Comment by drysine
11 hours ago
>Imagine this happening for a serious criminal issue, with the years long back log on some courts, this could ruin someones life.
It can be much scarier.
There was a case in Russia when a scientist was accused in a murder that happened 20 years ago based on 70% face recognition match and fake identification as an accomplice by a criminal. [0] He spent 10 months in jail during "investigation" despite being incredibly lucky to have an alibi -- archival records of the institute where he worked, proving he was in an expedition far away from Moscow at that time. He was eventually freed but I'm afraid that police investigators that used very weak face recognition match as a way to improve their work performance stats are still working in the police.
I know it’s the wrong way to think but things like this make me glad about a digital footprint… good chance I’m liking a TikTok comment or reading an HN thread at the same time as any crime, just statistically.
that's not going to get you off the hook. anything that could be faked via account sharing is going to be discarded (not to mention that tiktok and similar platforms will not collaborate with you to build an alibi by giving access to this data, only the police to build a case)
And probably there are other people in jail convicted using the same method that just were unlucky enough to not have a bulletproof alibi?
I don't know, but it seems quite likely, unfortunately. There were quite a few other cases when fake evidence was planted by police.
It's not the only problem with technology -- it's claimed that there has been over hundred cases of false DNA matches not caused by malice or processing errors.[0] In theory, DNA match must not be considered by courts as 100% accurate, but in fact it is.
On the other hand, there were cases when human rights advocates or journalists were claiming that innocent people were jailed but that turned out to be false, like people getting caught on camera doing the same kind of crime again after they served their sentence.
[0] https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5825384
same with stenographs. We keep inventing new methods for the police to make up evidence.
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[flagged]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-fo...
The notion that this kind of thing couldn't happen in the west is laughable
Or this: "A former forensic scientist intentionally manipulated DNA evidence during her 29-year career at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, casting doubt on at least 652 criminal cases she handled, including some of the most high-profile trials, according to investigation findings released by the agency Friday." [0]
[0] https://coloradosun.com/2024/03/08/yvonne-missy-woods-cbi-in...
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The notion that the judicial system in democratic countries is in any way comparable to the judicial system in the dictatorship of russia is laughable.
In democratic countries such errors with regards to forensic evidence spark news because it is so unusual. In dictatorships like russia, nobody expects forensic methods to be valid because the court verdict does not depend on evidence, it depends on your connections to the dictator.
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> [...] my conclusion is that you're here to spill russian propaganda. [...]
The case described by the parent is that of someone who was wrongly imprisoned for 10 months on the basis of bogus application of faulty technology, even though they had a solid alibi. Therefore, the comment does not reflect well on Russia, the Russian state or the Russian government, like.. at all.
If there is a propaganda dimension to this (which I doubt), it is certainly not an attempt to say something nice about the Russian justice system.
It's a subtle form of propaganda. Same category as the "funny russian car crashes" or "awesome chinese acrobat" videos that are on reddit's front page all the time. One might wonder why it's always those two countries and not others who are getting thousands of upvotes.
The comment I criticized falsely implies that there is due process in russia, and that technical faults lead to unfair results for the people who are accused of something.
It is a cherry-picked example, and the big majority of russian court cases are decided without due process, because it is a dictatorship. If you try to get justice because you were harmed by corrupt officials or the tzar you're out of luck. Lawyers are getting shot on the street as a birthday present for putin. There are lots of examples. And once you're in prison they'll send you to the frontlines to murder Ukrainians.
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