London Man Wore Smart Glasses For High Court 'Coaching' (bbc.co.uk) 66
A witness in a London High Court case was caught using smart glasses connected to his phone to receive real-time coaching while giving evidence during cross-examination. "In my judgement, from what occurred in court, it is clear that call was made, connected to his smart glasses, and continued during his evidence until his mobile phone was removed from him," said Judge Raquel Agnello KC. "Not only have I held that Jakstys was untruthful in denying his use of the smart glasses and his calls to abra kadabra, but the effect of this is that his evidence is unreliable and untruthful." The BBC reports: The claim arose during a ruling by Judge Raquel Agnello KC in a case brought by Laimonas Jakstys over the directorship of a property development company that owns a flat in south-east London and land in Tonbridge. Jakstys was told to remove the glasses after the court noticed he "seemed to pause quite a bit" before answering questions, and that "interference" was heard coming from around the witness. The judge later found that he had been "assisted or coached in his replies to questions put to him during cross examination" during the January trial.
Once the glasses were taken off, an interpreter was still translating a question when Jakstys' mobile phone began broadcasting a voice -- which he later blamed on Chat GPT. Agnello said: "There was clearly someone on the mobile phone talking to Jakstys. He then removed his mobile phone from his inner jacket pocket." He denied using the smart glasses to receive answers, and denied they were connected to his phone. But the judge said multiple calls had been made from his phone to a contact named "abra kadabra," whom he claimed was a taxi driver.
Once the glasses were taken off, an interpreter was still translating a question when Jakstys' mobile phone began broadcasting a voice -- which he later blamed on Chat GPT. Agnello said: "There was clearly someone on the mobile phone talking to Jakstys. He then removed his mobile phone from his inner jacket pocket." He denied using the smart glasses to receive answers, and denied they were connected to his phone. But the judge said multiple calls had been made from his phone to a contact named "abra kadabra," whom he claimed was a taxi driver.
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If someone posts something worthwhile, they get either modded up or down, not out of spite or because "I hate them" or anything... now and then, you rsilvergun/AC have a good point, and other times it's not worth a point either way.
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Maybe ambrand12 is a pedophile. Prove me wrong.
Making random internet claims then asking others to prove you wrong (for which you'd probably ignore evidence anyway) is a waste of time.
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Maybe ambrand12 is a pedophile. Prove me wrong.
Making random internet claims then asking others to prove you wrong (for which you'd probably ignore evidence anyway) is a waste of time.
Obviously. The "prove me wrong approach" is a classical inversion: Make an insane claim you have no valid evidence for. Then require others to prove you wrong. A typical approach uses by those with weak minds but string opinions. The only real way to deal with these people is to stop talking to them as they will just waste your time.
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Ahh, yes... instead of _actual_ proof (besides rsilver's links to his own posts and fark.com, neither of which constitutes proof) (I just use the underlines because there isn't a way to underline stuff and have it work right (didn't there used to be a proper comment box with like an MS Office-style bar of like bold, italic, center justified, et cetera?), you just accuse me of being the pedo and being uneducated (while I type this on a laptop I built from parts, and the 24-core computer I built keeps the liv
Is that a buzzing noise? (Score:2)
Or just a vacuous propagated Subject from the usual abusers of anonymity?
If this had been a legitimate use of anonymity you probably wouldn't be seeing it on Slashdot.
Hmm... If my "style" wasn't a dead giveaway, I should click on the "Post Anonymously" box.
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Yeah, every single article has at least one of them blaming that article on the President.
Really, they should just take out the 'Post Anonymously' function... it serves no purpose on here.
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Tell us you are an idiot without telling us you are an idiot.
Incidentally, if you really want to find out whether some aliases belong to one person, time clustering analysis is a good way as is analyzing the factual mistakes present in their posting. Of course, you are very likely not smart enough to do the first and the second requires you to understand actual facts, not the hallucinations morons like you mistake for facts. Oh, an you need to be actually willing to find something out and not just have your
Ridiculous (Score:3)
Charge him with perjury, and while you're there have whichever lawyer brought him to the stand brought before his bar.
Re:Ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
No need. Perjury is for punishing people in court. In civil offenses these are usually laughably light punishments. Sounds very much like this guy fucked himself over more than any other punishment would. He'll almost certainly have the case found against him now since he was being cross-examined as his own defense.
As for the bar, that's not how that works. Bar tribunals basically never punish a lawyer for the actions of a witness on the stand, even if there weren't plausible deniability that they had anything to do with it.
Your comment is basically "throw the book at him", but you've never read the book and don't seem to know the plot.
