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

chicagoreader.com

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

#261
post #110
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…

My guess is that they don't want to reveal their methods because they are still crude and obvious.

Don't want to reveal their methods cause patent infringement.

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

#262

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…

In my experience you are 100% correct. This is also the potential use case for non-warrant based Ring/Nest video and audio along with smart speaker collected audio. I’m also certain this company and those like it are consistently looking for opportunities to advertise and sell the parallel construction utility of their services.

What experience have you in this area? (genuine qtn)

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

#263
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Word. I detest these kind of posts.

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

#264
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not really that simple though. You can always go back less than 40 years and point out that street gangs were a response to police harassment. That communities were selectively devastated with targeted infusions of dangerous and addictive drugs. That there is a continuous pattern of profiling based on superficial attributes. A bad summer can ruin a person’s life, I don’t understand how we don’t expect generation…

The explanation I had in mind was more directed to the narrative over reality when it comes to shotspotter, rather than the mechanics of structural poverty incentives that invariably drive people toward illicit income that's fraught with violence. We've had 50+ years of various great society type programs that are designed with negative net-of-transfers earned income gradient, and those were squarely aimed at racial…

When there has been a continuous stream of “bigot master plots” it understandably becomes hard to distinguish conspiracy from conscientious intent.

If you look at the current situation without any of the prior historical context it does bring up the question of how does law enforcement deal with this situation because their historical actions have led to a catch 22 situation where action or inaction is vilified. Maybe a coordinated and public attempt at cleaning up the police force that goes hand in hand with a nationwide, simultaneous move to clean up the hood?

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

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno if this company deserves that benefit of the doubt. Honestly, given their history, they probably just don't want to reveal that their entire business is snake oil, basically existing solely to make money by enabling law enforcement to create crimes out of thin air. If their science was sound they wouldn't have to resort to such tactics...

How can law enforcement use this technology to create crimes out of thin air?

They ask the company to alter the evidence so they can create false pretext for probable cause. See the other comments in this thread.

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

#266

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…

>Of course I kept my mouth shut so as to not ruin a holiday

What's the point of amassing knowledge if you're not gonna use it to change things?

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

#267
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lived in Chicago (but not the south side) and can agree that the gun violence there is extreme. It's an war zone every day, with thousands of shootings a year and hundreds of homicides.

That said, I don't think anyone is opposed to technology that can locate gunshots and deliver law enforcement to the right places. The gripe is that this company in particular has a history of being opaque and trying to cover up their failings, leading to questions about the effectiveness of their underlying technology and data integrity. The public can't tell whether this is a legitimate social good based on an effective tool or if the company is just ripping off tax payers and sometimes outright working with crooked cops to fabricate probable cause.

Not every cop is crooked, and not every acoustic triangulation technology is fake. But this company isn't being transparent or well intentioned enough for the public, or even a limited group of outside experts, to make that determination. And they have a history of being willing to corrupt their data, altering evidence to facilitate false records from crooked cops.

The right tools in the wrong hands can still be a problem. We don't know if this is the right tool, but the company has shown itself to be the wrong hands.

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

#268
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…

It's technically not triangulation, it's multilateration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilateration

Thank you for the correction!

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

#269
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Cultures and systems can select for biased treatment of groups even when looking exclusively at the local segment of a larger system which happens to have black decision makers. If you look out your window into America today and don't see systemic racism either statistically or with your own eyeballs I honestly don't know what to say to you.

The topic of discussion is a company that produces a product that due to echos and analysis doesn't actually know where or if guns are fired being deployed in shitty crime ridden neighborhoods where disproportionately minorities being poorer are obliged to live. In the context of the gun shot imaginer system they have been literally caught doctoring data to match what the police wanted to be true in order to obtain a conviction.

Multiple things can be true. The shot spotter can be deployed in areas where gun fire actually and truly is more common, it can be misused to shake down or frame people in that area, such behavior can primarily be misused against people in that area, because more poor black people are obliged to live their they can in turn fall victim to such bad behavior more frequently even if not specifically targeted by law enforcement. Further faced with multi decade scare tactics and shitty public defenders poor people and by extension disproportionately minorities flinch and cop pleas.

This is how you fill your prisons up with black people.

This is literally what systemic racism means. Its a racist outcome of a fucked up system even when said system isn't consciously malicious and lets be a little honest with each other. We both know that there is plenty of honest bigotry. There are plenty of folks in government and plenty of folks in uniform that wouldn't mind donning a sheet and burning a cross in their neighbors lawn.

America was born in racism and as much as we hope to generation by generation make it more equal some of us remain more equal than others and a lot of us like it that way.

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

#270
post #185
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…

Since sound speed varies with air density and air density varies with humidity, and humidity is relative and varies greatly in urban areas because of heat absorption/reflection of buildings vs trees, how would this technology be even remotely accurate or reliable? If it was up in the atmosphere with long consistent pockets of air, maybe. On the ground, no way.

It's not out of the question for it to work to some extent -- the question is what extent, when, how, and when it doesn't work. We can't make those determinations because the company is covering that up.

Even your ears can somewhat locate sound sources in 3D space, just not with perfect accuracy, especially in complex soundscapes like cities.

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