Interesting. I watched to the break. Defence says a pinch zoomed video has pixels inserted by an algorithm and they need to understand that process before accepting a zoomed video as evidence. Prosecution says
"but everyone does pinch to zoom every day. Its just like using a magnifying glass on a photo." ￣\(^o^)/￣
All the while not understanding that projecting a video of unknown resolution onto a large screen in the courtroom could have the same effect as zooming the image.
That's not really true. Video upscaling is probably going to be linear interpolation, which is very unlikely to add meaningful artifacts, but an intelligent zoom that tries to add visually meaningful information may change the apparent content.
> Video upscaling is probably going to be linear interpolation
This is probably true of the technology that's currently in the courtroom, but not for much longer, e.g.[1]. Apple have even done research on this[2], although I can't find anything that says it's currently in use on the iPhone/iPad.
Seeing the mess my 4k "smart" TV makes of 1080p video with parallax scrolling (say a car driving between two rows of trees, filmed from the side), I think we're well past linear interpolation in consumer devices with upscaling.
Counterpoint: projecting a video onto a large screen is just well-understood optical physics whereas the iOS "video up-scaling function" is a black box.
I watched this live. This is a standard objection in any criminal proceeding when digital evidence is introduced. The defense admitted he doesn’t know what he’s talking about (he kept saying “logarithm” when he meant “algorithm”) but asserted a well established precedent that requires digital evidence be accompanied by affidavits of its authenticity, especially in a context where it is being enhanced (magnification is enhancement). What I don’t like about this coverage is that it ignores the much more salient fact that the prosecution has utterly collapsed in the last two days. The prosecution witnesses have explicitly endorsed Kyle’s self defense theory and the prosecution has obviously acted in bad faith since.
> What I don’t like about this coverage is that it ignores the much more salient fact that the prosecution has utterly collapsed in the last two days.
Well, this post (or rather the HN thread) is about a mention to the technology and its impacts on society, not the case itself. Being so politically charged it's a much worse topic for an online forum
> This is a standard objection in any criminal proceeding when digital evidence is introduced.
As it should be - they need to understand what is going on to make fair calls.
In this case the lawyers and prosecutors (and judges, and jury) may have no idea that when we say a pixel is 'imagined and created' when magnification is applied it is very unlikely that enough pixels will be created to insert an human-recognizable object where there was none
Come to think of it, software to introduce objects when zooming in on image/video would be quite challenging. It's an interesting problem
Controversy naturally adheres to these edge cases. If Rittenhouse wasn't a law breaking idiot, there'd be no story. Similarly, if his actions weren't in self defense, there would also be much less story. Because you have someone who made demonstrably bad decisions and broke the law in several ways but to all evidence did not break the law in the most important way, you have a situation primed for engagement of the public and use as a political tool. Whatever your stance is, complexities like these give you the ability to project your argument onto them and thus become more about what you think the current state of society is than the actual case itself.
Personally I find it remarkable how well legal commentators who viewed the footage shortly after it happened predicted how the trial would go. The trial itself and the reactions of various interest groups have been completely unsurprising.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I was trying to make the point it's not as surprising as it first seems that these edge cases become well known. Cases regarding the right not to divulge your passwords involving someone accused of having child pornography, cases about whether the government can force companies to backdoor smartphones involving a terrorist, etc.
Grosskreutz -the prosecution's star witness!- admitted that Rittenhouse did not fire at him until after Grosskreutz aimed his handgun at Rittenhouse(!).
Thus the prosecution's star witness justifies Rittenhouse's firing at him.
Grosskreutz even volunteered sua sponte that Rittenhouse was at risk of head trauma in the seconds before Grosskreutz aimed his gun at Rittenhouse(!!).
Thus the prosecution's star witness justifies Rittenhouse's shots at the man who kicked him in the head and the man who swung a skateboard at his head.
The medical examiner says marks on Rosenbaum's hand indicate it was close to or touching the muzzle of Rittenhouse's rifle(!!!). This, together with the video showing Rittenhouse retreating, justifies Rittenhouse's shots at Rosenbaum.
That leaves no murder or attempted murder case against Rittenhouse. That's the prosecution's main witnesses' doing.
Then Debruin accused the prosecution of trying to get him to change his story, and got into a he-said-he-said on the stand with the prosecutor about a meeting he had with the prosecutors(!!!!). This means that either the witness is lying under oath and so committing perjury, or the prosecutor -- who is an officer of the court -- is lying to the court! You can't make this stuff up. What can possibly remedy that situation? The bare minimum is a bar complaint seeking the prosecutor's disbarment.
