Minnesota Supreme Court Rejects DUI Challenges Based On Buggy Software 391
bzzfzz writes "In a case with parallels to the Diebold Voting Machine fiasco, Minnesota's Supreme Court upheld the reliability of the Intoxilyzer 5000EN breath testing machine on a narrow 4-3 vote. Source code analysis during the six-year legal battle revealed a number of bugs that could potentially affect test results. Several thousand DUI cases that were waiting on the results of this appeal will now proceed. The ruling is one in a series of DUI-related court victories for police and prosecutors. Other recent cases upheld a conviction of a person with no evidence that the vehicle had been driven and convictions based solely on urine samples that may only show impairment hours before driving. The Intoxilyzer 5000EN is now considered obsolete, and replacement devices are being rolled out, with the last jurisdictions in the state scheduled to retire their 5000ENs by the end of the year."
Re:Cost/Benefit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Too Bad (Score:0, Insightful)
Then it's YOU who should stay off the road. If It's fine for me, I should be able to make that decision for myself. Nanny-state douchebag.
Probably guilty? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a minnesotan, I don't necessarily approve, but I would expect that the majority of those covicted with this equipment truely were drunk.
So your argument is that someone should be wrongly convicted because a bunch of other people probably were guilty? I pray you never become a judge.
Re:Too Bad (Score:3, Insightful)
So what you are saying is...this is some sort of religious conviction of yours? Because, I am of the opinion that the limits have been set so ridiculously low in some places that the law is a joke....a bad joke.
But hey, who cares that some studies even showed a person to be more safe after one drink. This isn't about safety, its about the perception of safety.
Re:I for one... (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely...they didn't want to throw them out because of revenue loss.
They're not interested in making the roads safer, they're wanting to protect their revenue stream.
I'd be willing to bet, that if you took all the revenue from driving infractions, and pooled them, and maybe gave it all back to the citizens that did NOT incur any infractions...rather than give it to the cops, you'd see a huge drop in the vigor and ferocity of our 'safety' officials in setting up all these traps, and the system not caring much about how realistic, accurate and fair they are....
It is always a bad idea to allow those that can impose power over you, directly benefit monetarily from said actions.
Re:Too Bad (Score:2, Insightful)
Gotta get the car home so I can get to work tomorrow.
If they didn't want people to drink and drive home, then they'd NOT have all those nice large parking lots outside of the bars.
Drive past one that's open....see the cars in the lot. Drive past after closing time...see how many cars have left.
Do you even slightly think that even a minority of those people drove home below the 'limit', or had a designated driver? Please...don't kid yourself.
It is behavior that is sanctioned, and yet prosecuted for high revenue gain...
On what planet? (Score:3, Insightful)
How did we come to a place where a judge can simply decide a machine, which has been proven unreliable, is in fact reliable? How will these people sleep at night knowing they are punishing people who were innocent? Is our whole society run by sociopaths now?
Re:Too Bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Say that when a drunk crashes through your front door, or hits your parked car, or runs into your kid on the side walk, or hits an electrical box in front of your house. Should all those people have been free to decide whatever too? How about when you, with your perfect knowledge of how to drive is stopped at a red light and a drunk careens into the back of your car?
Sort of by definition if your judgment is impaired you're not capable of making a judgment about when its safe to drive. Governments then take the view that at some point the average person becomes sufficiently impaired that they cannot be safely on the road, and then hammer this point into you when you're sober in the hopes that you'll remember when you're drunk (or that someone sober will keep you from killing yourself or someone else).
It's the government being nanny state douchebags telling you what to do, and it's not doing enough to keep stupid people off the road when they crash into you and yours.
Re:Too Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Alcohol affects people in different ways, what may be fine for you isn't fine for me.
