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Closed Source -> Charges Dismissed?
Snorpus writes "According to the Tampa Tribune, judges in the central Florida county of Seminole are dismissing DUI charges when the defendant asks for information on how the breath test works. Apparently the manufacture of the device is unwilling to release the code to the state, and all four judges in the county have been dismissing DUI cases when the state cannot provide the requested information. Could this apply to other situations where technical means (radar guns, video surveillance, wire-tapping, etc.) are used to gather evidence? " I'd not plan on this as a legal defense, but the question it raises - of public access to information - is an important one.
This should be obvious, if you want your evidence used in court you have got to supply ALL OF THE METHODS. If I were a cop or DA I'd be screaming at the salesmen who sold me these machines that will not hold up in court. Some competitor, who has machines that can stand up to scrutiny, ought to be making a killing on this.
Linus should go to a MADD meeting:-)
Indeed. That doesn't stop the "can you verify that this evidence is trustworthy" issue from being real.
First thing that popped into my head was to wonder how many people have been falsely convicted in the past.
If they won't release the workings to prove their device correctly tells that someone was DUI then it goes hand-in-hand that the evidence of previous DUIs is now very flimsy indeed.
Although DUI is mentioned, it's really got next to nothing to do with the story in question. The story's got to do with being convicted of something/anything because of evidence provided by an unknown method. Nobody's trying to defend drinking and driving, exactly. It's about whether or not the method of producing evidence is sound. Which I would say is exactly why the poster of the story mentions other things such as radar guns...
If a machine says you are DUI but you are in fact not, wouldn't you like to find out how the machine works so any flaws could be found?
Harald
Perhaps that's true.
Oh look I've used my new guilt-o-meter and it says you committed 9 murders... Don't ask me how it works [and in turn determine if it actually works...] for that's proprietary.
Who knows, maybe he really wasn't drunk [or that drunk] and the device is buggy or mis-calibrated? That's why we have a DEFENSE in the first place.
If you're just going to trust whatever "magic happens here" box the police are using without actually investigating whether it works... then you might as well have summary convictions without appeal [or defense]. Then we could just walk up and down the street and write people up because our "guilt-o-meter" went off.
For every "asshole who got through a loophole" there are others who "got wrongly convicted" of an offense.
Maybe next time the cops purchase equipment they'll make sure they can be independently audited. It's not the defendents fault the cops are using [effective] defective equipment.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
But the difference, often the DNA scanner can be shown how it works. Then expert witnesses can argue that the method is correct. The article says that you cannot get the information on how breath scanners work, and therefore, it cannot be proven in court that the scanners actually work.
So what stops the company from including a test for some other, not-so-common health-neutral or mostly neutral substance, and make the tests return "no alcohol" if the substance is detected, no matter how much alcohol is there?
Say, you're a friend of the manager of the company. You're driving drunk, but you know "the secret". A cop pulls you over. You pull out your lighter and take a few deep breaths of the gas from the lighter. Not a thing commonly done, but and mostly harmless. The device detects you're a friend of the boss and displays alcohol level in the allowed range, despite the real readout.
Any company is allowed to keep their trade secrets. It's just that government, just like any other customer may have specific requirements about the product. Like, access to the source code. You don't provide it? Sorry, we'll look for someone else to do business with. Same as intelligence won't like devices that provide "service backdoors", like military will pick EMP-resistant options over ones that can be easily fried by the enemy, wherever legal cases are involved, transparency of the design is essential.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Should a rape suspect be able to get off because he questioned how the DNA scanner works, and the court can't provide an answer?
If the scanning system is dodgy then YES HE BLOODY WELL SHOULD! How would you feel if falsely convicted for rape due to dodgy evidence?
Equally, given that traffic-related charges are a major source of income for police depts (certainly in Britain), how do we know the police didn't go for the breathalyser model that always flags each 20th suspect as being drunk? Sorry Granny, they caught you fair and square.
Without access to the system internals (in this case the source code) we just don't know. However unlikely tampering may seem, that uncertainty will still be there.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Technical evidence is being submitted without information about how it was gathered, leaving no way for a court to assess its reliability? I'd say that should be a pretty strong defence, actually, probably enough to instruct a jury to disregard that evidence entirely.
Indeed, the title is deeply misleading. A court requiring evidence about how software works is not the same as requiring the software to be Open Source, nor anything close to it.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
This problem can't be so hard. "The state" has to either:
- produce or commission its own breathalysers and / or blood alcohol testers, or
- get hold of and keep on standby expert witnesses who can answer the questions in sufficient detail to convince a judge and / or jury.
