7 ms·

Without even looking at the AI part, I have a single question: Did anybody investigate? That's it. Whether it's AI that flagged her, or a witness who saw her,

Without even looking at the AI part, I have a single question: Did anybody investigate? That's it. Whether it's AI that flagged her, or a witness who saw her, or her IP address appeared on the logs. Did anybody bothered to ask her "where were you the morning of july 10th between 3 and 4pm. But that's not what happened, they saw the data and said "we got her". But this is the worst part of the story: > And after her ordeal, she never plans to return to the state: “I’m just glad it’s over,” she told WDAY. “I’ll never go back to North Dakota.” That's the lesson? Never go back to North Dakota. No, challenge the entire system. A few years back it was a kid accused of shoplifting [0]. Then a man dragged while his family was crying [1]. Unless we fight back, we are all guilty until cleared. [0]: https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/29/apple_sis_lawsuit/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/29/apple_sis_lawsuit/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23628394 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23628394

bl4ckneon 6mo ago
I think you missed many important points. "The trauma, loss of liberty, and reputational damage cannot be easily fixed,” Lipps' lawyers told CNN in an email. That sounds a LOT like a statement you make for before suing for damages, not to mention they literally say "Her lawyers are exploring civil rights claims but have yet to file a lawsuit, they said." This lady probably just wants to go back to normal life and get some money for the hell they put her in. She has never been on a airplane before, I doubt she is going to take on the entire system like you suggest. Easier said than done to "challenge the entire system", what does that even mean exactly?
- 3eb7988a1663 6mo ago
  It was worse than that, the reporting from an earlier story[0] ...Unable to pay her bills from jail, she lost her home, her car and even her dog. There is not a jury in the country that will side against the woman. I am not even sure who will make the best pop culture mashup - John Wick or a country song writer? (Also, what happened to journalism - no Oxford comma?) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47356968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47356968
  - segmondy 6mo ago
    You have more faith in the country than I do.
    - 3eb7988a1663 6mo ago
      Normally, I would be a bit more grim, but people love their animals. I pray even the staunchest authoritarian would see the injustice of losing a dog.
      - deaux 6mo ago
        You're not aware of Noem killing her dog by shooting it in the face, lining up three horses and shooting them, while being proud of it all?
        konfusinomicon 6mo ago
        iirc the dog was a dangerous animal and had attacked people and animals uprovoked quite a few times. didnt hear about it so not sure about the horses, but typically people dont just execute horses when they aren't injured or at risk of living out a traumatic existence. who knows, media spins and all that jazz, but I wouldn't hesitate to end a liability of a dangerous dog or a horse in suffering that had no chance of recovery, however reluctant id feel in the moment
  - frankharv 6mo ago
    Indeed let out on Christmas Eve with no money 1000 miles from your homeland. Where your home was lost to foreclosure because one JUDGE did not look at the paperwork. There should be a way to personally sue somebody when they don't do their job. Protecting the innocent. The JUDGE failed badly here. Flimsy evidence would mean no warrant. Do your basic investigation please... Rubberstamping JUDGE caused this. Why are they not named? Like they are a spectator. Infact they are the cause.
    - fc417fc802 6mo ago
- cogman10 6mo ago
  The real problem here is she'll get money, who knows how much, but that ultimately does nothing to actually address the problems in the system. Effectively it just raises taxes to cover the cost of these failed prosecutions. Everytime one of these cases happens, a cop and a prosecutor should be out of a job permanently. Possibly even jailed. The false arrest should lose the cop their job and get them blacklisted, the prosecution should lose the prosecutor's right to practice law. And if the police union doesn't like that and decides to strike, every one of those cops should simply be fired. Much like we did to the ATC. We'd be better off hiring untrained civilians as cops than to keep propping up this system of warrior cops abusing the citizens.
