DUILawDefense Blog

It is against the law to drive while under the influence of marijuana. It has always been assumed that cannabis, like alcohol, impairs the perception, coordination, reflexes and judgment necessary for the safe operation of a motor vehicle. And, of course, there have been governmental studies addressing the question: Does marijuana impair driving?

Minneapolis, MN.  May 1 –Minnesota may be forced to drop thousands of driving-while-impaired cases and change the way it prosecutes others in the wake of a state Supreme Court ruling Thursday, prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed.

The state’s highest court ruled that defendants in drunken-driving cases have the right to make prosecutors turn over the computer “source code” that runs the Intoxilyzer breath-testing device to determine whether the device’s results are reliable.

But there’s a problem: Prosecutors can’t turn over the code because they don’t have it.

The Kentucky company that makes the Intoxilyzer says the code is a trade secret and has refused to release it, thus complicating DWI prosecutions…

The Intoxilyzer 5000EN is the standard device used by Minnesota police to determine if a driver is impaired. The state bought 260 of the machines from the manufacturer, CMI of Kentucky, in 1997, and state law presumes the devices’ results to be reliable.

The device is used with nearly eight of every 10 suspected drunken drivers who are tested in Minnesota.

But defense attorneys have argued that if they can’t examine the source code, the computer program that runs the machine, they have no way to tell if the Intoxilyzer is reliable. District judges across Minnesota have handled defense requests for the source code with a patchwork of rulings: Some say a defendant has a right to examine it; others say it isn’t relevant…

The Supreme Court said (defendant Brunner’s evidence) “show that an analysis of the source code may reveal deficiencies that could challenge the reliability of the Intoxilyzer and, in turn, would relate to Brunner’s guilt or innocence.”

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Washington, DC.  April 8 — President Barack Obama has chosen a top official with Mothers Against Drunk Driving to lead a Transportation agency that oversees safety and fuel efficiency requirements for automakers.

Chuck Hurley was nominated Wednesday to become administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Hurley, a longtime safety advocate, has served as MADD’s chief executive officer since 2005 and worked for the National Safety Council and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

At MADD, Hurley urged states to adopt tougher drunken driving laws and require first-time offenders to use ignition interlock devices on their cars. The devices require drivers to blow into an instrument that measures alcohol and prevent a vehicle from starting if the driver’s blood alcohol concentration exceeds a certain level…

The organization has received funding from several auto companies, including General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp., Ford Motor Co. and others. The General Motors Foundation provided MADD and MADD-related programs with $133,000 in grants in 2007, according to financial records filed with the IRS.

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BY JENNIFER LEBOVICH

jlebovich@MiamiHerald.com

Ohio man arrested for drunk driving on a homemade vehicle

MARCH 31–In a law enforcement first, Ohio cops this month arrested a man for drunk driving on a motorized bar stool. That’s right, a motorized bar stool, which can be seen below in a police evidence photo. According to cops, Kile Wygle, 28, crashed his bar stool near his Newark home earlier this month and called 911 due to his injuries. When an officer arrived and asked Wygle what happened, he answered, “I wrecked my bar stool.” According to a Newark Police Division report, a copy of which you’ll find here, Wygle’s homemade ride is powered by a Briggs & Stratton lawnmower engine. Wygle noted that the bar stool could hit nearly 40 miles per hour, but that he was only going 20 when he wiped out late in the afternoon on March 4 (a witness told police that he spotted someone driving a “strange motorized machine” before the crash). A plastered Wygle, who failed a series of field sobriety tests, was charged with DUI and driving with a suspended license, both misdemeanors. His bar stool was not impounded

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0331091stool1.html?link=rssfeed

In the past few months, Conficker’s creators have infected at least 3 million Windows PCs worldwide with malicious software, and perhaps as many as 12 million. At this moment, the bad guys are locked in a high-stakes showdown with a posse of security groups led by Microsoft.

Conficker’s controllers have set a date for what amounts to a cyber-shootout at the OK Corral. Next Wednesday — April Fools’ Day — millions of infected PCs, called bots, will begin reporting for further instructions, presumably to begin spreading spam, stealing data or carrying out online scams. And there appears to be little the good guys can do to cut off such communications.

“We have not yet begun to feel the real impact of Conficker,” says Paul Henry, researcher at security firm Lumension. “We may soon be at the whim of those in control of what has emerged as a formidable army of infected machines.”

Vintage worm

Conficker requires no action on the part of the PC user to spread. It’s a throwback to self-replicating worms that scanned the Internet for PCs displaying known — and unpatched — Windows security holes.

Such worms largely disappeared after 2004, as Microsoft (MSFT) improved its process for identifying new holes and quickly issuing patches. But last September, Chinese hackers began selling a $37.80 program for tapping into a newly discovered Windows hole on some 800 million machines worldwide, according to SRI International, a non-profit research firm.

Microsoft took notice, and on Oct. 23, issued a rare emergency patch. Most home PC users in North America got patched quickly, via Windows Auto update. But many corporate and government users were lackadaisical about patching. In China and other nations where pirated copies of Windows are widely used, patches simply weren’t available. “Once the patch was out, no one paid attention,” says Don Jackson, senior researcher at SecureWorks. “They underestimated the risk.”

