[HN Gopher] A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hin...
___________________________________________________________________
A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed
AI evidence
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 328 points
Date : 2021-08-22 11:47 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| arthur_sav wrote:
| Anyone else surprised that such a system is running across
| cities?
| rvba wrote:
| Wow there are microphones used to detect gunshots in Chicago? I
| remember seeing such technology in a relatively obscure cyberpunk
| comic book when I was a kid, but I never thought this would be
| legal.
|
| Do the microphones record conversations too? Can the government
| spy on its own citizens? I guess some secret court (
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intell... )
| allowed it?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| There are LED street lights in San Diego California that do
| just that. They have cameras and microphones. The microphones
| are used for Machine Learning of what people say. [1] There are
| a handful of other cities deploying these. It is a clever way
| to deploy CCTV much like what the UK has but without drawing
| much attention to it.
|
| [1] - https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/san-diego-faces-
| lawsuit...
| bleachedsleet wrote:
| Oh boy, wait until you learn it's not just Chicago where they
| deploy this crap [1]
|
| [1] https://www.shotspotter.com/cities/
| LatteLazy wrote:
| This seems like the definition of circumstantial evidence doesn't
| it? AI, human, accourate or not, he shouldn't have been in jail
| without something more.
| bryan0 wrote:
| > Soon after another vehicle pulled up alongside, and someone in
| a passenger seat took out a gun and shot Herring in the head,
| Williams told police.
|
| I dont understand what Shotspotter has to do with this case at
| all. The question the case seems to hinge on is "who fired the
| gun", not "was a gun fired at this location".
|
| What am I missing?
| dylan604 wrote:
| >What am I missing?
|
| The fact that some of the evidence the police used to say who
| did what where was manufactured by the company.
| bryan0 wrote:
| The headline is:
|
| > A man spent a year in jail on a murder charge that hinged
| on disputed AI evidence.
|
| But after the reading the article, the evidence seemed
| irrelevant?
|
| Maybe the headline should have been:
|
| > AI evidence was manually reclassified after human review in
| murder case
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Incorrect
|
| > Prosecutors said ShotSpotter picked up a gunshot sound
| where Williams was seen on surveillance camera footage in
| his car, putting it all forward as proof that Williams shot
| Herring right there and then.
|
| The police used the altered location of the shot to imply
| that the defendant's story about what happened wasn't true.
| Which was that another person in another var at a different
| location did the shooting.
|
| They used the altered location data alongside video
| evidence to imply the defendant and the victim were alone
| at the shot location and therefore the defendant was the
| only possible suspect.
| bryan0 wrote:
| > The police used the altered location of the shot to
| imply that the defendant's story about what happened
| wasn't true. Which was that another person in another var
| at a different location did the shooting.
|
| Ok that would make more sense, but I definitely did not
| take that away from the article. I'm sure there are
| better sources on this case though.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >I'm sure there are better sources on this case though.
|
| Yet another example of why you cannot get your
| information from one source. Even if they are not trying
| to mislead, the one author might not have all of the
| information to provide in thier writings.
| the-dude wrote:
| This is about ShotSpotter.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ShotSpotter
| Vaslo wrote:
| We have this system in our city. Can't speak to the accuracy and
| whether or not it should be admitted evidence. It has in some
| cases revealed the approximate locations of victims who have been
| shot where they potentially could have died without the AI heads
| up as to where they were.
| aaron695 wrote:
| Do we get the AI doesn't detect location? This is just high
| school maths, pretty obvious I guess.
|
| The "AI" is just used to see if it's a gunshot for early
| detection. Obviously anyone can listen in later to the many
| recording (min 3) to see what they think about the noise.
|
| So the gun shot was in a car, so the _mathematics_ fails. This is
| why it was withdrawn.
|
| So if you were blaming AI it's important you blame mathematics
| instead now you are better informed. Because the only thing I
| hate more than the fake AI industry is people with an
| inconsistent stance.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I'm not a Luddite by any means but it is time to be more honest
| about the limitations of AI.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| The only time I hear about people who talk about AI are average
| joes, ignorant journalists, generic business analysts, and
| upper management that don't know anything about programming. I
| wish I could point to these people and say "look at video game
| AI, we can't even make those without it cheating or following a
| routine to simulate human playstyles. What makes you think we
| can do that in real life without doing the same?"
| emodendroket wrote:
| Video games are a bad example because it's pretty feasible to
| make an AI that would win every time.
| JackFr wrote:
| "It's said that in May last year, Williams was driving through
| Chicago one night hoping to buy some cigarettes."
|
| Ah yes, I remember hearing that a lot growing up.
|
| Editors, do your job!
| jwilk wrote:
| What do you mean?
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Weasel words: "it's said"
| meowster wrote:
| I think OP meant that "driving through Chicago" was pretty
| large/vague area for someone just trying to buy cigarettes.
|
| It's like saying I was driving through the United States to
| go to my local corner store.
|
| I wouldn't have thought about the poor writing if OP didn't
| mention it, but it is still a bit pedantic in my opinion.
| omnicognate wrote:
| More likely "it's said" - a claim that some unspecified
| people said something, expressed using a phrase people
| often interpret to mean "it is generally believed that..."
| or "there is a saying that goes...". GP sarcastically said
| sure "it's said" that x occurred, I heard it all the time
| as I was growing up.
|
| It's not good journalism. If someone said something, say
| who said it. If it's an anonymous source say so. "It's
| said..." in an article like this means "I vaguely think
| this has been said somewhere but I can't be bothered to
| check or quote my sources".
| meowster wrote:
| Thank you everyone (including OP) who clarified that it was
| "it's said".
| LeonB wrote:
| "It's said" -- by whom?
| JackFr wrote:
| The sentence I quoted makes no sense in a news article.
|
| - The use of the passive "It's said" has no business in a
| news item. Who said it?
|
| - Idiomatically "It's said" is typically used to identify a
| bit of folk wisdom, not a particular incident.
|
| It's terrible writing and it should appall a decent editor.
| This isn't a blog post or a comment, it's an item in an
| English language professional online publication. Do better.
| tomxor wrote:
| > "I kept trying to figure out, how can they get away with using
| the technology like that against me,"
|
| I have a bad feeling this will be a theme over the next decade as
| government and law enforcement around the world starts to
| integrate "AI" (or rather call it what it is: statistical models
| + mass surveilence), without enough scepticism built into their
| process. Some of us know better, but it looks like society and
| government will still have to learn the hard way that these tools
| are not a highlight pen, they are a very crude spray can, and
| even then they will miss spots.
| [deleted]
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| >"The problem? When we made it possible for anyone to generate
| art with artificial intelligence, barely anyone used it to make
| actual art. Instead, our AI model was forced to make videos for
| random inputs, trolling queries, and NSFW intents."
|
| I am struggling with the use of the word "forced"; the
| researchers put their software out there to be used by anyone
| with an internet connection. The researchers created that
| dynamic.
|
| And how are they not seeing that AI created no-humans-used-to-
| make-this-porn could be a net good.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The article says that employees of the AI company (ShotSpotter)
| manually reviewed and classified the sounds as gunshots:
|
| > records showed that ShotSpotter actually initially picked up
| what sounded like a firework a mile away, and this was later
| reclassified by ShotSpotter staff to be a gunshot at the
| intersection where and when Williams was seen on camera.
|
| So the AI didn't even make the call. The staff did, manually. I
| assume that means the actual audio is available and entered into
| evidence?
