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This Impenetrable Program Is Transforming How Courts Treat DNA Evidence (wired.com)
mirandakatz writes: Probabilistic genotyping is a type of DNA testing that's becoming increasingly popular in courtrooms: It uses complex mathematical formulas to examine the statistical likelihood that a certain genotype comes from one individual over another, and it can work with the subtlest traces of DNA. At Backchannel, Jessica Pishko looks at one company that's caught criminal justice advocates' attention: Cybergenetics, which sells a probabilistic genotyping program called TrueAllele -- and that refuses to reveal its source code. As Pishko notes, some legal experts are arguing that Trueallele revealing its source code 'is necessary in order to properly evaluate the technology. In fact, they say, justice from an unknown algorithm is no justice at all.'
One thing is having access to the source code and a completely different story is properly analysing it. When dealing with something as complex as (probabilistic!) DNA sequencing, it seems quite clear that the most sensible way to validate the program is actually using it. Set up a proper benchmark with a relevant number of samples and confirm whether this (+ any other) program works exactly as expected. This would also be an excellent way to objectively assess its accuracy.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Well it shouldn't be accepted as fact. Ideally the courts would instruct the jury to treat the software's output as similar to a human being saying, "This is my expert opinion." You can submit your own software's "opinion" as evidence as much as you can get your own expert human to testify on your behalf.
It is true that you can't cross-examine it; but ideally, that should make the software less reliable. If you had an expert who, upon cross-examination, always responded, "I don't know, it just seems that way", then he wouldn't have much credibility. Ideally, software that can't justify its "opinion" should be treated the same way.
I have said "ideally" here several times, recognizing that it may well be the case that this isn't how people actually think. But I think a more constructive response to this misplaced trust is to help inform courts and defense lawyers more clearly (who should in turn inform the juries).
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
Well it shouldn't be accepted as fact. Ideally the courts would instruct the jury to treat the software's output as similar to a human being saying, "This is my expert opinion." You can submit your own software's "opinion" as evidence as much as you can get your own expert human to testify on your behalf.
One of the requirements for presenting expert testimony is that you have to provide all of the materials that the expert used in forming their opinion. If the results of some software were treated as an expert opinion, the "materials relied upon" would almost certainly include the source code. It may even make the programmers, as the source of those materials, subject to being deposed about how they developed the software.