I see the problem (Score:3)
Smart glasses in London court? (Score:2)
Was it this man [youtu.be]?
TBH, a taxi driver (Score:1)
Re: Why is this bad? (Score:5, Informative)
Because the cross examination is intended to verify the testimony of the individual who is being crossed examined, not their "taxi driver" helper.
It also leaks case information to the outside, which could further jeopardise the case or the safety of other witnesses.
Re: Why is this bad? (Score:5, Informative)
Because the cross examination is intended to verify the testimony of the individual who is being crossed examined, not their "taxi driver" helper.
It also leaks case information to the outside, which could further jeopardise the case or the safety of other witnesses.
This.
The UK (and most countries) have a right to privacy inside a court as confidential or damaging information may be discussed inside a court that may have no bearing on the outcome of case itself or even if it does, may be damaging or harmful in ways completely unrelated to the case if made public. Even with something as (relatively) trivial as commercial in confidence you should have a right to privacy in court. This is for civil law, the right to privacy becomes even more important with family law or criminal law.
On that ground alone, the book should be thrown at the guy.
Secondly, the point of testimony is to get the persons own words, not the words they were told by legal council. Cross examination is meant to trip up people trying to stay on a script rather than the events that actually happened, Having people give them "advice" on what to say in real time is a deliberate attempt to deceive the court.
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On that ground alone, the book should be thrown at the guy.
The guy maybe should get light punishment, but his lawyer should be disbarred. (Or whatever the equivalent is in the UK.)
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Having a device that isn't court-ordered recording the proceedings is illegal, unless I'm mistaken.
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If my lawyer tells me something is legal, I will probably believe it too.
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Is the lawyer also the judge?
Did the lawyer make the rules of the courtroom?
If not, then what the lawyer says doesn't matter, does it?
The purpose of cross examination (Score:5, Insightful)
If a witness is telling the truth, then the cross examination will not achieve anything. It will show that the truth is internally consistent and coherent. It's when the witness has something to hide that it will reveal that he's been lying. The fact that the witness in this case was depending on someone else to answer the questions strongly implies that he had something to hide.
I'm hopeful that the guy will lose the case and be charged with contempt of court and attempting to pervert the course of justice. Those should generate significant prison time. Add in a mega fine and perhaps this won't happen again.
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"Internally consistent and coherent" according to who... the hallucination-prone LLM-AI or the defendant?
What happened to lawyers doing research before going to court? They used to be able to cite former cases and subsections of law from memory... did the requirements to pass the bar exam drop by a huge margin in like the last thirty years?
I don't know about you, but I wouldn't trust a LLM-AI to argue my case... I'd rather have a physical lawyer argue it (with a stack of books and boxes of photocopies).
Re:Why is this bad? (Score:5, Informative)
a very experienced person with law and law-language trying to poke holes in a person's story who might or might not be very experience.
Yes, that's the job of an attorney in cases such as this. Find holes in a person's story. No legalese is needed to ask if a person was at a location on a certain date and time. It's a yes or no question. Nor is legalese needed to explain your side of the story. You said you were doing Y and here's what I did.
Go watch My Cousin Vinny. The courtroom scene is used insome law schools for how a question and answer is done. You'll note there is no legalese present except for the voir dire part. Just simpe questions about what people supposedly saw.
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(2) General hint to dealing with other humans: If you try to surreptitiously break rules and get caught, appealing to some sense of "fairness" makes you look like a fucking weasel who will say anything, so your words mean nothing. You just tried to get an unfair advantage and hide it, and now you're whining about being caught, demonstrating lack of remorse. You deserve to
Re: Why is this bad? (Score:2)
What a useless reply. Reading that was 27 seconds of my life I'm never getting back.
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Re: Why is this bad? (Score:2)
Please do, you'll be doing us both a solid.
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Maybe, just don't post if you don't have anything useful to post.
The "My Cousin Vinny" reference was just an example... it wasn't the basis for the argument or defense.
"(1) Your conception of fairness is broken, apparently because you can't see the difference between sports and society's justice function." = where was sports mentioned at all? Society has nothing to do with justice beyond being called for jury duty... either yours or my opinions don't matter to the court. (I'm in the US, don't really know
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I may be naiive, but... why is this even illegal? What's the reasoning?
The person on the stand is the one who is supposed to be providing testimony. If the court is to hear from the person coaching them, then put the coach on the stand and let them speak directly to the court.
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Having a thing (the glasses, in this case), connect to an outside database through his phone (which is either not allowed, or required to be off), sending sensitive information to an unknown party.
