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An undisclosed algorithm being used for analysis of evidence should basically have its conclusions disallowed in court imho.

by dv_dt 5y ago

atoav 5y ago
I, 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 ago
Doesn'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 ago
  It'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 ago
I 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 ago
Well, 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 ago
    They'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 ago
  I 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.

An undisclosed algorithm being used for analysis of evidence should basically have its conclusions disallowed in court imho.

by dv_dt 5y ago

An undisclosed algorithm being used for analysis of evidence should basically have its conclusions disallowed in court imho.

atoav 5y ago

I, 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 ago

Doesn'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 ago
It'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 ago

I 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 ago

Well, 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 ago
  They'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 ago
I 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.