Breath-test ruling jeopardizes thousands of state DWI cases

Seems like a reasonable request. I'm a developer, and I've seen way too much buggy commercial software.

This is the direction it needs to go for breathalyzer and voting. Open source that can be viewed by all parties, and with electronic receipts for individual tests to verify accuracy.

 

I hate drunk drivers and feel that they should be punished within the fullest extent of the law, moneygrab or no. I can say that w/o being a hypocrite like some on here.

That being said, I have never understood why the breathalyzer is viewed as the standard. I would never take it. I'd much rather go for a blood test. If an officer is sure that someone is drunk then they should have no problem brining them down and having them be tested with a more reliable test. If they are drunk, then they'll make up for whatever price the lab fees costed with the court fines etc. If they are brining in a lot of nondrunks to be tested then the officers need to get better judgement.

 

I'm fine with the ruling. The police will just blood test people instead of breath testing them. Blood test results tend to be, if anything, (slightly) higher than breath test results.

But in my experience I've never seen any evidence that the breath test is inaccurate, nor does this ruling suggest any inaccuracy. The Intoxalyzer 5000 is a highly reliable device that is calibrated frequently, maintained by certified professionals, and tested prior to each and every breath test administered.

 

Waiting for a Luckkky appearance...

 

The problem is that this is where state law rulings conflict with federal intellectual property law. If this gets to be heard by the federal courts, I expect a vastly different result.

The source code is a trade secret, because if it gets into the hands of would be competitors, the makers of the testing equipment no longer have a unique product. It is a problem from a practical perspective.

 

You can always copyright source code and techniques\formulas used to measure alcohol impairment. If I'm a defendant and their software is being used to convict me, I'd say I have a right to know exactly how they came to their conclusions. That outweighs the company's right to keep their code confidential.

 

I agree... this could be interesting

 

Absolutely, they should be able to review the source code for accuracy.

DD

 

I think any company that would call a product the Intoxalyzer 5000 is pretty r****ded in the first place.

I mean, did they have a 3rd grade class naming contest?

 

Assume someone sued one of the companies you have been involved with claiming that one of their video games caused a "video-game" addiction. Would you allow them to have experts review the source code?

 

Bad analogy. There is nothing in the source code in a case like that would prove or disprove addiction. The end result of the source code (ie the game) is easily reviewable and would be the product in question.
In the case of the breathalyzer, the source code is part and parcel of the entire product and the results it gives. It is very relevant to end result (ie the alcohol reading). And in this situation it can indeed be tested to prove or disprove accuracy.

 

Isn't it possible there could be some subliminal manipulation within the source?

 

Never blow into a breathalyzer. Drunk or sober. Those things are so unreliable.

 

That is for the Federal Circuit (and possibly USSC) to ultimately decide. Since trade secrets and copyrights fall under the rubric of intellectual property law, it is a federal question not a state law matter.

 

Every year, DPS doses hundreds of people based on their weight and gender to a specific blood-alcohol concentration, and then confirms that dosing using the Intoxilyzer instrument. The instruments are calibrated to a reference sample during every test. The instruments are inspected remotely every week and onsite every month. It is a very thorough process.

Bloodtests are conducted by machines too, yet for some reason the instruments hospitals use are trusted implicitly.

 

This is not even remotely close to the same, a person is being charged with a crime, the state has made the assumption of guilt based upon some machine.....the accussed has a right to question the accuracy of the machine.

And yes, they could review the source......why not?

DD

 

There are many companies that do not want any of their source looked at. I recently asked a vendor to verify if a line of code existed in their source. Out of tens of thousands of lines, I simply asked, 'does the line "return (error)" exist in a particular routine in their latest version of their code' and they refused to answer.

Many companies are very proprietary with respect to their IP.

 

But when your code becomes an instrument of the state to be used in thousands of criminal proceedings and assumed to be universally accurate, a different standard should apply.

 

If thousands of tests on known samples were conducted and an acceptable error rate was established through those tests, does the source code then matter?

The real reason to want the source code is for attorneys to pick it apart to attempt to find a flaw. Since that is what attorneys will try to do, you have all of the defense attorneys with their hands on that company's intellectual property (which is the basis for their entire business). Since attorneys generally know nothing about computers, they have to hire programmers to pick apart the source code. That means even more hands (ones with the knowledge to misappropriate that code) are on that intellectual property.

This is why it is best to leave this decision to federal judges that understand intellectual property law rather than state court judges. State court judges get federal bankruptcy questions wrong all the time. I have seen it in action. I have no doubt that they would get it just as wrong with intellectual property issues.