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Should all government software be open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Should all government software be open source? (Score:4, Interesting)
jf
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Re:Should all government software be open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is used for defining guilt in a court of law, how it works in my opinion is extremely relevant, and people might like to hire a computer scientist to know the value of that definition. I'd bet most people would be quite pissed off if you told them they're going to jail because a little box says so and you have to take it on the little box's word and the word of the makers of the little box.
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Re:Should all government software be open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
But without this ruling we had a situation where essentially:
That's unacceptable. You've got a rigth to confront the evidence against you. That required you to know exactly what that evidence is, so that you (or your lawyer) can point out weaknesses in the evidence, for example.
The logical conclusion is that evidence of any kind that is collected by closed-source software, and that is not independently verifiable is not evidence at all, but instead merely the empty claim of a uncheckable device.
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Re:Should all government software be open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm wrong, but imho, every free citizen has the right to personally verify any evidence used against them in a court of law. Whether or not that citizen is able to comprehend the arguments/details/whatever is not relevant - only that they be allowed to review it.
If they are personally unable to comprehend this, then this affords them the opportunity to consult with the experts of their choosing as they see fit - not as the gvt sees fit.
For due process to be transparent, the defendant needs to be afforded every opportunity to review and question every element that is being used to convict him/her. No matter how "independant" any group/company/organisation/person might be on paper, they are still not "my guy" if they have to sign "their papers" in order to see the evidence.
While this doesn't exlcude non-OSS, it does (and imho should) exclude anything where the mechanism is a trade secret. (that doesn't mean it's OSS, just not a trade secret)
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Re:Should all government software be open source? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Should all government software be open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the scenario is not "I was accused by (e.g.) the speed camera", but "I was accused by [name of minor civic dignitary responsible for this sort of thing]". You can confront him (or her) and ask "on what grounds do you claim that I was speeding/drunk etc." and they will respond that they have the reading from their machine as evidence. The evidential value of the reading is still up for discussion or dispute, but you're not being accused by the machine itself.
FWIW (and IANAL), I suspect that in the UK, at least, you could challenge the accuracy of the machine (in fact, it's been done successfully with some radar guns, at least) but I think that your chances of having the machine pulled apart to demonstrate that every last component worked would be pretty low. I think it would be enough for the prosecution to show that (i) the machine was accurate when properly calibrated; and (ii) it had been properly maintained, calibrated and tested.
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Re:Should all government software be open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course there are, but the algorithm that determines whether I get a criminal record or not should NOT be one of them. It's the equivalent of a cop getting to go into a courtroom and say "Trust us he's guilty, but the method we used to determine that is a trade secret."
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Re:Should all government software be open source? (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod the parent of this post up! He deserves a 5. The trust us mentality of the government bureaucrats has cost the freedom of many and the lives of others. Distrust of the government is the right and moral obligation of every citizen, because it is all that keeps tyrrany in check. With Hurricane Katrina the bureaucrats wouldn't let the citizens boats in for rescue efforts and hundreds died awaiting a helicopter. The boats were turned back because the drivers were not "qualified" by FEMA. Should we trust this sort of behavior? Yes, we can trust it to kill us.
In the justice the issue of fact presented in court is the whole issue. You must be able to try the "witness". This is why "rape shield laws" really protect the criminal from prosecution. They prevent trying the witness and thus we must either take the claim on faith or forget it. The inability to try a witness in technical evidence is to give the state an assured conviction without a trial. One may as well install a vending machine for justice. With modern computers the taking of their output as evidence is and act of extreme faith. One must trust the input, trust the process and trust the custody of the whole system including documents which are virtual in the first place. Video evidence for example may appear totally intact, but with modern edit technology it can be a computer induced hallucination.
I want DUI's locked up! But I don't want officers running a vending machine for justice either. The more computer dependent these machines become, the more certain the tests they presume to do can be faked, altered or be just plain wrong and to test the programming becomes as important as asking the arresting officer questions. Educated Jurors must keep this stuff in mind.
