[ad_1]
Errors in mobile phone location data have prompted the Danish authorities to examine 10,700 court cases to see if erroneous evidence leads to incorrect convictions. The New York Times reports that the problems date back to 2012 and consist of two bugs. The first is how the Danish police convert the raw data of the telephone companies into evidence, and the second is a bug that could cause cell phones to be linked to bad cell towers. Cases in which erroneous data was a determining factor in the conviction could be re-examined.
The problems discovered in Denmark could have a wider impact on the use of mobile phone location data as evidence in future cases. A legal expert quoted by the NYT says that lawyers do not usually question the data because they assume that it is accurate. It will likely take a long time before the reliability of evidence is restored, the expert said. It is not yet known how the errors discovered in Denmark could affect cases in other countries.
A representative of the Danish Telecom Industry Association asked whether the police should rely as much on the location data of mobile phones. "We are not created to create surveillance systems, but to create telephone networks," Jakob Willer, director of the association, said adding that the industry's focus with their data was to allow people to communicate.
[ad_2]
Source link