Ars Technica - The results from a Pennsylvania company's TrueAllele DNA testing software have been used in roughly 200 criminal cases, from California to Florida, helping put murderers and rapists in prison. Criminal defense lawyers, however, want to know whether it's junk science.
Defense attorneys have routinely asked, and have been denied, access to examine the software's 170,000 lines of source code in a bid to challenge the authenticity of its conclusions. The courts generally have agreed with Cybergenetics, the company behind TrueAllele, that an independent examination of the code is unwarranted, that the code is a proprietary trade secret, and disclosing it could destroy the company financially.
A new challenge, pending before the California Supreme Court, concerns some of the company's latest conclusions. The results are evidence in a cold-case murder, yet they differ astronomically from traditional DNA testing. The dispute comes as secret code is creeping into our everyday life in what is known as the Internet of Things. It's in everything, from airplanes to refrigerators, medical devices, and even elevators, light fixtures, and cars.
Volkswagen duped federal pollution regulators for six years, having written proprietary code in its vehicles to allow them to pass emissions tests. All the while, the vehicles would perform better on the road and pollute substantially more than allowed by federal standards.
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