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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

#131

Post by googlryas »

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?

No, I didn't. It was somewhat of an offhand comment. I'll break it down a little more directly:

1) Jackson MS is 80+% black.

2) The (mayor + city council) of Jackson MS is 75% black

3) The command staff of Jackson MS police department is 100% black.

4) The city and police department decided to deploy shot spotter in Jackson

5) (don't get distracted by this please) The city has not deployed shot spotter in areas that are predominantly white

Given those 5 points, where is Jackson deploying their shot spotter tech? Is it in predominantly black/minority neighborhoods? Yes.

Why are they doing that? Does the predominantly black government intend to keep black people down?

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

#132

Post by intelVISA »

renewiltord wrote: post #97

Laundering police positions is a pretty profitable industry. I think once I have my American citizenship, I'd like to give it a shot. The small-time stuff like police dog training[0], etc., and the obvious stuff like AI face recognition won't play. But there's a lot of stuff like this that can be relatively decent business. Everyone who could prosecute you is sort of on your side, so you're safe. And it has a natural…

You just need to figure out the tech they had in Minority Report and put it on AWS.

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

#133

Post by shadowgovt »

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…

The reframing is that it have cops reason to go in armed and expecting an active shooter when 93% of the time there was no reason to expect that, and 4 it of 5 times SS reports led to civilians being stopped for no justification.

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

#134

Post by telchior »

daenz wrote: post #109
xbar wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80% of all stops and searches are unfounded. I would not want to live in a community so policed.

I wouldn't want to live in a community with 50,176 gunshot alerts either.

You're assuming the "gunshot alerts" are actually gunshots, though. As noted, the sensors will identify other sounds as gunshots, and the company won't reveal its methodology so... do you live in a neighborhood with 50k gunshots, or 5k gunshots and 45k backfiring cars / fireworks / loud songs with gunshot sound effects?

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

#135

Post by nickysielicki »

Animats wrote: post #77

Strange. Probably the embarrassing parts relate to the after the fact reclassification of reports after the fact by Shotspotter employees. 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 d…

How long ago was this?

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

#136

Post by YLE118 »

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…

An egregious example from the first link:

Police said ShotSpotter, a surveillance system that uses hidden microphone sensors to detect the sound and location of gunshots, generated an alert for that time and place.

Except that’s not entirely true, according to recent court filings.

That night, 19 ShotSpotter sensors detected a percussive sound at 11:46 p.m. and determined the location to be 5700 South Lake Shore Drive—a mile away from the site where prosecutors say Williams committed the murder, according to a motion filed by Williams’ public defender. The company’s algorithms initially classified the sound as a firework. ...

But after the 11:46 p.m. alert came in, a ShotSpotter analyst manually overrode the algorithms and “reclassified” the sound as a gunshot. Then, months later and after “post-processing,” another ShotSpotter analyst changed the alert’s coordinates to a location on South Stony Island Drive near where Williams’ car was seen on camera.

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

#137

Post by braingenious »

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…

>9% actually seems like a lot? Considering that most criminals don't stick around after illegally discharging a firearm.

Are you under the impression that the only evidence of a firearm being discharged is carried away by the person firing the gun? I was under the impression that evidence of a gunshot is kind of famously objective because of the presence of bullets, bullet holes, casings, victims, property destruction etc.

By your reasoning, it’s a feasible proposition that criminals regularly patch up bullet holes and what, fireman carry their victims away from the scene?

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

#138

Post by trs8080 »

googlryas wrote: post #122
trs8080 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You win! The commenter made a grave semantic mistake by not adding "in the US" to "minority" and now their comment is completely meaningless and without merit.

OP's comment implied that it is a tool used by the majority(whites) to deploy in minority(black) areas, in order to oppress them. I provided an example of basically the blackest city in America deploying it within their own city. Why did they deploy a tool of oppression on themselves? It seems you were very distracted that I pointed out that whites are a minority within Jackson MS, but that was really just an offhand…

> OP's comment implied that it is a tool used by the majority(whites) to deploy in minority(black) areas, in order to oppress them.

The OP said nothing like this. You're projecting a lot of personal biases onto their comment. But you know that, and are trying to hone in a single example in order to strawman/red-herring valid concerns about the technology and its effects.

> It seems you were very distracted that I pointed out that whites are a minority within Jackson MS, but that was really just an offhand comment and not the point of the post.

That was the whole point of your post. You literally said nothing else.

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

#139

Post by YLE118 »

YLE118 wrote: post #136
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…

An egregious example from the first link: Police said ShotSpotter, a surveillance system that uses hidden microphone sensors to detect the sound and location of gunshots, generated an alert for that time and place. Except that’s not entirely true, according to recent court filings. That night, 19 ShotSpotter sensors detected a percussive sound at 11:46 p.m. and determined the location to be 5700 South Lake Shore Driv…

And another:

In 2016, Rochester, New York, police looking for a suspicious vehicle stopped the wrong car and shot the passenger, Silvon Simmons, in the back three times. They charged him with firing first at officers.

The only evidence against Simmons came from ShotSpotter. Initially, the company’s sensors didn’t detect any gunshots, and the algorithms ruled that the sounds came from helicopter rotors. After Rochester police contacted ShotSpotter, an analyst ruled that there had been four gunshots—the number of times police fired at Simmons, missing once.

Paul Greene, ShotSpotter’s expert witness and an employee of the company, testified at Simmons’ trial that “subsequently he was asked by the Rochester Police Department to essentially search and see if there were more shots fired than ShotSpotter picked up,” according to a civil lawsuit Simmons has filed against the city and the company. Greene found a fifth shot, despite there being no physical evidence at the scene that Simmons had fired. Rochester police had also refused his multiple requests for them to test his hands and clothing for gunshot residue.

Curiously, the ShotSpotter audio files that were the only evidence of the phantom fifth shot have disappeared.

Both the company and the Rochester Police Department “lost, deleted and/or destroyed the spool and/or other information containing sounds pertaining to the officer-involved shooting,” according to Simmons’ civil suit

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

#140

Post by thfuran »

renewiltord wrote: post #97

Laundering police positions is a pretty profitable industry. I think once I have my American citizenship, I'd like to give it a shot. The small-time stuff like police dog training[0], etc., and the obvious stuff like AI face recognition won't play. But there's a lot of stuff like this that can be relatively decent business. Everyone who could prosecute you is sort of on your side, so you're safe. And it has a natural…

There's really no need to shit up the country even worse.
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