With the rise of artificial intelligence, law enforcement agencies are increasingly using AI tools to solve crimes—and even put people behind bars. But now one of those tools, a software program called Cybercheck, is under fire.
Cybercheck “uses advanced machine learning algorithms to analyze massive amounts of data, including witness statements, digital forensic evidence, mobile signals, and other cyber profile data,” the company’s website says. This can be particularly helpful in finding evidence that human investigators may have missed. However, several investigators have reported problems with using the AI tool and criticized its founder, Adam Mosher.
Why is Cybercheck being questioned?
A report from Business Insider brought concerns about Cybercheck into the mainstream discussion. In particular, questions were raised “about the program and its reliability,” according to Business Insider. This is especially relevant since there are “many defendants whose fates were determined in part by Cybercheck’s secret algorithm.”
Subscribe The week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news and analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for the free weekly newsletter
From our morning news roundup to our weekly Good News newsletter, get the best of the week delivered straight to your inbox.
From our morning news roundup to our weekly Good News newsletter, get the best of the week delivered straight to your inbox.
That includes Adarus Black, who was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of drive-by murder. Prosecutors “had no direct evidence linking Black to the crime scene,” according to Business Insider, but Mosher testified in court that Cybercheck used its algorithm to triangulate Black’s phone and “located him within feet of the crime scene with over 90% accuracy.” Jurors later said that “without Mosher and his Cybercheck report, they would not have convicted Black.”
But while there are concerns about the program’s methodology, defense attorneys face an uphill battle when trying to challenge the reliability of evidence generated using AI, according to Business Insider. Companies like Cybercheck can argue that the algorithms and training data that power these AI tools are protected trade secrets of the private companies that develop them and therefore cannot be disclosed. Often, prosecutors do not have access to the AI’s source code, meaning it is “up to local judges, who likely have neither a PhD in computer science nor an understanding of higher matrix math, to decide whether to grant the defense access.” Mosher’s statements in court also drew criticism, with one attorney calling out “inconsistencies in Mosher’s resume, including trials he allegedly testified at but that never happened and a university peer review that was never conducted.”
Who is fighting Cybercheck in court?
In addition to the investigations into Cybercheck and similar programs, some challenges are also being raised in court. In one case in Akron, Ohio, a forensics firm hired to review evidence in a murder case “submitted a report to the court questioning ‘the accuracy and legality of the CyberCheck system’ because it had produced two identical reports using different data,” according to Business Insider. The report added that it was “implausible that the same number of hits for the same cyber profile were recorded by the same wireless routers at the same time on two different days.”
As Cybercheck’s use has spread, “defense attorneys have questioned its accuracy and reliability. Its methodology is opaque, they said, and it has not been independently audited,” according to NBC News, which also published an investigative report on Cybercheck. As of 2023, the tool has been “used in nearly 8,000 cases in 40 states and by nearly 300 agencies,” but some judges and prosecutors have pushed back against its use. In New York, “a judge last year barred authorities from presenting Cybercheck evidence after finding that prosecutors had not shown it was reliable or widely accepted, the decision shows,” while in another case in Ohio, a judge “blocked a Cybercheck analysis when Mosher refused to disclose the software’s methodology.”
The justice system “is being asked to trust a company to produce evidence that could ultimately lead to prison sentences,” William Budington, a technician at the civil rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation, told NBC. This “violates the right to a fair trial.”
