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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.
The reason there's no push for this is that for most people, making code open source doesn't actually improve their access to it. For 99.999 percent of the US population (and, I'd wager, a solid majority of Slashdot readers), an open source breathalyzer is still a mysterious box. The only difference is that you could get a computer scientist who doesn't work for the manufacturer to explain it. Now I do think that this is important (especially when it comes to voting machines) but for most people it probably doesn't come across as a great blow for openness and freedom.
jf
"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?"
Heh. I remember reading a story once where a dude challenged a speeding ticket he recieved. He wanted proof that the machine was properly reading the speed of his vehicle. The company that made the radar gun refused to go into detail about how it worked, afterall that's proprietary information they don't want their competitors having. Ultimately the case was thrown out because they brought the radar gun into the court room and clocked a wall travelling at 4mph.
"Derp de derp."
Some jurisdictions have Freedom of Information and other assorted records laws, which entitle normal citizens the right of access to documents and records, ensure that they are not destroyed to cover things up, etc.
Unfortunately, some governments work extraordinarily hard to subvert these rights. Of course, some people in some countries/states/etc do not have these rights to begin with.
So YES, governments should be open source.
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I pulled jury duty earlier this year and was placed on a DUI trial. I can tell you that breatholizers are complete bullshit. In Texas if you are pulled over refuse to take the test and offer to have a blood sample instead. They will threaten to take your license away if you say no but it's an administrative process and you can still get exemptions and keep driving.
I learned alot more about DUI law during that trial and while I never personally drink and drive I could see very easily how one could be falsely suspected and convicted.
So how did the jury decide? We didn't there was a mistrail because the "sleezy lawyer" ( the prosecutor in this case ) asked the cop a question about the administration of a PBT ( portable breath test ). These are not admissible in TX court and the judge had already said it wasn't allowed in. The judge felt that we wouldn't ignore the fact that we had heard the cops answer and declared a mistrial. He said he felt the prosecutor made a "mistake" but I don't believe it. I think she knew the trial wasn't going her way and wanted a way out.
It kinda sucked actually.... it was like reading a novel and not getting to read the end of the book.
But here laser speed detection is widespread to catch speeders, and a very special court case comes to mind: The defendant was accused of speeding in a rural area at a speed nearly physical impossible at the place where his speed was measured with a laser. The police refused to give out any information on the device used, except for the brand and the model. The defence got hold of a copy of the operations manual for the device from an unknown source, and the police had to confirm to the court that it was the operations manual for the device used. The defendant was aquitted because the defence could show that the policeman didn't know about the warnings about reflections in the manual and the he had used it in a way that could give false results. Without the manual the defendent would have been falsely convicted.
This has nothing to do with the accuracy of the breathalyzer and everything to do with the sleazy practices of DUI defense attorneys.
An attorney is the last defense between a defendant and The Government, which can, at the point of a gun, take away one's money, freedom or even life. It should be plainly obvious that The Government is much more powerful than the individual, and so it is vitally important that the individual be allowed a representative who will point out when The Government doesn't have an i dotted or a t crossed. Having a defense attorney that gets his client off on "a technicality" is the best way to insure that the government will do ITS job properly, fairly and fully, rather than putting someone in prison unjustly.
Let me assure you I'm not happy with drunk drivers or any lawbreaker getting off, but it would be much worse for an innocent person to be found guilty.
I once inherited a "simple" project, a pressure transducer with microcontroller that gave readings to a 'main' computer in decimal. While testing it I noticed that readings were sometimes way off. There was a bug in the binary to decimal conversion routine that causes about a 10 percent error in 1 out of about every 50 values (I recall it was an odd little table lookup thing).
So these days it DOES happen, and with bugs in "simple" devices perhaps moreso than ever, a "simple device" CAN be very wrong, and in this case it could cause the defendant a large fine, loss of license or even a jail term even though he may have actually below the legal limit.
You may argue that the legal limit for DUI alcohol tests is too high and should be lowered (further than has been done in recent decades), and there's probably a good argument for that (based on the punishment and very low drunk driving rates in some European contries), but again, this is a different matter than properly enforcing the current law.
Tag lost or not installed.
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
There was a case in Australia, where an improved version of the breathalyzer machine "got drunk". After having serveral people blow below the legal limit, the machine started to acrue the alcohol, eg person 1 0.01 PCA, person 2 0.02 PCA , etc etc until this fellow blew and it went over the limit.
Problem was this fellow was of a religion ( cant remember which one ) that forbade alcohol. So he goes back to the station for a blood test and Lo for the blood test came back negative for alcohol.
And now blood tests are needed to convict on DUI and "blowing in the bag" is used to see if a blood test is needed.
( currently looking for link )
Mod the parent of this post up! He deserves a 5. The trust us mentality of the government bureaucrats has cost the freedom of many and the lives of others. Distrust of the government is the right and moral obligation of every citizen, because it is all that keeps tyrrany in check. With Hurricane Katrina the bureaucrats wouldn't let the citizens boats in for rescue efforts and hundreds died awaiting a helicopter. The boats were turned back because the drivers were not "qualified" by FEMA. Should we trust this sort of behavior? Yes, we can trust it to kill us.
In the justice the issue of fact presented in court is the whole issue. You must be able to try the "witness". This is why "rape shield laws" really protect the criminal from prosecution. They prevent trying the witness and thus we must either take the claim on faith or forget it. The inability to try a witness in technical evidence is to give the state an assured conviction without a trial. One may as well install a vending machine for justice. With modern computers the taking of their output as evidence is and act of extreme faith. One must trust the input, trust the process and trust the custody of the whole system including documents which are virtual in the first place. Video evidence for example may appear totally intact, but with modern edit technology it can be a computer induced hallucination.
I want DUI's locked up! But I don't want officers running a vending machine for justice either. The more computer dependent these machines become, the more certain the tests they presume to do can be faked, altered or be just plain wrong and to test the programming becomes as important as asking the arresting officer questions. Educated Jurors must keep this stuff in mind.
The state pays officers and prosecutors to get convictions. They will unemploy one who loses often. There is a high incentive to fake and change evidence. The state has found it very cheap to hire very simple minded officers and load them with gadgets designed for the purpose of conviction. It makes money for the state and makes officials look like they are doing their job.
In England something like 800,000 traffic cameras exist. They got fabulous photos of terrorists doing their damage, but nothing could be done to stop them before hand. This because nobody was really watching. Cameras you see lack the ability to suspect (Probable Cause). The effect of these cameras has been an increase in crime and danger. This because the officers are no longer actually doing their job. We have to change this thinking that the machine is right. It exists to avoid being right.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.