  - FireBeyond 6mo ago
    > The false arrest should lose the cop their job and get them blacklisted There is actually a federal register for LEOs that have been terminated for cause or resigned to avoid termination. The police unions that operate in the jurisdictions that employ 70% of US police have negotiated into their CBAs that the register “cannot be used for hiring or promotional decisions”. Read into that what you will.
    - cogman10 6mo ago
      I'm generally pretty for unions, but the police union is one that's a complete cancer on society. It pretty much solely exists to make sure cops are free to harm the public without any sort of accountability.
      - rootusrootus 6mo ago
        Agreed. And I think we really, really need to put more effort into a "police the police" organization. Someone who has power only over the police, who the police do not have power over, to act as a check.
        1718627440 6mo ago
        We might call this the administration of the executive. Maybe we can vote for that or something.
latexr 6mo ago
Yes, of course someone should have investigated, but the larger point here is that people don’t because they are being sold a false narrative that AI is infallible and can do anything. We could sit here all day arguing “you should always validate the results”, but even on HN there are people loudly advocating that you don’t need to.
- dpkirchner 6mo ago
  We can barely convince powers thar be that eye-witness testimony is unreliable, after all.
- harshreality 6mo ago
  Where are you seeing people being told that AI is infallible? AI is being hyped to the moon, but "infallible" is not one of the claims. To the extent people trust AI to be infallible, it's just laziness and rapport (AI is rarely if ever rude without prompting, nor does it criticize extensive question-asking as many humans would, it's the quintessential enabler[1]) that causes people to assume that because it's useful and helpful for so many things, it'll be right about everything. The models all have disclaimers that state the inverse. People just gradually lose sight of that. [1] This might be the nature of LLMs, or it might be by design, similar to social media slop driving engagement. It's in AI companies' interest to have people buying subscriptions to talk with AIs more. If AI goes meta and critiques the user (except in more serious cases like harm to self or others, or specific kinds of cultural wrongthink), that's bad for business.
  - jmalicki 6mo ago
    > Where are you seeing people being told that AI is infallible? AI is being hyped to the moon, but "infallible" is not one of the claims. I see all kinds of people being told that AI-based AI detection software used for detecting AI in writing is infallible! You want to make sure people aren't using fallible AI? Use our AI to detect AI? What could possibly go wrong.
    - the_af 6mo ago
tmpz22 6mo ago
IANAL but AFAIK custodial interrogation triggers Miranda, lawyers, and those awful awful civil liberties we’re trying to get rid of. Better just to apply Musk or Altman software to the problem and avoid it entirely.
rcvassallo83 6mo ago
The thing about the legal system is there's no incentive to investigate to find the truth. The incentive is to prosecte and prove the charges. Speaking from the experience of being falsely accused after calling 911 to stop a drunk woman from driving. The narrative they "investigated" was so obviously false, bodycam evidence directly contradicted multiple key facts. Officials are interested only seeking to prove the case. Thankfully the jury came to the right verdict.
- hnuser123456 6mo ago
  I would absolutely never call the police on a woman. Simply walk far away and let her be someone else's problem.
  - loloquwowndueo 6mo ago
    Unless it’s a Karen chasing you and yelling and threatening to call the police on you for some asinine reason?
    - komali2 6mo ago
