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Judge Rules Defense Can Get DUI Machine Source Code
pfleming alerts us to developments in Arizona on a subject we have frequently discussed (e.g. FL, MN, NJ): efforts in DUI cases to obtain source code to devices that analyze blood alcohol levels. On Friday a Pima County Superior Court judge ruled that the software that powers the Intoxilyzer 8000 must be revealed to defense lawyers. "Defense attorneys representing more than 20 people arrested on felony DUI charges agreed to consolidate their cases into one and to argue it before [Judge] Bernini ... The source codes are crucial because the Intoxilyzer 8000 sometimes gives 'weird' or inexplicable results ... Six other states have been battling CMI [maker of the Intoxilyzer] over the source code — Minnesota, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Tennessee and New Jersey... CMI has currently racked up over $1.2 million in fines in a civil contempt order for not disclosing the source code in Florida."
I'm sorry, but if a company is making it impossible for DUI prosecutions to be done fairly, the company officers should be sitting in jail whilst we wait to find out if they can get the source code together or not.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
In court documents, Deputy Pima County Attorney Robin Schwartz said the defense attorneys' requests "bear all the hallmarks of a fishing expedition." Common sense shows that people rely on software and source-code information for everyday matters, Schwartz argued. One just looks at the results to know if something works or not. Schwartz used electricity as an example. "No one . . . needs to see a schematic of wiring to know that when he flips the switch on the wall, the light will come on," Schwartz said.
Um, that assumes that you are comparing the result with a known value. The point of a breathalyzer is to determine an unknown value.
Unless of course this attorney is saying that they already know the accused are drunk, in which case the breathalyzer is redundant.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Weird numbers? What weird numbers...?
This isn't about OpenSource.
It's about making sure that the device providing so-called scientific evidence for use at trial is producing evidence properly and -accurately-.
I'm surprised it isn't already on the books that source code for devices such as this be disclosed for that purpose already.
the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him;
In this case the withess is a machine, he has the constitutional right to know how that machine works
rule that all programming used for government functions be open source, unless there's an overriding reason for it to be closed. This outfit appears to have manufactured and marketed a fundamentally flawed piece of technology that may very well have resulted in prison time for innocent people. Not acceptable ... a manufacturer's need to maintain a competitive edge should not be held more important than our right to not be falsely accused and wrongly imprisoned. Now, of course there may be other issues with CMI's product other than the firmware, but a detailed examination of the code is a good first step.
Furthermore, the people responsible for the decision to market the Intoxilyzer should be held accountable for the device's failures, especially if they sold it knowing that the design was defective. Sure, it costs more money to properly certify a design, and to implement effective quality controls. Still, if auto manufacturers have to suffer multi-million-dollar lawsuits over tiny flaws in vehicle design, these guys should hardly get off scot-free.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I work as a law clerk in Minnesota, and while (being a clerk and all) I haven't "ordered" per se the source code be turned over, I've written many orders doing so -- until the Minnesota Supreme Court created a very high hurdle to getting it and no one has since requested. As stated by the attorney in the article, CMI won't turn the code over. Period. They simply will not obey court orders to do so. Minnesota is currently suing CMI in federal court, and we'll see how that turns out. But barring a federal court order, I assume they will simply continue to refuse to turn the code over. The result? Hundreds of DUIs being thrown out in Minnesota alone. Nice to see that the company cares more about their IP than the safety of our roads.
Even in such a simple case there are many things it should be testing. Is the A/D output sane? Does it take 3 quick samples while someone is blowing and average them or just take it once (which could be wrong for some reason)? According to the article, it doesn't look like it does. It calibrates the wind sensor, but doesn't check that the calibration is sane. It doesn't report errors unless they happen 32 times in a row. It disables the watchdog timer. It disables the interrupt for illegal instructions. It doesn't meet any coding standards. It contains code with things like "this is temporary for now" in it. There is an obvious reason why they didn't want the code released.
This was a partial summary of another breathalyzer source code that was opened up in another case. This has nothing to do with open source this has to do with software that is half-ass'd but determines if someone has to go through years of court hearings, meetings, suspended license, and a whole waste of money because some company rushed their software engineer to write code that may be giving wrong results all together.