|
| If humans are making the call then blaming AI seems like a
| stretch. That's almost like blaming the motion detection
| algorithms for triggering video recordings that were later
| reviewed by humans. It's still humans reviewing the recordings
| and making decisions.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _So the AI didn't even make the call. The staff did,
| manually._
|
| (a) The staff of the company who makes the AI, which would have
| an incentive to make the AI's original judgement appear
| accurate?
|
| (b) The staff of a company paid by the state/police, which aims
| to please its customers?
|
| (c) Was the staff trained/experts in recognizing such sounds,
| or were they random AI company employees, which just made a
| judgement call? If so, was this call presented as AI-supported
| to the trial, and was it sold as anything beyond "some devs, no
| gun experts, mind you, heard this recording and said this must
| be a gunshot".
| dylan604 wrote:
| It could come at the behest of police as in "it would be
| really helpful to our case if there was ShotSpotter evidence
| to support our cased". It could come from the fact that
| ShotSpotter is losing customers, and willing to do anything
| to make the product "feel" more valuable to the police to
| ensure cash cows keep producing.
|
| The modern criminal investigation has so much negative
| baggage attached, from historical shenianigans, that it's
| easy to find ways to question the prosecution's case.
| mola wrote:
| It's the AI companies to blame, always. Obviously the algorithm
| is without blame, it's not a blamelable entity.
| chacham15 wrote:
| This is missing a key crucial insight: the overall number of
| evaluated cases increases when AI is helping meaning that
| borderline cases which may have been ignored prior are now
| being evaluated. Said another way, with AI handling the obvious
| cases, the number of borderline cases being evaluated by humans
| increases. With humans having large amounts of inaccuracy,
| borderline cases before which may have been ignored due to not
| having manpower to evaluate are now being evaluated. This can
| and does lead to many more erroneous accusations despite the
| fact that all the borderline evaluations are being handled by
| humans.
|
| Another factor here is that simply evaluating more data is also
| likely to lead to more erroneous evaluations since random
| chance has a much larger impact.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| It's scary that prosecutors thought that the ShotSpotter
| evidence is suitable for a court. It's amazing technology that
| can help police get to a crime scene quickly but is far too
| easy to spoof or get the wrong answer due to reflections and
| other sounds etc.
|
| Hopefully cases like this will eventually stop the system being
| used in court.
| tyingq wrote:
| >Hopefully cases like this will eventually stop the system
| being used in court.
|
| I don't see any incentive here. The only consequence suffered
| by the prosecution was having to drop that evidence. That's
| it. Maybe there's a civil case later, but that will be
| separated by a large time gap, etc.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I mean, drug dogs are still a thing even though we know they
| tend to respond to owners desires regardless of if there's
| drugs present.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Wow i have never heard of that. Curious to see a
| link/article on the issue, if you can provide.
| DaftDank wrote:
| This is a decent summary of court cases related to the
| dogs: https://www.nlrg.com/criminal-law-legal-
| research/bid/84670/C...
|
| I think this part is pretty key, and has always been a
| big open question in my mind:
|
| "The court further recognized a potential problem in
| assessing reliability related to handler cuing, as even
| well-trained dogs could respond to subconscious cues from
| their handlers. For this reason, the court determined
| that a critical factor in determining reliability is the
| record of false positive alerts made by the dog."
|
| The subconscious cues, or even deliberate cues that only
| the handler and dog know, could allow an officer with ill
| intentions to make some kind of signal only known to him
| and the dog, which causes the dog to make an "alert",
| giving the cop probable cause.
| leephillips wrote:
| Some departments deploy dogs that alert on all vehicles
| when they want an excuse to search. In at least one
| department, this was referred to as "probable cause on
| four legs".
|
| If judges continue to allow this quality of evidence, the
| police will continue to abuse the legal environment that
| creates.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Let's face it - most judges are, at least subconsciously,
| on the same side as the police and prosecutors even
| though that's not how the system should work.
| pixl97 wrote:
| You know what you call a judge, a prosecutor, and a cop
| eating at the same table?
|
| Your average lunch near the courthouse.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I don't know about that. Judges have front row seats to
| the 10,000 ways that cops, prosecutors and defense
| attorneys screw up every day.
|
| If anything, I think the expense of defense and the poor
| quality of public defenders probably accounts for bias.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Magistrates aren't even required to pass the bar. I had
| one think that I was calling him prejudiced when asking
| to dismiss with prejudice (and many other examples with
| other magistrates, but this one is somewhat funny). I had
| a judge say that you can't use statements made at a prior
| trial to discredit the same witness at the current trial
| if their testimony conflicts. He also denied said that a
| trial de novo is a "complete do-over" yet denied a
| petition to dismiss because there's no record of the
| issues being raised before the end of the trial. So is it
| a complete do-over? The whole reason they do de novo
| trials for appeals from the magistrate is because the
| magistrate doesn't have a court reporter. Not to mention
| one of the complaints was that the magistrate wouldn't
| even hear the petition, responding with "That's not gonna
| happen". Makes sense since he was a retired police cheif.
| The judge also called me a sovereign citizen when I asked
| to speak, even though I met the definition of a litigant
| under the state constitution. There were some minor
| things too. The main point is, he knew rights had been
| violated in an irrevocable way as part of that case but
| decided that it didn't matter.
|
| My impression is that if they do recognize it, they don't
| care. I also think many dont recognize it. After all, are
| they going to side with a layman citizen or the police
| and prosecutor? Even with a defense attorney, it often
| comes down to the police officer's word vs the accused.
| Who are they going to believe?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's bullshit. Lay magistrates deal with minor issues
| like traffic infractions, violations and minor
| misdemeanors.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Misdemeanors can keep people from getting a job. There
| can be pretrial restrictions, including custody. They
| also tend to be the ones having preliminary hearings and
| can issue warrants, even for felonies.
|
| These are not just traffic violations and minor issues.
| And even if they were, that doesn't mean that people's
| rights stop mattering, nor is that a valid excuse for
| gross incompetence.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >though that's now how the system should work.
|
| I'm assuming that's an unfortunate Freudian slip of a
| typo.
|
| _not_ how the system should work, even though it is
| _now_ how it seems to work.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3078300/
|
| Backs up the GP claim but I can't find any evidence of
| this being replicated in another independent experiment.
| It's at least a little bit strange that no one tried to
| replicate these rather concerning findings in the past 10
| years since publication.
| hanniabu wrote:
| They probably refused new experiments because of this.
| It's better to have one test with this result that you
| can refute as a one off result that hasn't been
| replicated than dealing with multiple tests with the same
| result.
| c22 wrote:
| An internet search for _drug dog false alert_ returns
| numerous results.
| [deleted]
| sennight wrote:
| If you like that you'll love the Wikipedia entry for
| polygraphs :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Effectiveness
| mbg721 wrote:
| My personal theory has long been that "technology" is the
| word people use for things that don't reliably work. It's
| never clean drinking water from the tap or the seed drill,
| it's stuff like this or clunky meeting software.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Hopefully cases like this will eventually stop the system
| being used in court."
|
| Maybe it will stop this system from being used in court, but
| new ones will take its place. It would be great if we could
| change the structure of the justice system to prevent these
| types of issues from popping up again. I have no idea what a
| solution would look like.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| If you did that then everyone on here would be ranting
| about old judges and a luddite system instead
| giantg2 wrote:
| Those same complaints are still applicable today.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| > It's amazing technology
|
| Serious question, what part of this technology is amazing?
| Its just sounds trained against audio labeled as gun shots.
| How is this any different then detecting faces in images or
| whatever?
