Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology

chicagoreader.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 320 posts

Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology

#81

Post by clarkmoody »

public_defender wrote: post #2

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.

Why not both?

Waving a scientific magic wand from a crony-connected company is a great asset to would-be abusers in the justice system.

Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology

#83

Post by dmix »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #66
lkschubert8 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean, I genuinely think most people don't intend ill. The most nasty, abusive people I know simply believe that they are in the moral right. In fact, believing that being morally right justifies their behavior is the biggest sign to me of a dangerous person, not a person who knowingly thinks evil things.

The only question then is whether the police biased these installations in minority neighborhoods without connecting it to high amounts of shootings, which could easily be proven with data.

That's the sort of thing that would be useful in court if it's true.

Are local police required to publish where they are deploying ShotSpotters? Shootings and racial demographic data is certainly already public.

I've read the entire Vice court report and don't remember seeing that data. Haven't read the Chicago one.

Edit: reading the original Motherboard source all of the examples were described as small 'pilot programs' so they were usually only a single part of each city, in Cleveland for example :

> the Cleveland Police Foundation—has been deployed in a small section of Southeast Cleveland that city officials have described as a high-crime area.

> Those neighborhoods also happen to be among the least white in the city and those hit hardest by economic recession and the pandemic, according to local community organizers.

> The area the division chose for Shotspotter accounted for 37 percent of all shots fired calls, 37 percent of felonious assaults, and 45% of all homicides within district four, Sergeant Jennifer Ciaccia wrote to Motherboard in an email.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88nd3z/gunshot-detecting-tec...

(Motherboard didn't provide crime stats in the other 3 example cities cited, only the demographic profile which was consistently non-white)

Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology

#84

Post by llanowarelves »

solardev wrote: post #5

(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…

If true, selective enforcement is bad.

But some minority demographics commit disproportionate (edit: violent) crime per capita so you expect some proportional scaling (more crime = more need for crime detection) if they happen to live in cities/areas where that's the case. (Usually big cities)

Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology

#85

Post by [deleted] »

daenz wrote: post #68
solardev wrote: post #5

(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…

Top article on that vice link: >In Chicago, a government watchdog says Shotspotter alerts have only led to evidence of gun crime in 9 percent of cases. >fewer than 2 in 10 investigatory stops following ShotSpotter alerts resulted in the recovery of a gun 9% actually seems like a lot? Considering that most criminals don't stick around after illegally discharging a firearm. And 1 in 5 resulting in the recovery in a gun…

[deleted]

Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology

#86

Post by ATsch »

kbenson wrote: post #73
googlryas wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jackson MS uses shot spotter and is 80% black, and no, they aren't deploying it in predominantly white "minority" neighborhoods.

Do you seriously think by "minority" they meant at the local populace level and not national populace level? When has that ever been the colloquial use?

It is pretty frequently done when arguing in bad faith, or (sometimes deliberately) misunderstanding that "minority" refers to power and not numbers.

Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology

#87

Post by sbierwagen »

beckingz wrote: post #65
matt_heimer wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So can't you just do that? Install the system and then drive a calibration car that emits sounds and logs gps coordinates?

Map every city in the US and world? Now that's a lot of work.

Google was collecting point cloud data of US cities 15 years ago, I assume some GIS vendor somewhere is selling a copycat dataset to self driving car startups.

Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology

#88

Post by trs8080 »

jschveibinz wrote: post #80

I would like to post a slightly different angle to the discussion. 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…

If your technology is being used as justification for incarcerating people and as a way for law enforcement to circumvent the law and escalate routine encounters into violence, then yes.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-sh...

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5db8vk/police-are-using-guns...

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88nd3z/gunshot-detecting-tec...

Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology

#89

Post by Spooky23 »

public_defender wrote: post #2

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.

It could mean a lot of things.

I was on a jury where we were forced to acquit a guy of vehicular manslaughter because a vendor representative couldn’t properly explain how NTP works on a red light camera under cross examination. It was gross.

Re: ShotSpotter requests to be held in contempt rather than disclose its methodology

#90

Post by lkschubert8 »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #66
lkschubert8 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean, I genuinely think most people don't intend ill. The most nasty, abusive people I know simply believe that they are in the moral right. In fact, believing that being morally right justifies their behavior is the biggest sign to me of a dangerous person, not a person who knowingly thinks evil things.

Yeah I guess I was thinking of "ill intent" through a certain societal lens of their intent not their own personal lens. Which is admittedly a pretty subjective view. But, I would still argue someone doing something like a politician acting against the interests of their constituency for monetary gain to be ill intent regardless of their own moral justification. And that exact example seems to happen a lot.

Edit: Also to be clear I agree that the vast majority of people aren't these actors. The problem is it is very easy for someone with ill intent to get things moving in the direction they want. Very few systems stand up to real world abuse by a sufficiently motivated bad actor.

Post reply on HN