6 ms·

If ever there was something that should be fully transparent it is the mechanisms by which a person might be found guilty of a crime. The defendant shouldn't ev

If ever there was something that should be fully transparent it is the mechanisms by which a person might be found guilty of a crime. The defendant shouldn't even have had to fight for this. It should be a fundamental cornerstone of criminal prosecutions.

meowface 6y ago
These cases also often come up with drug and alcohol detection tests, and as John Oliver points out in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f2iawp0y5Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f2iawp0y5Y, software used to select jurors. All of these companies claim that their source code is valuable intellectual property and that disclosing it can hurt their business. Even if this were true, when you're providing something that can be a significant factor in someone being imprisoned or executed, when creating the business you should accept that you're providing a public service that needs to be publicly accountable. If it's not open source, at the very least there should be a requirement that software code and hardware designs must be provided on-demand to experts in court cases (with a non-disclosure clause to mitigate leaks and corporate espionage etc.).
- alistairSH 6y ago
  ...disclosing it can hurt their business... And there's an entire body of law based around IP which they can use to protect their business, just like everybody else.
  - zymhan 6y ago
    Their business interests are also of minuscule importance compared to the impact to society these tools have.
- bargl 6y ago
  Without jumping on the conspiracy bandwagon, I'd also like to see this applied to voting software. I know it's a hot topic, and I'm honestly not trying to get political. Software that is critical to our fundamental human rights, and is being used by our government should be open source, or at least audited by a group of people who sign Non-competes/NDA and can't go work for competitors, or with some other mechanism to protect IP that I can't think of.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    I agree, for my own piece of mind. But I am also certain that it would have made no difference in our current predicament with a third of the country thinking the election was stolen. It has been shown to us time and time again that no actual evidence is required to get people to believe what they want to believe. And the more technical the evidence (i.e. source code), the less helpful.
    - bargl 6y ago
      >But I am also certain that it would have made no difference in our current predicament with a third of the country thinking the election was stolen. It would have changed some peoples minds I don't know if the change would have been a few thousand or 10s of millions. I can't say if it would have a dent in the 1/3 of people or not. I can't predict that. It would have helped me with my own peace of mind. And frank I think it's overall the right thing for us to do. >And the more technical the evidence (i.e. source code), the less helpful. Disinformation is powerful, I'm not suggesting this alone would fix that. I disagree that more technical evidence is harmful. Global warming is benefiting from transparency and evidence. It takes generations to change political will not years. The evidence there has shifted our whole economy, just maybe not fast enough. There will always, always be deniers. Global warming, flat earth, vaccinations, etc. Evidence _helps_ battle deniers in these areas, but it takes generations for these ideas to become mainstream and the deniers to go from 99% of people to 2% of people. Also, 2% of people think the earth is flat? Holy crap. https://www.sciencealert.com/one-third-millennials-believe-flat-earth-conspiracy-statistics-yougov-debunk https://www.sciencealert.com/one-third-millennials-believe-f...
      - michaelmrose 6y ago
        Why would people who weren't convinced by reputable evidence in the first place be convinced by slightly better evidence that is only better in a technical hard to express and prove fashion. This is especially true when the people doubting are the least educated and least intelligent. It's like saying that better proof of evolution would convince some portion of creationists. That's just not how misinformation works. Misinformation works by targeting vulnerable parties with misinformation that aligns with their existing vulnerabilities and beliefs in order to power relevant action with long stored and fruitful sources of hate, bias, and scorn in a fashion that bypasses the brain and goes right for the gut. Like 30% in America believe in a young earth that is thousands not billions of years old. If Bob is a scientist of some sort and presenting interesting scientific work to the community and incidentally advising the government on environmental policy that will harm some business and you want to crush support for this by playing on existing biases with this group you advertise to the young earth crowd about how bob is anti God and see if you can tie bob to as many negative things they already dislike as you can. You aren't fighting an intellectual battle to set their ideas on bob let alone deeper ideas you are fighting an emotional battle to galvanize existing deeply held beliefs to obtain useful action like calling up and yelling at their congressman or voting. In that context asking Bob to present a better case is laughable. The relevant parties never engaged their brain in the first place.
frongpik 6y ago
Nothing is going to change until this software convicts a 10M net worth dude for something he didn't do.
- gorgoiler 6y ago
  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.
  - JacobSuperslav 6y ago
    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.

