11 ms·

EVERY Polish driver (without intending to) possibly exploited lack of type checking in an Irish national crime database: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_

EVERY Polish driver (without intending to) possibly exploited lack of type checking in an Irish national crime database: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_licence_in_Poland#Mistaken_identity_in_Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driving_licence_in_Poland#Mist...

afh1 2y ago
Fun read but not sure it can be attributed to type checking or the lack thereof
tedunangst 2y ago
What type checking would you add to your database schema to prevent this?
- justsomehnguy 2y ago
  That's an administrative problem so don't solve it with a technical means.
- RustySpottedCat 2y ago
  I don't think this can be prevented with a schema. The only thing someone has to do is legally rename themselves to "Driving license" to be the edge case in this check. Teach cops to look for the (almost) international driver license format where your names are preceeded by the numbers 1 and 2 on the license.
- fragmede 2y ago
  One thing (that was done in 2013) would be to standardize the format of the card, so that name is in the same place no matter which (EEA) country it's from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_driving_licence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_driving_licence The other thing is to list out the field names in all 27/30/33 languages and flag those for double checking. Theres probably few people named "drivers license". Finally, just take a photo of the whole ID so even if the wrong value is entered initially, the right value can be recovered later as necessary. None of that is foolproof, but it doesn't have to be 100% foolproof, just not totally broken.
RustySpottedCat 2y ago
I'm sorry, but PULSE (Police Using Leading Systems Effectively) is the stupidest name for a "computer system" I've ever seen.
- OJFord 2y ago
  A 'backronym' if ever there was one.
xg15 2y ago
The Ignobel prize in literature the police got awarded was a nice touch. I still wonder how their DB was set up to accept this data in the first place. It makes sense to allow a person to be associated with multiple addresses - people move, sometimes a lot - but a person should not under any circumstances have multiple DoBs, should it? (Unless I missed "Falsehoods programmers believe about personal data: People are born only once" or something)
- fragmede 2y ago
  A person can't, but there can be multiple people with the exact same name, with different birthdays (or even the same!) so DoB isn't guarantee to be unique without some other identifier.
  - xg15 2y ago
    Ah, that makes sense. So the DB likely assigned the incidents to multiple different persons with the same name and not a single person.
- stoperaticless 2y ago
  Well, here is a story I heard (central Europe). Parents did not want the baby, so they left it at the door step, date of birth was not known, so some was assigned and used in some legal documents. Later, original parents changed their minds, real date of birth became known. (For sanity sake, I would just say choose one or flip a coin and be done with it, but at the same time I could imagine that some layer could take my sanity into account)
- n_plus_1_acc 2y ago
  The DoB may change (per law, not the real), for example refugees without travel documents often get assigned Jan 01.
userbinator 2y ago
That reminds me of this: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=301 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=301 And this: https://toppandigital.com/translation-blog/welsh-road-sign-displays-out-of-office-message-in-translation-blunder/ https://toppandigital.com/translation-blog/welsh-road-sign-d...

afh1 2y ago

Fun read but not sure it can be attributed to type checking or the lack thereof

tedunangst 2y ago

What type checking would you add to your database schema to prevent this?

justsomehnguy 2y ago
That's an administrative problem so don't solve it with a technical means.
RustySpottedCat 2y ago
I don't think this can be prevented with a schema. The only thing someone has to do is legally rename themselves to "Driving license" to be the edge case in this check. Teach cops to look for the (almost) international driver license format where your names are preceeded by the numbers 1 and 2 on the license.
fragmede 2y ago
One thing (that was done in 2013) would be to standardize the format of the card, so that name is in the same place no matter which (EEA) country it's from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_driving_licence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_driving_licence The other thing is to list out the field names in all 27/30/33 languages and flag those for double checking. Theres probably few people named "drivers license". Finally, just take a photo of the whole ID so even if the wrong value is entered initially, the right value can be recovered later as necessary. None of that is foolproof, but it doesn't have to be 100% foolproof, just not totally broken.

RustySpottedCat 2y ago

I'm sorry, but PULSE (Police Using Leading Systems Effectively) is the stupidest name for a "computer system" I've ever seen.

OJFord 2y ago
A 'backronym' if ever there was one.

xg15 2y ago

The Ignobel prize in literature the police got awarded was a nice touch. I still wonder how their DB was set up to accept this data in the first place. It makes sense to allow a person to be associated with multiple addresses - people move, sometimes a lot - but a person should not under any circumstances have multiple DoBs, should it? (Unless I missed "Falsehoods programmers believe about personal data: People are born only once" or something)

fragmede 2y ago
A person can't, but there can be multiple people with the exact same name, with different birthdays (or even the same!) so DoB isn't guarantee to be unique without some other identifier.
- xg15 2y ago
  Ah, that makes sense. So the DB likely assigned the incidents to multiple different persons with the same name and not a single person.
stoperaticless 2y ago
Well, here is a story I heard (central Europe). Parents did not want the baby, so they left it at the door step, date of birth was not known, so some was assigned and used in some legal documents. Later, original parents changed their minds, real date of birth became known. (For sanity sake, I would just say choose one or flip a coin and be done with it, but at the same time I could imagine that some layer could take my sanity into account)
n_plus_1_acc 2y ago
The DoB may change (per law, not the real), for example refugees without travel documents often get assigned Jan 01.

userbinator 2y ago

That reminds me of this: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=301 https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=301 And this: https://toppandigital.com/translation-blog/welsh-road-sign-displays-out-of-office-message-in-translation-blunder/ https://toppandigital.com/translation-blog/welsh-road-sign-d...