The fact that neither can be fulfilled at the moment, and that it was (well, predictably) a defendent who had to point the weakness in the current state of affairs is neither here nor there: If "we the people" want to put someone in the slammer, we have to be able to tell them why we are doing so, and if we set up things so badly that we can't, they should indeed go free.
Who's to blame? Probably some mid-level bureaucop who rubbed his/her hands in glee when the saleperson showed them the single button and all the blinkenlights, and signed the purchase order for three dozen units without booting his/her brain.
Sic transit gloria mundi. Not that it can't be fixed, tho.
yes, we have no bananas
yeah, going 90km/h because my cruise control was set for the 90km/h zone that I just left, because it simply slipped my mind as I passed the 80km/h sign, which I could still see from the spot the cop pulled me over, sure makes me an idiotic maniac who's driving way too fast.
If 'slips of the mind' prevent you from slowing down for whatever reason then you're not in control of the vehicle and you're not safe to be driving.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
okay, your post is wrong in more than one place. first of all, almost all radar guns are now calibrated before the cruiser leaves the precinct. tuning forks for radar guns are cheap and plentiful. maybe in a ghost town in the midwest your defense of uncalibrated equipment may fly.
next, i don't agree with the speed limits in most places. in a lot of places, most of the traffic flows at a higher speed anyway. if you actually do the speed limit, in some cases, you are putting yourself in more danger. there is no proof that going 10-15 over the speed limit increases my potential for getting into an accident. in fact, when speed limits are increased, accident rates tend to decline. morons weaving in and out of traffic aren't causing danger by speeding, they are causing danger by driving recklessly. i could drive the speed limit and weave and it'd just be as bad as if i was doing 10-15 over.
i hope everyone milks this for all its worth. traffic court operates very differently than regular courts, in which the police officer's word goes for almost anything. a lot of cops tend to give people tickets knowing they won't fight it, thus its revenue for the city and judges will turn a blind eye to it.
-dk
as I just said, I had only *just* went into an 80km/h zone from a 90km/h zone and could still plainly see the sign from where I was pulled over. FYI, the ticket was thrown out anyway because of the proximity to the sign :P Again, making out like I was crazy out of control when I was simply going 90km/h instead of 80km/h is pretty dumb. But go right ahead and exaggerate all you like.
If you can manage to type in the URL, try to google for "black box testing".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If this avoids that one person unjustly accused of DUI goes to jail, it's a good thing, notwithstanding how many real DUI people get off with that.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
" This sounds more like a worst case scenario of judges legislating from the bench"
No, this sounds like a best case scenario of judges UPHOLDING the LAW.
Specifically the right of the defendant to cross-examine his accusor.
If they will not allow inspection of, and verification of, their software/hardware, then they are unable to demonstrate the reliability/unbias of their results.
IT's no different than someone coming to a court saying you are a thief, but not able to prove how they know that.
"How much of the public are the judges willing to put at risk to stroke their own egos?"
How much of the public are these judges protecting from unlawful accusations? Again, if you cannot dispute/verify the method of finding a person drunk, how can it be said that they really ARE drunk? "Trust me?" BS! I don't trust ANYONE in power anymore. They prove their case like they should have from the beginning.
"If they have a problem with the manufacturer then take it up with the state. If the state does not have a requirement of disclosure then by what basis do the judges operate?"
The basis of "the right of the defendant to cross examin his accusor". It's part of LAW. All these judges are doing is upolding your right to confront your accusor.
If the manufacturer cannot/willnot demonstrate how his device works, then it cannot and SHOULD NOT be used to accuse people of anything.
NO SECRET TRIALS. This is America, not the U.S.S.R. or Nazi Germany!
"How can they not apply this to speeding tickets, parking meters, or are items of revenue enhancement strictly excluded from this test?"
Maybe it has? MAybe those manufacturers can easily demonstrate how their equipment works? After all, parking meters are simply a clock. Speeding tickets could be either from a radar gun, or a cop matching your speed and looking at his speedometer.
Quite frankly, while we all may abhor the idea of a criminal being let go "on a technicality", the fact that those "technicalities" exist is to protect YOUR rights. If you cannot understand this, then you seriously need to re-learn our justice system.
"Could this apply to other situations where technical means (radar guns, video surveillance, wire-tapping, etc.) are used to gather evidence?"