The state pays officers and prosecutors to get convictions. They will unemploy one who loses often. There is a high incentive to fake and change evidence. The state has found it very cheap to hire very simple minded officers and load them with gadgets designed for the purpose of conviction. It makes money for the state and makes officials look like they are doing their job.
In England something like 800,000 traffic cameras exist. They got fabulous photos of terrorists doing their damage, but nothing could be done to stop them before hand. This because nobody was really watching. Cameras you see lack the ability to suspect (Probable Cause). The effect of these cameras has been an increase in crime and danger. This because the officers are no longer actually doing their job. We have to change this thinking that the machine is right. It exists to avoid being right.
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Re:Should all government software be open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. It would be very ideal and it would be in our very best interest to view the source code. It I think affirms the part of accountability. I want to make sure that my govt. isn't screwing me (fines etc) by writing manipulated code
If the government is in fact using our tax dollars to pay programmers, should we be entitled to view the outcome of their workOf course, I want to be sure and for that matter every responsible citizen should be assured that their dollars are not being just given to corporations. Halliburton rings any bell?
and does it become public domain if paid for by public funds?This is debatable. Obviously you wouldn't want your defense software etc to be open source but breath analyzer, I think poses no threat to national security.
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Re:Should all government software be open source? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not? Or do you believe in the FUD that closed software is inherently more secure?
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Re:Should all government software be open source? (Score:4, Interesting)
Some jurisdictions have Freedom of Information and other assorted records laws, which entitle normal citizens the right of access to documents and records, ensure that they are not destroyed to cover things up, etc.
Unfortunately, some governments work extraordinarily hard to subvert these rights. Of course, some people in some countries/states/etc do not have these rights to begin with.
So YES, governments should be open source.
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Re:Should all government software be open source? (Score:4, Insightful)
So, let's sum up this long block of text:
A. An important system has serious flaws, and
B. The designers of this system would rather that not come to light, because they can't or won't fix it.
And this is a good reason for leaving it closed? Seems to make the very case for opening it to me.
Closed-source systems, if left insecure, will be exploited. (See related entry under popular closed-source operating systems.) On the other hand, open-source systems which suck will have their flaws found and corrected by thousands of eyes-and for every person who finds and attempts to exploit a flaw, 5 will be working to fix it.
What if the Breathalyzer code -is- equally flawed? The code in the systems used to do DNA and ballistics testing? The code used in voting machines? Don't we have -every- right to see for ourselves, instead of accept "Trust us"?
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Umm (Score:5, Insightful)
2. So is this kind of ruling going to spread to radar detectors, baggage-scanning equipment, automated video cameras, etc?
Re:Umm (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry But (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sorry But (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for Free Software too.. and I also dont think the drunk driver should be let off the hook. That's why the source code has to be released.. Its not as if it was complex software.. and I mean.. they are selling a machine. Its not like asking Microsoft to Free Windows .. it wont kill the company.. But will probably guarantee a fair trial.. And it creates a good precedent for voting machines, etc.
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Re:Sorry But (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sorry But (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the accuracy of the machine can only be demonstrated with the test data that is available. While this should be very close to reality, we have no way of verifying that the test data chosen is relevant to the case of the person on trial. With the source code, we can verify the implementation, and make sure that that implementation will accurately reflect on the defendant.
Put another way: This software is only slightly less critical than the software which is used in the space program. There, people die. In this case, lives can be destroyed by a wrongful conviction. At least if you die, your problems are over and done with. Now, what if a particular test case was missed? How would you know? Even worse, what if THAT test case shows that one in every 10 readings will be wildly inaccurate? Without the source code, what chance do you have of proving this?
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Re:Sorry But (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, what you don't know is *how* it does what it does, so you do not know if perhaps there are edge conditions where it fails. Perhaps these conditions are one in a million (remember the Pentium floating point bug?) and so would not show up during testing and calibration.
If the code and hardware are open to examination, you can then say "this is how it does what it does, and I've verified that there are no error cases that could cause it to act incorrectly or unpredictably."