This code should be open to public discrimination, there would be no trade secrets if the law protects the code from someone else using it after its been opened to public discrimination because every company would have to disclose their software.
Then there needs to be a way to prove that the source code provided matches the binary code being executed. But if they can't provide the source code, then there's no reason at all to believe that it's honest.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Just asking. While the context obviously differs, the importance of voting machine accuracy ranks much higher than that of breathalizers.
If they are going to use the tools results as evidence, it should be open to expert examination just like any other evidence.
While there may prove to be some problem in the source code that destroys accuracy, it would be far more likely that any error is caused by the actual sensor. The only real error I can see them making in the source code would be averaging multiple readings from the sensor together.
The real way to determine if the Intoxilyzer is accurate is to do repeated lab tests using known concentrations of alcohol in air. This would take both software and hardware into account.
breathalyzers should never be the final answer.
you get pulled over for erratic behavior
you get breathalyzed and/or FST and if either merit suspicion you should then and only then be taken in for blood and/or urine done by a scrutinized lab.
the breathalyzer should be an indicator, not evidence.
If the system is one of those handheld machines police use, wouldn't the "source code" be a very low-level language, like an assembly language (not like C/C++ or Java)?
How the hell are the defense going to explain an assembly language - a VERY low-level language - to the Jury? A jury that most likely consists of people who use their computers to check their E-mail, watch videos, and surf the web. It took me a LONG time to make any sense of assembly languages... I just wonder how long it will take the Jury... or the people teaching the Jury what every line of an assembly language does... on a device that probably contains thousands of lines of code. It would be a bit easier with a higher level language like C++, because that at least provides words that people could comprehend.
Schwartz used electricity as an example.
"No one . . . needs to see a schematic of wiring to know that when he flips the switch on the wall, the light will come on," Schwartz said.
And what would this guy do if he finds that sometimes the light doesn't come on? Or the light goes off on its own? Or comes on by itself? Or flickers and buzzes? An electrician would need to know the wiring involved. A diagram or schematic would be used, if available, or else he would have to trace the wires (reverse engineering).
And this analogy doesn't even apply to a measurement device. What if he uses a volt meter that says the voltage is 120 volts ... does he assume that because the meter deflected that it's reading is correct? It could be a 240 volt circuit that has each wire only 120 volts relative to ground.
Any device that cannot be independently verified as operating correctly at all times should not have any of its results submitted in court for any purpose other than to argue that the device is defective in a case against the manufacturer.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
If the system is one of those handheld machines police use, wouldn't the "source code" be a very low-level language, like an assembly language (not like C/C++ or Java)?
Not quite true. While it used to be that all embedded devices were programmed in assembly language, nowadays there are C compilers for most embedded microcontrollers. C is very frequently used when doing complex math and/or when time is not an issue.
A jury that most likely consists of people who use their computers to check their E-mail, watch videos, and surf the web.
Once a flaw has been found in the source, it could most likely be demonstrated with a real live Intoxilyzer.
You don't have to explain assembly language to a jury; you get an expert witness to testify.
They just have an expert witness examine the code. It would be someone with experience in the kind of assembly code involved, and experience developing firmware for measurement devices like this. It is the testimony of the expert, not the source code itself, that would be presented to the jury. Just because you can't grok assembly code doesn't mean no one can. Obviously someone had to write the stuff.
Sadly, it may be the case that this manufacturer hired someone like you to develop it, and it was their first time writing for that CPU architecture, and under the memory and speed constraints involved in the hardware selected for the device. Perhaps it gives flaky results simply because values are not read from registers in sufficient time for it to have the correct meaning. The hardware may be providing the next interval reading, but the software assumes it's from an earlier time interval, and differentiates the values incorrectly. There are lot of other possible problems that can happen when interfacing between software and hardware. Just look at all the bugs device drivers in common computer systems have.
