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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

#231

Post by daenz »

hnThrow280 wrote: post #169

I did R&D work for an NGO developing a clone of shotspotter and its kind. I spent an enormous amount of time examining all the variants on the market, including the last two decades of military versions from around the world. I documented all of their various accuracies across all the various axes, how many microphones they used, etc. I also went deep into the academic research to learn all the varied algorithms in u…

A piece of advice because you're using a throwaway account: it will be easier for people to believe your claims if you give some kind of inside information about why it doesn't work other than "it just doesn't work"

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

#232

Post by BenjiWiebe »

woodruffw wrote: post #187
bluedino wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is hearing cars backfire particularly unusual? I hear it once or twice a week. I also hear kids shooting fireworks, and those modifications people do to their motorcycles and cars to make them sound like they're backfiring (even if they aren't; I don't know how these things work).

Yes. Since basically all cars are fuel injected these days, it's really rare to hear a backfire.

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

#233

Post by michaelmrose »

pxmpxm wrote: post #229
michaelmrose wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Systems overtly or tacitly designed to fuck minorities tend to successfully fuck minorities even when operation of local mechanics are effected by minority agents. An infallible argument; the oppressee can just as well be opressor, because otherwise we'd have to reconsider our preferred conjecture.

Not at all you just compare how for example black people are treated period instead of how black people are treated by white people.

The alternative is like a mirror of the argument that a fellow isn't racist because he has a black friend. It's parody masquerading as analysis.

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

#234

Post by woodruffw »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #232
woodruffw wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is hearing cars backfire particularly unusual? I hear it once or twice a week. I also hear kids shooting fireworks, and those modifications people do to their motorcycles and cars to make them sound like they're backfiring (even if they aren't; I don't know how these things work).

Yes. Since basically all cars are fuel injected these days, it's really rare to hear a backfire.

That maybe explains it. My neighborhood has a lot of vintage and modified cars.

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

#235

Post by gentleman11 »

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…

Accurate or not, so we really want companies installing microphones all over where we live that sends the data to the police? That is worse than 1984 because in 1984 the police didn’t have ai profiling everything it finds. Ie, imagine a company that was competent who did this

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

#236

Post by daenz »

nequo wrote: post #179
bushbaba wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You are not required to have committed a crime to be legally searched. If you're fleeing the area where gunshots have been reported, it's not unreasonable to search you.

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

#237

Post by pxmpxm »

michaelmrose wrote: post #233
pxmpxm wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Systems overtly or tacitly designed to fuck minorities tend to successfully fuck minorities even when operation of local mechanics are effected by minority agents. An infallible argument; the oppressee can just as well be opressor, because otherwise we'd have to reconsider our preferred conjecture.

Not at all you just compare how for example black people are treated period instead of how black people are treated by white people. The alternative is like a mirror of the argument that a fellow isn't racist because he has a black friend. It's parody masquerading as analysis.

Well in the context of this argument, it's moreso that a black fellow isn't racist towards black people because s/he is black... which tends to hold.

Also it's my experience that if an all black community decides to enact public policy that goes against the narrative, it's almost exclusively young white progressives that come up with these sorts of agency-removing arguments to protect their preferred worldview

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

#238

Post by daenz »

telchior wrote: post #216
daenz wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, that sounds like a great thing to focus on, but in this particular thread that's specifically about ShotSpotter it mainly serves to change the subject.

The topic has expanded to the related topics, as conversations do. ShotSpotter wouldn't even exist, much less be the topic of criticism, if there wasn't a rampant problem with gun violence in these communities.

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

#239

Post by daenz »

cycomanic wrote: post #186
bushbaba wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So to rephrase your argument, shotspotter allows police to arrest people with made up evidence. You say that is a good thing, because they were criminals anyway. You have an interesting concept of the rule of law.

Not OP, but probable cause is not "made up evidence." If there's a report of a noise that sounds like a gunshot, and that results in a search of people who are running, and that search finds an illegal gun, that's reasonable.

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

#240

Post by esoterica »

tomcam wrote: post #208
nickysielicki wrote: post #33

I don’t understand the argument here. Suppose shotspotter is deeply flawed and often confuses fireworks and car backfires for gunshots, how could that have any impact on this case or the legality of it? I don’t see it as any different than if a police officer is out patrolling, hears a car backfire, and confuses it for a gunshot. If he then detains someone as a part of his investigation and discovers some other crime…

What perplexes me is that in the USA we have a constitutional right to face our accuser in court. But this is a piece of software. > In one case, a 65-year-old grandfather was held in Cook County Jail for nearly a year at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic before his case was dismissed due to insufficient evidence. I mean, WTF.

I dug up the story behind that 65 year old grandfather.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/criminal-justice/ct-shot...

Prosecutors accuse him of shooting his passenger, but he claims that another car pulled up next to him and shot his passenger instead. In either case shotspotter both correctly identified a gunshot and the location of the gunshot, so what exactly did they do wrong here? By the defendant's own admission the gunshot that triggered the alert was real! Unless crucial details are being omitted somewhere it seems like a hatchet job to me.

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