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Florida DUI Law and Open Source
pete314 writes "A Florida court this Friday will hear arguments in a case where the accuracy of a breathalyzer is being scrutinized because the manufacturer refuses to release the source code. A state court ruling last year said that accused drunk drivers are entitled to receive details about the inner workings of the "mystical machine" that determined their guilt, and defense attorneys are now using that ruling to open up the device's source code.Is this part of a larger trend? With software bugs being a fact of life, consumers and organizations could claim that they need to be able to verify an application's source code before they accept that their calculations are accurate. Think credit card transactions, speed detecting radar guns, electronic voting machines..." Here is our previous story when this first became an issue in Florida.
drink and write open source software.
Crazy moonbats.
If, ideally, the government exists soley for it's citizens. Would it be in our best interest to be able to view the source code of non classified projects? If the government is in fact using our tax dollars to pay programmers, should we be entitled to view the outcome of their work and does it become public domain if paid for by public funds?
2. So is this kind of ruling going to spread to radar detectors, baggage-scanning equipment, automated video cameras, etc?
I'm sorry, I am all for open source and think it should be promoted. But if the breathalyzer's accuracy has been tested and verified, not being open source should not be a reason to let a drunk driver off the hook, in my opinion.
I'm still wondering if this is being used as a legalistic loophole or an honest concern about false arrest. I mean, there is a blood test that has been shown to be just as good or better than a breathalizer.
I don't get it.
The larger problem here is that a lot of these tools (breathalyzers, RADAR and LIDAR guns, etc) are dealing with ambiguous data in the first place. For example, the algorithm used to determine BAC in a breathalyzer may be implemented correctly, but what if the algorithm itself is wrong? You're dealing with many variables (a person's mass, their metabolism, etc), and those variables have different values for different people. It's well-known, for example, that women will blow higher on a breathalyzer than a man simply because they're generally smaller.
Similarly for LIDAR (laser speed detection), the underlying principle is using distance and time to determine rate. Sounds straightforward, as d = r * t, but how do you know you've got the right values for d? It's been shown that rapid movement of a LIDAR gun can cause even inanimate objects to register a rate. How do we know the LIDAR gun measured the distance your car traveled over a period of time, rather than the distance of your car at one point in time and the distance of some other reflective object (say, a much closer stop sign) at a different point in time? At the distances in question, we're talking sharpshooter skills as a requirement for using a LIDAR gun, but it seems that every cop on the force has one. Can they expect us to believe that every cop is a sharpshooter, or that several cups of coffee won't induce shaking in the cop's hands that could cause false readings?
It's a good precedent, forcing the breathalyzer source to be opened to inspection, but the assumption is still that the underlying algorithm is accurate when it's not. I don't understand why courts continue to rely on technology such as the breathalyzer or the LIDAR gun when there are better, proven tests that could be used instead (blood tests, RADAR or pacing with a calibrated speedometer). Worse, once a court has chosen to allow such evidence (this is not arbitrary, but once the admissability of such a test is challenged and lost it's almost impossible to re-challenge), you can no longer argue that the underlying tool is bad (without extenuating circumstances that would bring the acceptability of such tools back into question). You can argue that the machine wasn't properly calibrated or maintained or that the officer using it was untrained or unqualified or out of practice, but you can't argue that the tool itself is inadmissable as evidence even if the facts are on your side.
Same thing happened with the laser used for speed detection aka the "Geico Gun" Not specifically with opening the source code but the company could not actually prove it worked and refused to release technical details of how the gun even worked.
i darcase.htmls tart=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=
http://www.geocities.com/speeding@sbcglobal.net/l
http://www.radardetector.net/viewtopic.php?t=826&
and many more links with Google.
Just because law enforcement is using a tool and has been for years, does not mean that it has been thoughly tested and actually works as claimed. Sure, some of these instances may be lawers trying to argue though a back door but hey, you could also refer to it as a check and balance in the system.
... friends don't let friends code drunk.
It's important to remember that visible source code isn't the only requirement for Open Source. For software to be Open Source, it's not only necessary that the source code be available, but also that users are free to modify it and redistribute modified or unmodified copies. There's no real chance that the software in this case will be released under those terms. After all, one of the arguments that the lawyers are using is that the software has been modified without being recertified. It would be much more difficult to ensure that software in use hadn't been modified from a certified version if any user were free to modify it.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
If the software is complex enough to require "numerous software upgrades", then it is complex enough to have bugs. And it seems to me that not all bugs would necessarily show up under testing.
You go to a bar. Someone buys you ten beers. So your intoxication was free as in beer. Then you get pulled over and get a breathalyzer test which gets thrown out of court because the software was not free as in speech. So then you walk out of court, free as in Willy!
...you should make sure your SmartBreathalyzer is running Windows BAC SP2. Windows BAC SP2 fully supports the Male and Female classes, and adjusts predicted intoxication levels based on body mass and metabolism. In addition, Clippy will alert you of any extra factors that may affect the sobriety of the subject.
One of the easiest ways to get a speeding ticket overturned/dropped (at least in the UK) is to request all of the calibration reports for the particular camera/radar gun used to take your speed.
If the reports cannot be produced or are older/outside the statutory testing period, then the data produced by the machine will not hold up in court, and so the case will be dropped.
In some cases, the police simply cannot be bothered/do not have the time to do all of the necessary paperwork, and so the case may just be forgotten/ignored.
I don't know if this could be applied to a breathalyser, but it would be an interesting to see what would happen...