--Pat
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Re:Sorry But (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it makes it impossible for an innocent person to defend himself. That's why.
It does not matter how many times a black box has given you the correct answer under some artifical test conditions, so long as it is a black box it is impossible to predict when it will give you a wrong answer or to know/explain why it *did* give a false positive under these particular real world conditions.
Maybe it has some internal clock, and if the unit has been on for more than 48 hours then there is an overflow or some sort of error accumulation. You can you a million calibration tests on the device and never run into that problem because the unit is never left on over night during the test proceedure.
Does that sound like a rediculous argument? Well in fact the US Patriot Missle system underwent extensive testing and it passed all of those tests. And then once it was actually used out in the field *that exact problem* ocurred. If it was left on for 48 hours it went out of whack and started producing incorrect calculations. You can have a million tests with 100% accuracy and *still* get false results in actual use.
Perhaps the blood achohol tester gives false positives for people who are on a certain medication, or who have a certain disease. You can run a million laboratory calibration tests on the unit and and get 100% accurate results if none of the test subjects are on that medication or have that disease. However an innocent person (or his hired expert) faced with a FALSE POSITIVE can explicitly look at the factors that may be unique to the case and may have caused that FALSE POSITIVE. They can go over the list of medications he is on, and explicitly check how those medications might interact with the device.
The entire problem with your position is that you are assuming the person is guilty. Of course no one wants guilty people to get away with it. However the very foundation of our justice system is innocent until proven guilty, and that this presumed innocent person has the right to challenge any witnesses against him and to challenge any evidence against him. In this case he is being denied the right to challenge the evidence against him. The fact that someone in government has tested the device X times and gotten accurate results X times does not change the fact that the defence is being denied the chance to examine and challenge the evidence themselves, and being denied the right and opportunity to discover and reveal how and why a test may have been a false positive. innocent untill proven guilty means the presumption that it may indeed be a false positive and that both sides get to present any evidence and arguments on why it may be a false positive. And of course if there is extensive testing and documentation on the device, and if the government has strong arguments that it is not a flase positive, and if... after being given the opportunity to text/examine the device
The problem here is with the government and the prosecution. If they will not or can not present their evidence for examination by the defense... if they will not or can not present the software for examination by the defense... then both the innocent and the guilty get to go free until the government fixes *their* error. Yes it sucks letting the guilty abuse the government's error in order to go free, but that if prefferable to convicting the innocent due to the government's error.
And of course the solution is for the government to fix their error. They either need to subpoena the source and turn it over to the defence if they want to examine it, or they need to buy their test units from a different company that does not prohibit the gover
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Re:Sorry But (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I think there's way too much contracting being done already. If the US Government wants breathalysers, they can hire some engineers to design them, and post the code. I bet this'll be cheaper than contracting someone to do it (Halliburton, anyone?), and the world will get the blueprints and code for a breathalyser for free.
***
My grandmother died recently, a notorious pack-rat. Cleaning out her attic, we found pamphlets distributed by the government during the 1940's and 1950's. They included a *very detailed* guide to the mechanical and carpentry properties of different sorts of wood -- everything you'd want to know about selecting wood to build with. Another talked about radioactive fallout -- what isotopes are likely to be present, the effects of radiation on humans, how radioactive decay works, and the like.
I was impressed. Name some recent effort by the US government to provide information to the public on such a detailed level, not because it's politically expedient or profitable but just because *it is the government's prime job to be useful to its citizens.*
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Re:Sorry But (Score:4, Insightful)
The breathalyzer's accuracy HAD been tested. But since the tests the company released numerous software upgrades that have not been tested.
I see no reason to turn over the source code, however, simply retest the devices after each upgrade.
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Do you think their testing is 100% foolproof? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Even if it had been tested... (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about easter eggs and date bugs: How do you know the software works correctly on leap year day? On Sundays? On the 295th test? If the cop enters "124341+" on the keypad just before running the test?
You don't.