A detective admitted on the witness stand that he had a search warrant for Grosskreutz's phone that the prosecution told him not to execute(!!!!!), and that they didn't take Ziminsky's gun (he was the first to discharge a firearm, in the direction of Rittenhouse, while chasing Rittenhouse, which further justifies Rittenhouse's claim of self-defense). Together with the Debruin issue and with subsequent gross misconduct by the prosecution, the prosecution is now looking malicious.
These are the prosecution's witnesses!! What the **** are they doing?! The incompetence they are demonstrating is unbelievable.
And then the prosecutor crosses a number of lines in court besides the one mentioned above with Debruin. Trying to use a defendant's silence against him is an absolute no-no (note though: under Salinas vs. Texas, if a defendant said nothing at all upon arrest, not even that they want a lawyer, or that they're pleading their 5th amendment right to stay silent, then that can be used against them at trial, but this isn't relevant here). And several other incidents I'm not listing.
The prosecutors also display a severe lack of knowledge of firearms and firearms law -- surprising for a prosecutor who must have many firearms cases. (This trial has been very educational.) They tried to get Rittenhouse to admit that at 17 years of age he could not possess a rifle under Wisconsin law when in fact he could (what he couldn't do was purchase a rifle at 17) -- this is simply not something for the witness to admit as it is a matter of law and only the judge can rule on that, but still, Rittenhouse knew the law and answered correctly.
The thing about the prosecution telling the detective to not execute a valid search warrant for their star witness' phone is absolutely shocking and astounding. That alone should be enough to toss less notable cases out.
The mind boggles at all of this.
It's pretty clear that the judge wants to toss the prosecutor out of the court, and probably the whole case as well, but isn't doing it -- possibly for good reasons, and/or possibly for bad reasons, but there's multiple rationales for allowing the trial to continue under these circumstances.
It's also clear that the prosecutor is crossing those lines on purpose (one instance is one thing, two is pretty surprising, three is purposeful). Either they are trying to get a mistrial without prejudice so they can try again and that time not get sandbagged by their own...
I watched some of the cross examination as well as closing arguments by both sides.
I'm by no means a legal expert so can't get into the weeds on all these legal arguments but my common sense says there needs to be at least a consequence for a teenager who arms himself with a rifle, travels to somewhere outside his hometown and ends up killing two unarmed men (not accidentally) and severely injuring a third one.
If the only consequence of such set of actions is an internship offer at the Congress then it only makes sense for other kids to emulate him.
MSM and prosecutor got screwed over of their narrative by their own witness who disproved it (He said "Correct" for "Kyle shot you AFTER witness pointed gun at Kyle.."), the prosecutor was trying to bring up things that happened 4 months later in front of jury even though judge instructed both parties not to bring up issues that didn't happen during shooting with out prior discussion (without jury).
Other lawyers pointed out correctly that prosecutor is stuck between rock and hard place, the best outcome for him personally would be to get mistrial.
Also this BS article fails to mention that both judge and lawyer mentioned that they DO NOT understand the technology and defense attorney said that they had expert look at it and the expert told them about "AI and algorithms", he also apologized for saying "algorithms" incorrectly.
Judge said he has no idea on how this technology works and only mentioned "inserting pixels" because the prior expert who looked at the pictures told them about "inserted pixels".
Judge told prosecutor he is free to bring a expert who can attest to accuracy of video taken with zoomed in iphone and then zoomed in through iPad for display to Jury. Prosecutor also couldn't tell Judge which software they were using to zoom in on iPad.
I like how Fox News, all the right wing websites, and talk radio that are used by 50% of the US population, is somehow not 'mainstream media'. Can someone explain.
The curious part of this is that the defense felt the need to challenge this footage, since it isn't damaging to the defendant, zoomed in or not. To me, to the extent that it is clear, it shows Rittenhouse retreating and responding to attacks, rather than the reverse. Does anyone else see something in that particular video that supports the felony charges?
It depends what the prosecutions reason for including the video is - these cases are sometimes not ‘smoking guns’ and are just lots of little pieces of evidence that come together to imply a narrative.
Right. I watched the entire time Rittenhouse was on the stand. It seemed clear the prosecution had basically nothing, and was just trying to paint Kyle as unreliable or “looking for trouble”. And he wasn’t very successful at that, IMO.
I would agree with you in principle - although I was in a jury a year ago and saw some very similar from the prosecution and thought 'nobody would ever buy this ridiculous attempt just to paint the defendant as the kind of guy that is guilty!'
And then as soon as I got in the jury room, I found that 3-4 people had fallen for this technique hook, line and sinker.
