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A Man on Death Row Has Waited Years for GitHub to Provide Key Evidence
- dv_dt 5y agoAn undisclosed algorithm being used for analysis of evidence should basically have its conclusions disallowed in court imho.
- atoav 5y agoI, too can build them a small little box with a button and a lamp. Press the button and if the lamp lights up the person is guilty. They are not allowed to look inside.
- charles_f 5y agoDoesn't have to be a humble opinion. That seems a relatively reasonable standard to achieve in order to convict someone beyond a reasonable doubt to f-ing die.
- panxyh 5y agoIt's insane what goes through in what we like think of as a civilized country. Critical evidence can be dismissed if it has been obtained illegally, but a proprietary, unaudited algorithm can sentence someone to death? I hope this is a display of evil, because i refuse to believe people in the justice system are so stupidly ignorant.
- EveYoung 5y agoI think this needs to go even further than just disclosing the algorithm and code. The companies and prosecutors should be required to fund independent audits and bug bounty programs. Otherwise, it would be very difficult for resource strapped defendants to do anything with it.
- Arnt 5y agoWell, perhaps... We have many algorithms that are difficult to understand, difficult to debug, difficult to analyse, but the results are easy to verify. Look at famous algorithms like quicksort — understanding the code is hard, but looking at the output of a single invocation and verifying that it is sorted is trivial. The report does sound like quicksort in this respect. The code will have done a lot of analysis, but in the end, the DNA (fragments) it reports were either there or not.
- finnthehuman 5y ago>The code will have done a lot of analysis, but in the end, the DNA (fragments) it reports were either there or not. OK, so how do we verify if they're there? For your example of sorting, we have the ordered output, can read the values of each item in the output, and have a definition of sorted. What confirms the presence of DNA external to the methodology they don't want to allow external analysis of? I don't doubt there could be a way. But you've just asserted it can when the how is actually the material question to the case.
- Arnt 5y agoThey're asking for source code to a program. AIUI, the input data that was supplied to that program will contain or not contain those DNA (fragments) in a fairly simple format. It is of course possible that the program doesn't emit a detailed enough report. That it says "match found" without saying where in which files it found a match. But it's also possible that it does say where, in which case the presence of the needles can be verified easily, even if the method used to detect that those were relevant needles rather than irrelevant straws isn't specified. Either way, rejecting an unknown algorithm because it's unknown is wrong. What matters is whether the output can be checked by others.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dv_dt 5y agoI say algorithm as a shorthand for both the implementation of the software but the scientific theory on the entire chain of processing that needs to be strongly validated before being accepted as evidence (expert opinion?) for prosecution.
- yunohn 5y ago> It makes sense that GitHub wouldn’t comply with the subpoena against STRmix’s wishes. Losing the faith of a large company by sharing intellectual property is bad for business. Obviously a headline with “STRmix” is not as click-bait as GitHub. Regardless, how is it legal for the DNA software to get away with this?
- xupybd 5y agoThere needs to be some requirement that a technology used to sentence a man to death can be examined by experts. I don't think it should be allowed as evidence otherwise.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y agoMuch like public records, most code that doesn't retain personal records or for basic security should be open source.
- iudqnolq 5y ago> Obviously a headline with “STRmix” is not as click-bait as GitHub. A court has ordered GitHub to hand over the source code. GitHub has refused, believing that they only have to honor requests for the government, not for defendents. This article argues that stance by tech companies has led to morally reprehensible happening. They say tech companies often just pay fines rather than obey court orders to help defendents, while always helping prosecutors. The defendents's lawyers argue this is unconstitutional. I don't consider that clickbait.
- yunohn 5y agoWhoever is at fault, it’s extremely horrifying to see that somehow the courts are unable to compel either company to provide what appears like crucial material.
- charles_f 5y agoHow is that a problem with github rather than STRmix? Would you accuse Bank of America if they refused to open somebody's vault?
- Closi 5y agoAgreed - the headline is misleading. The article states that it would actually be illegal for GitHub to release the data.
- zimpenfish 5y ago> The article states that it would actually be illegal I might be misreading but doesn't it state a much less strong position of "GitHub and California courts are sticking by tech companies’ traditional hardline interpretation of an arcane 1986 privacy law" - they believe it to be illegal but it may not necessarily be the case because, as they continue, "Arguably, GitHub’s interpretation of the SCA infringes on a defendant’s rights as repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court itself".