Yes, No and No. I think you are missing the point here... breath tests and radar guns use technology as evidence while video survelance and wire tapping use technology to acquire evidence. No one will ever give a damn how a video recorder works as long as the defendant is clearly seen commiting a crime in the video (no comments about image manipulation through gimp/photoshop please).
Uh oh... somebody doesn't like the way something goes in court and immediately calls it 'legislating' from the bench. I wonder how he (assumption) voted in '04.
In TFA the judge says "Florida cannot contract away the statutory rights of its citizens". See that word statutory? Ever wonder what that means? The use of that particular word denotes actual, codified law in the books somewhere that guarantees those charged with a crime something along the lines of the right to understand how evidence was gathered against them.
Refer back to that word statutory - it appears that the state does have a requirement of disclosure.
I'll bet it does apply. Q: How does a speed gun work? A: http://makeashorterlink.com/?E1ED3343B and has an accuracy of .x +/- mph Q: How does the parking meter keep track of time A: A mechanical or electronic timekeeper which is accurate to within .001 seconds/day
Compare this with Q: How does your test meter detect alcohol and what is the accuracy A: None of your business. Q: So you're saying that if my BAC is .05 your machine could overrepresent this and show .09? A: None of your business. Q: If I eat a tuna sandwich does your machine consistently give false positives? A: None of your business. Q: If I fart will your machine generate a false positive? A: None of your business.
Can you honestly say that you don't have a problem with this? Next time you're in court I will hook you up to a polygraph. You must accept the results without question. There's a red light and a green light on the top - if the red light illuminates then you're guilty and go to jail. No, you aren't allowed to know how it works. Trade secret. But you wouldn't have a problem with this, right? After all, any judge who excludes this is obviously legislating from the bench and needs to be sued if a murderer gets off. Right?
Perhaps allowing a judge to be personally held accountable if he lets somebody back on the street after a 4th or 5th OUI conviction but to punish a judge for dismissing the charges after one's rights were violated due to improper collection of evidence is out of line. If a judge convicts a guy 10 times for OUI but the bum gets parole every time and then goes out and kills somebody you'd be on to something.
Other than that I'd say you're blowing smoke. Better hope that the testing equipment doesn't register smoke as EOH fumes or you're gonna see some jail time. Or maybe just some serious probation.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
Except that speed limits are typically .66 to .75 the actual maximum safe speed for any stretch of road. Being in control of your vehicle means not hitting things or people, and not leaving the road. Speed is only relevant by association with those.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
of this article is not that drunken drivers' charges were dropped, but if people should be prosecuted because a black box (whose function you don't know) said you're guilty. I could build something with a green and a red LED, and have only the red LED light up, meaning that you were guilty of whatever crime someone wanted, would that mean that you broke a law?
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Black Box testing only works for the current "frozen " black box.
If upgrade software is released, how do you know what changed... redo black box testing.
You've got that BACKWARDS.
A DUI prosecution should not succeed based on a "technicality". The consequences of such an action if successful are far more grave and thus are deserving of a much higher standard of car on the part of law enforcement.
If attorneys can successfully bring up the issue of false negatives then THAT is the real problem & not some drunk meeting the burden for reasonable doubt because cops think they can be sloppy.
Also, reasonable doubt is NOT a technicality.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I think you missed the point: how do you know they were really drunk if not for the technicalities? If you have the suspect blow in the breathalizer, and then believe they were drunk, you should then be required to get further proof if you want to inflict any permanent punishment (blood sample). This would mean taking the person down to the station--something an officer should always do if the person is drunk.
That would change the nature of the tickets from a minor annoyance to a serious situation, for both the officer and the suspect.
In many states (CA is the only one I know for certain) you have the right to demand the calibration records of any radar gun used in issuing a speeding ticket to you. If the gun has not been calibrated properly within 24 hours of issuing the ticket, then the charges must be dropped.
The sad part of this is that you must ask. If you don't ask, you still have to pay the ticket.
I think this is a good thing: it keeps the police honest. I think Freedom of Information is a good concept: the public watches the police. That's what the US is founded on--that government is to be held responsible for its actions by those who are governed. This means that government is not the highest power--the citizens are.
I don't think that we are necessarily adhering to that concept, and I certainly feel like there is too much government secrecy. Sometimes the idea of "secret for the good of the state" frightens me more than anything else. State secrets are handled as a fact of life, but this isn't necessarily good. No, I don't want criminals and terrorists to have access to the information required to build a nuclear weapon, but neither do I think that most senate meetings contain that sort of information.
