Defendant in a DWI case was able (after two years) to finally obtain the source code of the breath machine used to convict him. He then had the code analyzed. The results aren’t pretty. No wonder these companies have been fighting like hell to keep their code secret. And the obvious question: How many people’s lives have been thrown into a tailspin because of a false DWI charge due to a crappy breath machine?
The latest in horrifying torture allegations. God, I hope this isn’t true.
Nationwide, foreclosures were up 32 percent last month. In the D.C. area? They were actually down. The parasite economy continues to thrive.
Huffington Post is actually charging for the privilege of interning for them.
I don’t agree with Heather MacDonald much, but she’s usually a pretty worthy adversary. She does her homework. That said, this is one of the silliest arguments against gay marriage I’ve seen to date.
God gave him cookies.
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TheAgitator.com
I kinda have to feel for Heather though. The right is really running out of arguments on this issue – I guess she felt like she had to find a new angle on the issue and sometimes, when you reach for a new angle, you fail miserably. Like that.
The torture story is coming from Hersh. He got lucky with My Lai hasn’t had another scoop since…well, ever. Remember, he’s the one who claimed that we were going to start OIF with nukes and has reported that we are days away from attacking Iran pretty much ever week since Feb 1, 2000.
Attorney Lawrence Taylor over at the DWI Blog wrote this up back in 2007… http://www.duiblog.com/2007/09/04/secret-breathalyzer-software-finally-revealed/
Hey just a question here: why is the story about the “latest in horrifying torture allegations” from 2004? Has there been any update or progress on this story since? Did we really rape little boys?
Not trying to call Radley out or anything, just wondering where that story has gone since the linked Salon article was published.
Calling Ms. MacDonald’s argument “silly” is frankly an insult to silliness.
Monty Python is silly. That argument is willfully and aggressively stupid.
I’m gonna try that with my septic tank cleaning business.
Oh boy! The old “Marriage is about making babies argument dressed with some liberal paternalistic soft racism.
Since they didn’t knock, I’m calling it a class God Squad pitch. It was funny, respectful and the Evangelists still got their Jesus freak thing on.
Any speech Hersh gives should not be given any credibility. He openly and knowingly lies in speeches.
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/11719/ So this speech should be given 0 credibility. http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2004/07/15/hersh/index.html
Well, most of the HuffPo readers seem of the trustifarian stripe, so I don’t think they should have trouble getting interns to pay even if it is obnoxious.
“If the black illegitimacy rate were not nearly three times the rate of whites’, I would have few qualms about gay marriage.”
for some reason that parses as “LIES LIES LIES”.
“I fear that it will be harder than usual to persuade black men of the obligation to marry the mother of their children if the inevitable media saturation coverage associates marriage with homosexuals. Is the availability of homosexual marriage a valid reason to shun the institution? No, but that doesn’t make the reaction any less likely.”
what the hell? that doesn’t even parse. it’s just a test tone.
I am pinning my hopes that the torture story isn’t true on the same point that Phelps raises at #2.
If it is true, however, I hope they drag the %$#^% responsible to a Mosque in Sadr City just as Friday prayers get out. Preferably, drag him by the balls.
either i just woke up four years in the past, or that torture memo link says “2004″
We recently had a story that people who identify as evangelical Christians in this country (note the “people who identify as”) are more likely to support torture. With homosexuality thrown into the mix, it’ll be interesting to see their brains fry…
This is just the tip of the iceberg for the breathalyzer story. What happens to all of the people convicted based solely on the results of the faulty equipment? What happens to the company who produced the faulty equipment? I really hope this doesn’t turn into a problem so large and potentially expensive the government decides it’s best to let bygones be bygones.
I admit I’m surprised to find that the Hufflepost is charging for internships, but it makes a kind of sense, from an economic perspective.
A Hufflepost internship is going to be a highly prized commodity among the well-heeled liberal set. There’s a limited supply, and demand from a huge cadre of trust funders looking to prove their social-consciousness cred.
Could backfire, though. It’s turning volunteerism into a consumer commodity, and their interns could start seeing themselves as empowered consumers, rather lucky selectees.
Someone should remind MacDonald that the black community’s problem with illegitimacy began and became serious long before homosexuality became the latest civil rights movement…
@ dhex # 7.