A lawyer walks into a courtroom with copies of anything pertaining to the case (books if needed), not a device that is streaming the proceedings to an unknown party.
If the person isn't a lawyer but wants to represent themselves, they should take the time to research stuff and jot notes for use in the proceedings.
I
Abra kadabra... Alakazam! (Score:3)
You've just been caught, you fucking ham.
Faraday cages needed, it seems (Score:2)
Putting one around the witness box might have the bonus of reminding witnesses what will happen if they tell lies...
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I'd say, the whole court... during court, nobody is allowed to be on their phones/tablets, correct?
You have the right to an attorney (Score:2)
Or a cab driver.
All his knowledge was based on older episodes of bootleg CSI
Wait until the tech is invisible (Score:5, Insightful)
We're going to reach a point where the tech to do this kind of thing is pretty close to invisible. It's going to be interesting when that happens.
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I'm all for that... if you're going to argue your own case (act as lawyer), know your stuff.
The courtroom (or, even courthouse) should be in a Faraday cage, tested regularly for leaks.
You can bring paper copies of laws or even books... sucks, but sending case data beyond the walls is breach of privacy.
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I doubt that entirely. Everything we are discussing uses radio waves and electricity.
What is more likely is that the court room will employ an active radio jammer device, similarly to what is currently being used to stop drones
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So, your jammer blocks regular cell frequencies... what about non-standard freqs?
Are you going to block the entire radio spectrum? Gods help someone with a pacemaker or an oxygen concentrator that dials home... not to mention anything near the court.
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Invisible tech doesn't get around the human brain latency. He ultimately got caught because he was waiting for instructions which made him speak funny. That said I'm sure this kind of tech has other potential applications beyond being a glorified earbud and a phone call.
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While true in this case, that is just a matter of bad procedures and bad training.
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No, it's a fundamental issue of latency. Even people whose job it is to do this professionally (e.g. real time translators) introduce latency into communication. Input, process, output. That's how all human brains work. If you need to do those steps twice with an intermediary then conversation is slower than normal.
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Your model of the situation is too simplistic. This is not the same as measuring a signaling pipeline. The problem is not the latency. The problem is the pauses and these can be brought down enough to not be easily noticeable.
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How about this... if you don't know your stuff well enough, you can reference printed/hard copy... you have to bring it with you into the court. No communication with the outside world (that's taken care of with a jammer and a Faraday cage).
If you can't defend yourself (if you're being your own lawyer) with copies of everything relevant, maybe you screwed yourself already.
Really? (Score:3)
I guess the couple of million people with Bluetooth enabled hearing aids won't be able to testify then.
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In the US, at least in my state, jurors are not allowed to bring a cell phone into the courtroom and unless you have an issued pass, you can't bring cell phones into the court building.
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Doesn't matter... it's up to the judge.
If they allowed a device with cell capabilities, that's up to them.
Maybe UK isn't too up to date with streaming sensitive proceedings to Claude (Clod)/the public (given the security of these useless things)... they should catch up a bit.
"I'm sorry, your Honor... just need a couple minutes to upload the proceedings so 'Clod' can figure out my defense" isn't going to fly anywhere... some places would send you to the Gulag.
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The cellphone with BT hearing aid is enough, your answer-giver doesn't have to SEE the prosecutor.
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What an insightless statement. You missed everything that is the problem here and instead went for making this out to be "anti tech". Are you mentally challenged?
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Perhaps, you'd rather have your court proceedings be broadcast to the world... your choice, of course.
Does an outside (of the courtroom) connection have a place in(side) a courtroom? Should a hallucination-prone thing be trusted for legal advice? Can the judge access what that advice is, and verify it as accurate?
If that's added as an option (for those who choose self-representation), what rules/laws (for the court) have to be changed to allow this? For anyone going for appeal/retrial, what changes for t
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It's a hearing aid... it's purpose is to amplify things.
If it's reliant on a BT-connected device, it's not a hearing aid, its a BT earphone/earbud... and, if it's using your phone as the receiver (the thing that 'hears' as far as what the aid gets for amplification), it'll work inside the Faraday Cage.
The "Cage" blocks outside stuff... if your hearing aid is streaming YT without needing your cellphone, you don't need it and you can suffer through using a regular hearing aid.
were those "smart glasses" that hard to identify? (Score:2)
All of the "smart glasses" that I've seen are pretty obvious. They're bulky, with an easy to spot camera, and many of them even have a drop-down display panel. I'm amazed they were able to get up on the stand without anyone noticing/objecting before they even got sworn in.
Okay but, which glasses? (Score:2)
Asking for a friend