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

251–260 of 320 posts

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

#251

Post by hypersoar »

remflight wrote: post #215
woodruffw wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they don’t reveal their methodology then how could this be used as evidence? It isn't used as evidence; it's used to manufacture pretext to justify collecting "real" evidence. SpotShotter is not an ignorant party: they understand that the service they sell to police departments is a pretextual laundromat for busting up whoever the police feel did the crime. That's the crux of this case: SpotShotter is being aske…

Isn’t that fruit of the poison tree though?

The exclusionary rule has been gutted over the decades. Police and prosecutors have long known how to work around it.

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

#252

Post by Taniwha »

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…

One of these cases is a class action on behalf of people who have been wrongly arrested because of spotshotter - the case is also trying to get the police to stop using it because of this - if it's wrong most of the time police do not have probable cause - they have improbable cause

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

#253

Post by kelnos »

nickysielicki wrote: post #130
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…

I would have a problem with that, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. My gut feeling is that shotspotter mostly works and is mostly accurate, regardless of what Vice reported. I can imagine how I’d build such a system and I don’t think it would be very complicated. You don’t need any powerful signal processing or AI, this entire idea was feasible 20 years ago. And secondly, I think that if any technology i…

> My gut feeling is that shotspotter mostly works and is mostly accurate

I don't want to base our legal system on your gut feelings. If ShotSpotter is mostly accurate, then they should have no problem releasing the requested material and proving that's the case.

Otherwise I will have to assume it's just the magic crime detection box as described above.

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

#254

Post by braingenious »

daenz wrote: post #173
braingenious wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

So your answer to my initial question is “Yes. I believe that it is a reasonable assumption that all of the evidence of a gunshot is carried away by the shooter.”

That’s a fascinating position! Based on how difficult it is to find any evidence whatsoever, would you conclude that gunshots are essentially inconsequential 91% of the time? If I believed that, I would advocate for the legalization of recreational firearm discharge in populated areas, since obviously they rarely actually cause any noticeable issue.

Edit:

A tech company going “Beep boop loud noise! Give us more public funds for our technology that we refuse to explain!” is not the same thing as an actual report of gunfire to me. As for what I expect the police to do? Nothing. Literally nothing at all, anywhere at any time. They’re not obligated to, and in my experience, that’s what they usually do. Nothing.

I forgot to add “witnesses and complainants” as something that could be considered evidence of gunfire, but I’m assuming they can also be carried away

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

#255

Post by tomcam »

esoterica wrote: post #240
tomcam wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 admiss…

Great points. Thanks for doing that research. I should’ve done it myself and I am embarrassed that I did not.

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

#256

Post by woodruffw »

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% would be a lot, if we had strong evidence that SpotShotter was the source of hard evidence leading to a gun seizure, and not simply legal pretext for frisking people who the police think look suspicious (or, more accurately, would otherwise like to target but lack admissible evidence to do so).

It's the same problem that Stop and Frisk[1] in NYC had: you can make the contraband recovery numbers look fantastic, if you're willing to sweep peoples' civil rights under the rug.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_Cit...

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

#257

Post by HWR_14 »

matt_heimer wrote: post #57
HWR_14 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's phenomenally hard. Echos, indirect routing (bouncing off buildings), sound waves changing speed as they go through various materials (like a lens). It's a very hard problem. Heck, a truly calibrated surround sound system requires using a microphone to measure the volume in place.

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

I would definitely object to any system that required a car to creep along every block and regularly make a simulated gunshot sound. It sounds prohibitively annoying.

And how often would it have to be repeated?

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

#258

Post by woodruffw »

daenz wrote: post #239
cycomanic wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why does this scenario presume that people are running? Even with this technology, it seems exceedingly unlikely that police are arriving on the scene within seconds of a possible gunshot; it's much more likely that they're corralling bystanders and frisking them.

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

#259

Post by HWR_14 »

sbierwagen wrote: post #87
beckingz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I doubt you could do it just based on point cloud data.

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

#260

Post by JetAlone »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #75
assbuttbuttass wrote: post #9

What does it mean for a corporation to be held in contempt of court? I guess they will pay a fine and never have to produce those documents?

Usually the idea is to compel discovery, so it would be a fine of several thousand dollars a day until they give up the info.

I remember hearing that The Jehovah's Witnesses are in contempt of court and pay that fine instead of releasing internally held information about alleged child abuse incidents.
Post reply on HN