| DaftDank wrote:
| I started reading "Amazon Unbound" by Brad Stone, and in the
| part where he discusses the development of Alexa, my laymen
| self had never considered how difficult it would be to train
| that thing. I think the term was "far-field" speech
| recognition, and all the problems that come up when adding in
| real world variables. People talking from across the room
| while others are talking, or the TV is going, or as you said,
| reflections and other materials in the room.
|
| I agree that it is disturbing they tried to use this as
| evidence.
| smt88 wrote:
| The only people saying ShotSpotter is amazing technology are
| ShotSpotter's PR team.
|
| By all other accounts, it doesn't work at all and is losing
| contracts.
|
| > _"...a study of Chicago police data found that over a
| nearly 22-month period ending in mid-April, almost 90% of
| ShotSpotter alerts didn't result in officers reporting
| evidence of shots fired or of any gun crime. "_[1]
|
| > _" In four years, police have made two arrests while
| responding to a ShotSpotter activation. Lt. Shawn Takeuchi,
| an SDPD spokesman, could only confirm that one of those
| arrests was directly related to the activation, but declined
| to give more information on both."_[2]
|
| 1. https://apnews.com/article/chicago-police-crime-shootings-
| be...
|
| 2. https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/public-
| safety/shotspo...
| emodendroket wrote:
| If manual reclassification is routine then what does that say
| about the AI?
| CrazyStat wrote:
| That it doesn't give the answers the customers (police and
| prosecutors) want.
|
| Which is mostly unrelated to whether or not it's accurate.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I think it's related. If it is good enough to put someone
| in jail there shouldn't be any kind of need for manual
| overrides at all.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| "Good" in what sense? Police and prosecutors don't
| necessarily care about their evidence being good in the
| sense of accurate. It just needs to convince a jury.
|
| There is a very, very, very long history of police and
| prosecutors using bad (in the sense of accuracy) evidence
| to put people in jail.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I'm making a normative claim. Obviously it does not
| describe reality.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > Crucially, Williams' lawyers - public defenders Lisa Boughton
| and Brendan Max - said records showed that ShotSpotter actually
| initially picked up what sounded like a firework a mile away,
| and this was later reclassified by ShotSpotter staff to be a
| gunshot at the intersection where and when Williams was seen on
| camera. ShotSpotter strongly insisted it had not improperly
| altered any data to favor the police's case, and said that
| regardless of the initial real-time alert, its evidence of the
| gunshot was the result of follow-up forensic analysis, which
| was submitted to the courts.
|
| "Strongly insisted" links to:
| https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/02/nvidia_cuda_openai/
|
| > One of the pieces of evidence against Williams claims
| ShotSpotter's sensors in Chicago identified gunfire where
| surveillance cameras had seen Williams stop his car by a south-
| side Chicago block, right when and where the cops said Herring
| was shot.
|
| > However, Williams' lawyer submitted paperwork [PDF] claiming
| ShotSpotter actually detected a firework a mile away from that
| location, and that ShotSpotter later reclassified the bang as a
| gunshot and the location as being where Williams was seen on
| camera, Vice first reported.
|
| > Williams' lawyer demanded the court hold an inquiry into the
| ShotSpotter evidence, and the prosecutors simply withdrew it.
|
| > ShotSpotter responded by denying at length it improperly
| altered any data or evidence, and hit back at any suggestion it
| had done so to help the police make a case. It said its
| software generates real-time alerts automatically, and staff
| later analyze the microphone readings to submit forensic
| reports for the courts, and these final reports can therefore
| differ from the initial alerts.
|
| > "The idea that ShotSpotter 'alters' or 'fabricates' evidence
| in any way is an outrageous lie and would be a criminal
| offense," it said in a statement. "We follow the facts and data
| for our forensic analysis. Period."
|
| > Update: The case against Williams was dismissed by the judge
| at the request of the prosecution, which admitted it now had
| insufficient evidence. Williams had spent the best part of a
| year in jail awaiting trial.
| merrywhether wrote:
| Wow, we need a civil rights lawyer to represent Williams in a
| wrongful imprisonment suit against the city, if not also a
| civil suit against ShotSpotter (or maybe even a criminal
| complaint for knowingly providing false testimony?). People
| shouldn't be able to just dust their hands of this.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "People shouldn't be able to just dust their hands of
| this."
|
| Yet the system will let them. I've had a prosecutor and
| trooper hold a charge that they know was incorrect and
| subject us to pre trial restrictions found only under that
| charge. The prosecutor also used their position to block
| our ability to have a witness remotely testify by telling
| court scheduling not to even speak to us (inappropriately
| using their position to influence the court). The state
| police said they see nothing wrong with knowingly holding
| an incorrect charge and subjecting people to pretrial under
| it. The Bar said that even though the conduct we described
| would constitute prosecutorial misconduct, they won't
| pursue complaints against prosecutors unless the court
| makes a determination supporting that. That would cost
| thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer, make an appeal, etc.
| The ACLU said they have bigger issues to deal with. I
| submitted a complaint to DOJ, but I'm not holding my
| breath.
|
| Literally everyone we dealt with as a part of the system
| made a bunch of mistakes and didn't give damn about
| correcting them or protecting people's rights. It's us vs
| them and all about the money.
| jtbayly wrote:
| It may not be right to blame AI, but it's certainly the case
| that they were presenting it as "the system says there was a
| shot fired here." The bigger point is that the "system" can't
| be trusted. And the fact that they need to manually classify
| things is proof of that fact. (It's way more complicated than
| just an audio recording. It's recordings from numerous
| locations, attempting to triangulate the original location,
| without being confused by echoes and other things.)
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > It may not be right to blame AI, but it's certainly the
| case that they were presenting it as "the system says there
| was a shot fired here."
|
| I think a crucial distinction is to clarify who "they" is:
| Who was making the claim? From the article, it seems that the
| prosecutors may have been the ones exaggerating the evidence:
|
| > Prosecutors said ShotSpotter picked up a gunshot sound
| where Williams was seen on surveillance camera footage in his
| car, putting it all forward as proof that Williams shot
| Herring right there and then.
|
| Naturally the defense wanted to see the actual evidence, so
| that's what they got down to.
|
| I know everyone wants to vilify AI, but I think the actual
| bad actor in this article might be the prosecutor trying to
| misrepresent the evidence.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Sure. But the point is that they misrepresent the evidence
| by pointing to the system as trustworthy. Even without
| tampering with the evidence the system isn't trustworthy
| beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _I think a crucial distinction is to clarify who "they"
| is: Who was making the claim? From the article, it seems
| that the prosecutors may have been the ones exaggerating
| the evidence:_
|
| The prosecutors are the "they". The further removed you get
| from people who know the 'AI' the more the validity of the
| evidence provided by the AI relies merely on what others
| have said.
|
| The people working on the system know that it can be
| faulty. Other software developers have an idea that it
| could be faulty. Prosecutors are told that it's alright.
| They turn around and argue it in a court of law. And the
| further you get the less people have any idea that the
| system is faulty. Down the line people will go "the machine
| says so, therefore it must be so".