Don't forget here that we are talking about a device that gets substantially less testing than a driver in Windows, and gets deployed for use in mobile environments that subject the device to hostile conditions like vibration and mishandling. And consider that there are fewer of these devices made and sold than there are beta test copies of a new version of Windows. Which will have the greater scale of testing in the intended environment?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The software should be available to those who have a legitimate interest. The source code for ANY machine being used to gather evidence should be available to the defense. The judge in such a case should get to decide if the defense needs to see the source code. If closed source software is leaked to the public, then some sort of sanction would be appropriate.
This raises the issue of software on election machines... The entire voting public has a legitimate interest about haw their votes are counted. The only way around this is that the software running should be publicly available. It doesn't have to be open source as far as copyrights are concerned, just the public should have the right to examine the source code.
This has already happened with radar guns. If they are not calibrated frequently they will register a tree moving at twenty miles an hour.
That being said, in Florida, even if you are below the legal limit, you can still be charged with driving while impaired if it can be shown that your driving was impaired.
One of my closest friends is a Criminal Defense Attorney and he tells everyone he knows, "Don't drink a drop and drive". Also, you are within your legal rights in all fifty states to request a blood test instead of the breath test. You will be booked, but the results will be indisputable in court. So if you're sure you only drank one beer it will be dead on.
This comes straight from the product's PDF made available on the manufacturers website.
Under "Features and Options", "REAL-TIME CLOCK: accurate to ±10 minutes per year."
Now, although I'm pretty sure that time measurements aren't required for analysis, I have to wonder the accuracy rate is like for it's intended purpose.
That argument aside, unless the clocks are well-maintained this sort of time drift could really skew the evidence in a case where time was critical. A poorly maintained machine could, in theory, be the "reasonable doubt" that someone committed (or even didn't commit) a crime.
And this is a surprise to you? They are selling a product, not safety.
I would also imagine that if a major bug is found, they might have to refund all the purchases to date, and go under.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
At some point, the suspects were caught, and the state needed to collect evidence of their BAC. Unfortunately, the state, instead of using a device that could provide accurate, verifiable evidence, used a device that, due to the lack of source code, could not provide verifiable evidence. Since the evidence is not verifiable, then the evidence is not admissible. Next time, the state should buy and use breathalyzers that produce admissible evidence.
While their action is despicable, the breathalyzer vendor didn't agree to provide their source code as part of the purchase, and shouldn't be forced to do so after the fact because the state didn't buy a device suitable for the task.
It's a bit like if I went to the state and offered to sell them a breathalyzer, and delivered a bicube blood alcohol measurement device, which is used by giving the two cubes to the suspect, having them throw the cubes on the ground, and then counting the number of dots that are showing on the top faces of the cubes. The state should know my breathalyzer isn't going to produce admissible evidence and shouldn't buy it and try and use the results in court.
Just like voting machines, states need to learn to stop spending millions of dollars on technology that doesn't work.
paintball
Um, and what about voting machines?
The problem is the source code looks something like this:
if ($suspect == black) {
print ".12";
}
elsif ($suspect == hispanic) {
print ".14";
}
elsif ($suspect == irish) {
print "ERROR";
}
You don't have to explain assembly language to a jury; you get an expert witness to testify.
I'd be more concerned that if there were serious flaws (and there may be), you couldn't find an expert witness that's good enough to find them.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
It is very similar to the voting machine issue, and there have been several attempts to make open source voting systems. Open source systems of this nature make sense as well.
It could be a 240 volt circuit that has each wire only 120 volts relative to ground.
Er.
Schwartz sounds like the kind of DA you would want if you were planning on framing someone, being as he isn't interested in how things work and will believe anything told him that confirms the prosecution's case.
No doubt they were accepted under a statistical testing model and that being the case they really shouldn't survive under "beyond a shadow of a doubt" reasoning. These are felony cases that can destroy a person's life, that can even turn accidents into murder charges even when they would otherwise be determined as the other driver's fault. At best a breathalyser test should only be evidence for obtaining a search warrant to obtain a blood test. Probably the only thing stopping these tests from becoming a cash cow for dishonorable communities is that the charges derived from them automatically become a state case and not a local one.
well I was making a joke. sorry if you didn't get it :-)
These problems are a result of the breathalyzers running a Windows OS.