[All Your Fish Are Belong To Us]
They need to do the same with radars!!! People shouldn't have to pay for tickets that are nothing more than racketeering! (Although most tickets are ones that should be paid, sometimes cops are just out to get their bottom line up!). Also, we need a law that makes all government software open-source. For example, I am currently trying to resolve a proprietory issue with RFID cards.
-Palal
Sure, today some drunk is trying to get off the hook by saying that the software cannot be verified because it is not open. But tomorrow the gang bangers that raped your daughter will get off scott free because some library used in the DNA analyzing software is closed source and there's not a damn thing you can do about it!
Even if the brethalyzer's accuracy had been tested, so what?
Think about easter eggs and date bugs: How do you know the software works correctly on leap year day? On Sundays? On the 295th test? If the cop enters "124341+" on the keypad just before running the test?
You don't.
The output of a machine is NEVER evidence in a trial. What is evidence is the expert testimony of a human - hired by the prosecution - that the output is correct. (This has an incentive structure that encourages both fraud and rose-colored-viewing on the expert's part.)
To mount a defense the accused needs to be able to hire his OWN expert and let HIM examine the machine and identify any ways it could have made a false indication. Then you get a conviction if, and only if, the prosecution's expert is able to show that none of those occurred, so the reading is accurate.
For the defense expert to be able to do his job on a software-using system he needs access to the source. If the prosecution is able to deny him that, he has been denied - by his opponent - his due process right to challenge the evidence against him. So the evidence MUST be thrown out if he is to have a fair trial. IM(NAL)HO that's cut and dried.
Imagine if the machine was a witness. The prosecution gets to question the witness. The defense does not get to cross-examine him. See where that would lead?
How about a program that allegedly (according to a prosecution's expert witness) examines evidence and says "he's guilty" or "he's innocent"? Without a defense expert examining the code how do you know it's not:
g = "innocent"
repeat until eof
if input line == "officer O'Malley saw a rabbit"
g = "guilty"
print "he's " g
So it's:
1) open the software generally,
2) open the software to a long string of (expensive) defense expert witnesses,
3) not use the software's output if challenged, or
4) deny due process.
If they try to settle on 2) it's easy to argue that not going to 1) denys due process to the poor, since they can't take advantage of the expensive experts.
Result: No closed-software devices can be used by the procecution if challenged (unless the courts decide to deny due process).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I actually perform the testing as a member of an external firm on the world's largest credit card transaction processor. While we don't examine the source code, we do perform extended testing of various scenarios by inputting data and verifying the appropriateness of its processing. While this might seem slightly different than testing BAC, I don't see whey you couldn't validate the accuracy of a breathalyzer by taking a blood test on a subject and then validating that it matches the result of the breathalyzer at a given point in time.
with variables like; float pissed pissed = >.09 and float alittletipsy alittletipsy = <.09 little wonder they don't want it open sourced!
Why you shouldn't code drunk
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
I've never forgotten that lesson. If I know what algorithms are, and how they work, and what a particular language can (and can't) do, I can certify a project, based on the look on the programmer's eye when they answer The Questions.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Here in Australia, the road-side breath test (RBT) just gets you dragged to the police station, where they take a blood sample. It's the blood sample that gets you convicted, not the RBT... additionally, they take two blood samples: one for you, one for them.
Aren't blood samples used in the US? Do you not have that option?
In Australia the breath test is only used to indicate that a blood test is required, and can't be used to prosecute.
Of course this may give the driver's blood time to fall below the limit, but is far more accurate. To address this, the police sometimes have roadside blood testing vehicles (the booze bus).
The accuracy of the device could be easily verified by calibrating w/ blood samples using a mass spectrometer. So unless the code is really bad such that it gives erroneous results 1 in a 1000 trials, I'd say this is a lost cause.
> With software bugs being a fact of life, consumers and organizations could claim that they need to be able to verify an application's source code before they accept that their calculations are accurate
:(
Similarly, back before the Y2K bug was seen as a huge technological burden on companies, the FDA had proposed some regulations regarding drug manufacturing / quality control that required the process to be fully reviewable during an FDA inspection. As usual the regulation was intentionally vague as to allow for interpretation where deemed appropriate. I was lucky enough to be working for very compliant and thus, proactive company (now BMS) and got to see how things ideally could be in the pharmaceutical industry: The original guidance given by the agency seemed to require that all equipment and devices have least have some sort of documentation from the vendor saying that they would allow the FDA to look at their source code. It was a MAJOR pain to get companies to agree to such things (as they didn't wanna be held liable for poor code) and thus began the notion that OSS would be used if available. In one notable instance, the manufacture of a UV spec waffled until it came time to fax a document assuring the FDA could look if necessary. Our company ended up returning the whole unit and ordering a different brand. If it weren't for the Y2K worries already burdening the industry, it likely would of turned out that the whole industry would have had to work on VALIDATED and open software -- too bad
Remember that states here are somewhat independant and DUI law is largely up to the state. Many, perhaps even all, states will allow a large, more accurate breathilizer to be used as evidence. You are taken to the station and then tested with it. It's cheaper than a blood test, and easier (many people, myself included, hate needles). Now in all the states I know of you can demand a blood sample be taken as well, and your lawyer can have an independant expert examine it. However, I know DUI law for only a couple states, so it may be that's not true in all states. Also, the police usually don't have to tell you that, and if you don't ask you are SOL.
In generaly, we are pretty convict-happy on DUI offences. There are some very effective lobby groups that have convinced the public that DUI is a major, major problem that needs a strict response. The laws have been steadily getting more baised on the prosecution side, where it takes less alcohol in the blood to be considered drunk, and it's harder to challenge the results in court.
