Believe the magic box
Good news coming out of a courtroom:
SANFORD - Hundreds of cases involving breath-alcohol tests have been thrown out by Seminole County judges in the past five months because the test’s manufacturer will not disclose how the machines work.
All four of Seminole County’s criminal judges have been using a standard that if a DUI defendant asks for a key piece of information about how the machine works - its software source code, for instance - and the state cannot provide it, the breath test is rejected, the Orlando Sentinel reported Wednesday.
Prosecutors have said they do not know how many drunken drivers have been acquitted as a result. But Gino Feliciani, the misdemeanor division chief in the Seminole County State Attorney’s Office, said the conviction rate has dropped to 50 percent or less.
Seminole judges have been following the lead of county Judge Donald Marblestone, who in January ruled that although the information may be a trade secret and controlled by a private contractor, defendants are entitled to it.
“Florida cannot contract away the statutory rights of its citizens,” the judge wrote.Judges in other counties have said the opposite: The state cannot turn over something it does not possess, and the manufacturer should not have to turn over trade secrets.
Source: The Tampa Tribune
The manufacturer is entitled to its trade secrets, but the courts are under no obligation to consider as evidence the output of machines whose inner workings are a secret. The precedent is important; it will affect the admissibility of results from devices such as speed guns and voting machines. Systems used to provide evidence in trials or to decide elections should be open to public scrutiny.
Posted on September 16th, 2005 by pwyll
Filed under: politics
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Dear Editor,
Recently, on an unrelated issue you labeled yourself a “liberatian”. In all sincerity, humbly I inquire, doesn’t this mean the government should stay out of the private lives and personal, victimless decisions individuals make about what substances they put in their bodies?
Okay, what if drinking and driving is not victimless?
Shouldn’t the criminal procedure issue you raise be wholly secondary when, in reality, police do not in fact use the quite-flawed breathalizer technology, trade secret or not, to improve highway safety but rather to play modern day “big brother” to individuals who need treatment for genetic disorders, not first hand lessons in fascist behavior?
Would not: getting liquor ads off TV (especially the modern ones that seek to persuade the viewer that liquor is more important in life than sex and interpersonal relationships); contolling alcohol sales, if at all, in rational ways; providing treatment for individuals with alcohol problems; and scientifically assessing what are truly driving safety dangers, make more sense?
That is, if the government’s goal truly is safety on America’s highways and avenues?
Paco Malo
“Recently, on an unrelated issue you labeled yourself a “liberatian”. In all sincerity, humbly I inquire, doesn’t this mean the government should stay out of the private lives and personal, victimless decisions individuals make about what substances they put in their bodies?”
Yes
“Okay, what if drinking and driving is not victimless?”
I think we can agree it is not victimless.
“Shouldn’t the criminal procedure issue you raise be wholly secondary when, in reality, police do not in fact use the quite-flawed breathalizer technology, trade secret or not, to improve highway safety but rather to play modern day “big brother” to individuals who need treatment for genetic disorders, not first hand lessons in fascist behavior?”
Secondary to what? I meant to discuss the procedural issue because it has technological implications that interest me. Specifically, the softwre in systems that provide evidence in legal matters should be open to inspection. This applies in several areas, with voting machine software looming especially large.
“Would not: getting liquor ads off TV (especially the modern ones that seek to persuade the viewer that liquor is more important in life than sex and interpersonal relationships); contolling alcohol sales, if at all, in rational ways; providing treatment for individuals with alcohol problems; and scientifically assessing what are truly driving safety dangers, make more sense?”
More sense than what? I have no program for mitigating the side effects substance abuse to promote, nor any special insight to offer. I am inclined to hold people fully responsible for the effects of their actions. Being drunk or otherwise impaired is not an extenuating factor.
On this last point: over-crowded highways, road rage, cell phone usage in cars, and competence as a driver are just a few examples of actual causes of motor vehicle pile-ups that are instantly ignored by law enforcement once a CDS and or alcohol is discovered in the posession of one of the drivers in the pile-up.
Acknowledgment of the fact that that vehicular pile-ups may have one or more other proximate causes, even when a CDS or demon liquor is nearby, officially evaporated in the U.S. some 2 decades ago.
Paco Malo