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FBI Repeatedly Overstated Encryption Threat Figures To Congress, Public (techcrunch.com)
mi shares a report from The Washington Post (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): The FBI has repeatedly provided grossly inflated statistics to Congress and the public about the extent of problems posed by encrypted cellphones, claiming investigators were locked out of nearly 7,800 devices connected to crimes last year when the correct number was much smaller, probably between 1,000 and 2,000.
Over a period of seven months, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray cited the inflated figure as the most compelling evidence for the need to address what the FBI calls "Going Dark" -- the spread of encrypted software that can block investigators' access to digital data even with a court order. "The FBI's initial assessment is that programming errors resulted in significant over-counting of mobile devices reported,'' the FBI said in a statement Tuesday. The bureau said the problem stemmed from the use of three distinct databases that led to repeated counting of phones. Tests of the methodology conducted in April 2016 failed to detect the flaw, according to people familiar with the work.
Over a period of seven months, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray cited the inflated figure as the most compelling evidence for the need to address what the FBI calls "Going Dark" -- the spread of encrypted software that can block investigators' access to digital data even with a court order. "The FBI's initial assessment is that programming errors resulted in significant over-counting of mobile devices reported,'' the FBI said in a statement Tuesday. The bureau said the problem stemmed from the use of three distinct databases that led to repeated counting of phones. Tests of the methodology conducted in April 2016 failed to detect the flaw, according to people familiar with the work.
Sherlock reportedly overstated the threat of No Shit to Congress, Public. Also, Cop Math doesn't have a Wikipedia page. I'm genuinely surprised.
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What is the point of this? Does it really matter if the guy had a pound or 28 ounces or 16 ounces or 8 ounces? A dose of heroin is probably 10mg. The guy is a drug dealer either way.
You missed the setup.
The cop testified - as in, went on record saying, under oath, that there was half a pound of heroin in a cereal box. He said he knew it was half of a pound based on weighing it at the scene when the heroin was confiscated, and did not re-weigh it at the station. That scale weighed exclusively in metric measurements, so the police officer would have needed to be able to convert between measurements quickly in order to make that claim. The defense attorney then asks the police officer to do what he claimed he did at the scene of the crime. The officer, given a pencil and paper (unlikely to have been at his disposal during the arrest) then struggles to accurately perform the sort of arithmetic that is performed by third graders.
Whether the defendant was dealing or not, the plaintiff is a police officer who either decided to guess at how much heroin was confiscated rather than write down what the scale said, or lied under oath. Either way, the defense attorney managed to make it basically impossible for the standard of "proof beyond reasonable doubt" to be met, so the only reason the guy ended up doing any jail time was based on familial loyalty rather than having been proven guilty.