      Imo they're right, if you're faced with the option of running away from some crazy person or interacting with the police in the USA, the safer option is to run. A police interaction can escalate to ruinous heights within seconds due to no fault of your own. Remember that cop that got scared by an acorn falling and started shooting at random? I don't care how many "good cops" there are, I'm not rolling the dice on encountering an acorn cop.
- fc417fc802 6mo ago
  > The thing about the legal system is there's no incentive to investigate to find the truth. The truth is much more complicated and involves politics. For example Seattle (and possibly other cities?) enacted a law that involves paying damages for being wrong in the event of bringing certain types of charges. But that has resulted in some widely publicized examples where the prosecutor erred by being overly cautious.
themafia 6mo ago
> Whether it's AI that flagged her It absolutely was. There's no question of this. Now we need to ask how was the system marketed, what did the police pay for it, how were they trained to use it? > anybody bothered to ask her "where were you the morning of july 10th between 3 and 4pm. Legally that amounts "hearsay" and cannot have any value. Those statements probably won't even be admissible in court without other supporting facts entered in first. > we are all guilty until cleared. This is not at a phenomenon that started with AI. If you scratch the surface, even slightly, you'll find that this is a common strategy used against defendants who are perceived as not being financially or logistically capable of defending themselves. We have a private prison industry. The line between these two outcomes is very short.
- LocalH 6mo ago
  >Legally that amounts "hearsay" and cannot have any value. How is that hearsay if she's directly testifying to her own whereabouts? Hearsay would be if someone else was testifying "she was in X location on july 10th between 3 and 4pm", without the accused being available for cross
  - Borealid 6mo ago
    No! "I was at the library" is firsthand testimony. "I saw her at the library" is firsthand testimony. "I saw her library card in her pocket" is firsthand testimony. "She was at the library - Bob told me so" is hearsay. Just look at the word - "hear say". Hearsay is testifying about events where your knowledge does not come from your own firsthand observations of the event itself.
    - LocalH 6mo ago
      That's fair, I'll admit to getting it slightly wrong. However, the original topic had nothing to do with that as far as I could tell, and instead was claiming it was hearsay for her to testify about her own whereabouts. That is simply not at all true, regardless of my error.
- jmye 6mo ago
belorn 6mo ago
Society went through the necessary lessons with DNA and fingerprints. Putting people in jail because the computer produce a match is a terrible idea, especially when its done by an proprietary dark box that no one really understand why it claims there is a match. It can be used as a tool of investigations to give the investigators an hint to find real more substantial clues, but using it like in fiction where the computer can act as the single truth is terrible for society and justice. A month ago or so people on HN discussed facial recognition when looking victims and perpetrators in child exploitation material, and people were complaining that meta did not allow this fast enough. Neither the article or the people in that discussion draw any connection that the issues in this article could happen. People seemingly want to think that the lesson is "Never go back to North Dakota", as that is a much easier lesson than considering false positives in detection algorithms and their impact on a legal system that is constrained in budget, time, training and incentives.
NL807 6mo ago
>No, challenge the entire system. Agree in principle. But people like her does not have the resources, financially and emotionally to go through the legal system again. Unless there are charitable lawyers who are willing to do it on her behalf for free.
not2b 6mo ago
Clearview again. ICE is using it too, and their people think it is an oracle that is always correct, so that when someone shows a passport card or a RealID showing that they are someone else, a US citizen or permanent resident, they are usually accused of having a fake ID. It's a flawed tool and it misidentifies people sometimes.

