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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

#171

Post by ta988 »

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…

The microphones are not hidden you can see them, they are just discreet.

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

#172

Post by bluedino »

telchior wrote: post #134
daenz wrote: 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?

When's the last time you heard a car backfire? And who plays music loud enough to be mistaken for gunfire?

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

#173

Post by daenz »

braingenious wrote: post #137
daenz wrote: 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…

>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 destructio…

>bullets, bullet holes, property destruction

Find the bullet hole, and you've found the property destruction, and the bullet is either embedded in the property destruction or fragmented all of over the place, as bullets often do. So you could have just said "property damage."

But tell you what, I'll go downtown and shoot a black paintball in a random direction, and tell you roughly where I was when I shot it, within 100m. It will be your job to find where that paintball hit. Good luck finding your evidence.

>casings

Casings are easier to find, but still very difficult if you don't have the precise location of where the shooting took place.

>victims

Firearm discharges don't always result in victims, or even victims willing to come forward.

What are you honestly expecting cops to do when there's a gunshot report? Spend hours combing the city for some rogue bullet holes? It's not realistic. The best evidence you're going to get is rushing to the area where shots were reported and finding someone fleeing.

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

#174

Post by kbenson »

fastball wrote: post #118
kbenson wrote: 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?

Since it's the locality that is deciding whether or not to use ShotSpotter isn't that the most reasonable level to be talking about?

No, as that would be a purposeful misinterpretation of the intent of the original poster, if it was obvious they didn't mean it to be interpreted that way.

Even if the response that used it differently was meant to make a valid point (I believe it was, as they expanded on it later), the way they used minority did nothing to help that point and instead caused unnecessary contention.

It would have been far more effective for their point to say "Jackson MS has a population and police department that are both majority black, and they still choose to deploy shotspotter in black neighborhoods.". Then we could jump right to exploring reasons why that might be, including valid uses of shotspotter because of effectivenessas well as other incentives regardless of it's effectiveness.

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

#175

Post by BoorishBears »

randyrand wrote: post #98

> selectively deployed in minority areas God this phrasing gets so annoying. If white neighborhood residents were being murdered in their streets, you really don’t think they’d put these devices there? Residents would be itching for them! It’s about catching murders - putting these devices in places with the most gun violence. Having police catch murderers is something we all want - rich neighborhoods included - and…

You're answering a point no one made. No one is saying crime is good, yet your comment is mostly trying to sell how bad gun violence is?

During the "war on drugs" black men were getting snatched left and right, destroying communities. Now the fruits of that come back to create violence, and your answer is to push an expensive heavily flawed automated police lead generator?

Shotspotter is broken. It constantly results in false alarms and false stops to go with them, it's not effective enough to be reproducible, they openly admit to letting police override their classifications...

It's an expensive farce that isn't helping anyone.

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

#176

Post by esoterica »

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.

Very funny to see HN upvote a comment that boils down to "if they did nothing wrong, they have nothing to hide".

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

#177

Post by quickthrower2 »

esoterica wrote: post #156
alasdair_ wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine I made a magic "crime detection" box that called the police each time a crime was "detected". Now imagine all it did was randomly pick a number from 1 to 100 each day and if it were a 1 or a 2, it "detected" a crime, giving probable cause to police to search people near the box. Now imagine I almost exclusively put the boxes in areas where black people without a lot of money lived. You could see this would be…

The magic box already exists, it's called people who call the cops to report gunshots every time they hear fireworks are a car backfiring. If you think it's wrong for police to investigate a shotspotter alert because it might be a false positive then the logical conclusion of that line of thinking is that it should be illegal for the cops to show up to investigate when someone calls in to report gunshots, since those…

I don’t see the logical connection between what the parent comment said and your reply.

He is saying they could be selling pure snake oil, and worse using it for discrimination (but not sure what the basis was for that, if any).

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

#178

Post by Animats »

nickysielicki wrote: post #135
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?

1990s.

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

#179

Post by nequo »

bushbaba wrote: post #164
jahewson wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, these numbers are meaningless without a null hypothesis to compare them to. If you stop random people in the monitored areas, at the right time of day, how many guns do you find?

You need cause to investigate someone. So sounds like even if shot spotter is not accurate, it’s still effective. Criminal is a criminal.

Not everyone who is searched has commited a crime. See, e.g., this paper: https://conrad-miller.github.io/qjab018.pdf

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

#180

Post by owlninja »

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…

Honestly this reads just like anyone in the business of big consulting.
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