The output of a machine is NEVER evidence in a trial. What is evidence is the expert testimony of a human - hired by the prosecution - that the output is correct. (This has an incentive structure that encourages both fraud and rose-colored-viewing on the expert's part.)
To mount a defense the accused needs to be able to hire his OWN expert and let HIM examine the machine and identify any ways it could have made a false indication. Then you get a conviction if, and only if, the prosecution's expert is able to show that none of those occurred, so the reading is accurate.
For the defense expert to be able to do his job on a software-using system he needs access to the source. If the prosecution is able to deny him that, he has been denied - by his opponent - his due process right to challenge the evidence against him. So the evidence MUST be thrown out if he is to have a fair trial. IM(NAL)HO that's cut and dried.
Imagine if the machine was a witness. The prosecution gets to question the witness. The defense does not get to cross-examine him. See where that would lead?
How about a program that allegedly (according to a prosecution's expert witness) examines evidence and says "he's guilty" or "he's innocent"? Without a defense expert examining the code how do you know it's not:
g = "innocent"
repeat until eof
if input line == "officer O'Malley saw a rabbit"
g = "guilty"
print "he's " g
So it's:
1) open the software generally,
2) open the software to a long string of (expensive) defense expert witnesses,
3) not use the software's output if challenged, or
4) deny due process.
If they try to settle on 2) it's easy to argue that not going to 1) denys due process to the poor, since they can't take advantage of the expensive experts.
Result: No closed-software devices can be used by the procecution if challenged (unless the courts decide to deny due process).
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Re:Even if it had been tested... (Score:5, Interesting)
Problem was this fellow was of a religion ( cant remember which one ) that forbade alcohol. So he goes back to the station for a blood test and Lo for the blood test came back negative for alcohol.
And now blood tests are needed to convict on DUI and "blowing in the bag" is used to see if a blood test is needed.
( currently looking for link )
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Re:Sorry But (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a good tactic to get your client off the hook as people tend to be greedy. This might not work on every judge of course, but it's not a bad tactic to try if you have the money to spend. Who knows... maybe he was not legally intoxicated. The truth is the person is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law (unless you wave that right).
In another sense... it is a good stepping stone to have those "mysterious" inner workings of other sensitive devices exposed. Oh noes screams the company... we can no longer hide behind the curtain.
Yeah, it sucks it is being started out with a DUI case with scrutiny being eyed on a critical piece of equipment as a breathalizer, but the trend has to start somewhere.
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Re:Sorry But (Score:4, Interesting)
I learned alot more about DUI law during that trial and while I never personally drink and drive I could see very easily how one could be falsely suspected and convicted.
So how did the jury decide? We didn't there was a mistrail because the "sleezy lawyer" ( the prosecutor in this case ) asked the cop a question about the administration of a PBT ( portable breath test ). These are not admissible in TX court and the judge had already said it wasn't allowed in. The judge felt that we wouldn't ignore the fact that we had heard the cops answer and declared a mistrial. He said he felt the prosecutor made a "mistake" but I don't believe it. I think she knew the trial wasn't going her way and wanted a way out.
It kinda sucked actually.... it was like reading a novel and not getting to read the end of the book.
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Re:What's even worse... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Sorry But (Score:5, Interesting)
An attorney is the last defense between a defendant and The Government, which can, at the point of a gun, take away one's money, freedom or even life. It should be plainly obvious that The Government is much more powerful than the individual, and so it is vitally important that the individual be allowed a representative who will point out when The Government doesn't have an i dotted or a t crossed. Having a defense attorney that gets his client off on "a technicality" is the best way to insure that the government will do ITS job properly, fairly and fully, rather than putting someone in prison unjustly.
Let me assure you I'm not happy with drunk drivers or any lawbreaker getting off, but it would be much worse for an innocent person to be found guilty.
I once inherited a "simple" project, a pressure transducer with microcontroller that gave readings to a 'main' computer in decimal. While testing it I noticed that readings were sometimes way off. There was a bug in the binary to decimal conversion routine that causes about a 10 percent error in 1 out of about every 50 values (I recall it was an odd little table lookup thing).