bl4ckneon 6mo ago

I think you missed many important points. "The trauma, loss of liberty, and reputational damage cannot be easily fixed,” Lipps' lawyers told CNN in an email. That sounds a LOT like a statement you make for before suing for damages, not to mention they literally say "Her lawyers are exploring civil rights claims but have yet to file a lawsuit, they said." This lady probably just wants to go back to normal life and get some money for the hell they put her in. She has never been on a airplane before, I doubt she is going to take on the entire system like you suggest. Easier said than done to "challenge the entire system", what does that even mean exactly?

3eb7988a1663 6mo ago
It was worse than that, the reporting from an earlier story[0] ...Unable to pay her bills from jail, she lost her home, her car and even her dog. There is not a jury in the country that will side against the woman. I am not even sure who will make the best pop culture mashup - John Wick or a country song writer? (Also, what happened to journalism - no Oxford comma?) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47356968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47356968
- segmondy 6mo ago
  You have more faith in the country than I do.
  - 3eb7988a1663 6mo ago
    Normally, I would be a bit more grim, but people love their animals. I pray even the staunchest authoritarian would see the injustice of losing a dog.
    - deaux 6mo ago
      You're not aware of Noem killing her dog by shooting it in the face, lining up three horses and shooting them, while being proud of it all?
      - konfusinomicon 6mo ago
        iirc the dog was a dangerous animal and had attacked people and animals uprovoked quite a few times. didnt hear about it so not sure about the horses, but typically people dont just execute horses when they aren't injured or at risk of living out a traumatic existence. who knows, media spins and all that jazz, but I wouldn't hesitate to end a liability of a dangerous dog or a horse in suffering that had no chance of recovery, however reluctant id feel in the moment
- frankharv 6mo ago
  Indeed let out on Christmas Eve with no money 1000 miles from your homeland. Where your home was lost to foreclosure because one JUDGE did not look at the paperwork. There should be a way to personally sue somebody when they don't do their job. Protecting the innocent. The JUDGE failed badly here. Flimsy evidence would mean no warrant. Do your basic investigation please... Rubberstamping JUDGE caused this. Why are they not named? Like they are a spectator. Infact they are the cause.
  - fc417fc802 6mo ago
cogman10 6mo ago
The real problem here is she'll get money, who knows how much, but that ultimately does nothing to actually address the problems in the system. Effectively it just raises taxes to cover the cost of these failed prosecutions. Everytime one of these cases happens, a cop and a prosecutor should be out of a job permanently. Possibly even jailed. The false arrest should lose the cop their job and get them blacklisted, the prosecution should lose the prosecutor's right to practice law. And if the police union doesn't like that and decides to strike, every one of those cops should simply be fired. Much like we did to the ATC. We'd be better off hiring untrained civilians as cops than to keep propping up this system of warrior cops abusing the citizens.
- FireBeyond 6mo ago
  > The false arrest should lose the cop their job and get them blacklisted There is actually a federal register for LEOs that have been terminated for cause or resigned to avoid termination. The police unions that operate in the jurisdictions that employ 70% of US police have negotiated into their CBAs that the register “cannot be used for hiring or promotional decisions”. Read into that what you will.
  - cogman10 6mo ago
    I'm generally pretty for unions, but the police union is one that's a complete cancer on society. It pretty much solely exists to make sure cops are free to harm the public without any sort of accountability.
    - rootusrootus 6mo ago
      Agreed. And I think we really, really need to put more effort into a "police the police" organization. Someone who has power only over the police, who the police do not have power over, to act as a check.
      - 1718627440 6mo ago
        We might call this the administration of the executive. Maybe we can vote for that or something.

latexr 6mo ago

Yes, of course someone should have investigated, but the larger point here is that people don’t because they are being sold a false narrative that AI is infallible and can do anything. We could sit here all day arguing “you should always validate the results”, but even on HN there are people loudly advocating that you don’t need to.

dpkirchner 6mo ago
We can barely convince powers thar be that eye-witness testimony is unreliable, after all.
harshreality 6mo ago
Where are you seeing people being told that AI is infallible? AI is being hyped to the moon, but "infallible" is not one of the claims. To the extent people trust AI to be infallible, it's just laziness and rapport (AI is rarely if ever rude without prompting, nor does it criticize extensive question-asking as many humans would, it's the quintessential enabler[1]) that causes people to assume that because it's useful and helpful for so many things, it'll be right about everything. The models all have disclaimers that state the inverse. People just gradually lose sight of that. [1] This might be the nature of LLMs, or it might be by design, similar to social media slop driving engagement. It's in AI companies' interest to have people buying subscriptions to talk with AIs more. If AI goes meta and critiques the user (except in more serious cases like harm to self or others, or specific kinds of cultural wrongthink), that's bad for business.
- jmalicki 6mo ago
  > Where are you seeing people being told that AI is infallible? AI is being hyped to the moon, but "infallible" is not one of the claims. I see all kinds of people being told that AI-based AI detection software used for detecting AI in writing is infallible! You want to make sure people aren't using fallible AI? Use our AI to detect AI? What could possibly go wrong.
  - the_af 6mo ago

tmpz22 6mo ago

IANAL but AFAIK custodial interrogation triggers Miranda, lawyers, and those awful awful civil liberties we’re trying to get rid of. Better just to apply Musk or Altman software to the problem and avoid it entirely.

