NSW Australian Law on Admitting Computer Program Results as Evidence?

[SoftSome]

I'm asking about laws in NSW, Australia.

I believe result of a lie detector, even obtained at court in front of jury, is not admitted as evidence, am I right? I believe result of a robot, even obtained at court in front of jury, is not admitted as evidence, am I right?

What about result of a closed source computer program? The programmer, who is the maker of the computer program, testifies at the court, answers questions, but refuses to release the source code of the computer program, and hence does not explain step by step how he or she obtains the result.

In my view, the closed source computer program acts just like a lie detector, or a robot.

Are there Australian laws to allow admittance of the result as evidence?

Are there Australian laws to ban admittance of the result as evidence?

 

[Iamthelaw]

Evidence derived from lie detector/polygraph machines are not considered admissible in any Australian court, let alone NSW. The basis for this is that polygraph machines are considered to lack any solid scientific basis for their results and in reality, they're just not that accurate as movies depict (amongst other, more technical reasons ie, the evidence of the operator being opinion yet falling short of being deemed a qualified expert etc).

This reasoning would no doubt extend to the computer program you've mentioned in your post, notwithstanding the fact that (I imagine) it would have even less scientific basis in comparison to a polygraph machine.

Are there Australian laws to ban admittance of the result as evidence?

Section 6 of the Lie Detectors Act 1983 (NSW) states that evidence taken from a polygraph machine is inadmissible in a court.

 

[SoftSome]

Thanks for the reply. The computer program is called TrueAllele.

If you google, you'll find many articles about it. Are there Australian laws to allow admittance of the result of TrueAllele as evidence? Are there Australian laws to ban admittance of the result of TrueAllele as evidence?

 

[SoftSome]

A danger of using such a program is its parameters can be manipulated, just like a robot may say 'yes' this time, and say 'no' in another time, due to adjustment, and no one else but the programmer knows that. What do you think?

 

[Iamthelaw]

I've googled 'TrueAllele' and it appears to be DNA interpretation technology that builds genetic profiles from pieces DNA evidence (different to how DNA is currently tested and in fact presented at court) - Not a polygraph/lie detector machine?

These are two completely different things.

 

[SoftSome]

I've googled 'TrueAllele' and it appears to be DNA interpretation technology that builds genetic profiles from pieces DNA evidence (different to how DNA is currently tested and in fact presented at court) - Not a polygraph/lie detector machine?

These are two completely different things.

Thanks, Iamthelaw. I understand why you used "technology" rather than "closed source computer program". Both polygraph and TrueAllele take information from human beings, both give out result without transparency, both are subject to adjustment, and both suffer faulty parts or bugs. Each has its maker, but each itself is not a human being.

 

[Iamthelaw]

Thanks, Iamthelaw. I understand why you used "technology" rather than "closed source computer program". Both polygraph and TrueAllele take information from human beings, both give out result without transparency, both are subject to adjustment, and both suffer faulty parts or bugs. Each has its maker, but each itself is not a human being.

While that might be true they are very different pieces of technology, used in completely different capacities and for different purposes - There is almost no correlation between the two.

I'm not familiar with the TrueAllele method of DNA tests but from the limited amount that I've read on it (after you posted it) and the basic premise of the method, I can see issues in the method (my personal opinion).

The current methods available in Australia and accepted by the courts are those that have a solid foundation in science, that being Nuclear DNA testing and Mitochondrial DNA testing.

DNA evidence is classified as expert evidence under the relevant legislation and even where there is a 'match' between two samples it can't be said with certainty that they came from the same person - This is where an expert comes in and provides testimony about the probability of a match with a random member of the public, in comparison with, for example, the accused.

This of course isn't to say that new technology such as TrueAllele won't be put to juries in the future, a key question that a jury must consider in any case involving DNA (following a direction from the trial judge) is was the testing accurate and reliable?

 

[SoftSome]

TrueAllele is a closed source computer program to analyse testing results. The testing results are, say, from Nuclear DNA testing and Mitochondrial DNA testing methods, but the results are just numbers. Sometimes the mechanism of generating these numbers are so complex that even DNA experts and Mathematicians combined can not have a conclusive conclusion.

TrueAllele takes these numbers, and even though some experts do know the general mathematical theories TrueAllele uses, no one knows the detailed steps to obtain the output of TrueAllele, no one knows if TrueAllele was adjusted to please some party for business reasons.

 

[SoftSome]

And, one of the methods TrueAllele uses is Monte Carlo, a computational algorithm that rely on repeated random sampling to obtain numerical results.

 

[SoftSome]

Section 6 of the Lie Detectors Act 1983 (NSW) states that evidence taken from a polygraph machine is inadmissible in a court.

So, in my opinion, the reasoning behind the law on polygraph applies to TrueAllele.