IANAL, but from what I understand, jury nullification is not a valid legal tactic and someone openly doing it may even be considered in contempt of court. However, a juror can take the position that the defendant is innocent due to the fact that they don't believe any criminal action has been taken, e.g. a drug offender who did nothing but use a drug. They can't say this, but they can refuse to find the defendant guilty. Again, IANAL.
I think the car one will go through easily. I doubt any of them want it to come out how frequently their drivers greatly exceed the speed limits or for black boxes to capture any of the drunken shenanigans they'd otherwise get away with.
When the option is to accept a plea bargain with a minor sentence and a lesser criminal record versus going to trial for everything the prosecutor can throw at you while you're bleeding to death paying a lawyer or have an overworked public defender, it seems like trials become more of a right that exists exclusively for the wealthy.
Jury Nullification? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification. I wonder if the ACLU would do a widespread public education campaign on this or if it's too far outside of our current legal system. I can see the crooked cops and prosecutors wetting their pants if they did.
Note that, in my post, when I said the justice system would explode, I didn't say if that was a good or bad thing. I think I'd almost prefer no police/legal system and just vigilanteism to what we have now. Though, to our justice system's credit, I do enjoy having fewer serial killers and rapists roaming around.
If "explode" means that they'd have to prioritize cases and just dismiss the rest, then, yes I agree. A lot of that would probably no longer prosecuting minor drug offenders. Hopefully, within the next 50 years (or less) we'll go the way of Portugal and decriminalize all of it and opt to treat addicts instead. Which might make having full trials for all cases plausible.
Also, if you could build identical binaries, you could do something like have a separate machine on a separate domain, separate location,... do a daily build of the source to check if the compiled version matches the binary. If they don't match, either they've drifted out of sync or maybe the machine has been compromised. If the machine is compromised, you'll be able to detect, externally, regardless of environment that something has changed when it shouldn't have and see if an attacker has replaced the binary or the source.
I can think think of two issues (aside from the malicious code issue which is being beaten to death). First, we can't tell if the binary matches the source, so we can't tell if they're fully complying with the GPL. Second, since we can't tell if the binary matches the source, if we try to hack around in the source we have the potential to be working in a different build than the published binary and getting wildly different results.
As for the malicious code, if you can compile the build from source and have a byte for byte match, you can be sure that you have the correct source. If there is malicious code, you'll be able to find it later. Or better yet, maybe someone else is verifying it. Does anyone question the value of being able to go back and look at malicious source code to see what it's done?
Maybe we should make it easier to make reproducible binaries?
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Don't feed the trolls.
IANAL, but from what I understand, jury nullification is not a valid legal tactic and someone openly doing it may even be considered in contempt of court. However, a juror can take the position that the defendant is innocent due to the fact that they don't believe any criminal action has been taken, e.g. a drug offender who did nothing but use a drug. They can't say this, but they can refuse to find the defendant guilty. Again, IANAL.
Probably. My only other thought is crowdfunding. I can dream, can't I?
I think the car one will go through easily. I doubt any of them want it to come out how frequently their drivers greatly exceed the speed limits or for black boxes to capture any of the drunken shenanigans they'd otherwise get away with.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2004/05/10/Newspaper-finds-Pa-Gov-Rendell-speeding/UPI-17641084237859/
When the option is to accept a plea bargain with a minor sentence and a lesser criminal record versus going to trial for everything the prosecutor can throw at you while you're bleeding to death paying a lawyer or have an overworked public defender, it seems like trials become more of a right that exists exclusively for the wealthy.
Jury Nullification? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification. I wonder if the ACLU would do a widespread public education campaign on this or if it's too far outside of our current legal system. I can see the crooked cops and prosecutors wetting their pants if they did.
Note that, in my post, when I said the justice system would explode, I didn't say if that was a good or bad thing. I think I'd almost prefer no police/legal system and just vigilanteism to what we have now. Though, to our justice system's credit, I do enjoy having fewer serial killers and rapists roaming around.
If "explode" means that they'd have to prioritize cases and just dismiss the rest, then, yes I agree. A lot of that would probably no longer prosecuting minor drug offenders. Hopefully, within the next 50 years (or less) we'll go the way of Portugal and decriminalize all of it and opt to treat addicts instead. Which might make having full trials for all cases plausible.
I think people have already suggested this and everyone agrees that the US Justice system would explode.
Also, if you could build identical binaries, you could do something like have a separate machine on a separate domain, separate location, ... do a daily build of the source to check if the compiled version matches the binary. If they don't match, either they've drifted out of sync or maybe the machine has been compromised. If the machine is compromised, you'll be able to detect, externally, regardless of environment that something has changed when it shouldn't have and see if an attacker has replaced the binary or the source.
I can think think of two issues (aside from the malicious code issue which is being beaten to death).
First, we can't tell if the binary matches the source, so we can't tell if they're fully complying with the GPL.
Second, since we can't tell if the binary matches the source, if we try to hack around in the source we have the potential to be working in a different build than the published binary and getting wildly different results.
As for the malicious code, if you can compile the build from source and have a byte for byte match, you can be sure that you have the correct source. If there is malicious code, you'll be able to find it later. Or better yet, maybe someone else is verifying it. Does anyone question the value of being able to go back and look at malicious source code to see what it's done?
Maybe we should make it easier to make reproducible binaries?