rcvassallo83 6mo ago

The thing about the legal system is there's no incentive to investigate to find the truth. The incentive is to prosecte and prove the charges. Speaking from the experience of being falsely accused after calling 911 to stop a drunk woman from driving. The narrative they "investigated" was so obviously false, bodycam evidence directly contradicted multiple key facts. Officials are interested only seeking to prove the case. Thankfully the jury came to the right verdict.

hnuser123456 6mo ago
I would absolutely never call the police on a woman. Simply walk far away and let her be someone else's problem.
- loloquwowndueo 6mo ago
  Unless it’s a Karen chasing you and yelling and threatening to call the police on you for some asinine reason?
  - komali2 6mo ago
    Imo they're right, if you're faced with the option of running away from some crazy person or interacting with the police in the USA, the safer option is to run. A police interaction can escalate to ruinous heights within seconds due to no fault of your own. Remember that cop that got scared by an acorn falling and started shooting at random? I don't care how many "good cops" there are, I'm not rolling the dice on encountering an acorn cop.
fc417fc802 6mo ago
> The thing about the legal system is there's no incentive to investigate to find the truth. The truth is much more complicated and involves politics. For example Seattle (and possibly other cities?) enacted a law that involves paying damages for being wrong in the event of bringing certain types of charges. But that has resulted in some widely publicized examples where the prosecutor erred by being overly cautious.

themafia 6mo ago

> Whether it's AI that flagged her It absolutely was. There's no question of this. Now we need to ask how was the system marketed, what did the police pay for it, how were they trained to use it? > anybody bothered to ask her "where were you the morning of july 10th between 3 and 4pm. Legally that amounts "hearsay" and cannot have any value. Those statements probably won't even be admissible in court without other supporting facts entered in first. > we are all guilty until cleared. This is not at a phenomenon that started with AI. If you scratch the surface, even slightly, you'll find that this is a common strategy used against defendants who are perceived as not being financially or logistically capable of defending themselves. We have a private prison industry. The line between these two outcomes is very short.

LocalH 6mo ago
>Legally that amounts "hearsay" and cannot have any value. How is that hearsay if she's directly testifying to her own whereabouts? Hearsay would be if someone else was testifying "she was in X location on july 10th between 3 and 4pm", without the accused being available for cross
- Borealid 6mo ago
  No! "I was at the library" is firsthand testimony. "I saw her at the library" is firsthand testimony. "I saw her library card in her pocket" is firsthand testimony. "She was at the library - Bob told me so" is hearsay. Just look at the word - "hear say". Hearsay is testifying about events where your knowledge does not come from your own firsthand observations of the event itself.
  - LocalH 6mo ago
    That's fair, I'll admit to getting it slightly wrong. However, the original topic had nothing to do with that as far as I could tell, and instead was claiming it was hearsay for her to testify about her own whereabouts. That is simply not at all true, regardless of my error.
jmye 6mo ago

belorn 6mo ago

Society went through the necessary lessons with DNA and fingerprints. Putting people in jail because the computer produce a match is a terrible idea, especially when its done by an proprietary dark box that no one really understand why it claims there is a match. It can be used as a tool of investigations to give the investigators an hint to find real more substantial clues, but using it like in fiction where the computer can act as the single truth is terrible for society and justice. A month ago or so people on HN discussed facial recognition when looking victims and perpetrators in child exploitation material, and people were complaining that meta did not allow this fast enough. Neither the article or the people in that discussion draw any connection that the issues in this article could happen. People seemingly want to think that the lesson is "Never go back to North Dakota", as that is a much easier lesson than considering false positives in detection algorithms and their impact on a legal system that is constrained in budget, time, training and incentives.

NL807 6mo ago

>No, challenge the entire system. Agree in principle. But people like her does not have the resources, financially and emotionally to go through the legal system again. Unless there are charitable lawyers who are willing to do it on her behalf for free.

not2b 6mo ago

Clearview again. ICE is using it too, and their people think it is an oracle that is always correct, so that when someone shows a passport card or a RealID showing that they are someone else, a US citizen or permanent resident, they are usually accused of having a fake ID. It's a flawed tool and it misidentifies people sometimes.