The author finds it stupid that the jury was allowed to ask questions to the author of a forensics tool about the technicalities and inner workings of the forensics tool, like "Wouldn't it be easier if you just jailbroke the phone?"
As a defendant, you do have a constitutional right to be judged by a jury of your peers. As a professional providing a highly specialized service to a court, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have non-peers (laymen) ask technical questions about the inner workings of a tool that, for all intents and purposes, is basically magic levers and knobs.
Edit: I don't mean to imply that juries shouldn't question forensic evidence gathering methods (far from it actually), but I can see where the author finds the practice comical at best, and dangerous at worst.
If it's basically the output of magic levers and knobs and processes which are not allowed to be inspected or questioned or understood by the jury, then one could make a pretty persuasive argument that it can't really be considered to be "evidence", in any meaningful sense of the term.
> If it's basically the output of magic levers and knobs and processes which are not allowed to be inspected or questioned or understood by the jury
I specifically edited my comment to say that I was not trying to imply that juries should not question processes of evidence gathering. To state so is disingenuous.
Look at it this way: If can assume that few readers of HN are in chemistry, and any of us were on a jury of a case where a chemist was comparing trace chemicals found in a container that was owned by a defendant on trial for some heinous crime, we would want to know the methods used to gather and inspect those trace chemicals. But what would you think if you were the chemist and you were asked "Why couldn't you just use a cotton swab and look at them under a big microscope?" when the process involved a complex series of baths to hydrate the residue on the container and then separate and concentrate the combined compounds into individual and inspectable forms? I know, if I had spent most of an afternoon talking about the process I had taken to do my work, and was asked that question, I would feel frustrated and defeated. Clearly that juror had no idea of what I was talking about.
As a defendant, you do have a constitutional right to be judged by a jury of your peers. As a professional providing a highly specialized service to a court, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have non-peers (laymen) ask technical questions about the inner workings of a tool that, for all intents and purposes, is basically magic levers and knobs.
Edit: I don't mean to imply that juries shouldn't question forensic evidence gathering methods (far from it actually), but I can see where the author finds the practice comical at best, and dangerous at worst.