You know very well that the basic fabric of the Republic is threatened by black gays who won’t marry the mothers of the children they sire out of wedlock.
;)
I like how Heather MacDonald has managed to insult almost every major demographic all at once. All African Americans are bigots, gays shouldn’t get rights because of some strange type of white guilt, and she insinuates that all conservatives would make the same retarded argument.
Note that we don’t know if the breathalyzers work or not. We know that the source code is shoddily written, but the reviewers only looked mostly at the coding practices (horrible) and the implementation (odd) but not at all at whether the machine actually measure accurately.
The last is the scariest part: the usual way we report results in science is via error bars (“Your breath indicates that your BAC is between 0.07 and 0.10 at 95% confidence level”). There is no such thing as “your BAC is 0.09 exactly” [cue Florida 2000 / Minnesota 2008 election jokes]. For some reason in the courtroom we forget all that and allow presentations like “the machine said the BAC was 0.09″. This is meaningless unless we understand the confidence interval.
What the state should have had to present to the court is not just the machine (which is nice) but the study showing that the machine actually measures BAC [say, comparing machine readings and blood tests] together with the error rate.
PS: The same analysis applies to speed guns. When the reader says “you went 69mph” what it really says is “with 95% confidence your speed was between 69-e and 69+e mph”. The error margin “e” is however a closely guarded secret — why bother the courts with numbers when you can dazzle them with “infinitely accurate” evidence?
@Lior: Yeah measurement error ranges are an inherent part of any scientific measurement. Of course, this is the police we’re talking about; “scientific” ranks just above “fair” on the importance scale.
For what it’s worth, the source article for the blog Radley linked to mentions several more problems with the code. These include everything from device operation (no feedback loops to make sure the instrument is in the state the software puts it in) to interrupt timing.
So maybe the readings are accurate, but the shoddy software makes it impossible to trust the results.
And the obvious question: How many people’s lives have been thrown into a tailspin because of a false DWI charge due to a crappy breath machine?
It also begs the question how many impared drivers are allowed to drive on low readings. I’m no defender of drunk driving, as an aunt almost died in a head-on accident with a drunk about 15 years ago. I’m all for locking up drunk drivers, but it has to work both ways.
#11 Hamburgler007
“This is just the tip of the iceberg for the breathalyzer story.”
I certainly hope that you are right. However, in my state (and many others) the criminal part of DUI and driving “privilege” part are treated separately. In other words, one could win the court case but still have their licensed revoked at the DMV (MADD) “hearing.” Not to mention the fact that many plead “no contest” based on the breathalizer results.
This is positive news though. I ‘m happy with anything that may curb this insane practice.
The regime of Saddam Hussein did torture inmates at Abu Ghraib and did so most horribly. They also recorded some of it so Saddam could see his enemies being punished, and numerous videos from that time are available on the web showing terrible things in graphic detail.
Hence, I don’t doubt that the American military came to be in possession of such videos after capturing the Iraqi archives.
Rhayader: The code review tested the coding practices. This already allows us to conclude that the device could potentially only work under ideal conditions. The code review also looked at the implementation. Thus we know that the calibration isn’t done properly, and that they average successive readings with an exponentially increasing weight (lastest reading counts the most) rather than a uniform one. These should compromise the result even under optimal conditions — I don’t think the readings are accurate at all.
My main point was not that the results might be accurate — it’s that the courts are accepting “scientific evidence” which isn’t.
This review should not have been necessary. It should not be up to the defence to impeach the machine — it should be up to the prosecution to document the error rates and hence prove that the machine works. The FDA won’t approve a drug based on the manufacturer saying “we tested it but the results are secret and we won’t tell anyone”. The court should not allow into evidence the results of a measurement without also including the study proving the error rate. If the people who do the measurement can’t document their error rates, it should not be considered evidence.
@Lior: Oh I am absolutely in agreement with you. If this were a device used in a hospital setting to detect blood alcohol level, it would never be used without reams of verification documentation, calibration inspections, stated error ranges, etc etc etc. No scientific device is ever considered legitimate unless the manufacturer can prove that it works exactly as claimed.
Except in the case of breathalyzers, apparently.
Someone should tell Heather MacDonald that same-sex marriage isn’t a race issue but a generational issue. The younger generation just doesn’t care.