Precursors of Conficker began spreading on a limited basis, mostly in Asia. In early January, a full-featured version began seeking out unpatched PCs across the globe. The worm slithered onto any shared hard drives; it searched out nearby servers and issued hundreds of combinations of user IDs and passwords to break in; it copied itself onto any device plugged into a USB port, such as thumb drives, music players or digital cameras. When that infected device later got inserted into another work station, that machine became infected.

Conficker also took extraordinary measures to prevent each new bot from being disinfected by Microsoft or antivirus programs, or usurped by a rival botnet group. SRI found, for instance, that Conficker’s encryption algorithm came from MIT’s Ron Rivest, copied from a recently published research paper.

On Feb. 12, Microsoft put up a $250,000 bounty for information leading to the capture of Conficker’s creators. The software giant also formed an alliance of security groups, dubbed the Conficker Cabal, to battle the worm.

The Cabal focused on disrupting what was perhaps Conficker’s most unnerving feature. Eight times a day, each bot tried to connect with a list of 250 randomly generated Web addresses — each a potential rendezvous point to receive further instructions. Each day, this list of 250 rendezvous points changed.

To cut this off, the Cabal identified the Web addresses scheduled to turn up on the daily lists, and began registering any that weren’t already registered by someone else. The goal: to “pre-empt registration of those domains for potential criminal use,” says Christopher Budd, of Microsoft’s security response team.

Upgrade slips through

Yet, on March 6 and on March 17, the bad guys somehow slipped a malicious software upgrade to millions of infected PCs. The upgrade began organizing the bots into a vast peer-to-peer, or P2P, network, says SRI program manager Phillip Porras. P2P networks are powerful and flexible, because each PC can function as a command server. They’re commonly used to share videos and music and play complex online games.

The upgrade also included instructions for each bot to begin a daily routine on April 1 of checking in at 500 rendezvous points, randomly selected from a pool of 50,000 domain names. This trick will make it more difficult for the Cabal to preregister addresses, says Porras.

Joe Stewart, a senior researcher at SecureWorks, notes that the infected PCs are already capable of receiving directives from the controllers via the P2P network, “so the 50,000 domains aren’t really needed. They could even be a practical joke on the part of the authors.”

Botnets have emerged as the cybercrime world’s tool of choice to carry out scams. Josu Franco, Panda Security’s director of business development, surmises that Conficker’s controllers may be moving methodically to corner the market on botnets for hire. “This is free inventory for them,” says Franco.

The good guys’ defense boils down to vigilance. While the Cabal may not be able to stop the controllers from issuing directives, it remains poised to disrupt any criminal activity attempted by Conficker bots.

“There may be a second phase of the threat at some point in time,” acknowledges Microsoft’s Budd. “However, we believe, given the tremendous amount of attention this worm has received, industry and law enforcement efforts will be a deterrent to a large second wave of attacks.”

As most of you know, MADD has focused on ignition interlock devices (IIDs) as the answer to the drunk driving problem in America.  The organization has even widely trumpted the device as the way to “literally wipe out drunk driving in the United States”.   

Recent Celebrity DUI Arrests Include Charles Barkley and Sam Shepherd

Ice Cream Causes Positive Alcohol Test 

Frankston, Australia.  Jan. 20 – An Australian man challenged to prove his claim that ice cream gave him a blood alcohol reading demonstrated his defense in court.

The man, whose name was not given, had asked Frankston Magistrates’ Court to remove the breath testing alcohol interlock device from his car, the (Melbourne, Australia) Daily Sun reported Tuesday.

Prosecutors inquired why the machine had registered a “fail,” which prevents the car from starting, despite the man’s claims that he had not been drinking.

The man claimed the alcohol reading was the result of eating a Bubble O’ Bill ice cream treat and Magistrate Rod Crisp ordered a test to be performed to back up the claim. Police recorded the man’s blood alcohol content as 0.00 and performed the test a second time after he took a few bites of Bubble O’ Bill, yielding a 0.018 reading.

Crisp granted the man’s request to remove the breath testing device from his car.

Experts said consuming some foods or drinks before breath tests can cause a false positive reading. It is recommended that that test subjects wait at least 15 minutes in between eating and blowing into the machine.

Why don’t they use them?  And why, when they do, do they so often get lost or erased? 

Local Attorney Says All D.U.I. Arrests Should Be Videotaped

KUTV News, Utah.  Oct. 23  - Many Utah police departments videotape suspected drunk drivers.  The Highway Patrol has most of the dashboard cameras in Utah.  Attorney Jason Schatz wants to see more videotaping for the sake of his clients.

 “It’s only fair to those people if the technology is available”, he says.  Schatz defends suspected drunk drivers and says often, police video is valuable evidence in court, challenging officers’ written reports.  

 “You look at the police report and you’d think this person was falling down drunk, then you see the tape and you say ‘Wait a minute, that doesn’t look the way it was described on paper”. 

Schatz says he wants Utah to adopt mandatory videotaping like the State of South Carolina.  He hopes to find a local lawmaker who will take the issue to Capitol Hill.