Apparently the joke is too obscure. Doesn't anybody watch Too Late With Adam Carolla?
Why can't these companies simply show the statistical data from tests.
What I've heard is that if you know for certain that you aren't drunk, take the blood test, because it is the most reliable and you can have it re-tested if you don't like the answer. If you aren't sure, take the breath test because it's easier to challenge in court.
See, I'd go with the breathalyzer in all cases. It's quicker. If I'm not drunk, I want to get going. I mean, what's a blood test? Half an hour to station or ER, then getting the test taken, then getting back on the road? Heck of a lot time to waste.
Not everyone wears a tinfoil hat like you?
Kerry lost the election. Get over it. Have a cookie.
Maybe if you actually got involved and tried to get more of your little hippie friends to vote it might have turned out differently.
Or maybe if the two main political parties put forward canidates other than Mr Stupid and Mr Ignorant (or even the almost canidate Mr Nutjob)we might live in a better country.
Remember folks, slashdot doesn't have a -1 "disagree" moderation!
Can you trust that photo?
If just looking at the source could tell you if it worked or not, there would be no such thing as bugs and no need for testing and QA as long as the programmer looked at his code while he typed it.
If you think the machine doesn't work, prove it with a test case.
Maybe he meant Willy as in Bill Clinton.
'cause my Windoze PC has never crashed. honest.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
is what can happen to you after you're convicted of an alcohol-related crime. I may get modded off-topic (as if it weren't bad enough being an AC) but I gotta say it.
t ch/
Part of your sentencing may involve mandated attendance at 12-step groups such as AA:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/12-step_Coercion_Wa
Judges who send people to AA are often AA members themselves, but never state this. How's THAT for a conflict of interest?
What is AA like? Google for all the glurge sites from members and compare them to these:
http://www.orange-papers.org/
http://www.morerevealed.com/
This machine has not been verified. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. It is up to the prosecution to prove it works. I'm innocent by that machine until you prove that it works. If there is even a .1% change that it is wrong, I'm innocent.
I want the drunks locked up. I do not want anyone who is not drunk to get locked up by mistake. We have not yet established that this machine can tell the difference to a reasonable degree of accuracy.
Read about it here "After testing American-specifcation laser speed guns, London's Daily Mail newspaper concludes that the popular LTI 20-20 Ultralyte model is prone to "wild" errors. Specifically, a wall was found to travel at 44 MPH, an empty road 33 MPH, a parked car 22 MPH, and a slow-moving bicycle at 66 MPH. These findings match those of the BBC who investigated the same device in March and September."
One would be STUPID to think that our devices can't be wrong, defective, etc. Just look at how many defective computer parts have been shipped in the brief history of Computing.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
Being required to let the source code be known wouldn't be enough to make the product Open Source, at least not by the OSI definition. You can't force someone to play nicely like that; they have to be convinced that Open Source is a good thing, first.
Otherwise, the company could easily release their source code in encrypted/DRMed PDF formats; obliging the person, but requiring they sign a NDA. And prohibit redistribution, except under terms designed to protect their rights; they may require a fee, paperwork, etc, anything to limit the exposure -- or insist on the use of trusted third parties to analyse the code.
Being required to disclose source doesn't permit others to make free derivative works either -- and if anyone develops a product with a similar function after reading their source code, the person who examined the code might be setting themselves up to have redistribution blocked (if it's considered a derivative work, due to substantial similarity and access to the work)..
Bottom line: this may turn out to result in new ''Open Source'' releases, but don't hold your breath on the result actually being Free Software; but sure, we can dream...:)
Prosecuter: Your Honor, Mr. Smith was travelling at a high rate of speed, swerving side to side. He was pulled over, and the officer, upon approaching the car could smell alcohol. Mr. Smith was asked to submit to a breathalyzer test which he agreed to. His blood alcohol level was 1.6, twice the legal limit.
Defense Attorney: Your Honor, this is preposterous. How can anyone sit there and expect me to think that the machine they are using is accurate. I have good information that these machines are in fact filled with raspberry jam and spit out completely random numbers. In fact, your honor, if you look hard enough you can even find a hack that will convert the machine into an mp3 player. It's quite obvious that we need to examine the source code that runs this snack dispenser or let my client go.
Judge: I'm going to ask you for the last time. Remove the foil hat, the glare off of it is really starting to bug me.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
...is an open-source, Linux-loving whiner who though the breathlyzer program was written by Microsoft.
in some way shape or form for the last 18 years, I can tell you that breathalyzers are tested regularly. Each agency that I have worked for/with has had its machine tested and calibrated on (at the worst) a monthly basis. Logs and printouts of the tests are kept for a period of time (last I remember it was 5 years, but that may have changed). The machines are tested against a predetermined and certified air/alcohol mixture, and sent back for recalibration if they fail to report a correct alcohol level past a very minute tolerance. The machines work. Any standards and training officer worth his salt can rip this defense to shreds with documentation on his agency's breathalyzers.
My thought is that this should be a slam-dunk. Re-frame it this way: suppose the machine were a lab technician who'd performed an analysis on forensic evidence (blood test or something). Would it be legally acceptable for the state to say the defense had no right to put the technician up on the stand and question him about the procedures that were followed doing the test, that defense simply had to accept without question the technician's "Trust me, these results are right."? If defense has a right to cross-examine the technician, why should they have any less right to cross-examine the machine that's doing the same job?
