Defendants may be entitled to review proprietary software code used in the prosecution’s expert probabilistic DNA analysis, according to a New Jersey appeals court in New Jersey v. Pickett.

In 2017, defendant Corey Pickett and an accomplice were arrested and charged with first degree murder after they allegedly fired weapons into a crowd, wounding one victim and killing another.  In the course of the arrest, the police discovered a revolver and a ski mask.  Finding the samples inappropriate for traditional DNA analysis, swabs from the revolver and ski mask were sent to Cybergenetics Corp.’s Laboratory to use its TrueAllele software to run probabilistic genotyping analysis on the samples.  The TrueAllele software determined that Pickett was the source of the DNA on the revolver and ski mask.Continue Reading New Jersey Appeals Court Rules that Defendant Can Review the Proprietary DNA Analysis Software That Linked Him to the Crime

Companies and other organizations increasingly must face serious and complex threats to their business and infrastructure.  Whether the threat is trade secret theft, rogue insiders, cybercrime adversaries, aggressive competitors, or misconduct by business and supply chain partners, companies should remain constantly vigilant and defense ready. Adversaries, including especially cybercriminals operating exclusively in the digital domain, are often highly motivated, sophisticated, resourced, and innovative. The opaque, pervasive, and global nature of modern digital networked environments presents opportunities for criminals. The sophistication and relentless creativity of these bad actors pose significant challenges to companies and law enforcement agencies in being able to detect, assess, mitigate, attribute, and deter these threats. Because available tools and real-world practices to address these threats often outpace the law, companies are called upon to develop their own comprehensive approaches to investigate and remediate these forms of risk. In doing so, companies must be willing to assume a certain level of risk to effectively investigate and obtain sufficient insight to counter the problems.
Continue Reading Complex Threat Investigations: Tips for Investigating Trade Secret Misappropriation and Other Digital Crimes