I have more thoughts, but it is Monday morning, and I have work (!) to get done.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
Something else that should be looked at closely is the blatant trampling of the 5th Amendment in DUI cases.
In many states your license is revoked for 1 year if you refuse to blow into the breathalyzer. Assuming you were under the influence, you'd be incriminating yourself if you do use the breathalyzer.
Many people will reply that having a license is a privlege and can be revoked at the state's whim. I then ask those same people if other privleges such as voting (which is not an inherent right in the USA, but ought to be) should be taken away on the spot if you fail to give the authorities your DNA when they ask for it.
Is this where I have to post a link to an article discussing the Therac-25? O.K, I will.
Hint: Just because it's tested, doesn't mean it works.
One moron weaving out of traffic colliding with you going fast causes a whole pileup on a highway.
So is it speeding or being a moron weaving in and out of traffic that causes a wreck? Speed does not always mean more wrecks (look at the autobahn which has less fatalities per mile traveled than the interstates in the U.S.).
The problem is that people are given a drivers license with little to no training, and there are very few traffic laws that are enforced other than a speed limit. Meandering all over traffic is rarely pulled over unless you're also speeding. Talking on your phone, while reading a book and drinking your morning coffee - no big deal as long as you're not speeding. Driving 40mph in the fast lane or merging by driving 10mph, no big deal. Just make sure you don't speed. Moron drivers, not speed is the problem.
It's not that they don't work, but that they don't necessarily justify their own existance.
I did some research on this topic some time back and came up with a series of criteria that a DRE system must meet to be considered a viable replacement and investment for a county.
1 - Auditable: I.E. the system must provide some vote by vote means of tracking the number of votes for each given candidate (in the event of memory loss) while still preserving the anonymity of each voter. Most DRE systems fail in this because no paper trail exists.
2 - Encrypted: Verifiable strong encryption must be used to prevent unauthorized access to the differing components of the system. We want to make sure that real roll based security exists to prevent unauthorized access to the components of the system. Diebold's systems, for example, allowed the same person who set up the ballot options access to the source code -- bad idea. We also want to use a key system to authenticate individual voters.
3 - Inexpensive: Diebold's systems and most others are too expensive for statewide or nationwide roll outs. While it hasn't been tried formally in the Federal Court system - Bush v. Gore suggests that the use of differing voting technologies in differing counties may be a violation of Equal Protection as this would imply that the state values some votes more than others.
4 - Open Source: The way these systems work must be either publicly verifiable or at least open to inspection by an organ of the state. While the former is preferable, the latter is better than a totally closed source system. The ability to conceal of bit of malicious code in something as complex as a DRE system dwarfs such capability in every other voting system currently in use. The burden of proof must rest with the manufacturer, not the state or the people.
5 - Ubiquitous: Tyeing into the concept of "inexpensive" a DRE system must conform to a series of standards, making differences in the implementation and interface fairly minor between counties. This speaks more to the standards by which the machines and software are produced and less to the financial onus placed on each county.
Conveniently, those are your five vowels -- AEIOU.
DRE systems have the capability to make a real difference in the way we cast votes -- but until they conform to specifications like these it's just not a worthwhile investment, both of my tax dollars and my vote.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
It seems to me that one place this could really matter would be if a precedent were set that affected all the electronic voting machines cropping up in recent elections (with not such a great reputation so far, IME).
No, because the standard of evidence is different. In a criminal case, the defendant only needs to show reasonable doubt. If you don't know how the breathalizer works, it creates doubt as to its reliability, so there is doubt that the defendant is guilty. The voting machine cases are civil cases, where the standard is perponderance of the evidance. You have to show some actual evidence that the machines failed, rather than just suspicion because of not knowing how it works.
> if you actually do the speed limit, in some cases, you are putting yourself
> in more danger
This is true only in a relative few places -- and in those places, as a rule,
the cops don't go after the people who are just going with the flow; they go
after the idiots who are passing the people who are going with the flow.
> there is no proof that going 10-15 over the speed limit increases my
> potential for getting into an accident
I suspect there may actually be, but in any case that's largely irrelevant.
The likelihood of getting into an accident isn't the point: the amount of
dammage caused if there *is* an accident (whether you cause the accident or
not) is the point. Momentum is proportional to the square of velocity, so
at 70mph you can cause 160% as much dammage as at 55mph, and that can be
the difference between injury and death -- for you, or for someone else.
