Live data from Hacker News

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

chicagoreader.com

141–150 of 320 posts

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

#141
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The reality is in those areas cops are always armed and expecting active shooters. Look up the gunplay stats for places like Back of The Yards in Chicago.

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

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could ask for the information to be under seal to protect their commercial interests. The actual technology is not all that complex. Transient detection and triangulation by decorrelation from a microphone (edit: not microwave!) array. You could probably prototype it in a week if you leaned on an established FFT library. Obviously they would not want to reveal their source code and so on, but if you know digital…

While true the tech is not complex, I believe the discrepancy is "how accurate is it and is the data being manipulated to fit a crime" versus "the data is accurate and leading to fair justice outcomes." Wouldn't "red teaming" ShotSpotter solve for this to see how accurate they are? A team would perform controlled firings in known locations under various auditory scenes with the city's approval, and then request the d…

That would tell you if it correctly detected gunshots... but it wouldn't tell you if it falsely reported certain sounds as gunshots, if it works in all weather, etc.

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

#143
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I wouldn't want to live in a community with even 10% of the loud noises being gunshots, no. Saying that there's only 5k real gunshots doesn't make it sound any better.

Maybe we should focus on why there's so many gunshots in these specific communities.

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

#144

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.

Hahaha, the pre-crime stuff? Love it. No, something boring, you know. A "likely crime-involved vehicle" automatic camera tech that uses just a cross-referenced DB and ultimately just detects vehicle make. This stuff is mostly about doing the bizdev to get into a place. And police are like any other users. If you get a 10% detection rate, you'll hold the contract. And you can get that if it's like a "hit this button to perform scan" thing and you almost always return true. After all, they won't hit it unless they think something anyway.

Whatever, the specifics of the product design are irrelevant details. It's about the bizdev. They still use polygraphs in the Federal Government. The device itself doesn't have to do anything.

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

#145
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Systems overtly or tacitly designed to fuck minorities tend to successfully fuck minorities even when operation of local mechanics are effected by minority agents.

This may be non obvious but for example black cops tend to use disproportionate force against black suspects in areas where such behavior is culturally and systemically tolerated. Cops and suspects are in an adversarial situation and being part of team cop or team suspect is more important than sharing a skin color.

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

#146
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honest question: what probability of finding a shooter is the “right” threshold to go in armed and expecting a shooter?

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

#147
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are being ordered to disclose and they are refusing to do it. The article says the lawyer requested to be held in "friendly contempt." I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist. It would probably be more accurate to say that the lawyer conceded the company was in contempt (i.e. they were refusing the order to produce and maybe even conceding it was legal) and was requesting a light sanction. The strategy seems rather b…

> The article says the lawyer requested to be held in "friendly contempt." I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist. It's a thing https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.idc.law/resource/resmgr/quarterly_... > This procedure is often called “friendly contempt,” a recognition that the contemnor has not acted “with contumacious disregard for the court’s authority,” but requires a contempt finding and sanction for the purpose of obtaining…

Oh interesting, thanks. I'm a criminal lawyer and contempt in my domain has been contumacious or not at all.

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

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 poi…

> The OP said nothing like this. You're projecting a bad-faith argument onto their comment. But you know that, and are trying to hone in a single example in order to strawman valid concerns about the technology and its effects.

Yes, I will admit I am projecting, or rather assuming, bad-faith on their part, or at least sneaky rhetorical tactics. I used to assume good faith, but the past 5 years or so have made me realize that very few people operate this way. If I see someone making a point, and an underspecified part of their post or a part where they use vague language may give a certain impression, and it just so happens that that certain impression furthers the point they were trying to make(rather than diminish it, or be orthogonal to the point), then I assume there was intent to do such a thing.

OP said:

> 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.

Yes, I suppose it sometimes may be selectively deployed in minority areas in order to oppress them, but without any kind of mention of the rate that that happens, this appears to be OP trying to convince you that it may be worse than it is. If you didn't know anything about cars, and I said that cars are used to intentionally murder people, you would probably have a worse perception of cars than if you had a more thorough understanding of their usage.

Therefore, my point was to show that shot spotter is not just used to oppress minorities, I provided an example of a predominantly black city choosing to use the technology, which almost certainly means there are uses of the tech that aren't about oppressing minorities.

> That was the whole point of your post. You had nothing else substantive to say.

I'm sorry, but I understand my point better than you do. I apologize for not being more explicit earlier. Hope my post helped.

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

#150
post #107
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enti…

You seem to imply that intent is all that matters. But the law and history regarding discrimination in the US is more nuanced. For example, perhaps literacy tests in order to vote in the Jim Crow south were purely based out of concern that only informed voters should be able to vote. Assuming they were applied evenly to both whites and minorities (they weren't), one could draw the conclusion that even though most of…

So basically even if we assume the data shows they were only deployed to the highest crime areas (and for sake of discussion we're not debating the legitimacy of that data like you could with biased Jim Crow literacy tests AND feigning that shotspotter actually provides some IRL value), it would still be discrimination because in a wider context it's just another tool that contributes to the oppression of minorities?

Which, in the sum of everything, ultimately out-ranks the value of attempting to address the homicides and gun violence that plagues their communities through law enforcement. Therefore it's a net negative for society?

(Apologies if I'm being overly literal here, my brain tends to seek the most rational explanations for everything).

Post reply on HN