Something is rotten...
 
Notifications
Clear all

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

2 Posts
2 Users
0 Likes
1,175 Views
jaclaz
(@jaclaz)
Posts: 5133
Illustrious Member
Topic starter
 

😯

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/world/europe/denmark-cellphone-data-courts.html

Flaws in Cellphone Evidence Prompt Review of 10,000 Verdicts in Denmark

COPENHAGEN — The authorities in Denmark say they plan to review over 10,000 court verdicts because of errors in cellphone tracking data offered as evidence.

The country’s director of public prosecutions on Monday also ordered a two-month halt in prosecutors’ use of cellphone data in criminal cases while the flaws and their potential consequences are investigated.
….

Particularly worth of note is the statement

Even the director of the country’s Telecom Industry Association said that while phone companies were willing to assist the police in investigations, the use of cellphone tower data in court cases went beyond its original purpose.

“We are not created to make surveillance systems, but to make phone networks,” said the director, Jakob Willer. “Our data is for our purposes so people can speak together.”

jaclaz

 
Posted : 23/08/2019 4:03 pm
(@athulin)
Posts: 1156
Noble Member
 

The part at the end is a little scary

“Cellphone tower data has, for better or worse, been a significant part of criminal cases as they also helped document that people weren’t at a given crime scene,” [Karoline Normann, who heads the Danish Bar and Law Society’s criminal law committee] said. “Everybody’s benefited from the high evidence value, and it’s in everybody’s interest that it returns.”

The point seems rather to be that the evidence didn't actually have that 'high evidence value', although the prosecution probably claimed it did at the time. And any assumptions about it helping document presence (or absence) at a crime scene is, consequently, a moot point, until its validity has been reevaluated.

Perhaps not as nasty as the FBI method for identification by microscopic examination of hair, but probably just as important.

[ Added The IT system that did the conversion from raw call data that form the first part of the total problem seems to be an internal system called 'Raven' but there seems to be no information so far who developed the system. Looks like some important information in the input data was not passed through as it should have been, and this, at least partially, may have affected the calculation of the geoposition of the cell-phone.

The second area of problems appear to be related to data from VoWifi and VoLTE services.

A possible problem may be that only the past two years of relevant case evidence may have been saved earlier evidence may not have been saved.

Based on articles in Politiken, who also points out that the problems appears to have been known prior to a recent general election, but not published … Complementary information from Berlingske Tidende, and from version2.dk, an IT-news provider ]

 
Posted : 23/08/2019 4:52 pm
Share: