State v. Underdahl, Minn.S.Ct. 4/30/2009. This is a combined appeal; the alleged DUI offenders who sought the source code are Dale Underdahl and Timothy Brunner. The upshot of the opinion is that if you say the magic words you get the source code. That is, you get the source code if and when the Department of Public Safety can wrestle it away from some outfit in Owensboro, Kentucky. As a matter of law, however, the appellate court says that the Department has "possession" of that code.
I've written about this ongoing battle here and here and maybe elsewhere, I've lost track. I'm done. Here's what Mr. Brunner submitted in support of his request for the code:
Appellant Brunner submitted a memorandum and nine exhibits to support his request for the source code. The memorandum gave various definitions of “source code.” The first exhibit was the written testimony of David Wagner, a computer science professor at the University of California in Berkeley, which explained the source code in voting machines, the source code‟s importance in finding defects and problems in those machines, and the issues surrounding the source code‟s disclosure. The next exhibits detailed Brunner‟s attempts to obtain the source code, both from the State and CMI. The last exhibit was a copy of a report prepared on behalf of the defendants in New Jersey litigation about the reliability of New Jersey‟s breath-test machine. See State v. Chun, 943 A.2d 114 (N.J. 2008). The report analyzed the New Jersey machine‟s computer source code and uncovered a variety of defects that could impact the test result
This is a sufficient showing under Rule 9.01, subd. 2(3) of the Rules of Criminal Procedure. Counsel, get those boilerplates humming.
No comments:
Post a Comment