Now, if they ran Linux, it would be a completely different story.
Sorry, in today's world there are two sorts of companies: those with IP and a product and those with a product.
The first sort exist in the US and Europe. The second sort are in China, Singapore, Indonesia, etc. Taiwan and Japan are sort of a mix.
Once you let the IP out, the second sort of company can easily eliminate the first sort from the market. They can make the product cheaper, faster and more efficiently and they have zero R & D costs. Sure, you can use all sorts of things like patents and copyrights to try to lock down the IP. Unfortunately, none of those apply in a Singapore courtroom. And US Customs really, really doesn't care. They will not block importation of materials based on patents, licensing or anything else like that.
If push comes to shove, the binaries could probably be extracted and disassembled. That would be expensive, I suppose, but given that this is a compact embedded system the code probably isn't that complex.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
That's how things are wired in the USA for 240 volt circuits. The transformer secondary is tapped at the midpoint and grounded at that tap. All 3 wires are supplied to the building. 120 volt circuits can be wired between the midpoint neutral and either of the other wires. 240 volt circuits can be wired between the 2 non-neutral wires. While AC is, of course, alternating polarity in time, at any one instant, one of those wires is positive while the other is negative relative to the neutral. So the voltage difference between them will be 240 volts.
If you insert the two probes into the outlet holes for power, and one of those probes is broken, you can still get a reading that shows the charge potential for just one side. Digital meters pull so little current from the measurement that they actually can read charge potential alone. It could then show as much as 120 volts even for a 240 volt circuit, giving a reading that could appear to make sense since 120 volt circuits are the most common here, while the actual circuit is really 240 volts. A good electrician will cross check his meter to be sure it is not giving a faulty reading.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I'm sure that the only possible reason that they don't reveal the source code is that it's badly commented, and that's in the places where it's commented at all. Isn't modular or structured. Loop indexes are all "i" and "j". And it still contains a plethora of GOTO statements. The programmers don't want to reveal this to the world.
Oh, and it's written in Visual Basic 4.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
CMI and Minnesota have reached an agreement to make the source code availiable. there is not much else in the snoozepaper article, buried inside the local section today.
frankly, I would expect some enterprising attorney to require a "normal" sample showing correct calibration for his cases, and see whether the state goes to blood tests for prosecutions.
it is an option for either law enforcement or the suspect to take a blood alcohol test in MN. it's a hospital trip, and that's going to wreck the cop's night if he's still a ticket book behind the "oh, no, we don't require that" quota.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
An good Electrician should check all the wires. Three wire setup example of one type of three wires (120) High Neutral Ground Ground to Neutral should read very low; best reading is zero volts AC. High to Neutral should read about 115 VAC RMS High to Ground should read about 115 VAC RMS Three wire setup example of another type of three wires (240) High Low Ground Ground to Low should read about 115 VAC RMS High to Low should read about 230 VAC RMS High to Ground should read about 115 VAC RMS Tim S
In NYC the police using their breathalyzers (might be a different model) could trigger an intoxicated reading just by keying their radios nearby. The needle would jump higher and they could use that to lock you away for hours until a much slower blood test refused to confirm the reading. It is well known that they used this "ability" to harass and lock away people who annoyed them with no justification. There are all kinds of "tricks" that can be played with these machines and the defense is right to be very leery of any "evidence" provided by them.
And I know Pima county well enough to know not to rely on what their attorneys say as the final word on anything.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
How did they getthis thing past homologation in the first place?
bickerdyke
... face your accuser and to a fair and open trial. If your accuser is a machine, then the machine's source code should be open for examination, plain and simple. Otherwise, the right to a fair trial is not present.
One cannot adequately defend one's self from a decision made, in essence, by a machine if the workings of that machine are kept secret.
To allow the processing methods, including the source code to such a machine, that is used in determining the freedom of a human being, to be kept secret is to allow an unethical person with sufficient skill to tamper with said machine with impunity and thus allow that person or even random error on the part of the machine, itself, and not the courts, to decide who has and who has not broken the law.
