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My understanding is that "contempt of court" is used to either punish someone's "bad" behavior or compel them to do something the court believes they are required to do. In this case, wouldn't they just keep getting punished for contempt (racking up fines presumably) forever until they fulfil the court's request?
To my knowledge, you only need 3 active points to triangulate a location[0]. [0]: https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/triangulation-locate-earth...
(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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Sure, but if a city that is predominantly black, whose government is predominantly black, decides to use shot spotter, it would be silly to claim that it is being deployed in minority areas in order to oppress minorities.
What does it mean for a corporation to be held in contempt of court? I guess they will pay a fine and never have to produce those documents?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Sure, but if a city that is predominantly black, whose government is predominantly black, decides to use shot spotter, it would be silly to claim that it is being deployed in minority areas in order to oppress minorities.
No, it would be silly to claim it's being deployed only in those areas.
The first system was in Redwood City, CA. I once went to a talk by the designer. They had leased analog audio lines to each microphone. At the microphone end, they had something like a logarithmic amplifier, which traded dynamic range for frequency response. The idea is that you don't want to saturate when it picks up a bang. The audio feeds went to an IBM PC at the police station with some multichannel analog input cards. A program written in LabView running under DOS did the analysis. It was looking for a sharp upward spike from multiple microphones. Then it took the time deltas and computed a position. No attempt to compensate for bounces off buildings, etc. Fairly coarse resolution, down to the side of a block, not a building. It was pretty simple.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Sure, but if a city that is predominantly black, whose government is predominantly black, decides to use shot spotter, it would be silly to claim that it is being deployed in minority areas in order to oppress minorities.
This 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.
Would results of discovery be public record? If so, I could also see: 3) They don't want their "secret sauce" made publicly available. That would both open them up to commercial competition, and make their product less reliable in court, as anti-Shotspotter experts would start figuring out how to effectively argue against the product's methodology. In general I think technology like this should have to be fully trans…
Assumption: the majority of commenters are working in technology fields, and perhaps even technology startups.
Let’s say that you have developed some software product that works pretty well for certain applications, but is certainly not perfect. But it works well enough that your customers are paying you to use your product.
Now, your customers decide to use your product in a way that you have neither intended nor prescribed. (In fact, your product comes with a disclaimer.)
In doing so, they end up in court. And you get hauled into the middle of it.
Should you have to expose your technology? This could endanger your entire business.