What really bugs me, though is the people who do 55mph through a residential
25mph zone with on-street parking and children playing. I think the ticket
amount should be based on the *ratio* between the speed they were going and
the posted limit, rather than the *difference*, or perhaps both, multiplied
by the square of how many prior tickets you've had (if you've had any).
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
IMO, the details shouldn't be in the public. The general theory or usage should be, but a defendant has no right no know the details of a listening device (for a mobster or terrorist suspect), a radar gun, or a breathalizer. That would just give them the ability to thwart it.
If giving someone knowledge of how your breathalizer detects alcohol in your breath allows you to thwart it, your breathalizer should have no place in law enforcement. Same thing with radar guns. They both do very simple things, that once past the general theory phase just let you know whether or not it was built well enough to actually judge what it is claiming to judge. And sometimes the answer is "no." Of course it is possible to thwart the above... by slowing down or not drinking, but then you need to know when they are coming up.
Even listening devices / wiretaps etc are trivial. If the CIA installs a keylogger between your keyboard and PC, what does it help you to know how the keylogger functions? Or if there is a bug in their room, what harm does it do if during the trial the frequency used comes up? You should be rotating frequencies anyway, and the mobsters should be jamming all frequencies around them like embassies do.
Most law enforcement tools work not because they are rock solid, but because people don't know when they will be used. Once someone finds out that there is a bug in their room, the bug becomes useless, even if the person doesn't know where or what it is. Once someone knows there is a portion of the highway designated a speed trap, the speed trap won't catch them. You don't need details to know that. You do need details to know that you were actually going the speed the machine says you were going, or that your blood alcohol levels were what it says they were.
The ______ Agenda
Here in the UK if you say "I don't know how fast I was going" you are opening yourself up for a charge of "driving without due care and attention".
How about if you say "yes, I know how fast I was going, and no, I'm not going to tell you."
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
1) how do you know they work?
2) how do you know the errors are not intermittent?
It's a well proven fact that misporgrammed voting machines have made serious errors. The sad thing is we only know about the ones that are so spectacular they get noticed.
We require all public meetings to be open and notes kept. We dont allow any secret laws on the books. Why should we settle for closed source software?
The sodtware in these things is not that sophisticated. Not a lot more to it than a vending machine and a data base. Thus there are no trade secret justifications for keeping it closed.
However unlike a vending machine, the transactions on a voting machine are secret. economic transactions always traceable. Buy something on line and you know if the package arrived. Deposit your check and you can check the bank statement. But with voting its intended that no one can reverse engnieer your vote after you step away from the machine.
Thus one has to have more than an "accurate" machine. It has to be provably accurate. Pure electronic transactions cannot meet that criteria and they cannot be trusted on faith without open source.
For all we know most voting machines work fine. But we do know that some do not. And we do know that there are many close elections. and we do know there are even more upset elections with unexpected outcomes.
This is not a good situation to be in. The essence of democracy is not in the voting or the vote counitng as some have said. The true essence is in the willingness of the loser to believe they were proven wrong byt the outcome. For that you need to instill confidence in the process--even when you personally think it is not neccessary. Voting has to be both secret and transparent
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I find that very Orwellian.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Let's see, she's talking on her mobile phone and speeding, with a suspended licence, which is both stupid and illegal.
The cop then asks her politely to get out of the car. She ignores him and carries on talking on her phone, which is stupid.
He asks her repeatedly to hang up and get out of the car, and she refuses. She could even get out of the car while still talking on the phone, which would at least show willing, but she doesn't. This is stupid, and (IIRC) tantamount to resisting arrest.
The cop then pulls a tazer on her, and threatens her with it twice. She hears and sees him ("he's got a gun - he's going to shoot me!"), and he clearly tells her it's a Taser, and states "If you don't get out of the car I am going to Tase you". She ignores him. This is monumentally stupid.
You can't actually see the next bit (she's still in the car), but the police officers mention later in the video that they Tazed her because she "took a swing" at one of them. Now, either she did or she didn't, but if she's driving around, speeding, with a suspended licence, and is then hostile and un-cooperative once pulled over, it's not that much of stretch to assume she did take a swing at them. At the very least, she (solely) created the tense situation where they were likely to mis-interpret any sudden movements (especially after she'd already repeatedly refused to move from the car). If she actually tried to throw a punch this is criminal, but either way it's so monumentally stupid she deserves a fucking Tazing right there.
