Well, I’ve been released from jury duty — I didn’t get selected for the panel. A few observations:
- Almost everyone who was questioned as a potential juror had been either burgled or subject to a home invasion (we’re in the former camp). The difference, of course, is whether someone was home when the crime happened. I wonder if this says something about Los Angeles, large cities, or society in general.
- They need to proof their questionnaire better. Some questions you want to answer yes, just because of how they are worded (for example, will you follow the judges instructions?).
- There was a lot of discussion about whether one can view the defendent as innocent if they do not testify on their own behalf. I began to think about this in terms of computer security. Look at it this way. The testimony and other items presented during the trial constitute the set of evidence used to judge — you can’t make a decision based on what wasn’t presented. So, in a murder trial, for example, one couldn’t draw a conclusion from the fact that the gun wasn’t presented — you can only base it on what was presented, and the story that tells. Not presenting the gun is no more a demonstration of guilt or innocence than the defendent testifying. In this case, with the lack of evidence, you presume innocence.
With computer security, the opposite of true. Having the scan for one system doesn’t allow you to generalize that scan for another system, in the sense that something closed on the former positively implies it is closed on the latter. More significantly, lack of evidence about a system doesn’t allow you to presume innocence for the system: with vulnerability assessment, you assume a system is vulnerable until convinced otherwise.
Still, the system worked pretty smooth, and the Burbank court isn’t all that bad. Can’t speak to Glendale.