So these days it DOES happen, and with bugs in "simple" devices perhaps moreso than ever, a "simple device" CAN be very wrong, and in this case it could cause the defendant a large fine, loss of license or even a jail term even though he may have actually below the legal limit.
You may argue that the legal limit for DUI alcohol tests is too high and should be lowered (further than has been done in recent decades), and there's probably a good argument for that (based on the punishment and very low drunk driving rates in some European contries), but again, this is a different matter than properly enforcing the current law.
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A cleaver ploy or honest defense? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A cleaver ploy or honest defense? (Score:3, Interesting)
A blood test would require either a court order/warrant or permision by the person the blood is to be taken from. Seeing as how this is for drunk drivers, people usually want the results back fairly quickly. Blood tests usually take a while unless you want troopers carrying around a whole lot of nee
Re:A cleaver ploy or honest defense? (Score:4, Insightful)
They should be forced to use ONLY tests which can be proven to be statistically accurate and not just by marketing materials produced by the people selling them. This means blood only for *BAC*. Unless you measure BAC directly, it's just an estimate - and one that is only accurate in some people. They should have zero right to convict people on the flimsy evidence they have from these machines. The companies who make the machines have a vested interest in rigging the accuracy tests.
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Should be more than just source code (Score:5, Insightful)
The larger problem here is that a lot of these tools (breathalyzers, RADAR and LIDAR guns, etc) are dealing with ambiguous data in the first place. For example, the algorithm used to determine BAC in a breathalyzer may be implemented correctly, but what if the algorithm itself is wrong? You're dealing with many variables (a person's mass, their metabolism, etc), and those variables have different values for different people. It's well-known, for example, that women will blow higher on a breathalyzer than a man simply because they're generally smaller.
Similarly for LIDAR (laser speed detection), the underlying principle is using distance and time to determine rate. Sounds straightforward, as d = r * t, but how do you know you've got the right values for d? It's been shown that rapid movement of a LIDAR gun can cause even inanimate objects to register a rate. How do we know the LIDAR gun measured the distance your car traveled over a period of time, rather than the distance of your car at one point in time and the distance of some other reflective object (say, a much closer stop sign) at a different point in time? At the distances in question, we're talking sharpshooter skills as a requirement for using a LIDAR gun, but it seems that every cop on the force has one. Can they expect us to believe that every cop is a sharpshooter, or that several cups of coffee won't induce shaking in the cop's hands that could cause false readings?
It's a good precedent, forcing the breathalyzer source to be opened to inspection, but the assumption is still that the underlying algorithm is accurate when it's not. I don't understand why courts continue to rely on technology such as the breathalyzer or the LIDAR gun when there are better, proven tests that could be used instead (blood tests, RADAR or pacing with a calibrated speedometer). Worse, once a court has chosen to allow such evidence (this is not arbitrary, but once the admissability of such a test is challenged and lost it's almost impossible to re-challenge), you can no longer argue that the underlying tool is bad (without extenuating circumstances that would bring the acceptability of such tools back into question). You can argue that the machine wasn't properly calibrated or maintained or that the officer using it was untrained or unqualified or out of practice, but you can't argue that the tool itself is inadmissable as evidence even if the facts are on your side.
Re:Should be more than just source code (Score:5, Interesting)
Heh. I remember reading a story once where a dude challenged a speeding ticket he recieved. He wanted proof that the machine was properly reading the speed of his vehicle. The company that made the radar gun refused to go into detail about how it worked, afterall that's proprietary information they don't want their competitors having. Ultimately the case was thrown out because they brought the radar gun into the court room and clocked a wall travelling at 4mph.
