How is a non-expert, and somebody whose job specifically requires them to be sceptical and to question unstated assumptions, supposed to be sure of that?
It's a simple enough thing to verify, or require the defence (in this case) to substantiate the claim without throwing out the method of showing evidence entirely.
Courts have to deal with questions like this all the time and handle them well enough. Technology isn't magic, nor do we have to go down a rabbit hole on each point about what might be there rather than what is there.
This inverts the burden. The prosecution proposed the exhibit, and so the burden is on them to show that everything about it - that the chain of custody was valid, that the processing done on it was meaningful - is correct. It's not the defense's place to prove them wrong.
All of the other evidence was processed through forensics software, and displayed on Windows laptops. Then, at the last minute, the prosecutor asks to show this late-discovered evidence on an iPad. Watching the trial, that felt suspicious - why should this one piece of evidence be shown in a novel way?
It’s not a new exhibit being introduced, and the zoomed in form is not evidence. Therefore there’s no chain of custody question.
It was being used to show the footage to the witness on the stand, in order for them to explain what’s shown on it. As has been done in American courts hundreds of times before.
Now sure, the witness and prosecution or defence could argue that a witness doesn’t need to make guesses about what they’re seeing on zoomed in low-quality footage when under cross-examination. That happens all the time, too.
What doesn’t happen every time is for iPads to be rejected for this purpose because of magical AI ‘logarithms’ inventing imagery.
That means the jury will be able to see this as its own exhibit. (It may have been assigned two exhibit numbers.)
And I'd say it makes sense. Each additional processing step can change the image. For example, if one used the waifu2x algorithm to scale the image up, that would certainly be wrong.
It is not magic, but, as other posters alluded, sometimes it can be merely an educated guess. It is hard to accept a life changing verdict based on a guess.. even if it is an educated one.
So no, each time a given technique is used, the way it works has to be explained so that a decision based on facts of the case is made.
Nothing wrong with that, but a common sense explanation by an expert witness ought to be enough. Does Apple need to be dragged into each and every case to testify as to how pinch to zoom works, as was demanded here?
Courts have established mechanisms for handling technical questions around evidence. It's not like any of this is new.
The judge did not give the prosecution time to find an expert witness, did not ask his clerks to search for similar usage of iPad zooming in previous cases, and did not require the defence to provide expert testimony of their own to substantiate their claim.
In the end the iPad was not used. Instead a 4K TV was used, which ironically probably upscaled the image too.
This wasn’t a new evidence exhibit being introduced. Did you actually read the transcript, or are you reacting to this story based on what you’ve read elsewhere?
I would argue they DO NOT handle them well enough at all, and I have a feeling that if the person on trial had a different political affiliation you would also be claiming they do not.
Courts routinely get technology wrong, and use this the send innocent people to prison all the time. I would say the courts get technology related evidence wrong more than they do correct.
> I have a feeling that if the person on trial had a different political affiliation you would also be claiming they do not.
That's an ad hominem argument. In truth I don't care who's on trial, as the outcome of this specific trial is at this point an American culture war & politics issue that I'm uninterested in.
I am interested in how well courts handle technology and whether either prosecutors or defence attorneys can throw a wrench in proceedings with fanciful woo like "iPads, which are made by Apple, have artificial intelligence in them that allow things to be viewed through three dimensions and logarithms", and have that tolerated by judges who themselves are often technologically illiterate.