- alisonkisk 5y agoIt's impossible for GitHub to infringe on the defendant's rights. The court is infringing on their rights by convicting of a crime when there is a reasonable doubt.
- Closi 5y agoCalling the law "Arcane" doesn't change the fact it's federal law (Arcane is hyperbole anyway). You don't get to not follow laws just because they are a little old. Also you can call it a "hardline interpretation", but that probably means it's following the text. Companies are supposed to take a "traditional" interpretation anyway legally, although typically this is referred to as "precedent"! If we remove the words "Hardline", "Interpretation", "Traditional" and "Arcane" which are all hyperbole, the statement actually would read "GitHub and California courts are sticking by a 1986 privacy law" - which of course they would, they are legally required to. > "Arguably, GitHub’s interpretation of the SCA infringes on a defendant’s rights as repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court itself". This is just saying that arguably by not breaking one law, they were possibly breaking another law - and in this case the courts need to move.
- julienreszka 5y agoWait, the death penalty is still legal in the USA? I thought it was abolished decades ago.
- bennysomething 5y agoSo they have no evidence to prove their software works? Reminds me of that Chris hitchens thing, what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
- Nicksil 5y agoYes, Hitchens's razor! Good call. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens's_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens's_razor
- femto 5y agoIt seems that it is possible for legal teams to get source code access? https://www.strmix.com/news/strmix-updates-defense-access-policy/ https://www.strmix.com/news/strmix-updates-defense-access-po... Edit: Just reread the article: it seems that the defence followed the above but refused to agree to the conditions dictated by strmix.
- tinalumfoil 5y ago> The defense expert refused to sign the NDA, and a Texas judge also refused to sign off on STRmix’s protective order because it barred the court from oversight of the review. Some of this case/article seems less like a fight between an convicted murderer trying to clear his name against Github/strmix, and more like a jurisdictional spat between Texas and California courts.
- redis_mlc 5y agoFYI: there's been multiple scandals with LEO DNA labs. One of the most famous had a SF lab tech goof up 1,000 cases: Crime lab scandal rocked Kamala Harris’ term as San Francisco district attorney https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/03/07/crime-lab-scandal-rocked-harris-term-as-san-francisco-district-attorney/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/03/07/crime-lab-scandal-roc...
- hedora 5y agoThe bigger issue here is that they would have already provided the source code if the prosecution requested it. Apparently California law requires them to hand over evidence such as this to prosecutors, but bars them from handing it to defense attorneys. That’s clearly unconstitutional, yet it has been happening for years.
- carlmr 5y agoThat just sounds awfully lopsided. Is there any reasoning for why this is?
- ThePowerOfFuet 5y agoAmerica.
- voxic11 5y agoThe reasoning is to protect customer data held by third parties. Prosecutors are exempt from the law but defense attorneys are not. > Both GitHub and California courts are sticking by tech companies’ traditional hardline interpretation of an arcane 1986 privacy law the Stored Communications Act (SCA). While the SCA makes a provision for government entities, like the police, to demand electronic communications, it doesn’t make the same exception for civilians—giving prosecutors a leg up while kneecapping defense teams.
- scrps 5y agoSTRMix should either allow the source to be examined or brief the court that their software isn't suitable for use in criminal prosecution because it is a black box. You can't eat your cake and have it too.
- carlmr 5y agoI think we should petition for a law that states this. Companies will never do this out of benevolence. Something along the lines of "Any software used to determine guilt in a court of law, either directly or indirectly, must be open sourced to the public. Binaries used must be provably obtained from the published version, using an open source toolchain, reproducible by the public, free of charge."
- scrps 5y agoI fully agree but sadly in the U.S. it will take the better part of a decade just to explain binaries, toolchains, and trusted reproducibility to politicians. I think the larger issue is that the political and legal class in the U.S. has a combination of arrogant ignorance and willful ignorance when it comes to anything to do with tech.
- barelysapient 5y agoCompletely agree. Even better as a constitutional amendment. Imagine if finger print matching and other sorts of identifying methods were so opaque?
- fmakunbound 5y ago> GitHub spokesperson told us: “This is a difficult case for all involved Somewhat more difficult for the guy about to be executed.