Yes, I know you wouldn't pick apart a machine exactly the same way you'd question a lab tech. But the principle's the same: in both cases you want to know not just what the results were but what the tech/machine did, how they did it, and where they may have made a mistake, contaminated the evidence, failed to calibrate the equipment before testing or otherwise done something that changed or could have changed the results.
Seems to me that was what the judge in the first case held, and the judge here should rule the same way for the same reasons.
Set up a contract that is in the software developers' favour: a license of $X per year, indexed against inflation, terminable upon the discovery of a bug in the software. Set up a bounty that's equal to the license value. On discovery of a bug, the (quarterly|annual) license fee is instead paid to the bounty hunter; the software developer gets nada. This is an equitable arrangement: we get increased personal safety, by paying some amount of tax dollar to the dude who wrote the code for the detectors. Cool, that.
If the code is any good, the developer will be nicely set for life. The states will continue to license it for as long as that software is (a) acceptably bug-free or (b) not displaced by a more-functional product that would better serve the public's interest. This new product might well be from the same developer: we're cool with that; it might not, but it's not like we're gonna chuck out a few million dollar's worth of detectors on a whim.
We'd all be winners in that scenario. I'm all for tossing into the kitty for a good product like that. There's 25 million of us, each drop a quarter in the bucket, that's a damn good paycheque for the guys that make a good product. It could be a coupla guys in a garage for all I care, just so long as it works. Any doofus can contract out a decent design to some Chinese company, make a bunch of open source, damned reliable breathe detectors, and license them via web commerce. A single smart guy could do it.
Alas, I'm not that guy. I suspect the guy will know something about FPGAs, assembly programming, and case design, perhaps coupling up with a web designer who's also a bit techy and a programmer who's a bit hardware-geeky. Toss in someone to oversee management -- which is to say specifically that the manager's job is to be the grease between the wheels: your job is to make damn sure everyone has what they need in order to get things done, and stand out of the way while they do it. Make sure the web guys are providing the 'geers with the knowledge resources they need to do their job, all the wikis and bugtrackers and forums and shit; make sure the hardware guy and software guy are on the same wavelength; make sure the engineers are dumping their brains into the databases so that we can exercise that information to make the next revision so fucking mindblowing we'll own the entire nation's breathe alcohol detector market. That's a whole lotta dough.
Go for it!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Build everything in ANALOG!
Here in WA state, refusing to take a brethalyzer test is the same as failing one. Instant DUI pretty much.
How screwed up is that? Note, I don't drink, and definitely don't condone drunk driving. IANAL, but, isn't that self incriminating?
Does the state believe 100% in the accuracy of the test to conclude that one's refusal is admonition of guilt? What do you have go hide if you're not guilty, right?
Hey, if everyone were to be reasonable, inaccuracy wouldn't be a big problem.
If I can be 99.99% certain that when the radar/lidar/alcohol detector/whatever is more than, say, 10% in excess of the legal limit, the radar is probably right and I will pay a reasonable fine. We'll all have to communicate our idea of "reasonable" to our representatives... both in terms of what our laws will say with regards to the limit, but also to the accuracy issue.
Lay it down in real terms, and I'll agree to what's reasonable: I'll commit to staying at a speed that my speedometer reads as within 10% of the limit, and I'll pay a $20 fine if the accuracy is such that only one out of a thousand "tagged" are falsely accused. The accuracy test will be designed by knowledgeable experts, and all components of the system shall be "open source": no hidden proprietary black boxes allowed.
I'll play fair if everyone else plays fair. It's in my best interests. And putting it all in an open light will achieve rewards for everyone that is worthy of them.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
And unfortunately, because "karma means nothing" to him, it's sitting at -1. What a shame.
I don't have any modpoints but hopefully a +2 reply will help some mods with points boost it to somewhere bozos that don't read at -1 can enjoy it.
It is called the Government Printing Office. The GPO publishes books, magazines. posters and CD-ROMs in hundreds of categories. Titles like "The American Practical Navigator" have been in print for two hundred years. U.S. Government Online Bookstore
...even if the source code is available, what assurances do you have that the breathalizer in question is running the same code (also, ACM's Reflections on Trusting Trust)? Are the cops going to have to have their breathalizers examined every single time somebody is pulled over and fails the test?
As opposed to the massive advantage of being rich? I'm not rich, but I'm decently technical, where's my piece of the advantage pie?:-)
Slogan of the math club bar crawl in college
This is simply a conspiracy by activist judges to bring the NASCAR Dads of your country on side. I mean who else elected dubbya. As a sibling post makes mention of, a NASCAR Dad, or even a Soccer (ok Hockey) Mom, is possibly more likly to get a DUI then vote.
As responsible citizens you must act NOW!
Happy Noodle Boy says "F###ing doughnut! Mock me? You fried cyclops!!"
I know I'll get modded down for this, but whatever:
Typical lawyer - he'll do anything to get his client off. You don't need to know how something works to know if it works - you just need to be able to test it. For example, Linux may be open but no one person knows how a computer running linux works entirely (from the high level code down to the transistor level). There could be bugs/unintended consequences in it, but we use it, it works under testing, and we trust it.
In the case of a breathalizer, the code is likely very simple. The company may want to keep the algorithms or code secret (i guess, i didn't rtfa), but I'm sure the company would allow you to test it all you want. In fact, they probably have tested it themselves a lot.
This whole mentality of "if its computer code it should be open" doesn't *always* make sense.
How do you know that the code you've just seen is actually the code that was on the ROM of the machine used?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Some programmers got rich shaving pennies from otherwise correct code.
Without access to the source, there is no way to prove that quickly turning the machine on and off 3 times won't cause it to over or underreport the next test.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
the breathalyzer blows you!