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| >Down the line people will go "the machine says so,
| therefore it must be so".
|
| Thats the real feature of AI, devision laundering: a
| flawed decision made by someone for their own gain now
| appears impartial and trustworthy, and come wothout
| accountability
| kbenson wrote:
| There was a submission here a few weeks back about ShitSpotter
| and how they seem willing to put in overrides at request of the
| police without necessarily having a basis for it.
|
| If that's what happened in this circumstances it would be,
| police check ShoySpotter for more evidence, ShotSpotter hasn't
| automatically marked anything, police request manual review for
| gunshot they are sure must be there, ShotSpotter manual review
| process comes up with something and marks it as a shot with a
| human override.
|
| There's a lot of places bias, or outright corruption, could
| cause problems in that process, if it's what happened here.
| stefan_ wrote:
| That's the point? These systems invariably turn out to not be
| any sort of AI at all, but sales people ready to make a call
| any way their customer (police) wants it made.
|
| Later it's presented as AI to a jury. It's basically the same
| scam as lots of forensics, junk science to get a desired
| result.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| What freaks me out about forensics is no one at all is doing
| any validation testing. And they aren't doing blind testing
| either.
| jdjd6 wrote:
| It really boggles my mind how desperate people are to try and
| include and blame the police for everything.
|
| >sales people ready to make a call any way their customer
| (police) wants it made.
|
| You really believe people signed up for a dangerous amd
| thankless job with high liability and low pay so they can
| feverishly conspire to have this guy arrested?
|
| Edit: This place is becoming reddit. Someone posting links
| which dont substantiate their statements gets upvoted,
| meanwhile my replies questioning this get hit by a downvote
| brigade.
| d4mi3n wrote:
| I think you're conflating issues with the institution of
| policing within the United States with the behavior of
| individual police officers. Without getting into the
| politics or philosophy of the comportment or purpose of a
| police force, there are some things in situations like this
| that are fact:
|
| 1. Police officers (and more importantly, prosecutors) are
| incentivized to make arrests and have those arrests stick.
|
| 2. It's a well understood psychological phenomenon that
| individuals are much more lenient of their own actions.
| They call this attribution theory in psychology [1].
|
| 3. While policing is a risky job, it comes with privileged
| treatment, powers, and trust that a common citizen does not
| have. As such, and as public servants, we hold those with
| these powers to a higher degree of responsibility and
| behavior than those without such powers. To hold police
| accountable, we need a minimum level of oversight and
| control. Historically, this has either not happened or been
| circumvented by way of police unions establishing ill-
| advised contracts with the local governments they work
| with. [2]
|
| I'll agree on points that individual police officers aren't
| evil, but I'd need a lot of convincing to believe that many
| policing organizations within the United States are not
| being held accountable to an acceptable level; nor are they
| being trained in ways that encourage appropriate
| interactions with the public they serve.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_(psychology)
|
| [2]: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cg
| i?arti...
| jdjd6 wrote:
| 1. What are those incentives you mention?
|
| 2. That applies to everyone, not just police.
|
| 3. This is a fallacy due to media portrayal. If you are
| late to your job what happens? Probably nothing or you
| get asked not to do it again. The same mistakes you make,
| police officer will get investigated by internal affairs
| and punished over.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| This is equally a fallacy - "if you are late to your job"
| "will get investigated by internal affairs". No, they
| won't. But they will be protected by one of the strongest
| unions in the country, if not the strongest.
|
| Policing is also a lot less risky a job than is commonly
| perceived.
| [deleted]
| aeturnum wrote:
| Just fyi - Police are generally quite well paid for the
| area they live in. For example, in Alameda (the county I
| live in) it's common for police to make over $450,000 a
| year[1].
|
| Also, while police to have a more-dangerous-than-average
| job[2] (and face unique risks - they are probably the most
| likely profession to die of a gunshot on the job), there
| are much more dangerous jobs[3].
|
| So if you have been excusing police because you think they
| are accepting poverty for danger, I'd ask you to consider
| that Police are more like extremely well paid garbage
| collectors[4].
|
| [1]
| https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2019/alameda-
| coun...
|
| [2] https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/police-2018.htm
|
| [3] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/logging/default.html
|
| [4] https://qz.com/410585/garbage-collectors-are-more-
| likely-to-...
| phsau wrote:
| Where in source [1] does it show that it's common for
| police to make over $450k a year?
|
| The 'Avg Total pay & benefits' sorted by title has Chief
| Information Officer/Registrar of Voters as the entry into
| that level of remuneration. Police specific above that
| you only have the Sherrif, which is an elected official.
|
| Police pay for the vast majority of roles is
| significantly below $450k.
| aeturnum wrote:
| That's a good critique! Looking at historical data it
| seems like "commonly above $300,000" would be more
| accurate. It's worth saying that listed police salaries
| are far below these numbers and the officers get there
| through overtime and other extra payments. Thus the use
| of 'common' instead of average because you have to look
| back at what people were actually paid.
|
| Edit: I can no longer edit my original post so this will
| have to do.
|
| https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?a=alam
| eda...
| jdjd6 wrote:
| How are supervisors and elected officials making 300k
| (after all benefits considered) in an area with a high
| cost of living equal to "police commonly make above
| 300k"?
|
| Second, it would be absurd to account for extra income to
| say they make what you're saying. That's like saying a
| cashier at walmart works three jobs to make an average of
| 70k a year, so cashiers at walmart commonly make 70k a
| year.
| aeturnum wrote:
| > _it would be absurd to account for extra income to say
| they make what you 're saying._
|
| It's not what I say they make, it's what the public
| records say they make. You can go look yourself.
|
| For example, from my first link, Sergeant Stuart Eugene
| Barnes made $125,380.76 in salary and $172,330.17 in
| overtime. I think it fair to say that's compensation from
| their job as a police officer.
| DaftDank wrote:
| I can't remember which department, but I remember the
| local SF/Bay news many years ago talking about some
| supervisor at that department somehow making $1.5 million
| the year before (or something insane like that.) They
| explained how it was all possible, which to me seemed
| like he had just been with them for so long, he knew
| exactly the optimal way to play the system and exploit
| all the loopholes in it.
|
| As for your second part, I guess it _would_ seem unlikely
| for some positions, but I know a doctor who made like 3x
| his base salary each year through all sorts of absolutely
| legal, ethical, and hospital-sanctioned means. Taking
| every single weekend he could on call (even offering to
| "relieve" other doctors who had been assigned that
| weekend) for example allowed him to make much more than
| you would ever think possible.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > Second, it would be absurd to account for extra income
| to say they make what you're saying.
|
| Except it's extra income that they make _by being a
| police officer_. A business that hires an off-duty police
| officer for security isn 't hiring them because they're a
| big burly-looking dude; they're being hired because they
| are a police officer. An off-duty officer will typically
| wear their police uniform while working "off duty", and
| can take actions which an ordinary civilian could not
| (like conducting arrests).
| sharken wrote:
| With $450,000 as yearly pay i should give up being a
| software developer. Alameda even has a violent crime rate
| of half the US average.
|
| https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Alameda-
| California.htm...
|
| I do wonder if the pay negatively affects the
| confrontations that the individual officer will risk,
| e.g. let a suspect escape due to not having good enough
| backup.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| That's because he's probably lying/exaggerating. I highly
| doubt your average officer makes anywhere near that. I
| don't make over 200k as an experienced developer, either.
|
| People are terrible with nuance. OP did a good job at
| contextualizing danger of policing, without claiming it's
| "safe", as you'd see on reddit, but I'm guessing
| something is getting lost here.
|
| I'm very sceptical someone is in the multiple sixes of
| figures without serious responsibility and credentials.
| In my area officers make similar (lower) pay than tech
| jobs, and every area I've seen is similar. So people on
| reddit will be complaining about officers making 80k-100k
| out west, when in reality that's just marginally better
| than bartenders.
|
| So yeah, they're making like 60k-100k, or more out west.
