<story><title>Cellebrite asks cops to keep its technology secret</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/19/cellebrite-asks-cops-to-keep-its-phone-hacking-tech-hush-hush/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>foooorsyth</author><text>&amp;gt;“We’re suppose to take some ‘hacking company’’s word for it that they’re doing everything forensically correctly, and the prosecution expects us to just trust them?”&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;d be surprised. The courts are not scientific debate arenas. Burn forensics? Pseudoscience. Bite mark forensics? Pseudoscience. Lots of DNA-based forensics? Totally unreliable. Firearms ballistics forensics? Laughable pseudoscience. Polygraph tests? Laughable pseudoscience. Field sobriety tests &amp;#x2F; &amp;quot;drug recognition expert&amp;quot; certifications? Lol, lmao even.&lt;p&gt;All of this nonsense has been successfully used to convict people in court. Turns out, putting someone with PhD after their name or a white lab coat or a phony certification on the stand tends to work for prosecutors.</text></item><item><author>kstrauser</author><text>I’d think defense attorneys would be all over that. “We’re suppose to take some ‘hacking company’’s word for it that they’re doing everything forensically correctly, and the prosecution expects us to just trust them?”&lt;p&gt;Were I such an attorney, I’d campaign to taint the reputation of Cellebrite and make the evidence it generates completely untrustworthy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>AmVess</author><text>You are right on the money. Many of the tools law enforcement uses are straight up hocus pocus, and they lack the training or ability to question their methods.&lt;p&gt;New York&amp;#x27;s main crime lab completely blew DNA testing, and thus rendered all of their results worthless. This went on for many years. Instead of rectifying their mistakes, they swept it under the rug and forgot about it. To this day, thousands of people are in jail based upon wildly incorrect &amp;quot;science&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;It is rather unsettling to know that nearly everything the criminal justice system uses is no better than voodoo, and you are not far away from getting thrown behind bars for little more than the whimsy of people who are empowered to do so.</text></comment>
<story><title>Cellebrite asks cops to keep its technology secret</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/19/cellebrite-asks-cops-to-keep-its-phone-hacking-tech-hush-hush/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>foooorsyth</author><text>&amp;gt;“We’re suppose to take some ‘hacking company’’s word for it that they’re doing everything forensically correctly, and the prosecution expects us to just trust them?”&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;d be surprised. The courts are not scientific debate arenas. Burn forensics? Pseudoscience. Bite mark forensics? Pseudoscience. Lots of DNA-based forensics? Totally unreliable. Firearms ballistics forensics? Laughable pseudoscience. Polygraph tests? Laughable pseudoscience. Field sobriety tests &amp;#x2F; &amp;quot;drug recognition expert&amp;quot; certifications? Lol, lmao even.&lt;p&gt;All of this nonsense has been successfully used to convict people in court. Turns out, putting someone with PhD after their name or a white lab coat or a phony certification on the stand tends to work for prosecutors.</text></item><item><author>kstrauser</author><text>I’d think defense attorneys would be all over that. “We’re suppose to take some ‘hacking company’’s word for it that they’re doing everything forensically correctly, and the prosecution expects us to just trust them?”&lt;p&gt;Were I such an attorney, I’d campaign to taint the reputation of Cellebrite and make the evidence it generates completely untrustworthy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>duped</author><text>&amp;quot;Forensics&amp;quot; is pseudo science. Little, if any of the &amp;quot;science&amp;quot; is peer reviewed. And what is is not convincing to anyone who has an undergraduate experience in a chemistry, biology, or physics classroom and lab. Circumstantial evidence is a lot more convincing than physical evidence, but the TV shows convince us otherwise.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s really no incentive for forensic science to be a science at all, at the end of the day. You&amp;#x27;re either working for cops, and paid for evidence to convict their suspect, or working for the defense, and paid to convince us the cops are wrong. There&amp;#x27;s no one paid to tell us what reality we&amp;#x27;re in.</text></comment>