Respectfully,
Lee Darrow, C.H.
It just might provide enough time for a DUI suspect to sober up enough to pass the test.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
To add on to the above post, in Florida, portable breath test unit results (breath tests in the field) are not admissible in court. They can be used for certain administrative violations, but not for criminal charges.
In order to be administered a breath, blood, and/or urine test, you must already be under arrest in Florida. The officer has already administered field sobriety exercises and determined that the subject is impaired by drugs and/or alcohol. The tests at booking or elsewhere are after the fact. And as the parent said, you can be arrested even if your BAC is below the per se limit. This is because some people can get completely smashed on a drink or two, some people drive with drugs (legal or illegal) in their system which impair their ability to drive, and some like to mix and match.
I suppose that this really does not have much to do with the device's source code, but I just wanted to point out that in Florida mindless drones are not using this machine alone to determine if someone is drunk. It is a little more complicated than that.
While I agree that government should not use "expert testimony" that can't be reproduced, I don't buy the following logic (from the story, haven't read the opinion yet):
So: if it's not patented and not under copyright then it's not a trade secret? Usually a company gets a choice: copyright/patent (publish but get protection) or trade secret (can't publish). No patent or copyright holds in favour of trade secret protection.
The real ruling should be that while the company should be free to keep the workings of their device secret, the government should not be allowed to rely on evidence produced via devices whose inner workings are secret.
Actually I can think of a better reason why they don't want the source code made public. Earlier in this discussion it was claimed that they never submitted it for a patent or copyright. The reason for this might be because they are infringing on a patent.
The same way ANY forensic evidence is explained to a jury -- you get an expert witness to testify either that the code works or that it doesn't. Are jurists required to have a medical degree to understand the results of an autopsy?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Do they make voting machines as well? That would be 100 times more important than drunks. After all, Bush was a drunk and look now, he's president.
That is fine. IF the driver was driving in an erratic manner they are unsafe. However ANY driver should be able to face their accuser and if the accuser is an electronic device they shouldn't have to tolerate "poof then magic occurs" This is to protect the innocent from an abusive state. Most cops are honest great people but anyone that does not think there is rogue and corrupt governments is gullible.
Most states have what is known as "simple DUI," which is usually worded in the statute as "it is illegal to drive while under the influence of alcohol or other drug." That could mean one drop of alcohol that you had 50 minutes ago, if it can be proven that the alcohol has affected you in any way. It doesn't take much. Typically a simple DUI will carry the same penalty as a "low test" DUI, or something just over the legal limit.
On top of that, the states will also have certain "low test" or "high test" DUIs. These are typically worded as "it is illegal to drive with a BAC of .08 or higher" or "it is illegal to drive with a BAC of .17 or higher" and have various penalty levels based on the alcohol level in your blood. To prove those you do need a reliable test.
What?
When the source code is compiled in the exact same manner that the binary the hash value should be the same for the compiled code as the binary used in the machine. Hash Function
Err why would they purposely screw up the code for a "Intoxilyzer 8000"? I mean they don't really get any benefit out of possibly making random ppl get charged. I'm as paranoid as the next guy but there has to be atleast some motive aside from being asinine.
Also, Intoxilyzer 8000 ??? The engineers must have loved naming that one. Might has well have called it the Drunkmaster 9000 so that everyone knows they are ripping off dilbert.
That is fine. IF the driver was driving in an erratic manner they are unsafe. However ANY driver should be able to face their accuser and if the accuser is an electronic device they shouldn't have to tolerate "poof then magic occurs" This is to protect the innocent from an abusive state. Most cops are honest great people but anyone that does not think there is rogue and corrupt governments is gullible.
They do face their accuser. The cop who pulled them over is their accuser.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This device no doubt contains digital logic devices. I would expect my expert witnesses to be entitled to inspect:
- The Verilog or VHDL register description of the devices.
- The gate description of the devices.
- The mask definitions used by the chip foundry.
Similarly, all CAD data related to the circuit board needs to be free for inspection as well.
I mean they don't really get any benefit out of possibly making random ppl get charged.