| Here in the midwest it's more like 40k-80k. This compares
| to developer jobs I've seen, but it's not apples to
| apples. Cops end up years behind in pay, but end up with
| better benefits. So they'll be at 70k 3-10 years in,
| instead of 0-5 in.
|
| In either case there's other tiers and roles, was
| assuming grunts. There might be other cases where "super
| grunt" jobs exist, and get paid very well. Just like with
| engineers it seems like the way to advance is increased
| specialization and moving to management.
|
| You can spin your wheels at low level engineering jobs
| for decades if you want, too. Usually, people also have
| to move towards leadership roles to advance in
| engineering...
|
| So I digress, but I guess it's fair to say police officer
| is of similar value as engineer in terms of job perks...
| but engineer is considered a good job.
| jdjd6 wrote:
| I looked at your link and I dont see any police making
| over 450K a year. In fact, I dont see any making over
| 100k a year except supervisors and elected officials.
| robocat wrote:
| Police are telling ShotSpotter to alter evidence from
| gunshot-detecting AI
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-
| sh...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27959755
| giantg2 wrote:
| I generally agree, but wouldn't necessarily say a lot of
| forensics is junk science. The science is generally sound
| (procedures and theory). Usually it's the prosecutors that
| present the forensics in a way that misrepresents what the
| results actually mean. Or lab techs make mistakes or perform
| misconduct (How to Fix a Drug Scandal on Netflix is
| interesting).
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Citation strongly needed on forensics bring generally
| sound.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Not all forensics disciplins are created equal and some of
| them, such as hair forensics, are definitely junk science.
| giantg2 wrote:
| How is hair analysis junk science? Maybe you just mean
| that people misuse the facts to come to incorrect
| conclusions?
|
| It's only supposed to be used to include or exclude
| someone, and based on the numbers/probabilities it's
| generally only useful for excluding someone. Of course
| that's not how most prosecutors use it...
| emodendroket wrote:
| No, the procedures and theory behind, e.g., bite mark
| analysis or fire analysis, are total junk.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Do you have some links for this? My understanding is the
| interpretation part can be BS, but stuff like finding and
| identifying _potential_ ignition or accelerant locations
| and types should be more settled.
| emodendroket wrote:
| https://theintercept.com/2019/05/05/forensic-evidence-
| aafs-j...
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-
| features/jeff...
| giantg2 wrote:
| That doesn't exactly support your claims for most of
| forensics. If you read/skim the NAS report these articles
| are based on, you will see that much of the issue is not
| with the underlying science, but rather in the
| "interpretation" part. Yes, the odontology seems to be
| unsupported. But even the fire analysis that you list as
| an example is said to have a scientific basis like
| chemistry, but that the interpretation part has issues.
| shkkmo wrote:
| If you are using forensics in a trial, the validity of
| the "interpretation" part is key to it's use. The
| reliability of these interpretations has been
| historically hugely overstated.
|
| Given this history it is absolutely reasonable to reject
| most forensic evidence unless there actual good science
| supporting the reliability of expert interpretations.
| tooltower wrote:
| While my stance on forensics is not as negative as the
| parent comment, I don't see how you are drawing such a
| sharp distinction between the "science" and the
| "interpretation". They are not separate things.
|
| When a scientist proposes a new test, they include
| measurement techniques as well as a method of
| interpretation. If a medical test is used in a way that
| is frequently prone to misinterpretation, it would be
| fair to call that entire test useless.
| hervature wrote:
| I disagree. The canonical example here are p-values.
| Completely valid and accepted interpretation which will
| forever be abused. In the medical realm, we see the same
| things with false-positive and false-negative rates
| causing massive confusion. An even more recent example is
| COVID vaccine efficacy. I would take the bet that 90% of
| the general population could not give the accurate
| definition of what the definition of efficacy is.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Just curious about the downvotes.
|
| 1. Was it he said statistics lie sometimes?
|
| 2. Or, questioned 90% efficacy of some Covid vaccines?
| giantg2 wrote:
| "If a medical test is used in a way that is frequently
| prone to misinterpretation, it would be fair to call that
| entire test useless."
|
| And yet there are many examples of this with malpractice,
| unnecessary deaths, etc. Lyme tests are notorious for
| false negatives depending on the lab you use. It's also a
| widely held belief that you want tests done in the middle
| of the week instead of on a Friday or weekend because
| some techs just want to get out of there and are more
| prone to mistakes.
|
| The reason I'm drawing a hard line is because of fact vs
| opinion. This same line gets drawn in court. They will
| ask experts if it's a fact or an opinion that they
| testified about (usually to attack a witness). Autopsies
| are full of facts, and then there are opinions on what
| those facts mean. If it's an opinion, it's possible to
| counter it with another professional opinion.
|
| The only sort of opinion they _should_ be sharing is
| included, excluded, or undetermined. Hair is not a
| "match", but it could include or exclude someone and
| _maybe_ mathematical probabilities.
| emodendroket wrote:
| It may very well be the case that a version of fire
| analysis that is scientifically rigorous can be done, but
| this would have nothing to do with how it is typically
| practiced.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Which is what @giantg2 said:
|
| > The science is generally sound (procedures and theory).
| Usually it's the prosecutors that present the forensics
| in a way that misrepresents what the results actually
| mean.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28265884
| emodendroket wrote:
| That's not the same claim. The practitioners who come up
| with the results are not operating in a scientifically
| sound or rigorous way. One documentary I watched about a
| wrongful murder conviction (a man was found to have
| burned down his house to kill his entire family) had a
| discussion of how the fire investigators would talk about
| "feeling the beast" and other nonsense. It is very
| flattering to describe this as in any way "evidence-
| based."
| wyager wrote:
| Fingerprinting is junk science. Polygraphs are junk
| science. Tons of things that have been or are admissible as
| evidence are junk science.
| tzs wrote:
| > Fingerprinting is junk science.
|
| How then do you explain the success of Touch ID on Apple
| devices and the equivalent systems on other phones and
| tablets?
|
| Random people can't just walk up and unlock a Touch ID
| device with their fingerprint, which suggests that
| fingerprints are in fact a very good way to tell people
| apart.
|
| Yes, it is possible to make a fake fingerprint that Touch
| ID will not be able to distinguish from my fingerprint.
| But that fake fingerprint will only unlock my device, not
| your device, so it is still correctly distinguishing our
| fingerprints.
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| > How then do you explain the success of Touch ID on
| Apple devices and the equivalent systems on other phones
| and tablets?
|
| Because on those devices the fingerprint is only used as
| a second factor (the first factor being physical
| possession of a particular device).
|
| If Apple used fingerprints like law enforcement do, that
| is running a fingerprint against the big DB of all
| prints, then they would certainly get some arbitrary
| matches.
| bagels wrote:
| How many people have you let try the unlock your device
| with their fingerprint? Tens or hundreds of Millions?
| That'd be a closer comparison for how a search of
| fingerprint database work.
| tzs wrote:
| Searching a big DB is one way to use fingerprints. It is
| a crappy way, though.
|
| Another way fingerprints are used is to compare
| fingerprints found at a crime scene to people who have
| been identified using other methods that have nothing to
| do with fingerprints.
|
| E.g., if you have someone murdered in his office when
| working late at night, and security cameras show that
| five other people were in the building at the time of the
| murder, and you are able to get a good set of
| fingerprints off the murder weapon you don't need a
| database. You take the fingerprints from all five of
| those other people, and if one is a very good match and
| four do not match, you concentrate most of your effort on
| the one that matched.
