs were cutting costs. The mysterious killer was working in a swab factory. > There's also evidence that both DNA and fingerprint attribution is not trustworthy (from a strictly scientific perspective). Isn't the issue that they use so few markers that you would be guaranteed collisions the moment you tried to build a large scale biometric database?

goto11 7y ago

It seems the error here was not in the data received but in analysis by the police.