Friday, October 21, 2005

Facing Your Accuser
Some DUI arrestees in Florida are demanding to confront their accuser. Problem is, the accuser is a machine whose inner workings are a proprietary secret.
The prosecutors say that the software is a trade secret belonging to the company that sells the breathalyzer. It's a fascinating problem: what's more important, the trade secrets of a vendor or the constitutional right to due process, which surely includes the right to examine a machine used to determine one's guilt? Does selling breathalyzer software for use in evidence in a court of law mean that you waive your right to keep the software's workings a secret?
Hopefully this will work and we can use that to open up the software of vote-counting machines, which have a similar problem.

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