|
| It's actually quite similar to how DNA evidence has been
| used and misused. I don't know how they compare DNA
| nowadays, but when DNA evidence was first making waves
| getting people convicted they only compared two DNA
| samples at a few points. For a given sample there would
| likely be several people in the country that matched.
|
| That's fine if used right, like fingerprints in the
| earlier murder hypothetical. Narrow it down to only 5
| people who could have committed the crime, get a DNA
| sample from the crime scene that must be from the
| criminal, and if that matches exactly one of those 5
| suspects it is strong evidence they are the criminal.
|
| Have no suspects yet, run that same sample through a
| database, get exactly one match, and conclude that must
| be the criminal. Totally bogus. A lot of people were
| convicted in the early days of DNA matching that way.
|
| The database method can be made sound, but only if the
| database includes _everybody_. Match against a database
| that includes everyone, only get one hit, and you 've
| probably got your criminal. But if the database includes
| everyone you are likely to get several matches.
|
| As I said, that was how it used to be. I know DNA
| sequencing has gotten faster and cheaper over the years,
| but I have no idea if routine forensic DNA matching now
| matches enough to make matches unique except in the case
| of identical siblings.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Ok, but supposing what you say is true, they are junk
| science when it comes to forensics. There is research on
| capturing the full 3D structure of fingerprints to
| actually capture the uniqueness of a fingerprint[0]. But
| even if the 2D scan is enough not every scanner is
| capable of collecting that structure.
|
| Given how much R&D goes into making better fingerprint
| scanners, it seems odd to then claim that a fingerprint
| taken off of a victim has anything near that level of
| detail. I guess its sound to say that it may be used as a
| piece of evidence to further narrow down the target, but
| its completely disingenuous to claim that it's sound
| evidence.
|
| [0]: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9160923
| klyrs wrote:
| Sorry, but the security required for your Apple devices
| is less exacting than the demands of justice.
|
| late edit: how often do people try to unlock your
| unattended apple device?
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Because other surfaces are not a purpose built sensor
| designed to detect the features of a finger then
| repeatedly trained with a specific set of finger scans?
|
| Like are you joking?
|
| Saying TouchID validates fingerprinting is like saying
| MRI machines validate psychics.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Are you joking?
|
| It seems you two have a different idea of what is being
| discussed. The underlying fundamentals of finger prints
| are solid. The part that _can_ make them ineffective is
| when they are using insufficiently tested tools or
| matching on too few points. And of course
| misrepresentating what a match actually means and how it
| pertains to the case.
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| I can effectively burn off my fingerprints completely...
| They are not completely effective at all
| giantg2 wrote:
| I wouldn't call polygraphs forensics. Most states do not
| allow them as evidence.
|
| Do you have a link for the fingerprinting claim?
| monetus wrote:
| (Not who you responded to)
|
| https://www.crammlawfirm.com/fingerprint-match-jails-
| innocen...
|
| This isn't the case I originally recalled, and doesn't
| say how many points were matched, but I remember a 5
| point match being used to convict a person who was later
| proven innocent.
| arp242 wrote:
| Fingerprints aren't "junk science", but they do have
| error margins and plenty of room for mistakes. The
| problem is that many juries, judges, prosecutors, and
| even defenders forget about this.
|
| This is the case for many types of evidence; witness
| statements for example can also be notoriously
| unreliable. It's not _bad_ to use this kind of evidence,
| but you do have a problem if you consider any witness
| statement to be absolute truth and never consider any
| "reasonable doubt" there may be, and this is how you end
| up convicting people based purely on "I saw the suspect
| commit the crime from 50 metres away in the dark and I'm
| sure it was him!" or some such.
|
| If you have six independent witness statements like that,
| or a witness statement _and_ fingerprints then the
| reasonable doubt starts becoming a lot less reasonable.
|
| This is also the problem with the case in this article: a
| piece of evidence over which it seems like reasonable
| doubt should exists is the singular piece of evidence
| tying this person to the crime. The problem here isn't
| the evidence as such IMHO, but that juries and/or
| defenders (depends on the case) seem exceedingly bad at
| sceptically examining physical evidence.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Fingerprints aren't "junk science"
|
| Fingerprints are directly-recorded facts. What may be
| junk science is what expert witnesses present about the
| interpretation of fingerprints.
|
| > The problem is that many juries, judges, prosecutors,
| and even defenders forget about this.
|
| Juries as triers of fact, and judges insofar as they are
| ruling on the facts of the case, aren't, in any case,
| supposed to allow themselves fo be guided by extrinsic
| knowledge, they are supposed to act based on facts (both
| direct and the expert knowledge relating to the import of
| direct facts) provided as evidence, both testimony and
| exhibits, in the case.
| arp242 wrote:
| > Fingerprints are directly-recorded facts.
|
| That's not really how it works; false positives exist,
| especially if you consider that a lot of times you have
| incomplete or smudged fingerprints and there is actually
| some amount of subjectivity involved in determining a
| match. See e.g. [1]: "only two properly designed studies
| of latent fingerprint analysis had been conducted. These
| both found the rate of false matches (known as "false
| positives") to be very high: 1 in 18 and 1 in 30."
|
| Again: useful evidence for sure, but considering them
| undisputable facts is not wise.
|
| [1]: https://theconversation.com/fingerprinting-to-solve-
| crimes-n...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That's not really how it works
|
| Yes, it is.
|
| > false positives exist
|
| Matches (positive or negative) are not the same thing as
| fingerprints. Fingerprints are directly recorded facts.
| _Matches_ are matters of interpretation (the fact of a
| match reported by a particular system is a distinct
| direct fact from the fingerprint itself, but again the
| significance is...what expert testimony exists to
| establish or challenge.)
| arp242 wrote:
| The reality is that when "fingerprint evidence" is
| brought to court that it's not foolproof and has a
| sizeable margin of error that should be accounted for
| when considering the verdict, something that is currently
| often ignored. You can argue semantics all day, but
| that's the way things work right now. This seems like an
| exceedingly pedantic point to make.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The reality is that when "fingerprint evidence" is
| brought to court that it's not foolproof
|
| No evidence is foolproof. My entire point is that the
| issue isn't with "fingerprints" or the knowledge that
| juries and judges bring extrinsically (which was the
| explicit claim made upthread), but with the expert
| testimony that contextualizes fingerprints.
|
| (This was even more clearly the problem with fiber
| evidence when the FBI crime lab was presenting pure bunk
| expert testimony in virtually every case.)
| shkkmo wrote:
| The "fact" of a fingerprint is useless without matching.
| Forensics is the process of interpresting and finding
| matches for facts.
|
| You pedantism is wholey off base here.
| newswasboring wrote:
| That shows its flawed, not junk.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Oh, yeah. I've heard of them using too few points. I
| would have lumped that into misconduct or mistakes by the
| lab tech or prosecution.
| monetus wrote:
| Yeah, knowing or not, comparing with too few points is
| misconduct - that should be the fault of someone besides
| the defense, but that is somewhat tangential - does
| anyone with more knowledge know where the line is drawn?
| I imagine there are some outlandish coincedences
| happening.
| k1t wrote:
| Not fingerprinting, but related issue for microscopic
| hair comparisons:
|
| _The Justice Department and FBI have formally
| acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI
| forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials
| in which they offered evidence against criminal
| defendants over more than a two-decade period before
| 2000._
|
| _Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory's microscopic
| hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in
| ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of
| the 268 trials reviewed so far_
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-
| overstated-fo...
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Most forensic science is junk.
|
| That said, human in the loop ML can be extremely useful.
| Surfacing possible positive examples for human review and/or
| cutting down 'obvious' negatives can multiply the
| productivity of human reviewers in many contexts.
| theelous3 wrote:
| > Most forensic science is junk.
|
| I'm ignorant on the topic. Got links?