They would get a benefit if the code was rushed and they were able to underbid for a contract to provide the devices.
.
Nope. They extrapolate back to when you were driving. Of course you can argue in court that it's not valid to do that, but expect the state to have an expert witness already on payroll.
Doesn't matter even if you below the limit.
Even if you're at .04% BAC in a .08% BAC limit state, they can still arrest you for DUI if they think that you're not driving safely. Which kind of makes sense, as a 100 pound borderline anorexic girl is going to feel more drunk on less alcohol and probably less BAC, than would a hardened male alcoholic at twice her weight.
However, what does not make sense, is that they DO NOT NEED PROOF to convict you of a DUI if you blow under the limit. They can send you to jail on the cop's word alone. If they say that you were swerving, or changed lanes without a blinker, then it happened. Unless they have it on tape, which will likely end up lost or destroyed if needed to clear you from guilt.
Imagine all of the things you do on the road that could get you pulled over for a DUI: Changing stations on your radio causing you to have to slightly correct your steering, changing lanes on an empty highway with no blinker, driving under the limit, driving over the limit, having a tail/headlight out, talking on the phone, beating your kids, etc. Every single one of these has been used as evidence in DUI cases.
So, my best advice I can possibly give, is to not be an asshole to the cop, dispute everything, and check your laws regarding the use of breath tests vs blood tests. For example, some areas give you a breath test and if you fail, its go directly to the station, where they give you a blood test. Some areas you have to request a blood test when you're being booked, and some areas they can get you with the breath test alone.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I work in the State of Florida as a police officer, and I arrest and charge people with DUI on a regular basis.
In my opinion, this ruling was exactly on the money, and far too long in coming. If a company refuses to disclose evidence, the State should immediately stop using their product to obtain evidence.
As a certified expert witness, I am able to testify to the impairment of a subject without the need of a breath analysis to verify. About 20-30% of the cases I testify in have no breath results because the defendant refuses to provide a breath sample. We only forcefully obtain samples (of blood, not breath) when a traffic homicide is involved.
If the evidence is faulty, I *need* to know. I can only uphold my oath of office if I can testify in good faith that I am using proper methods of obtaining evidence. If this company is witholding vital information, they should not be allowed to sell their product to law enforcement.
DUI charges are an avenue of making money, and most of the judges are little Napoleans.
His lawyers defense was that every man had the right to face his accuser, and that included the computers.
Captain Kirk was innocent. The computer records were falsified.
The DUI makers should watch this episode.
As information technology begets ever-growing oceans of records, all legal investigations and prosecutions grow ever more lengthy, revealing, expensive and difficult to close. --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2007/09/endless-investigations.html
Benjamin Wright, Dallas, Texas, benjaminwright.us
It's doubtful they'd pull a switch just to get people charged, but comparing the compiled escrowed source to the live machine would also reveal sloppy source and binary version control, quick fixes to ugly problems (denied of course).
It could also force the submitted source to include all the dreadful hackarounds to the flaky hardware. If you don't hash it, the submitted source will be correct to drive the ideal hardware, not the crap they actually use.
Or perhaps more to the point, perfectly honest cops drink the cool-aid and believe the marketing slicks about how accurate the devices are. The people must be able to examine the device and question it in court.
There's actually three types, Those with IP, those with a product and those with both.
Companies that don't have both seem to be problematic.
They do face their accuser. The cop who pulled them over is their accuser.
Said accuser is relying on (and trusting) the breathalyser for his belief. The defendant has every right to explore the validity of that trust.
The alternative is that the cop's accusation comes down the his belief of the device's marketing department. Nothing marketing departments say can ever be true beyond reasonable doubt!
So why can't we get this judge working on one of the cases against voting machines?
There may be a bit of financial incentive for the states to screw over people getting arrested for possible DUI, but there's a whole hell of a lot more to be gained by falsifying election results and thus the devices should be trusted that much less.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but shouldn't there be some sort of requirement for a certain level of technological knowledge by the judge when working on a base that hinges on that technology?
