Ars Technica reports on a US court case, where the judge ordered a professional code review of breathalyser software in a drink-driving case. The examination found serious bugs, complex and ill-maintained code, a lack of safeguards and other bad programming practices. While the case is a US one, the issues it raises are global. Why do we allow companies to use proprietary, closed-source software in technology which affects everything from our liberty to the people we elect to power? And, as the post notes, if the software is not open-source it highlights the need for routine, independent audits on such code. We should not accept that the evidence against us is decided by a black box to which we have no access.

Posted Sunday, May 17th, 2009 @ 11:19 pm
Filed in business and productivity, community and social, politics, science and tech

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