Finding bugs might be difficult, so let's not bother looking?
If there was a *chance* of me finding one, I'd sure as hell want to look at that code.
Why is it that when source code is involved, writers make such a big deal out of it? The defense wants to know about the inner workings of the device. This time, it happens to be source code.
It seems like whenever there is a linux, source code, or internet slant to a story, it suddenly becomes a million times more important.
Writer: "I'd like to write a story about a guy asking for the schematics for a dui machine."
Editor: "No."
Writer: "I'd like to write a story about a guy asking for the source code for a dui machine."
Editor: "That's a whole new ballpark. Stop the presses!"
You don't need access to the source code to ascertain its accuracy. All you need are test subjects for whom the blood-alcohol level is already known and see how close the device comes to it.
All they have to do is encrypt the code then decrypting it would be a violation of the DMCA, unless a court order would exempt you from that. The challenge makes sense, the devices in question are used to generate profit, or at least some cash flow to help pay public bills, the local governments could find it helpful to be able to distribute additional fines. Casinos and their hardware suppliers used to rig slot and video poker machines to give out fewer jackpots resulting in more PROFIT for them, saw it on Breaking Vegas. The RIAA is paying their agents for every positive result indicating file sharing of their crap. And then there's Mythbusters and the poppy seed drug test which returned a positive 30min after eating a poppy seed bagel. It's possible the challenge was made as a last desperate attempt of a habitual offender trying to avoid jail time or maybe even someone from a competing company going for the gave government contract. Even if the machines arn't rigged to add maybe 0.004 to every result they are 25yrs old and the last reviewed/certified changes were 12yrs ago and they may not be as accurate as they could be and are accidentally off by 0.002, that could be the difference between the very close 0.078 and the illegal 0.08.
I read some random stat somewhere saying that 60% of drivers on the road after 3am were drunk. I used to work until 2am or 4am and if I was stopped for a random DUI test and the only thing between continuing my commute home and a fine was some electronice device I'm not familiar with I'd want it to be as accurate as possible, yes being 0.00 after work and 0.08 after some time a a bar is too big a change without some tampering. If you were at a bar and then were stopped and a breath given while you were still seated in your car, no field sobriety or blood test and the result was test failure wouldn't you want to challenge it? Maybe the batteries were low and it was running on low power and the reults were faulty. There are places(NJ being one) were refusal of a breath test has the penalty of a 0.10+, suspension of license and thousands in fines and maybe even some jail time. The results of and the device that can result such severe penalties should subject to some form of peer review or uninterested/government independent agency. Testing of DNA and other evidence is done by both sides during murder1 trials, there's no reason the same shouldn't happen for trials for lesser offences. I consider it to be the same as not being allowed to examine a photo of you allegedly robbing the Kwiki Mart that could be photoshopped. Senator McCarthy says you're on his list of communists, but you're not allowed to see the list.
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
It's unfortunate that the Open Source movement has to be advocated by homocidal users of a dangerous drug.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
These things can be and are routinely calibrated using samples of known alcohol content, and defense attorneys routinely challenge the validity of the calibration's accuracy and the techniques used to conduct the calibration. There's no legal reason to treat these devices as anything other than black boxes. As a lawyer, I can tell you that this has much less to do with the open source movement than it has to do with the criminal defense bar doing their job (love it or hate it) of selling doubt to a jury.
"Ladies and Gentleman of the Jury, are you willing to convict my innocent client on the basis of evidence gathered by a secret government owned apparatus?"
Mind you, breath tests are the least accurate means of testing blood alcohol content, but in most jurisdictions, a driver can opt for an actual blood test if he or she wants one.
What's next - examining the firmware's source code of a digital camera used to take photographic evidence? The fancy fingerprint matching computer program we see every week on CSI? Mind you, I don't think there's any actual harm in us seeing the source code, but it's not a civil rights issue from the perspective of prosecuting crimes.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
The underlying assumption in the article, is that people should be able to drink and drive as long as they are doing so at a threshold within the accuracy of the test equipment.
However, the position of the state is that nobody should drink any amount of alcohol and drive, at all. And instead of a zero-tolerance policy, a compromise policy with a specific criterion for prosecution is created.
Are the unlucky people who are the clients of the lawyer in the article claiming that they have not had any alcohol whatsoever and are being convicted of DUI anyway, or are they actually admitting to drinking and driving, and trying to avoid the consequences of getting caught doing so, by claiming the accuracy of the equipment cannot be verified?
I don't expect the state to be sympathetic to their position.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Problem was this fellow was of a religion ( cant remember which one ) that forbade alcohol.
Islam forbids consumption of alcoholic beverages, full stop. Christianity, on the other hand, permits use of wine in moderation (as Jesus did), but believers should not drink "wine" (that is, alcoholic beverages) to the point of being "drunk" (that is, intoxicated), but rather get high on the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18).
Funny thing is, publicly funded researchers aren't required to publish/make available their source code. In other words, your tax money is going towards scientific software development that, if the researcher chooses, can be through a closed source model. Thats doubly evil since peer review isn't possible, either. Not only would I like to know how the breathalyzer works, but I'd like to be know my physicist buddy didn't mess up his math while calculating the stress limit on the latest panels for a NASA space shuttle.
see: http://openinformatics.sourceforge.net/
CAPS LOCK IS THE CRUISE CONTROL OF AWESOMNESS
Here in Austria its the same, and in Germany too.
But it has always been that way, I don't think breath tests are accurate enough to prove a case in court. They are only an indication if a blood test is needed or not.