Yes... and the solution is not your proposal of any alcohol means no driving. The solution is being responsible for your damn self and knowing how the shit affects you. If you can't drive after even one drink, then fucking don't. If I can without any issues of safety or decreased driving ability (especially when had with a big meal that the alcohol hasn't even had time to absorb into my system fast enough, because it hasn't been sucked out of the food that it was absorbed into yet), then let me drive and get the fuck off my lawn. And if some fuck abuses that responsibility and kills someone, then said person needs to take responsibility and take the consequences or find a new life where he can forget that it ever happened.
Re:On what planet? (Score:5, Insightful)
no, it was proved the software has bugs. all software has bugs. all software has always had bugs. airplane software has bugs. my honda CR-V was just patched for a transmission software bug. i was still able to drive it safely and airplanes don't fall out of the sky daily because of software bugs.
it was up to the defense to prove that the bugs in question return invalid results or increase the margin of error so much as to make the results useless
too bad, all the idiots who choose to drive after drinking more than they should deserve to go to jail. i'll drive a few hours after i have one drink. maybe one and a half. these idiots got drunk and drove a car
Re:I for one... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that police should focus on areas where they can actually improve public safety, specifically, school and playground zones. It is very, very, very rare to see a police officer ticketing people speeding or passing in a playground zone. Dont get me started on automated systems (multinova, red light cams, speed on green).
Re:Cost/Benefit (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever happened to the idea that it's better to let ten guilty men go free than to wrongly imprison one innocent man that this country's justice system was once based on?
Re:On what planet? (Score:4, Insightful)
According to the article, cellphones in close proximity to the device can effect the accuracy of its results. Based on this ruling, defendants charged based on results from this equipment will not be able to challange the reliability of the results due to the proximity of a cell-phone, even though it is known to be an issue! How can you honestly not have a problem with that? Are you so blinded by your hatred of drunk drivers that you don't even believe people accused of it should have a right to a fair trial?
Re:Too Bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Alright, I'm willing to compromise here.
You're free to drive drunk if you want. If you get into any accident whatsoever, there is a mandatory death sentence (maybe I'd be willing to further compromise to life without parole), and all of your personal assets are transferred to the victim(s).
If you want to take the gamble, go for it. Currently, you force that gamble on other people every time you put your idiot drunk ass behind the wheel.
This should in no way imply that I'm on the cops' side on this one though. Screw implied consent, screw checkpoints, and screw all of the other abuses of the citizenry that happens in the name of protecting us from drunk drivers. That said, above all else, screw people like you for making it necessary because you think you're special and are able to drive while impaired.
--Jeremy
Follow the Power (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely...they didn't want to throw them out because of revenue loss.
If it were that easy, it'd be mere corruption.
But consider that those with the libido dominandi seek money, sex, and power - in that order.
We all know that speed limit laws are often set capriciously, foolishly, and dangerously. But it's the law - and you'll obey.
It's like the marijuana debate. It doesn't matter that there's plenty of scientific evidence to show that alcohol is more dangerous, that legalizing marijuana reduces deaths and crime, etc. That's been known for at least decades. Yet the policies continue - why?
Sure, there's some financial emolument to certain players by having these laws, but there's way more benefit for the power structure. The point of these policies is to enforce the power structure. They dictate, you obey, logic and reason need not apply. Repeat until you understand who's in charge, what your position is, and how free you really are.
So then we get Supreme Court decisions like this one which takes a reasoned argument, throws it out, and that sets the new precedent. We must all obey these precedents, because that's what the system decided. We're taught that the system operates for our benefit, but primarily (literal sense) it operates for its own perpetuation. There's even SCOTUS precedent for decisions which basically say, "the defendant's claim has merit, but finding for him would threaten the system, so we find for the State."
"Follow the money" is good in business, but in politics, do that and also "follow the power".
Re:Minnesota, eh. (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like you believe the sole purpose of prison is revenge against the offender. I don't want to live in a society where that's the purpose of justice.