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Forensics is full of gee-whiz-cool csi stuff which
| eventually is shown to be worthless. Polygraphs are a
| great example; they're still very wisely used in the US,
| despite piles of evidence showing they're prone to both
| false positives and false negatives. Sibling comments
| saying they aren't forensics because they've been
| discredited are missing the point: these are typical
| crime tech, and have been lately discredited, but are
| still in use in the US regardless.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph
|
| For a more recent example, here's an article on denim
| analysis...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/denim-pattern-
| mat...
|
| The underlying problems seem to be bad incentives (the
| prosecution is paid+evaluated on its ability to put
| people in jail) and the court's willingness to accept
| insufficiently validated tech.
| duskwuff wrote:
| To add to that list: fire investigation. There have
| historically been a lot of myths in the field regarding
| forms of "proof" that a fire was caused by arson, and
| many of them were historically used to obtain (likely
| false) convictions.
|
| https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/long_held_bel
| ief...
| ransom1538 wrote:
| https://innocenceproject.org/what-is-bite-mark-evidence-
| fore...
| FireBeyond wrote:
| What almost invariably happens in cases like this or the cell
| phone surveillance boxes (Stingrays) is that if the underlying
| technology or behavior is challenged or questioned strongly
| enough, the evidence introduced by them, if not the case
| itself, will be withdrawn, in order to try to avoid any
| negative precedent against the device or technology being set.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I get that their system may sometimes need manual classification
| of signals but how is it possible to change the triangulated
| location? That is the core part of the technology and doesn't
| require ML to implement. Seems like it's all just Theranos style
| vapor.
| c_weighted wrote:
| Locating on an echo at one more receivers rather than a perhaps
| quieter more direct path. Putting the wrong impulses together
| when computing a location. Computing the wrong start time for
| one or more impulses.
|
| If you want to read up on all the ways this kind of thing can
| go wrong, the technical term here is "source localization."
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The military has no problem detecting gunfire direction and
| estimating range from a single microphone array on a mast.
| Shotspotter is a distributed network of multiple sensors
| across a wide area. If they can't make it work after 15+
| years then they are hopeless.
| c_weighted wrote:
| Boomerang is colocated with the target. Multipath is less
| likely to be an issue because there is likely to be line of
| sight to the source. Selecting the right impulses is easier
| because the spacing of the microphones provides some tight
| timing constraints. You're not likely to see
| inconsistencies in timing the impulses lead to location
| error because any effects of the environment are likely to
| be consistent across the pulses. Finally, the location
| accuracy requirements are far different. ShotSpotter needs
| to put a dot on a map accurate enough to find shell casings
| or a victim in a wide geographic area. Boomerang just needs
| to give a good bearing from the receivers to return fire.
| The range doesn't have to be all that precise, and the
| mathematics suggests it isn't.
|
| These are two very different approaches to solve different
| problems.
| setr wrote:
| It seems to me jail time without verdict is the real problem in
| this scenario -- it's not clear to me how that's not "guilty
| until proven innocent"
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| In Germany and Austria you get compensated for your time
| incarcerated if found innocent. So as to basically "fine" the
| government for not having speedy trials.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Precisely. This happens to people all the time regardless of
| the technology involved. Being suspected of a crime should
| never ruin your life. At most it should pause your life.
|
| House arrest with deferral of your debts and obligations and
| mandatory reinstatement of your job if you are exhonorated or
| the charges are removed seems like what you would need at a
| minimum to live up to "innocent until found guilty".
| qayxc wrote:
| That's exactly what judges decide to do if certain criteria
| are met, though.
|
| The person in this case, however, had a criminal history
| including attempted homicide so the judge decided to opt for
| detention while awaiting trial instead.
|
| Sounds like perfectly normal procedure to me and happens
| other countries as well.
| StreamBright wrote:
| The US has the most troublesome track record of law enforcement
| abuse of "evidence".
|
| https://innocenceproject.org/what-is-bite-mark-evidence-fore...
|
| https://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/nathan-robinson-forensi...
|
| https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/ke...
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Well that's still a failure on both the software programmed by
| humans causing a false positive and then doubled down by a wrong
| human review, based on a false alert. All involved stakeholders
| have failed.
| nend wrote:
| How is this a failure by software? The software categorized the
| sound as a fire work.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| 'The system' is software + people who run it. Their failures
| are combined. As an external person i dont care which part of
| the company fucked up, they shoupd carry responsibility
| indymike wrote:
| > How is this a failure by software?
|
| The outcome - a guy being charged with a crime using bogus
| evidence is the story. The software may have been right, but
| the people who operate the software didn't trust it.
| Regardless, the story is trying to point out we might not be
| ready to put our faith in AI for criminal prosecutions at
| this time.
| MichaelGroves wrote:
| If shotspotter had not existed, I think this man would have
| still been charged with the murder. It seems beyond dispute
| that the victim was shot in the car of the accused. The
| case against him was seemingly lost for two reasons:
| shotspotter's fuckery, and the police not bothering to
| collect other evidence in a timely matter. It should not
| have been hard for the police to determine whether there
| was a gunshot fired in the car, or whether the passenger
| was struck by a bullet fired from outside the car. There
| was really no reason for shotspotter to play a role in this
| case, it _could_ have been cut and dry but they went and
| muddled the whole thing up with their janky tech.
| notahacker wrote:
| Yeah, looks like it's the actual software that's undermined
| the case against him. A loud bang which coincides - perhaps
| pretty loosely - with some footage, some supposed audio
| expert contractor's human employee - possibly knowing other
| details of the case - thinks it's consistent with a gunshot
| but the case collapses when records reveal the AI program
| they ran originally classified the loud bang as a distant
| firework.
| alias_neo wrote:
| The software didn't raise a false positive though, by my
| reading.
|
| It identified it as a firework a mile away! The humans at the
| software company, REclassified it as a gunshot at Williams'
| location.
|
| Interesting that there's no mention of the actual gun shot,
| which appears to have happened some time later?
|
| Not only is this "tool" bullshit, it seems the employees of
| said org are morally bankrupt enough to falsify evidence in
| order to put an innocent man in jail.
|
| The whole thing would be utterly unbelievable if it wasn't
| happening in America.
|
| EDIT: typos
| Borrible wrote:
| Fake AI?
|
| Who would have thought?
|
| Shocking, shocking I tell you.
|
| https://venturebeat.com/2021/04/05/government-audit-of-ai-wi...
| tyingq wrote:
| It's interesting to me that there's no working process to
| introduce/accept new types of science in court. Polygraphs aren't
| allowed (though the police still find ways to use it to bully
| people). So, there's _some_ process. But you still see stories
| about subsets of fiber, hair, arson, fingerprint, dna, etc,
| science, that shouldn 't have been brought to court.
| jes wrote:
| The legal system will, over time, also have to accept and adapt
| to the idea that free will is an illusion. (See "neuro-law" for
| more information on this.)
| matt123456789 wrote:
| Unless you are aware of any breakthroughs in fundamental
| physics or neurology which are being kept from the rest of
| us, "free will is an illusion" is not a very useful theory
| when it comes to public policy.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| The idea that the people who run the legal system have the
| free will to change it is also an illusion.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Why would it? Aren't judges and legislators equally lacking
| in free will too?