And often somebody is just above the limit in the breath test and just below the limit in the blood test.
When buying fruit I do not examine the scale every time because I know there is an independent organisation that does this regularly. If I would be arrested because of (what I think is) a defective speedgun or breathalizer, I would rather ask for a recent calibration report than for the source code. That is what certification institutes are for in the first place.
I thought that the breathalizer was designed to provide a strong indication that somebody had been drinking, the officer can arrest under the suspsision of being DUI, which is then confirmed by an 'open source' blood test which can then be used in court.
There are all sorts of reasons why somebody could fail a breathalizer, not least of which is mouth wash - which is why only the results of a blood test are admissible as evidence of DUI.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Ah. So what you really want from your engineers is someone who can look totally confident when they don't know and has totally mastery of B.S.ing. Why don't you throw in a firm, "honest" handshake while you're at it?
What you want is either a con-man or a politician. Programmers are sometimes shy, quiet, and awkward when asked questions - especially assembly and compiler programmers. You may get someone who knows their stuff but is too timid to admit it when you ask them questions. Someone may have the best stuff in the world, but you come away thinking that they can't write anything beyond a Dr. Seuss book.
If you want to manage, but don't have the time to look through their code, find a third party with good communication skills who can.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Don't be asinine. Security through obscurity is another layer that any threat has to break through. In the case of the defence and national security business, just about everything is obscured as much as possible, hence the cheese phrases "top secret" and "need to know" appearing in every spy movie ever.
Do you really think it would make no difference if the (highly confidential) source code to every defence application were released? Perhaps we should release the names of all the intelligence officers working under cover in diplomatic missions as well? And the list of all the suspected terrorists currently under surveillance by those intelligence officers? And the daily travel plans for each intelligence officer within the next week? Yep, that wouldn't compromise their security at all.
Information that is obscured is more secure than the same information when it's not secured, simply because there's an extra wall a cracker has to break through before they can get the information or do any damage. In this case more than any other, that wall is rather solid and well-guarded, too. Every intelligence service in the world has known this since forever, but I suppose it was hoping a bit much to put OSS-zealot wannabe hackers in the same sentence as the word "intelligence".
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
On the other hand, there's no such thing as a "technicality" in legal jargon. Lawyers don't use that word in open court or in pleadings. It's a layman's term. What people need to understand is that the word "technicality" means a violation of a rule of procedure, a rule of evidence, a statute, or the Constitution.
"Having my rights violated" is NOT limited to being an African-American in 1960s Alabama and having a police dog attack me. My rights are broader than that and are enumerated as discussed above, and any time someone decides to gloss over the fine print in the name of justice, I get a little worried.
Make love, not reality television.
(a) was made by humans (so it can't be perfect!)
(b) is owned/operated by the prosection/gvt (conflict of interest?)
(c) they are unable to independantly verify the workings.
Would you allow your opposition in a civil case to say - "I'm right, 'cause I have this black-box with a green light that's flashing; and it flashes whenever I'm right." The difference here is that you won't just lose some cash, but a part of your life, possibly your job, house etc...
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
I just thought I would share this with everyone, because it is somewhat related and would definitely come up to some degree in DC. You see we have a Zero Tolerance policy on driving drunk. They decided to pass this law so they could arrest a person who blew as little as a 0.01.
Now it is suppose to be discretionary, but recently an officer arrested a woman who had a single glass of wine with dinner and then proceded to say she was drunk. Apparently when she did the "alphabet" test, he said to recite the alphabet from D to X. She stopped at S. Why? Because hell X and S sound very similar normally. Trust me this is a ploy to confuse individuals, but it can be argued she maybe should have verified the letters. I would like to state I have passed most of the tests cops give while drunk (I wasn't driving, but I wanted a non-scientific study to see if they worked.) and they are all jokes. You have to be stupid drunk IMO to not remember the alphabet (from any letter range).
He said she was cocky. Well no shit, I would be cocky too if I was SOBER. I mean drunken driving with one glass of wine with dinner...wow some lush. This Officer's Captain (or Chief or someone important) defended him as arresting 100 (or so) people since this law and stated he was an "expert" as such in drunkeness. Well, maybe he just like tossing innocent people into prison? How many of these arrested "drunks" blew over the 0.08 that is the national standard.
The woman spent months fighting the ticket and eventually won. (Thought I think she should've sued for the wrongful imprisonment of one night.) She then had to fight with the DMV over her driver's license because they do not pay attention to what actually happens in the courts, and she refused to attend a responsible drinking course. So especially in a place where blowing a 0.01 (cough syrup, bread with natural fermentation, some cough drops, and possibly other items can cause this) can get you arrested, having access to the source code would be important, eventhough fighting the stupid law should be the priority in this case (and the city council claims to be working on it).
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Odd use of mods.
If the US Government wants breathalysers, they can hire some engineers to design them
Ahhh, irrational idealism. I remember it well. I also remember how stupid I was when I used to think things like this. The government can't get anything like this accomplished, you'll find that out some day.
Name some recent effort by the US government to provide information to the public on such a detailed level
Again, your youth is showing. Take a trip to your local state or US representative's office. You'll see hundreds of publications on all sorts of things including things that you're naming. Or if you're feeling a little lazy just go to the web site of the General Services Administration. There you can order all kinds of free publications.
It's OK. Everyone that's young thinks they know everything and that everyone and everything else is stupid. Then most people grow up and actually accomplish things and see how difficult doing great things is. Then they realize that they're not as smart and other people and institutions aren't as dumb as they thought. The problem people are the ones that don't grow up though and never realize this. I hope you aren't one of those.