“The latest in horrifying torture allegations. God, I hope this isn’t true.”
There are no practical limits to state power. That’s what makes it the state.
Orwell distilled it to its essence — Room 101. No one can withstand the power of the state, which is limited only by the human imagination.
“How many people’s lives have been thrown into a tailspin because of a false DWI charge due to a crappy breath machine?”
One of my great regrets is that, in my pre-anarchist days, I sat on a jury that convicted a man of DUI in CA. It was unanimous.
That is the last time I will sit on a jury voluntarily.
If forced to serve, I will vote to acquit in every case. Better ten guilty go free than one innocent lose his freedom.
Selling internships? Sounds like a free market at work. In a world where it’s not what you know, but who you know, it’s only natural for celebs and name brand organizations to charge for the privilege of using their name on a resumé. I think it’s fair to say that ivy league schools have been charging based on their name for a long time.
Woot! That AlcoTest code looks great!
My first thought was “Hmm… ok, post average result is left shifted 8 (divided by 256 with remainder destroyed.) Apparently, this gives a range of 0 to .16, at least according to certification tests. Wait! No it wouldn’t. The certification tests clearly show resolution of .01, which would result in values ranging from 0.00 to 0.15 with a resolution of .01 but the calibration results range from 0.00 to 0.16.
So… those numbers are being fudged, too. Ok… That’s not TOO bad… it’s pretty bad, but it also guarantees it’s rounded down.
More troubling is the fact that the flow sensor is ONLY calibrated on power up, with that level set as “zero flow”. All I would have to do to bias the readings is to be gently blowing into it while powering it up. Since the device doesn’t show current flow rate or sample size (Just go/no go) you could easily inflate the values by a goodly margin by gaming the flow base setting.
Saying that in another way, If I power it up with a flow rate of .2 liters per second instead of the assumed 0, then a guy gives me a 5 second sample totaling 3 liters… the machine will calculate the result on 4.0 liters of air as if it was 3.0 liters. That’s a 33% error on the high side.
I have no idea if that would actually produce those results… but I expect the device is sufficiently poorly designed that it could easily be gamed by law enforcement to give erroneously high results.
#17 @Mattocracy — and of course, there aren’t any gay Black people, right? And if there are, I’m sure it’s all their fault.
If Hersh is lying, he’s done a horrible disservice to all of us and deserves to be sodomized in the manner he described. Forever.
If he’s telling the truth, we all deserve to be sodomized for allowing our government to get this out of control.
It shames me that this is even plausible.
#29 Well it didn’t directly state how the poor A/D reading was to be used. It said voltage reading. It would be a fantastic coincidence for the the formula for BAC to be linear with respect to voltage, and even it if is it may not be to the same scale as blood alcohol level.
It could be that one count on the A/D corresponds to 0.0143455 BAC. So I suspect the resolution could be much worse than 0.1 but you wouldn’t know it as the display could show 10 digits of accuracy but not state the +/- error.
Dave, I thought the same thing. Except with a slightly more cynical twist: Is HuffPo actually taking advantage of the free market in labor, or is the government going to start setting prices for internships?
Don’t be silly. Cops don’t try to make people look guilty when they’re not. Cops are the good guys.
Haha. Just kidding.
God gave HER cookies, Radley. She states in the post that she is nearing her cycle and can’t resist sweets. And in her profile she is a housewife.
Sorry. Couldn’t leave it.
Paraphrasing a commenter on the site hosting the Heather MacDonald article, the argument seems to be:
(1) The most homophobic demographic is also the least likely to marry, so
(2) let’s codify discrimination against gay people in the hope that it will somehow encourage (or more accurately, not discourage) black fathers to marry the mother of their children.
If the unwed parents rate is already so high in the black community (while gay marriage is generally not legal), she must be assuming that it will be even worse if gay marriage is allowed. That assumes there is a large percentage of black fathers out there who would say “I WOULD marry the mother of my out-of-wedlock child but then I’d be kind of like a gay person so screw that.” Goofy.
I always thought that the breathalyzer code was something like this.
0100 Let x+(RND)*1
0110 If x.18 GOTO 0100
0130 PRINT “GUILTY”
Let’s be clear about this: Hersh’s piece is not the latest in torture allegations, because it was published five freaking years ago. Either nothing ever came of the allegation, or it was somehow confirmed but we all forgot.
