Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

computer.rip

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 443 posts

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#141

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

verteu wrote: post #116
jcrawfordor wrote: post #71

Hello all, occasionally I write what I consider "Albuquerque content" and I do not expect it to become broadly popular. This article is something I put together very quickly and it probably assumes a certain degree of familiarity with the political context around policing in Albuquerque (which either side will tell you is very contentious) and, more broadly, policing and civil justice. Even without the currently evol…

Why didn't you mention that the only "conversation" recorded by ShotSpotter admitted in court was a guy saying "[shooter's name], why did you shoot me!" two seconds after the sound of gunfire? It seems an important piece of context if you are concerned about surveillance.

Are these things public microphones that pick up street conversations or are they specialized microphones without stored recordings? The capability of these things is the only important question, since if they can be used for mass surveillance we shouldn’t trust cops with them.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#142

Post by whimsicalism »

mandevil wrote: post #83
fasthands9 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if the author lives in the wealthier or non wealthy region. I do not own a gun. I currently live in a city and would be happy to learn they were installing shot spotter near me. It's maybe the least intrusive type of surveillance there is. It just says a signal if there is a loud noise in public. edit: previous statement not correct but leaving it up as it's been responded to

Shotspotter is trash. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/chicago-watchdog-harshly... https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1512138327205589004 (criminal defense attorney) https://boingboing.net/2022/04/12/shotspotter-wastes-million... I supported units with them while I was a contractor to the US Army, and the soldiers I talked to didn't think much of it either.

It works very well where I live (DC) and I and people I know have seen police respond to actual things with shotspotter

Many shootings where nobody calls it in and cops respond with shotspotter

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#143

Post by bikezen »

jacurtis wrote: post #133
verteu wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why didn't you mention that the only "conversation" recorded by ShotSpotter admitted in court was a guy saying "[shooter's name], why did you shoot me!" two seconds after the sound of gunfire? It seems an important piece of context if you are concerned about surveillance.

Yes it is very important. Shotspotter is like a DVR. It's always "recording", but it is running on a very very short recording loop. The detection of gunshots is based on an algorithm. When triggered, it saves a few seconds before the sound and several seconds afterward. It is different than police just being able to pull up the recordings for a certain street corner from 2 weeks ago or even a day ago and listen in o…

Is that, like provable though, thats my biggest issue. Cities are allowing a private company to mass deploy microphones all over (mostly lower income) areas and just _trusting_ them to not be keeping recordings.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#144

Post by bhaney »

jacurtis wrote: post #133
verteu wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why didn't you mention that the only "conversation" recorded by ShotSpotter admitted in court was a guy saying "[shooter's name], why did you shoot me!" two seconds after the sound of gunfire? It seems an important piece of context if you are concerned about surveillance.

Yes it is very important. