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from the take-a-deep-breath-before-reading dept.
These Machines Can Put You in Jail. Don't Trust Them.
A million Americans a year are arrested for drunken driving, and most stops begin the same way: flashing blue lights in the rearview mirror, then a battery of tests that might include standing on one foot or reciting the alphabet.
What matters most, though, happens next. By the side of the road or at the police station, the drivers blow into a miniature science lab that estimates the concentration of alcohol in their blood. If the level is 0.08 or higher, they are all but certain to be convicted of a crime.
But those tests — a bedrock of the criminal justice system — are often unreliable, a New York Times investigation found. The devices, found in virtually every police station in America, generate skewed results with alarming frequency, even though they are marketed as precise to the third decimal place.
Judges in Massachusetts and New Jersey have thrown out more than 30,000 breath tests in the past 12 months alone, largely because of human errors and lax governmental oversight. Across the country, thousands of other tests also have been invalidated in recent years.
The machines are sensitive scientific instruments, and in many cases they haven't been properly calibrated, yielding results that were at times 40 percent too high. Maintaining machines is up to police departments that sometimes have shoddy standards and lack expertise. In some cities, lab officials have used stale or home-brewed chemical solutions that warped results. In Massachusetts, officers used a machine with rats nesting inside.
[...] Technical experts have found serious programming mistakes in the machines' software. States have picked devices that their own experts didn't trust and have disabled safeguards meant to ensure the tests' accuracy.
[...] Yet the tests have become all but unavoidable. Every state punishes drivers who refuse to take one when ordered by a police officer.
I strongly suggest reading the entire article. Breath-taking and sobering is an understatement.
Also at CNET
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday November 05 2019, @11:06PM (2 children)
Were they ever held accountable for any of that?
Sounds like a very stressful situation; sorry to hear you had to deal with it.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday November 06 2019, @02:49AM (1 child)
Somewhat accountable, yes. The final project I was on was an utter train wreck, so bad that even the military boys couldn't help noticing. Management tried to blame everything on the peons, of which I was one of the most notable. We were all "quitted". But that didn't fool the military, not that time. I don't know much of what happened after I was forced out. But I did learn later that my employer lost the contract anyway, and that the on-site manager, who was a nothing more than a bullshit artist, was no longer employed there.
Strangely, our boss, a real jar head ex-officer who took a drill sergeant approach to motivating people (you know, snarling at us to stop being crybaby quitters and to get to work, do as he had ordered, and get that perpetual motion machine invented and to be quick about it), was promoted to vice president.
I made a number of mistakes as well. I should have wised up to their foolish dishonesty sooner, but even if I had, what could I do about it? Take a page from the drill sergeant method and bark back at them that they better shape up? There was really no use in such a course of action, they were just too corrupt, incompetent, and contemptuous. And it's real hard to risk or walk away from a good paycheck, no matter how awful the job. It got so bad though, that being fired would have been a relief. Or if not that, I should have broken the door to the exit down running away as fast as possible, and the heck with having another job lined up.
But since I kept quiet, I got to see the grand finale. Our boss made a total ass of himself at the last quarterly progress meeting in front of a bunch of customers and other defense contracting companies. He tried to blow smoke up all their asses, putting a fake schedule on the projector, and they stopped him scarcely a minute later to ask him the very embarrassing and pointed question: what was the goal? He replied that figuring that out was the first item on the schedule! I thought we were all going to be fired right then and there. No, not quite. But there was blood in water then, and they tore the boss to pieces. Don't feel sorry for him, he deserved it, convincing himself that everyone was too stupid to realize he was full of it and would let him get away with such grievous insults to their intelligences. When the meeting ended, the boss took me aside to kick me verbally as if I was nothing more than a pet dog who had to take his owner's abuse whenever he wanted to vent.
Anyway, I now think that every engineering program should have a course or two on the crap that pointy haired bosses can pull, with strategies for detecting and dealing with the lying, gaslighting, abuse, bull, unconscionable orders, blackmailing, and manipulation. And one of the lessons should be something I heard a long time ago: "kid, always keep some 'fuck you' money." What's 'fuck you' money? "So you can tell your boss, 'fuck you'". Now the whole nation is paying for not having experience and education in dealing with that kind of boss. It's been a hard lesson, and I hope we emerge mostly intact and wiser.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 09 2019, @02:02PM
You mean every lie "project" you do https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=34553&page=1&cid=918215#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] fails as you did there fuckboy? Of course. Your ENTIRE wasted LIFE is a lie and fail. Just like how you failed to answer in a simple question there welfare sucker fuck you are in that link. Come on now FAKENAME - prove you even have a job or any real skills in computers. Having trouble doing so, fakename? Yes. You are nothing but a fucking lie and a waste of life.