| abrichr wrote:
| Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurolaw
|
| > The rapid growth of functional magnetic resonance imaging
| (fMRI) research has led to new insights on neuroanatomical
| structure and function, which has led to a greater
| understanding of human behavior and cognition. As a response,
| there has been an emergence of questions regarding how these
| findings can be applied to criminology and legal processes.
|
| I hope they have a more solid foundation of evidence than
| fMRI.
|
| Eg from https://www.fastcompany.com/90520750/duke-university-
| researc... :
|
| > The researchers reexamined 56 peer-reviewed, published
| papers that conducted 90 fMRI experiments, some by leaders in
| the field, and also looked at the results of so-called
| "test/retest" fMRIs, where 65 subjects were asked to do the
| same tasks months apart. They found that of seven measures of
| brain function, none had consistent readings.
|
| Also https://www.pnas.org/content/113/28/7900 :
|
| > Functional MRI (fMRI) is 25 years old, yet surprisingly its
| most common statistical methods have not been validated using
| real data. Here, we used resting-state fMRI data from 499
| healthy controls to conduct 3 million task group analyses.
| Using this null data with different experimental designs, we
| estimate the incidence of significant results. In theory, we
| should find 5% false positives (for a significance threshold
| of 5%), but instead we found that the most common software
| packages for fMRI analysis (SPM, FSL, AFNI) can result in
| false-positive rates of up to 70%. These results question the
| validity of a number of fMRI studies and may have a large
| impact on the interpretation of weakly significant
| neuroimaging results.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| Wow - any software system that is used to submit evidence to the
| court should have a preferably cryptographically secure chain of
| custody of all artifacts - including the raw recorded audio and
| the code used to process it. Any manual 'post processing' should
| be tracked down to a person, a date, and a verifiable reason for
| making changes to the model/decision. For 'black box' models an
| independent organization should be able to test them to confirm
| stated accuracy/precision.
|
| I don't think the answer is to do away with these systems but as
| we yield more and more authority to machines regulation will need
| to catch up so they aren't just used a fig leaf for
| corroboratory-evidence-as-a-service.
| Crontab wrote:
| Coming next year: "A man spent a year in jail on child
| pornography charge that hinged on disputed Apple CSAM evidence".
| csydas wrote:
| I know you're being coy to slam on Apple, but this already
| happens in the uS __without__ Apple's (imo misguided) strategy
| and it happens frequently.
|
| Prosecution over thumbnails, file hash matches with tenuous
| connections to individuals, Crime-Tech has given a new position
| for law enforcement to craft fanciful narratives to support
| prosecutions of just about anyone. I'm not specifically citing
| or inferring there have been *targeted* instances of this, but
| it happens very often towards US citizens already.
|
| Stingrays, Cellebrite, Forensic "science", ShotSpotter, it's
| absolute chaos and anyone can be a victim here.
|
| My goal here is not anything about Apple and its CSAM strategy,
| but to make it very clear that the imagined scenario happens
| now and happens frequently.
| ailef wrote:
| I'd be interested in reading about some of these real cases
| if you have any links handy.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| For that to happen: they'd have to be matched 30 times, the
| Apple employees would have to mistakenly manually confirm the
| match 30 times, and the defence would fail to request to see
| the underlying images that matched the hashes during discovery.
|
| It seems... far fetched.
| the-dude wrote:
| For now.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| When your slippery slope includes the abolition of pre-
| trial discovery, it's a very slippery slope indeed.
| dylan604 wrote:
| When does slope become cliff?
| psychlops wrote:
| When it's your phone.
| [deleted]
| xdennis wrote:
| You don't know it's 30 and you don't know it's going to stay
| so even if it is.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Right, because imagine the spin.
|
| "Our CSAM matching found 29 matches that are either
| confirmed or strongly suspected in your iCloud drive. But
| because Apple values your privacy, we are not turning this
| information over."
|
| No. Expect that number to go to '1', or very close, and
| very soon. Because as much as this is a PR nightmare for
| Apple right now, the above scenario is even worse.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Not really relevant to this article, but relevant to the title:
| if AI keeps banning accounts for reasons that seems nonsense to
| humans, how will we protect people from getting flagged and
| locked up 'just in case' by the machine?
|
| AI is just not advanced enough to jail people, by a very large
| margin. And yet we will see it happen.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| The scariest part is how quickly policing agencies are to
| embrace this tech as well but the government as a whole is slow
| to change anything else. Why is it that the state can be
| proactive about jailing me but not as much when it comes to
| quickly resolving cases and protecting my rights?
| leephillips wrote:
| This year in jail was awaiting the "speedy trial" that is
| supposed to be guaranteed by the US Constitution. I think that in
| itself is as much of an issue as the quality of the evidence. How
| can the government justify taking year away from the life of a
| man who has not been convicted of anything?
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| It's typical for a defendant to waive their right to a speedy
| trial. If you don't waive it typically you get the book thrown
| at you and in the little time you have to prepare, something
| sticks. I agree this should be changed but there is not much
| political will behind it, as prosecutors view it as a necessity
| to try everyone fairly. The real solution is to not bring so
| many pointless cases to trial.
|
| Knowing that, I think I would demand a speedy trial, but most
| people have horrible lawyers.
| leephillips wrote:
| Huh, thanks for pointing that out. I had no idea that waiving
| the right to a speedy trial was even a thing. If you do not
| so waive, what is the standard for a trial date that is
| considered constitutionally speedy at the moment?
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| It depends on state. In Kansas, it is 180 days if out on
| bail, or 90 if held. Note this does not include time before
| you are arraigned. In some states it does (personally,
| speedy trial should include the time before you are
| arraigned, so that the state is forced to hurry up and deal
| with cases or dismiss them).
|
| I'm unsure about federal guidelines. I think many states
| have laws that could be challenged in federal court, and
| their de facto behavior most certainly can, if you have
| money.
| stelcodes wrote:
| A year? Curtis Flowers spent over 20 years on Death Row without
| being convicted of anything. A couple years ago he was set
| free! Why? Because of a true crime podcast called In The Dark.
| Seriously. Listen to season 2 and your mind will be blown. The
| "justice" system in this country is horrific.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Flowers?wprov=sfti1
| leephillips wrote:
| I agree with your distress at the state of the justice
| system, but it doesn't make sense to say that someone was on
| death row without having been convicted. The article you link
| to explains that his convictions were overturned. Although I
| would never rely on information in a Wikipedia article, you
| did link to it, so presumably you find it credible.
| stelcodes wrote:
| Every time he was "convicted", the prosecution was found to
| be in blatant violation of laws on appeal. They intimidated
| witnesses, kept black people off the jury, and more. So no,
| he was never rightfully convicted! The prosecution broke so
| many laws, way more than Curtis Flowers ever did! And they
| just did it over and over again for 20 years. None of them
| have faced any consequences. They effectively imprisoned an
| innocent man for 20 years because they didn't like him. And
| big surprise, Curtis is black.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| What you are describing is different from convicting
| someone withoht trial, it's way worse.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| A lot of times, people have to waive their right to a speedy
| trial. Apparently, in some districts they don't like it when
| the accused doesn't waive their right, so much that the defense
| attorney will get assaulted by the judge.
|
| https://youtu.be/jAv1QUkHFSY?t=397
| shadilay wrote:
| 'Florida Judge'
| ransom1538 wrote:
| This. "Michael Williams, 65, who denied any wrongdoing, sat
| in jail for 11 months awaiting trial for allegedly killing
| Safarian Herring, 25."
|
| Do not waive a speedy trial ever. The judge will want you to,
| your attorney will want you to ($), the DA will want you to.
| Tell them to go fuck themselves.
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