There's no belief here. Our country has the highest per capita incarceration rate of any country. Any [wikipedia.org]. And the rate accelerated dramatically since 1980, and continues to climb steeply year by year. Obviously this is not a sustainable trend; But it's quite clear that America has a very different perspective on what "Justice" is than the rest of the world... I'll leave you to your own opinions on what that perspective is. We also have the highest rate of capital punishment of any country, though if you removed Texas from the statistics, we would lose that distinction... so it is debatable. And we continue to expand extrajudiciary action: Guantanamo bay, seizing foreign nationals on foreign soil and indefinately detaining them... and we are also exporting our own citizens to other countries for indefinite detainment under semi-secret reciprocity agreements.
There is little doubt in the international community that the United States has become a police state, and continues to expand its use of military and covert force to extend its judiciary practices worldwide.
Re:Too Bad (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't about safety, its about the perception of safety.
This is about safety.
Drunk driving kills approximately 40 times as many people as terrorism, about 8000 drunk drivers and 4000 people that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, making it one of the top causes of death by trauma (the other contenders for this dubious honor being other car accidents, poisoning, suicide, falls, and homicide). It's a serious problem, and is a reasonable area for government to try to do something about it.
I'm not against getting drunk. I'm against drunk people killing and injuring those around them.
Re:Too Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you even fucking READ the comment he was responding to? The GGP said he thought anyone with any amount of alcohol in his system whatever should not drive, and that's just plain retarded. In most places the limit is .08, and .08 is NOT drunk. At .08 a person is NOT going to "crash through your front door, or hits your parked car, or runs into your kid on the side walk, or hits an electrical box in front of your house."
In the context that your comment is in, I have no idea how you got modded to 5. Must be a lot of MADD members with mod points today...
Re:Probably guilty? (Score:5, Insightful)
what part of "I don't approve" didn't you understand?
The part where you never actually said that.
Re:Too Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Presumably, you are with somebody who *CAN* drive you home... and the next time you are there, it'll be your turn to drive.
The excuse that they have parking lots in bars should be an excuse to drive home after drinking is about as lame as "she was dressed like a prostitute" is an excuse to commit rape. And before anybody brings it up, I'm not comparing the severity of the two actions (drinking and driving to rape)... only the feebleness of the excuse, and all it shows is an immature reluctance to assume responsibility and accountability for one's own choices.
Re:Too Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Applying the same standard, nobody gets to drive after 40 or before 25 years old. Measurable impairment and poor judgement and all.
Looking at the stats for actual drunk driving accidents it's apparent that .15 is where driving goes to shit. Even .10 was conservative. .08 is just about revenue.
Re:Minnesota, eh. (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't have a different perspective on Justice, we simply have a for-profit prison industry.
Not much of this stuff matters (Score:4, Insightful)
Once the cop decides he's going to arrest you for a DUI, its pretty irrelevant what data he does or doesn't collect or how its collected. Unless you're up for spending six to eight months of your life and about $15,000+ to put on a jury trial (and who knows what a jury is going to do), you're pretty much guilty on the spot. Its all well constructed legislation that was passed literally without opposition, as no politician is interested in sticking up for drunk drivers.
Further, in many states (like California) you're charged criminally AND as a separate administrative process by the department of motor vehicles. The DMV portion in CA simply requires that there be sufficient evidence of guilt and is independent of whatever happens in court on the criminal aspect. The DMV considers a police report with the arresting officers opinion that you were incapable of driving as sufficient evidence, without a need for a breathalyzer result. Further, some people are convicted of a dui with a blood alcohol level below .08, again because the arresting officer felt based on his observations that the driver was drunk.
The "cake" in this situation is the truth about the dividing line between social drinking and drunk driving. I think most people would agree that having a drink or two after work or with dinner is social drinking and should be legal if one should decide to drive home. However many people would be legally drunk on two drinks the size and composition of what many bars and restaurants pour.
Throw in the pressure to make DUI arrests, the ridiculous amount of fines and fees that fill wallets, the lack of any sort of sympathy or lobby effort to make things fair and reasonable, and then leave the 'social or drunk' decision to the cop...