meowface 6y ago

These cases also often come up with drug and alcohol detection tests, and as John Oliver points out in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f2iawp0y5Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f2iawp0y5Y, software used to select jurors. All of these companies claim that their source code is valuable intellectual property and that disclosing it can hurt their business. Even if this were true, when you're providing something that can be a significant factor in someone being imprisoned or executed, when creating the business you should accept that you're providing a public service that needs to be publicly accountable. If it's not open source, at the very least there should be a requirement that software code and hardware designs must be provided on-demand to experts in court cases (with a non-disclosure clause to mitigate leaks and corporate espionage etc.).

alistairSH 6y ago
...disclosing it can hurt their business... And there's an entire body of law based around IP which they can use to protect their business, just like everybody else.
- zymhan 6y ago
  Their business interests are also of minuscule importance compared to the impact to society these tools have.
bargl 6y ago
Without jumping on the conspiracy bandwagon, I'd also like to see this applied to voting software. I know it's a hot topic, and I'm honestly not trying to get political. Software that is critical to our fundamental human rights, and is being used by our government should be open source, or at least audited by a group of people who sign Non-competes/NDA and can't go work for competitors, or with some other mechanism to protect IP that I can't think of.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  I agree, for my own piece of mind. But I am also certain that it would have made no difference in our current predicament with a third of the country thinking the election was stolen. It has been shown to us time and time again that no actual evidence is required to get people to believe what they want to believe. And the more technical the evidence (i.e. source code), the less helpful.
  - bargl 6y ago
    >But I am also certain that it would have made no difference in our current predicament with a third of the country thinking the election was stolen. It would have changed some peoples minds I don't know if the change would have been a few thousand or 10s of millions. I can't say if it would have a dent in the 1/3 of people or not. I can't predict that. It would have helped me with my own peace of mind. And frank I think it's overall the right thing for us to do. >And the more technical the evidence (i.e. source code), the less helpful. Disinformation is powerful, I'm not suggesting this alone would fix that. I disagree that more technical evidence is harmful. Global warming is benefiting from transparency and evidence. It takes generations to change political will not years. The evidence there has shifted our whole economy, just maybe not fast enough. There will always, always be deniers. Global warming, flat earth, vaccinations, etc. Evidence _helps_ battle deniers in these areas, but it takes generations for these ideas to become mainstream and the deniers to go from 99% of people to 2% of people. Also, 2% of people think the earth is flat? Holy crap. https://www.sciencealert.com/one-third-millennials-believe-flat-earth-conspiracy-statistics-yougov-debunk https://www.sciencealert.com/one-third-millennials-believe-f...
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      Why would people who weren't convinced by reputable evidence in the first place be convinced by slightly better evidence that is only better in a technical hard to express and prove fashion. This is especially true when the people doubting are the least educated and least intelligent. It's like saying that better proof of evolution would convince some portion of creationists. That's just not how misinformation works. Misinformation works by targeting vulnerable parties with misinformation that aligns with their existing vulnerabilities and beliefs in order to power relevant action with long stored and fruitful sources of hate, bias, and scorn in a fashion that bypasses the brain and goes right for the gut. Like 30% in America believe in a young earth that is thousands not billions of years old. If Bob is a scientist of some sort and presenting interesting scientific work to the community and incidentally advising the government on environmental policy that will harm some business and you want to crush support for this by playing on existing biases with this group you advertise to the young earth crowd about how bob is anti God and see if you can tie bob to as many negative things they already dislike as you can. You aren't fighting an intellectual battle to set their ideas on bob let alone deeper ideas you are fighting an emotional battle to galvanize existing deeply held beliefs to obtain useful action like calling up and yelling at their congressman or voting. In that context asking Bob to present a better case is laughable. The relevant parties never engaged their brain in the first place.

frongpik 6y ago

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

gorgoiler 6y ago
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.
- JacobSuperslav 6y ago
  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.