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
The bottom line is that, particularly in an embedded device working with sensors, many problems will simply not be apparent from the source code, no matter how good you are. The only way to know that this device gives good data is to give it the same sort of rigorous testing we give (for example) new drugs and electronics that go into airplanes and military hardware.
I would want to see this device subjected to adverse environments, radio interference, being operated on the side of the road, etc. etc., and still reliably producing results that closely correlated with those produced by reference tests (i.e. blood alcohol tests). If this sort of testing is done for each and every revision of the device's firmware then the company is right, source code is irrelevant. This isn't like a voting machine... it has a discrete, limited number of inputs, no operating system, and a small memory pool--the only way to tamper with it would be to alter the firmware, and that can be checked with a simple checksum. And if this sort of testing isn't being done, then these devices are worthless and shouldn't be used to send someone to jail, because anyone who knows anything about programming knows that any project of any complexity will have bugs, and this sort of testing is the only way to catch them.
So... does anyone know how these devices are tested? How rigorous is the testing? Is it serious, covering all conditions, and all revisions no matter how minor, or is it the usual "get the bad guys, screw civil liberties" sort of half-assed stuff that we've come to expect from American law enforcement?
I have no sympathy for drunk drivers... but I don't want anyone sent to jail on evidence that even MIGHT be false.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
The state collects fines from DUI convicts, and I'm sure they can manipulate the stats on arrests in such a way that there are other gains (politicians showing better results on DUI crackdowns getting re-elected, as a possible example).
If the company producing the devices knowingly rounds things up internally, the police would tend to see higher conviction rates using those devices over others even if they aren't actually aware of the fact. Follow the money trail.
Of course, the code could be fine and they're just concerned about the IP. Or it could be unknowingly flawed, or as has already been mentioned it may have been rushed out the door to get the bid on the contract. There are any number of scenarios that could apply here, but what really needs to be determined is whether the code is producing results that are fair and accurate.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Yes, you have a constitutional right to know how well the human works, if the human used one of it's senses to provide evidence against you.
Any good lawyer would challenge the testimony of a blinder-than-a-bat-old-lady giving an eye witness statement for something that happened in a low light situation.
Even if you're at .04% BAC in a .08% BAC limit state, they can still arrest you for DUI if they think that you're not driving safely. Which kind of makes sense, as a 100 pound borderline anorexic girl is going to feel more drunk on less alcohol and probably less BAC, than would a hardened male alcoholic at twice her weight.
That's not how BAC percents work. The percentage is related to the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream. That girl you're referring to would still have the same BAC as I would, the fact that I could probably drink 2x as much is a completely moot point.
Yes, there would be less alcohol in the system, but BAC is measured as a percentage relative to the amount of blood the person has.
Impaired is ultimately impaired, and regardless of amount drunk, if you're driving impaired you should be cited for it.
and I was pulled over for DUI after working into the wee hours to get a client back up by the next day. (Fatigue impairs driving also, and having learned my lesson I just stretch out on the carpet for such occasions.) Anyway, I also had a full paper bag on the passenger seat (with recently acquired church publications). It was a tense 15 minutes, but fortunately the adrenaline banished fatigue long enough to convince the officer that my problem wasn't substance abuse.
And half of it will be metabolized by the time you get to the station.
Cool. Now apply the same requirement to the manufacturers of police speed radar units. Anyone who has been wrongly accused by the operator of one of these gadgets deserves to have the innards of the thing gone over with a fine-toothed comb. There's a lot more snake oil and marketing gimmickry than science involved in the business of nailing innocent motorists in the name of raising revenue.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
Here's an example I heard in England:
Is that I'm not sure how well breathalyzers can be made to work. One big problem is that it is doing an inferred measurement. The question of law is what is the alcohol content of the blood is. Of course the only way to actually measure that is to take blood and test it. A breathalyzer is an inferred measurement. It measures properties of your exhalation and from that infers what the alcohol in your blood is. Ok well that would be kinda like inferring the amount of power a light is using by it's lumen output. That is only accurate if you make the correct assumptions about the light (ie how much it draws per lumen). Well human bodies are variable. So I dunno how well you can ever get it set up for all people.