So its advisable to stop worrying about the cockamamie systems they use to 'prove' whether you were too drunk to drive, those don't really matter much. Understand that there is no such thing as 'social drinking and driving', that by speeding a little or failing to stop completely at a stop sign can easily lead to a DUI arrest even if you haven't had that much to drink, and that arrest will be fairly devastating in terms of financial and personal impacts.
Re:Too Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Zero tolerance is a very easy and popular way to reach judgment with no effort. That's how he got modded up; nobody stopped and thought about it.
Re:On what planet? (Score:2, Insightful)
Assuming someone was innocent, but for whatever reason they did not request a blood test (maybe they didn't know it was an option), would you contend that they should not be able to challenge the breathalyzer evidence even though there is a known issue that can cause it to be unreliable?
You can't retroactively say "don't stick the cellphone next to the breathalyzer machine" since it is unlikely someone would know this was an issue until long after they were tested.
What I'm seeing here from you is a lack of ability to empathize with someone who is a different situation. You can see what they "should" have done or not done, but you fail to realize how non-obvious these courses of action would have been at the time. It is unlikely you would have actually behaved the way you claim you would have if you were actually in that situation. And even if you would have, it doesn't mean that someone else is obligated to behave the same way.
No, it's not. People are able to consume a small amount of alcohol and not become impaired. It is senseless to punish people for engaging in an activity that is fundamentally safe.
Re:Careful there (Score:5, Insightful)
My children will be home schooled until they are old enough to understand the importance of education and have learned how to learn on their own. At that point, they will be allowed to decide for themselves whether they want to attend public schools, a private school if I can afford it, or continue home schooling. This is one of many decisions my wife and I discussed and agreed upon *before* deciding to marry; of course, the vast majority of couples who marry don't take the realities of the future into consideration, so decisions like this are set aside "until they have to be made" and one or both parties gives in, not wanting to argue, and the kids end up in an "educational" system that doesn't teach them anything useful (amongst many other "easy way out" decisions that get made when a couple simply can't agree on things), or they end up in a single parent home.
I barely graduated; not because I didn't understand the material, not because I had no desire to succeed, but because I was spending my time learning things above and beyond what was being taught in the classroom, rather than doing the classwork. I passed tests, I aced midterms and finals, but I was too busy, after having run through the provided textbooks in the first month or so of the class, seeking new material and learning new things that were *not* being taught in class, to waste my time on the classwork. This is a direct resuly of being taught, at a young age, how to learn on my own; and it has been instrumental in my success. The more I think about it, the more I also see a strong correlation between the actual ability to learn independently and the ability and willingness to take responsibility for one's own life and actions. That's what's greatly lacking in the younger generations and, to some extent, ours, as well.
I know I've touched on several seemingly unrelated topics in this post and most readers are going to think I'm just all over the place. That's fine, all I ask is that you step back and take a look at the big picture, I'm probably not as far out there as you think I am.
In order for a person to be willing or able to take responsibility for something, they must first understand that thing. In order for someone to understand something, they must be able to learn; if they can only learn when things are explained to them, rather than on their own, then that thing must be explained in terms they already understand. We're breeding generations now that do not know how to learn, do not understand their own actions, and take no responsibility for those actions, or their own lives, as a result. It's a vicious circle that can only get worse, unless those of us who see it happening and are willing and able to take responsibility, who see what's happening, get off our asses and do something about it. That said, I'm not sure what I can do, beyond simply not raising my own kids that way and writing my congresscritters to beg for change; if anyone has any workable ideas, I'd love to hear them.
Re:Careful there (Score:5, Insightful)
Often I fear for the future of this world, seeing the kind of people our socio/economic/educational climate is generating these days... Part of me feels that I'm just getting to the point where I no longer understand what it's like to be young, dumb, and full of reproductive fluids
CanHasDIY, 2012
I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint"
Hesiod, 8th century BC