Rebecca Wexler writes for Brookings: Federal law enforcement agencies have long used forensic testing to associate physical evidence found at a crime scene with a specific individual. Formerly a manual task, this process is now increasingly automated by forensic analysts using computer-based forensic algorithms. Last week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new technology assessment report titled Forensic Technology: Algorithms Strengthen Forensic Analysis, but Several Factors Can Affect Outcomes, which provides an in-depth analysis of the three most common systems: latent fingerprint matching algorithms, facial recognition algorithms, and probabilistic genotyping algorithms that analyze complex mixtures of DNA.
read analysis: It’s time to end the trade secret evidentiary privilege among forensic algorithm vendors (brookings.edu)