Prosecutions do this because, unfortunately, it works. Often jury trials unfortunately aren't about objective proof, they are about feelings and convincing the lay-public.
The prosecution is going to argue that the footage shows Rittenhouse raising his rifle at someone before being charged by Mr. Rosenbaum, out of sequence with his own testimony of what transpired.
It looked like Rosenbaum chased him for like 10 seconds while Rittenhouse was running away, threw something at him, and they're going to argue that in the last single second before the shooting he possibly raised his rifle in a grainy video where the question of pixels is an issue?
That seems weak but I guess the prosecution needs something.
> That seems weak but I guess the prosecution needs something.
From what I've read, the prosecution has been pretty weak. Their witness are often helping the defense at least as much as they're helping the prosecution, and the judge got angry with them the other day for likely deliberately going somewhere they weren't allowed to go.
They are lying by omission. It was WAY more than that.
The prosecutor was saying that Rittenhouse must be guilty because he chose not to speak before the trial.
That is an egregious violation. Judge wants a clear jury verdict due to the politicization of the case. In any other circumstances, I'd bet heavily that a mistrial with prejudice would be immediate.
I'm guessing there's a non-zero chance that the prosecutor gets officially censured for this case. Between that and the testimony about coercing the witness and interfering with the detective, there's a lot of wrong stuff going on here.
Not only that, but he would have to holding the rifle left-handed here, but right-handed both before and after. Defense didn't catch this though. Maybe the'll mention it in closing arguments.
I recognize the ICP reference but I find it funny that people make fun of ICP for simplistic lyrics while literally having the same lack of knowledge. Disclaimer: this is the only ICP reference I recognize.
I'm going to try to stick to the technical concerns this event raised, not the procedural ones.
There was a previous witness who had enhanced several videos for the prosecution. He testified that part of the enhancement process did involve "adding pixels that weren't there previously". It seems important that these videos were enhanced by a person who has a professional reputation to uphold. Those videos were admitted as evidence. The defense is positing the concern that a similar enhancement process happens when you zoom in on a video on the iPad. If it does, there is obviously no professional oversight. Keep in mind that this is a very small section of the screen that they were concerned with - a very small number of pixels of a slightly different color than there surroundings would be construed to be the object in question.
I have no idea if playback software the defense intended to use had an auto-enhance feature, but it does seem telling that the prosecuting attorney declined to certify when the judge asked that the video would not be altered. Instead he continued to make an argument of "we all do this all the time in our daily lives, it's common sense".
I do not recall him mentioning which software he intended to use for playback, so it would be hard to say for certain whether he was correct or not.
First of all, interpolation DOES use algorithms which could reasonably be described as AI.
If it's too blurry to tell, the actual intelligence of the observer will indeed fill in the detail of what they believe is happening. So if the prosecutor continues to assert "he is pointing his gun" while the pixels blurrily shift around, that may become the observer's impression regardless of what the pixels are actually showing or not showing.
You know, with Super Resolution technology, I think this is possible. It would be a great feature to implement if iOS and Android haven't implemented it already.
I happened to tune on during the part of the live trial. At first was funny seeing them using works like logarithms incorrectly, but then the other side didn't do a great job at explaining either. As he kept saying everyone pinches and zooms and knows what that does so no expert is needed. But just because people all use the feature, that doesn't mean the average person would know if ai is enhancing/inserting pixels to do that or not. Because of this poor argument, later on when he finally starts to touch more on the reality that it has to do with resolution and you are just zooming in our out of full resolution... it was too late, since the by then the judge was confused enough and lacked confidence in both sides to hear it. The magifying glass example didn't seem like a good way to explain that. And finally while pinch to zoom is just bring you close to the real full resolution, off the top of my head, I'm not sure if you keep zooming into the deepest detail if say Apple Photos, etc, does apply any techniques of inserting pixels to show even larger or if stops at the max resolution. Or if the user has accessibility modes on if that further amplifies beyond the available data. And whether that's via linear interpolation like watching an evidence photo on a big screen tv or a different technique. So depending on how much they are zooming in, etc, it's not a completely crazy question to ask. But they could have probably just googled and got answers to that pretty quickly.
This was one of the more entertaining parts of the trial. The defense stated that "AI and logarithms" (algorithms) were used to enhance the image when zoomed in, and the prosecution claimed that it was no different from a magnifying glass.
