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Breathalyzer Source Code Ruling Upheld
dfn_deux writes "In a follow up to a 2005 story where Florida judge Doug Henderson ruled that breathalyzer evidence in more than 100 drunk driving cases would be inadmissible as evidence at trial, the Second District Court of Appeal and Circuit Court has ruled on Tuesday to uphold the 2005 ruling requiring the manufacturer of the Intoxilyzer 5000, Kentucky-based CMI Inc, to release source code for their breathalyzer equipment to be examined by witnesses for the defense of those standing trial with breathalyzer test result being used as evidence against them. '"The defendant's right to a fair trial outweighed the manufacturer's claim of a trade secret," Henderson said Tuesday. In response to the ruling defense attorney, Mark Lipinski, who represents seven defendants challenging the source codes, said the state likely will be forced to reduce charges — or drop the cases entirely.' ... What this really means is that outside corporations cannot sell equipment to the state of Florida and expect to hide the workings of their machine by saying they are trade secret. It means the state has to give full disclosure concerning important and critical aspects of the case."
Finally
Guess there are some judges out there that understand justice.
The courts got it right, this time. Yeah, sure, the whole argument is a no-brainer for anyone who thinks about it for more than 30 seconds, but the jurists weighing similar cases re. voting machine source-code seem to be struggling with it nonetheless.
No. Did you bother reading the summary? The judge ruled the defendant in a criminal case has the right to review the source code of the machine that was used to convict him.. It's not like they ruled that CMI had to open source the thing. That seems pretty reasonable to me.
My blog
As much as I like hearing about cases of stickin' it to Da Man, I don't know that we should necessarily celebrate this decision quite so much...
All software contains bugs. The defense will find some, and even if they only affect accuracy at the 7th decimal point, the case will get thrown out by a jury based on reasonable doubt. And this doesn't apply just to the current case, but to nearly any legal case using machine-generated evidence. The court allows DNA evidence? How about the firmware in the sequencing machine? Drug test came back positive? Let's see how Agilent's HPLC code rounds in integration.
Now, in some cases (*cough* Diebold *cough*) we may have a valid gripe against a closed-source implementation. But in most cases... Not to make this a case of "for the children", but do you want drunks behind the wheel? Screw the children (calm down, Mr. Jackson, I didn't mean it like that), I don't want to DIAF because someone can't stop at two beers.
Yeah it's utterly horrible that people would actually have to make sure that the evidence they are using against people is actually accurate and not being tainted by flaws in the equipment used or their methodologies. Oh the horrors of that!