This is about the worst advice for verifying the engineering of a complex device that I could think of.
The person's ability to play it cool under this kind of unsually direct question is probably inversely correlated with their ability to program.
You described a litmus test for good CEO's, not good engineers. A good engineer is aware of the complexities of the real world, doesn't see things in black and white. When pressed in this manner, a good engineer is immediately going to start second guessing themselves for the thousandth time, as they should.
The catch, of course, is the meetings are fewer and further in between and any sort of excessive demands (such as a 90 in 90, or 3x a week) may be impossible to do w/o AA.
Heck, ppl who have to go to NA (narcotics anon) meetings with high frequency often pick up the slack via AA.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
So you would understand it?
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
You don't need to see the source if you can prove it works in control tests, duh!
The type of testing implied here is like trying to prove by example which we all know is not valid unless every single possibility is examined. This would not be possible with the breathalyzer as the test case possibilities are not discrete.
My instinct tells me that if the source code is released, they WILL find that it will be easier to prove the possibility of an inaccurate reading, and all past convitions that relied on this code will have to be wiped from the record.
One must remember that a police officer has the power to clock your speed by the method of pacecar using his own judgement that he is driving the same speed. How could you test that in court?
I truly believe that these untestable methods have no place as evidence in the courtroom, but I don't think any of it will be changing any time soon.
Imagine the lawsuits filed for compensation of lost funds due to DUIs. The cost of lawyers, classes, and insurance premiums ranges from 5-10K per violation on average. I would love to ge my money back!
Any unclassified code written with taxpayer money should be Open Source and available for the cost of duplication. Of course, all the ITAR nonsense will get in your way in some cases, but this can be overcome by following procedures. Free and open source supports the long term protection of data integrity and the inability of a proprietary vendor to hold the government hostage to upgrades and maintenance.
As for COTS, well, it is desirable that it be FOSS. However, some extremely useful COTS stuff just doesn't have an adequate FOSS counterpart - e.g. Simulink.
"The impossible often has a certain integrity that the merely improbable lacks" - Dirk Gently
What ever makes you think the breathalyzer's accuracy has been tested or verified? These things are amazingly broken. Hell, they come with a little slip of paper full of legal disclaimers. The manufacturer won't even warranty them as being accurate or useful for any purpose.
Read up on http://www.duiblog.com/ under Breath Alcohol Testing: "State of the Art"?
Clue: Amongst many, many other problems, BREATHALYZERS DON'T CHECK FOR ALCOHOL. They check for compounds containing methyl groups via spectral absorption. Sure, alcohol is one such compound. One of many thousands, hundreds of which are normally found in, on, or around the human body.
Clue: If you burp within half an hour before taking a breathalyzer test, you're screwed. Similarly if you have recently filled your gas tank (gas fumes in lungs create a false positive). Painted your house. Eaten certain types of flavored chocolates (or other foods). Been around car exhaust fumes (say, in the bumper-to-bumper traffic leading up to the DUI road block). Or if you've had the misfortune to be tested just after several slightly (still legal) intoxicated people (fumes building up in the machine is a confirmed problem).
Clue: Once you test positive on a breathalyzer, nothing else is required for your guaranteed conviction. You are now screwed! As in your driver's license is immediately confiscated. You are booked. You go directly to jail. You are denied trial by jury. Attempting to present evidence that the breathalyzer is flawed will get you charged with contempt of court. The police have every incentive to PREVENT you from obtaining secondary testing, which could prove your innocence and upset their little applecart. You can expect to be anally gang-raped. You can expect to be infected with HIV. Our prison system is truly horrifying. There's a reason we've been on Amnesty International's watchlist for so many decades.
Clue: You're not required to do anything wrong to get tested. The police frequently set up road blocks, and check everyone on the road.
Clue: You are not required to drive under the influence. Testing positive within three hours of driving is sufficient. As in driving to the bar and getting drunk is sufficient for a DUI conviction even though you haven't been intoxicated behind the wheel.
Clue: You know how the cops yell at you: "Keep breathing! Breathe harder! Harder!" That's because the last part of your breath from the bottom of the lungs near the alveolar sacs is the richest in alcohol. It can be over 50% above your blood alcohol level. And once you test positive, it's game over. You are screwed.
Clue: Need I mention how the machines assume you have a standard (fixed) lung capacity? Ignoring how humans vary from 50% to 200% of their default value... Ignoring how even the same human can vary considerably over a period of hours... Ignoring the impact of temperature and barometric pressure changes.
I could go on and on and on here. (We haven't even touched on RFI issues, etc.) Read up on this topic. We are getting seriously fucked.
reminds me of a gas-pump short-volume scam: the pump had been rigged to deliver less than a full gallon. of course people would eventually notice, and the gummint gas-pump inspector guy would come out & take samples.
and he would always find that the pumps were dead-accurate...wtf???
seems the scammers knew that the inpectors always took some specific volume: 1 gal., 5, whatever, and coded the pump to deliver those volumes accurately;-);-);-)
Oooh! Can you say, "expert witness", children? Very good!
As stands, the only individual who can explain it is an agent of the govenment... not acceptable given first principles under an adversarial system of law. Yes, there are limited sovereign exceptions such as for national security, but this would hardly qualify for such.
(IANAL; I am not admitted to the bar, I just drink with law students at the pub.)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Is that only in Louisiana? I thought most states had laws on the book which stated that refusing to take the test was legally equivilant to blowing above the limit, and would get you a DWI.