Both are right in some way. I think the defense raised a good point that while interpolation algorithms are everywhere, people don't generally understand that by definition these introduce new information not present in the original. It's a general problem with technology, but isn't brought up often in court. On the other hand, I think the prosecution's magnifying glass analogy was apt, but for the wrong reasons; it's an older form of upscaling technology that introduces its own distortions, but is accepted as accurate. It is kind of ironic that the format of the video and whatever transcoding has been performed wasn't delved into.
I zoomed in on the lawyers head and as I kept zooming in, I ended up with nothing but a big void on my screen. The AI logarithms do indeed have a pretty good idea of what is there.
The prosecutor has a tough job. He's trying to prove murder in one of the most obvious and well documented cases of self-defence in history. There is so much video evidence that shows a reasonable person would fear for their lives in that situation that its insurmountable. When you throw in a star witness who is repeatedly shown to lie you realise the mistake was bothering with the trial at all.
The whole prosecution depends on this notion that Kyle raised his rifle to provoke Rosenbaum before the chase ensued. They are trying to do this with about a 30*30 pixel area on a dark video. If he did raise his rifle, there's no evidence of what he's pointing at. It's brutal and the judge allowed instruction to the jury about provocation today. Kyle might do life in prison over this instruction. Brutal.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 99.5 ms ] threadThis is probably true of the technology that's currently in the courtroom, but not for much longer, e.g.[1]. Apple have even done research on this[2], although I can't find anything that says it's currently in use on the iPhone/iPad.
[1] https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/the-secret-behind-8k-upsca...
[2] https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/gan
Well, this post (or rather the HN thread) is about a mention to the technology and its impacts on society, not the case itself. Being so politically charged it's a much worse topic for an online forum
> This is a standard objection in any criminal proceeding when digital evidence is introduced.
As it should be - they need to understand what is going on to make fair calls.
In this case the lawyers and prosecutors (and judges, and jury) may have no idea that when we say a pixel is 'imagined and created' when magnification is applied it is very unlikely that enough pixels will be created to insert an human-recognizable object where there was none
Come to think of it, software to introduce objects when zooming in on image/video would be quite challenging. It's an interesting problem
https://petapixel.com/2020/08/17/gigapixel-ai-accidentally-a...
Personally I find it remarkable how well legal commentators who viewed the footage shortly after it happened predicted how the trial would go. The trial itself and the reactions of various interest groups have been completely unsurprising.
Thus the prosecution's star witness justifies Rittenhouse's firing at him.
Grosskreutz even volunteered sua sponte that Rittenhouse was at risk of head trauma in the seconds before Grosskreutz aimed his gun at Rittenhouse(!!).
Thus the prosecution's star witness justifies Rittenhouse's shots at the man who kicked him in the head and the man who swung a skateboard at his head.
The medical examiner says marks on Rosenbaum's hand indicate it was close to or touching the muzzle of Rittenhouse's rifle(!!!). This, together with the video showing Rittenhouse retreating, justifies Rittenhouse's shots at Rosenbaum.
That leaves no murder or attempted murder case against Rittenhouse. That's the prosecution's main witnesses' doing.
Then Debruin accused the prosecution of trying to get him to change his story, and got into a he-said-he-said on the stand with the prosecutor about a meeting he had with the prosecutors(!!!!). This means that either the witness is lying under oath and so committing perjury, or the prosecutor -- who is an officer of the court -- is lying to the court! You can't make this stuff up. What can possibly remedy that situation? The bare minimum is a bar complaint seeking the prosecutor's disbarment.
A detective admitted on the witness stand that he had a search warrant for Grosskreutz's phone that the prosecution told him not to execute(!!!!!), and that they didn't take Ziminsky's gun (he was the first to discharge a firearm, in the direction of Rittenhouse, while chasing Rittenhouse, which further justifies Rittenhouse's claim of self-defense). Together with the Debruin issue and with subsequent gross misconduct by the prosecution, the prosecution is now looking malicious.
These are the prosecution's witnesses!! What the **** are they doing?! The incompetence they are demonstrating is unbelievable.
And then the prosecutor crosses a number of lines in court besides the one mentioned above with Debruin. Trying to use a defendant's silence against him is an absolute no-no (note though: under Salinas vs. Texas, if a defendant said nothing at all upon arrest, not even that they want a lawyer, or that they're pleading their 5th amendment right to stay silent, then that can be used against them at trial, but this isn't relevant here). And several other incidents I'm not listing.
The prosecutors also display a severe lack of knowledge of firearms and firearms law -- surprising for a prosecutor who must have many firearms cases. (This trial has been very educational.) They tried to get Rittenhouse to admit that at 17 years of age he could not possess a rifle under Wisconsin law when in fact he could (what he couldn't do was purchase a rifle at 17) -- this is simply not something for the witness to admit as it is a matter of law and only the judge can rule on that, but still, Rittenhouse knew the law and answered correctly.