Another problem would be that things other than the alcohol in your blood can change the reading. So even if a device is perfectly calibrated for you, things can offset it. For example if you burp, or if you took a drink shortly before being tested.
So I don't know how accurate these things can ever be made, and that is probably what has the companies so scared. They may be well aware of the fact that their devices are "best guess" kind of things. Well if that turns out to be the case, they'll see a massive drop in sales. I mean if the thing isn't accurate enough to give you a for sure reading it can't be used in court. So while the hand held models would probably keep selling (they are already known not to be perfectly accurate, they are just used to help decide if an arrest should be made) the big expensive supposedly accurate units would go away.
As a professional electronics technician for more than 35 years (I grew into computers as they grew up), and working with power electronics, where anything under 4160 volts is considered a low voltage circuit, one thing you learn is to test your measurement device before and after each use. If you can't verify that it is functioning correctly, both before and after each measurement (did you break it while taking a reading?), you can't trust the equipment. Your life depends on the measurement, as does your life (a DUI conviction is not a small thing) depend on knowing whether the "analyzer" in question is giving correct readings. If the software cannot be inspected to determine if the readings are being interpreted and scaled correctly, it should not be used for ANY purpose, much less to establish guilt or innocence in a court of law. To anyone who thinks differently, come on over to my shop and we'll work on a three phase bus system - but you will have to guess whether or not the power is off...
Johhny Depp grew up in the USA you insensitive clod!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
In Heaven, the police are British, the mechanics are German, the cooks are French, the lovers are Italian, and everything is organized by the Swiss.
In Hell, the police are German, the mechanics are French, the cooks are British, the lovers are Swiss, and everything is organized by the Italians.
A slight variation: in Heaven the French could be lovers while the cooks are Italian. A different version of the joke adds that in Heaven the houses are American and the wives are Japanese, while in Hell the houses are Japanese and the wives are American.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I designed embedded computer products for a few decades. (Not this one). Often, clever tricks in the code are used to compensate for various errors in the basic sensors or servos. With of course, nasty code comments to match. This isn't always a dumb thing. Take your scanner -- they used to cost a fortune. Now they don't, as someone figured out how to compensate for big mechanical errors in software, so it can now all be plastic gears, and cheap stuff, instead of precision good enough to do it feedforward.
Of course, some attempts to cover over a bad sensor only work some of the time. To determine the case here -- you need to know the whole shebang, not just the code. And have some understanding how it is supposed to work.
You'd also need some numbers maybe even the manufacturer doesn't yet have. For example, what's the error in the amount of breath admitted to the sensor? What's the effect of some minor impurity in the chemical used to do the color change with alcohol (if they did it that way).
What is this sensor detecting besides alcohol and it's metabolites? (the old chemistry was sensitive to a lot of things not necessarily related to ethyl alcohol intake).
And so on. While scarfing source code is a good thing, and the company is being idiotic to refuse (maybe -- it might stink, you know?) -- I like the idea of just sending all the units back and demanding a refund...
For Americans Irish is synonymous with Policeman, particularly on the E. Coast. It's also why there's a 2000 Years of Irish Cops float on the St. Patrick's Day parade in The Simpson's episode (4F15) "Homer vs. The Eighteenth Amendment".
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Even in such a simple case there are many things it should be testing. Is the A/D output sane? Does it take 3 quick samples while someone is blowing and average them or just take it once (which could be wrong for some reason)? According to the article, it doesn't look like it does. It calibrates the wind sensor, but doesn't check that the calibration is sane. It doesn't report errors unless they happen 32 times in a row. It disables the watchdog timer. It disables the interrupt for illegal instructions. It doesn't meet any coding standards. It contains code with things like "this is temporary for now" in it. There is an obvious reason why they didn't want the code released.
This was a partial summary of another breathalyzer source code that was opened up in another case. This has nothing to do with open source this has to do with software that is half-ass'd but determines if someone has to go through years of court hearings, meetings, suspended license, and a whole waste of money because some company rushed their software engineer to write code that may be giving wrong results all together.
The right to examine the evidence against oneself requires that any software used to produce such evidence must always be open source.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p