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Re:Should be more than just source code (Score:3, Interesting)
I think most police radar guns use a doppler shift technique, so they would need to be pointed at a moving object. However, a quick look at the websites of commercial radar gun companies shows that seve
Re:Should be more than just source code (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Should be more than just source code (Score:5, Interesting)
But here laser speed detection is widespread to catch speeders, and a very special court case comes to mind: The defendant was accused of speeding in a rural area at a speed nearly physical impossible at the place where his speed was measured with a laser. The police refused to give out any information on the device used, except for the brand and the model. The defence got hold of a copy of the operations manual for the device from an unknown source, and the police had to confirm to the court that it was the operations manual for the device used. The defendant was aquitted because the defence could show that the policeman didn't know about the warnings about reflections in the manual and the he had used it in a way that could give false results. Without the manual the defendent would have been falsely convicted.
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Re:Should be more than just source code (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Should be more than just source code (Score:3, Informative)
A BAC isn't really something depends on an "algorithm". Of course different people will have different BACs even after the same amount of alcohol - but that's irrelevant, since "DUI" is a measure of your BAC, not how much you've had to drink. The reason this is done is precisely /because/ different people have different metabolisms, etc.
It's well-known, for example
Not Necessarily Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)
It's important to remember that visible source code isn't the only requirement for Open Source. For software to be Open Source, it's not only necessary that the source code be available, but also that users are free to modify it and redistribute modified or unmodified copies. There's no real chance that the software in this case will be released under those terms. After all, one of the arguments that the lawyers are using is that the software has been modified without being recertified. It would be much more difficult to ensure that software in use hadn't been modified from a certified version if any user were free to modify it.
Re:Not Necessarily Open Source (Score:3, Funny)
So will we have to add more definitions and acronyms to the software lexicon?
Would source code you're allowed to inspect, but cannot modify, be Published Unmodifiable Source (PUS)?
How about Open Unmodifiable Computing Hardware (O
Let me get this straight (Score:5, Funny)
Calibration of Speed Traps (Score:5, Informative)
If the reports cannot be produced or are older/outside the statutory testing period, then the data produced by the machine will not hold up in court, and so the case will be dropped.
In some cases, the police simply cannot be bothered/do not have the time to do all of the necessary paperwork, and so the case may just be forgotten/ignored.
I don't know if this could be applied to a breathalyser, but it would be an interesting to see what would happen...
"Convince me" (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never forgotten that lesson. If I know what algorithms are, and how they work, and what a particular language can (and can't) do, I can certify a project, based on the look on the programmer's eye when they answer The Questions.
Blood tests? (Score:4, Informative)
Aren't blood samples used in the US? Do you not have that option?
It varies (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember, ... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Remember, ... (Score:5, Funny)
(calm down, mods... it's a joke!)
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Re:Calibration (Score:4, Informative)
I've built medical devices before. This is in essence a medical device. If this were being used in a medical laboratory for medical purposes, source code changes which were not properly recertified would void the FDA approval for the device. There's a reason for that.
It's a truism in software that you can't verify the absence of bugs by black-box testing, no matter how complete the test vectors. This is doubly true when the software is interacting with the real world, in a nontrivial manner.
Consider: The device undoubtedly measures a change in itself that occurs in response to the presence of ethanol. A voltage is produced, a current is seen, or a color change occurs in some sensitized material. Some chemical reaction occurs, and produces a detectable change in the device state. But because chemical reactions are susceptible to variation in temperature, in the age of the reagents, in the particular lot of the reagents, and in subtle machine-to-machine differences between reaction sites, the software for the machine must contain built-in adjustments for all of this. If you have a half-dozen linear adjustments that you have to make (not uncommon, in laboratory equipment), the six-dimensional test vectors that you have to check are massive. If you have a dozen such factors, you literally can't test enough combinations to be sure that every combination works. And even worse, you have to verify that the machine is in a known state at the beginning of such a test, and without access to the source you have no way of knowing.
The question isn't whether the machine can be made to work in a laboratory setting. The question is whether the machine worked this time, in the middle of the night, in an un-airconditioned drunk tank in God-knows-where, as the thirty-fifth breath test that night. If you don't have the source code, you literally can't possibly know what the chances are that it really worked.
As much as I hate drunk drivers, and as much as I think that the machines are probably pretty good, I'm with the defense attorneys here: produce the source, or stop pretending that this machine can produce proof beyond reasonable doubt.
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