The thing about the prosecution telling the detective to not execute a valid search warrant for their star witness' phone is absolutely shocking and astounding. That alone should be enough to toss less notable cases out.
The mind boggles at all of this.
It's pretty clear that the judge wants to toss the prosecutor out of the court, and probably the whole case as well, but isn't doing it -- possibly for good reasons, and/or possibly for bad reasons, but there's multiple rationales for allowing the trial to continue under these circumstances.
It's also clear that the prosecutor is crossing those lines on purpose (one instance is one thing, two is pretty surprising, three is purposeful). Either they are trying to get a mistrial without prejudice so they can try again and that time not get sandbagged by their own...
I'm by no means a legal expert so can't get into the weeds on all these legal arguments but my common sense says there needs to be at least a consequence for a teenager who arms himself with a rifle, travels to somewhere outside his hometown and ends up killing two unarmed men (not accidentally) and severely injuring a third one.
If the only consequence of such set of actions is an internship offer at the Congress then it only makes sense for other kids to emulate him.
Other lawyers pointed out correctly that prosecutor is stuck between rock and hard place, the best outcome for him personally would be to get mistrial.
Judge said he has no idea on how this technology works and only mentioned "inserting pixels" because the prior expert who looked at the pictures told them about "inserted pixels".
Judge told prosecutor he is free to bring a expert who can attest to accuracy of video taken with zoomed in iphone and then zoomed in through iPad for display to Jury. Prosecutor also couldn't tell Judge which software they were using to zoom in on iPad.
And then as soon as I got in the jury room, I found that 3-4 people had fallen for this technique hook, line and sinker.
Prosecutions do this because, unfortunately, it works. Often jury trials unfortunately aren't about objective proof, they are about feelings and convincing the lay-public.
It looked like Rosenbaum chased him for like 10 seconds while Rittenhouse was running away, threw something at him, and they're going to argue that in the last single second before the shooting he possibly raised his rifle in a grainy video where the question of pixels is an issue?
That seems weak but I guess the prosecution needs something.
From what I've read, the prosecution has been pretty weak. Their witness are often helping the defense at least as much as they're helping the prosecution, and the judge got angry with them the other day for likely deliberately going somewhere they weren't allowed to go.
https://apnews.com/article/kyle-rittenhouse-trial-judge-dire...
The prosecutor was saying that Rittenhouse must be guilty because he chose not to speak before the trial.
That is an egregious violation. Judge wants a clear jury verdict due to the politicization of the case. In any other circumstances, I'd bet heavily that a mistrial with prejudice would be immediate.
I'm guessing there's a non-zero chance that the prosecutor gets officially censured for this case. Between that and the testimony about coercing the witness and interfering with the detective, there's a lot of wrong stuff going on here.
There was a previous witness who had enhanced several videos for the prosecution. He testified that part of the enhancement process did involve "adding pixels that weren't there previously". It seems important that these videos were enhanced by a person who has a professional reputation to uphold. Those videos were admitted as evidence. The defense is positing the concern that a similar enhancement process happens when you zoom in on a video on the iPad. If it does, there is obviously no professional oversight. Keep in mind that this is a very small section of the screen that they were concerned with - a very small number of pixels of a slightly different color than there surroundings would be construed to be the object in question.
I have no idea if playback software the defense intended to use had an auto-enhance feature, but it does seem telling that the prosecuting attorney declined to certify when the judge asked that the video would not be altered. Instead he continued to make an argument of "we all do this all the time in our daily lives, it's common sense".
I do not recall him mentioning which software he intended to use for playback, so it would be hard to say for certain whether he was correct or not.
If it's too blurry to tell, the actual intelligence of the observer will indeed fill in the detail of what they believe is happening. So if the prosecutor continues to assert "he is pointing his gun" while the pixels blurrily shift around, that may become the observer's impression regardless of what the pixels are actually showing or not showing.
Both are right in some way. I think the defense raised a good point that while interpolation algorithms are everywhere, people don't generally understand that by definition these introduce new information not present in the original. It's a general problem with technology, but isn't brought up often in court. On the other hand, I think the prosecution's magnifying glass analogy was apt, but for the wrong reasons; it's an older form of upscaling technology that introduces its own distortions, but is accepted as accurate. It is kind of ironic that the format of the video and whatever transcoding has been performed wasn't delved into.
But this story reeks of "Sufficiently advanced technology = Magic"
Blaming it on the boogie monster of "AI"