I lived in Louisiana when I was young, it is a strange state... There was a drive through bar less than a mile from my family's house in suburban Shreveport. One of the 'things to do' was to get a 'go cup' and cruise the streets. I heard they have an open container law now though...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
if the breathalyzer's accuracy has been tested and verified
I'm not typically one to side with the conspiracy theorists, as I tend to believe the police, and I believe the breathalizer is probably very accurate, but...
The question is not the accuracy of the device, but who gets to verify that accuracy. In a murder trial with witnesses, the prosecution would be required to present them, the defense would be able to cross-examine, and the jury could make their own evaluation. It's the defendant's constitutional right. If the prosecution came forward and said only, "We talked to Joe and he saw the defendant do the murder. We've talked to Joe before and he's always been right, so we know the defendant is guilty." The defendant doesn't get to ask Joe questions, the jury never sees Joe or knows anything about him, and worse, all past juries have taken Joe's word as absolute truth.
Until the inner-workings of the breathalizer are openly known, we can only assume that there's a little guy named Joe who lives in there and makes the call.
I've gotten clocked doing insane speeds on my bike. Consider: it's carbon-fiber with steel spokes in the wheels. The spokes at the top of the wheel are going twice as fast as I am (like the tops of wheels do) and have the highest radar reflectivity of anything on the bike. One of my biker friends successfully challenge a speeding ticket based on this argument.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Firstly, anyone who knowingly is driving under the influence deserves to be removed from our society. Period. If you're driving, DON'T DRINK. If you're so collosally stupid as to not be able to plan ahead in your life, take a cab. If you can't handle such trivial responsibility as this, you have no business in my world.
.08, but to get there initially is far more than a single drink). Anyone who doesn't feel any effect from 2 or 3 drinks either is a fool, or drinks far too much to begin with. Believe me, I've been a heavy drinker in the past, and I STILL got a good buzz from 3 beer.
Secondly, anyone giving advice on how to "beat" the system on a DWI, you're pretty much as useful as a person in category #1.
Thirdly, up here in Canada most provinces will charge you with the equivalent of DWI if you refuse to take a breathalyzer test.
I just don't get why people still try to push the limit with drinking and driving. For most people, legally impaired (.08 in most areas) means you've had 2 or 3 drinks in the recent past (the one drink per hour rule is to *maintain* a BAC of
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Given that we are now all questioning the inner-workings of all things, let us question the inner workings of the Diebold machines. Any machine that mystically counts my vote and the vote of many other real and imaginary people deserves to be questioned and investigated right away.
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
Many of my friends here in FL have gotten off similar charges with the exact same cliam.
Dude, testing whether a mixture of alcohol and air returns the correct mix ratio does not mean that for any given human being who is excreting alcohol from their lungs that it is going to tell you their correct current blood alcohol level. All it means is that it can correctly measure a given mix of air and alcohol. The scientific study that shows that this mixture reflects a given level of alcohol in a person's blood is based on an average sized white human male, with average lung capacity, with an average metabolism, an average body type, and with an average blood chemistry. Given this, I wonder what would happen if you happened to be a member of one of the tribes that come from the Arctic who have very few sweat glands. In this case instead of excreting alcohol via your sweat glands, urine, and breath you would only do so via urine and breathing. A person with this physical trait would tend have a higher level of alcohol in the air in your lungs because it has less places to accumulate and leave the body. Such a person might very well appear to be much drunker if the test was not adjusted for their body type. So to be clear all this type of calibration does it show that the tool correctly detects the ration of the air/alcohol mixture coming out of person's mouth it does not prove the machine can accurately reflect a person's current blood alcohol level. The sick thing is that once something like this is allowed to become a precedent it is very hard to fight it unless something obvious happens like a person who was been video taped in a locked roomed for 24 hours and then shown taking one shot and testing drunk. Something like this was tried in Florida and it was ruled not admissible, by they way. Interesting is it not?
On another testing tool related note, drug test have the same type of flaw and worse. They only show that a given chemical signature appears in the blood it does not say how it got there and in many cases, if there are no secondary metabolites, how much the original ingestion was or how long ago it happened. To know this you would have to be able to monitor the person beforehand to verify what they took, how much and the time they took it. Otherwise, you are back to the concept that for a given average person with this chemical signature(s) in their blood at this level it means they would have taken so and so and, if you are lucky how much of so and so and at what time. Well guess what appart from the average person flaw there is another huge flaw in this. Now you might be saying, "Well if I detect heroin in a person's blood I do not care how much or when it was taken." Well MTV no less did a big on air demonstration once in which a cast member who was tested with a drug test that morning went and ate that legendary poppy seed bagel, that the test companies swear do not cause false positives, and then took the same test again and came back positive for a recent heroine ingestion. Somehow the massive implications of this seemed to have been lost in the wind with the public and the government and the time but let me clarify them as a herbalist and chemist. Poppy seeds that are harvested from mature pods that are then washed and the liquid tested in a lab will show no (In reality Super Super Low Amounts) of opiates as will most higher quality hand harvested poppy seed supplies bought in stores but in the real world for wholesalers poppy seed sellers, which are used in most bagels, the pods and their seeds are harvested and cleaned by machines. These machines grab a few less than ripe pods and some pods that have been damaged by things like insects. Well when damage happens to an unripe pod or an unripe pods dies the sap may dry up inside it or a drop or two may remain dried on the outside and when this or an uripe pod gets pulled into the processing equipment the result is that on occasion more than mere trace amounts of opiates get into the real world product. In fact in bins of wholesale poppies if the particle of sap was the correct size to match a poppy seed you may actually find a form of opiu