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I read the comment you're replying to as being satire/sarcasm, given how outrageous it is.
ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology
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Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology
#52This is an audio surveillance company which sells itself to cities as a gunshot detection system. Based on how they appear to be acting in court, it would be reasonable to assume that either: (1) Their methodology is about to be debunked, or; (2) It's about to be revealed that they were working with police to allow them to manufacture reasons to arrest people.
2 has already been revealed: https://www.vice.com/en/topic/shotspotter
Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology
#53I don’t understand the argument here. Suppose shotspotter is deeply flawed and often confuses fireworks and car backfires for gunshots, how could that have any impact on this case or the legality of it? I don’t see it as any different than if a police officer is out patrolling, hears a car backfire, and confuses it for a gunshot. If he then detains someone as a part of his investigation and discovers some other crime…
If the police officer was lying about hearing a gunshot to perform an illegal search, or the police officer used the “I heard a gunshot” excuse six times a day, then that would be a problem.
Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're telling me that cities are picking minority areas to put these in just for ill intent? Also, the devices don't "enforce crimes", they only alert approximate areas where a gunshot/firework may have gone off at.
I don't think anyone truly intends ill. However, someone who chooses a technology that doesn't have real evidence of working as well as it's advertised, and then uses applications of that technology on primarily minority populations, the result can only be concluded as illness on the people.
I'm hard pressed to believe that there aren't some folks who have ill intent. The problem is weeding them out from people who are just using crappy metrics and people who just barely know what's going on.
Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology
#55It's plausible that ShotSpotter's main motivation is that there isn't much benefit (e.g., increased sales) to complying with the defense's request, but the costs could be huge, both for collecting the requested information in the required manner, and for the ramifications if they cannot produce information that the court believed they should have been able to produce. Discovery can be extremely expensive even when th…
I dunno if this company deserves that benefit of the doubt. Honestly, given their history, they probably just don't want to reveal that their entire business is snake oil, basically existing solely to make money by enabling law enforcement to create crimes out of thin air. If their science was sound they wouldn't have to resort to such tactics...
Why are you so skeptical of their technology?
Look how accurate raspberry pi powered ADSB plane tracking networks are — and that’s a much harder problem: they have no funding, they’re doing triangulation at the speed of light, and they’re doing it without GPS clock sources. You could also point to the lightning tracker networks that work in roughly the same way.
Given a few million dollars to outfit their nodes with good GPS units and good microphone arrays, I’d expect their technology to be very good.
Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology
#56I don’t understand the argument here. Suppose shotspotter is deeply flawed and often confuses fireworks and car backfires for gunshots, how could that have any impact on this case or the legality of it? I don’t see it as any different than if a police officer is out patrolling, hears a car backfire, and confuses it for a gunshot. If he then detains someone as a part of his investigation and discovers some other crime…
If the officer lied about having probable cause (e.g., by telling ShotSpotter to fabricate alerts or to re-classify an alert after a stop to manufacture probable cause), the case can be thrown out.
Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s no way they have a legitimate secret sauce though… right? This doesn’t seem like a hard problem to do. Maybe some of this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_component_analys... Plus basic triangulation logic synced across a bunch of microphones?
It's phenomenally hard. Echos, indirect routing (bouncing off buildings), sound waves changing speed as they go through various materials (like a lens). It's a very hard problem. Heck, a truly calibrated surround sound system requires using a microphone to measure the volume in place.
So can't you just do that? Install the system and then drive a calibration car that emits sounds and logs gps coordinates?
Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology
#58(Not the OP) For background, this is the company that supposedly locates gunshot sounds in cities (and sometimes battlefields) by microphone triangulation. It doesn't work all that well and is selectively deployed in minority areas and is used by police to selectively enforce crimes, sometimes also altering the evidence. Vice did a few articles on them and the company tried to sue but had it tossed out. Shady all aro…
Jackson MS uses shot spotter and is 80% black, and no, they aren't deploying it in predominantly white "minority" neighborhoods.
I think they meant races or ethnicities that are a minority in the US at large, since that's how the term "minority" is typically used
Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology
#59I don’t understand the argument here. Suppose shotspotter is deeply flawed and often confuses fireworks and car backfires for gunshots, how could that have any impact on this case or the legality of it? I don’t see it as any different than if a police officer is out patrolling, hears a car backfire, and confuses it for a gunshot. If he then detains someone as a part of his investigation and discovers some other crime…
The cop that heard the backfire would likely be called to testify that fact in court. If they fail to show up, and the arresting officer (a different cop) claimed they made a probable-cause traffic stop based on what the other cop heard, and that cop refuses to testify, the prosecution is going to have a bad time.
Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology
#60I don’t understand the argument here. Suppose shotspotter is deeply flawed and often confuses fireworks and car backfires for gunshots, how could that have any impact on this case or the legality of it? I don’t see it as any different than if a police officer is out patrolling, hears a car backfire, and confuses it for a gunshot. If he then detains someone as a part of his investigation and discovers some other crime…
The problem is at least with police, presumably (and I understand this doesn't functionally work due to the dysfunction of the police & court systems) if the police kills and/or maims an innocent person due to their error, they can be held responsible for their stupid decision.