#25, many of us oldsters (60 and up) just don’t care, either. To see same-sex marriage as an issue to fear and therefore ban, or even just be concerned about it in any negative way, is to be ethically retarded.
Marriage between two people is their contract with each other, only, and doesn’t (ethically or Constitutionally) require the assent of their families, churches, neighbors, or government. That our society (or anyone within our society) sees it otherwise is twisted, morally. Such a ban is not only unconstitutional, it is just plain rude.
Legal marriage is a legal construct created to bring revenue to government and to deal with the legal matters of division/distribution of property upon divorce/death. Those property matters could be dealt with in other ways, as in a written contract signed and witnessed, without involving government. Religious people can keep their “God Blessed” marriage traditions within their individual churches and leave the rest of us alone to do it our way.
Said contract could also cover matters of privacy concerns, economic matters and healthcare decisions, etc.
I should add that I am heterosexual, female, and monogamous (married 47 years to same guy).
As far as I’m concerned, if two guys, or two gals, or even three or more (any mix) want to join into a single household, it’s no skin off my nose, and none of my business. It harms me in no way, whatsoever.
If only marriage really were a simply contract between individuals and the government’s only function was to provide a means of adjudicating breech of contract disputes.
If only the gay marriage crusade were all about getting government out of marriage instead of being about whether gays can tap into the special rights and privileges (and penalties) afforded that special class (only one among many, of course) as legislated by government. But it’s not.
The gay marriage controversy is a fight over getting the government to impose the will of one of side over the will of the other. It has nothing to do with liberty or freedom and everything to do with government control.
I’m with Windy in spirit; Dave paints a pretty accurate picture, though. As one who is more or less an evangelical (NOT the pro-torture “evangelical”) spiritually and a libertarian philosophically, I would love to see the government just get out of the marriage business altogether, but as Dave said, no one seems to be advocating that.
I was having lunch with a friend, recently returned from Iraq, and we shared an epiphany regarding the usual anti-gay marriage “slippery slope” argument: if gays are allowed to marry, then what’s to stop people from marrying two people, or their hamsters, or whatever. He was telling me about how plural marriage (one man and two, three or four women) is in the Middle East. Funny how they haven’t slipped down the slope into gay marriage over there, isn’t it?
Personally I don’t need a law to tell you how many people you’re allowed to marry, and you can go ahead and marry your pets as soon as they can sign the contract.
I’m not seeing it. They want same-sex marriages to have the same legal recognition as heterosexual ones. What that legal recognition should entail is a different question altogether. It’s the difference between eliminating laws against marijuana possession (good!) and eliminating laws against marijuana possession for people named Steve.
The gay side isn’t fighting to have heterosexual marriage banned and theirs approved, rather to be included in the approval list. One side fighting against the will of the other side isn’t necessarily bad if the side who currently has “the favor” is wrong in their position. It’s like saying black people fighting for desegregation vs white people fighting for segregation is a fight of wills when it’s really a fight of right vs wrong.
The eventual goal in the marriage issue should be to remove government from the contract (as it used to be) and let it be a private contract. Religious institutions can have their own “private contract ceremonies” for those that adhere to their religious tenets.
No, but the gay side is fighting for the same benefits that the heterosexual side has. They want the government to mandate the same recognition and legal benefits for gays that they do for heterosexuals. When government commands, by edict, that society provide certain benefits to a particular group of people against their wishes, that’s not as benign as just being “included on the approval list”.
By the way, I’m not a fan of forced desegregation, either.
That shouldn’t be the eventual goal, it should be the only goal. By definition, that’s the only solution that satisfies the concept of “equality under the law” (something that gets a lot of lip service, but is only rarely followed).
In my part of the world, a positive breathalyzer test must be confirmed by a blood test. It’s not that difficult.
I must not be too trusting because I would probably have eaten the God cookies.
I must be too trusting, even.
The story is probably true, but of the Iraqi regime -pre- US invasion. These same allegations have been said of the prison for many years. Seems unlikely to me that the exact same crimes would be commited by the US as were alleged about the prison under Baath control for years
Most likely either Hersch is confused about what he saw or what was alleged, or the transcript is somewhat shaky.