Next she's actually Tazed. Now, I believe Tazing hurts (I've had a few big shocks from electrical projects going wrong before now, and it's highly liable to be worse), but she's moaning and whimpering in rather a theatrical manner for over five minutes, by the clock. She can also clearly walk by the end of it, and yet (off-camera) still gives the officers a hard time getting her into the car.
One of them can also be heard telling her "I told you multiple times to get out of the car and you refused to do it." She denies this (despite the fact we've just watched the whole thing). One officer also indicates they've both been Tazed before, and know she's overacting.
Now I'm as quick with the tinfoil hat as the next paranoid conspiracy-theorist, but this ain't evidence of jackbooted fascism.
This is an object lesson in why it's fucking stupid to:
I've heard and seen a lot of sketchy things done in the name of Law & Order, but she brought this one entirely on herself.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Although I will agree that being forced to do something is a erosion of rights. No one has a right to drive. It is a privilege. No one forces you to just take a breathalizer test. Even in a case of a false positive you can ask to have your blood taken. They can note the time it is and your blood alcohol level at the time of the bood test and determine what your % was that way to.
I am a huge fan of the open up the source of breathalizer stuff. Every citizen has a right to know how and why it works. In fact no hardware software that can be admisible as evidence should be closed source otherwise how can independent review take place.
no problem, in court you just say you meant KPH, and not MPH
If they want to protect their device, than they should get a patent on it. Patents are the best protection for a device you can get, they allow you to tell everyone how your device works, and yet still be the only one who makes money selling it.
If they don't want patent protection, then they obviously do not care that anyone can make the device. So they should have no problem giving away the specifications to the court.
The test in most jurisdictions is some form of "scientific reliability." If the test is generally accepted as reliable, by a preponderance of the scientific community, the results are admissible. This type of defense has been tried before, but has been rejected in most American jurisdictions. NORMALLY the Court would reject the Defendant's motion to dismiss, but allow Defendant to depose the corporate officials (at Defendant's expense.) The Defendant could then offer expert testimony as to why the Defendant felt the test was not reliable. If the Court continued to believe the test was scientifically reliable, and the issue of intoxication, including the technical evidence would be submitted as a question of fact for the jury. I can understand the corporation's reluctance. I suspect if a good technie knew all the details of the radar gun, it might be possible to craft a device to indicate 43 mph on the radar gun when the true speed was something approaching Warp Factor. The corporation might be compelled to testify, however the corporation could apply for a "protective order" prohibiting the use of the information beyond the criminal trial at issue. Tj
> you had to be doing something wrong to get pulled over for
> DUI, make the officer feel that you certainly are drunk, and
> then be taken into jail for a breathalyzer. That doesn't deserve
> a big cash reward. Of course, most people say I'm an idiot.
I can't disagree more. I think it's more important BY FAR to keep the cops honest; and ESPECIALLY to slap the SOBs down when they decide to get their jollies by unjustly imprisoning the innocent; than it is to make sure that every little "failure to yield" or "improper lane change" is properly cited.
You said yourself that this was a tourist area. You should remember that driving laws and customs vary throughout the US. Sure, ignorance of the law isn't a defense. But, for example, what are normal everyday safe driving practices in Boston or New York would almost certainly pass as severely reckless in some sleepy town in the south. Not only that, but in many places in the south, corrupt pigs like to prey on tourists or anyone "just passing through", over the locals, because they are much less likely to come back to the local courthouse to fight the ticket. Having encountered southern cops in my own past, I wouldn't be surprised if 99% of the things people were "doing wrong" were total bullshit in the first place.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Thankfully, the law does not determine your rights. Rights exist above the law, and are sometimes supported by the law.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
You seem to misunderstand the situation. I'm not Lance Armstrong and I don't cycle for fun. I cycle to go places (I'm quite happy to get a free workout out of that, but that's incidental). Not all places are reachable (or reasonably reachable) by nice bike lanes or separate bike pathes. So I am forced to use roads.
I'm not creating an unsafe environment, I'm forced to operate in one created by bad city planning and reckless idiots in overpowered and undercontrolled tin cans. To shout back: IF YOU CANNOT DRIVE WITHIN EXISTING TRAFFIC LAWS, DON'T DRIVE!
As far as the speed issue is concerned: At least in Munich, my average speed is about the same as that of most cars. Taking the search for a free parking space into account, I'm faster for most intra-city distances. The burst speed of a car is obviously higher (for most cars).
BTW, cycling in Miami caused a mild sensation - people would see me in my cycling dress, and still not belive that I intended to carry my groceries in a backpack and on the bike. People here in Europe are more used to utility cycling...
Stephan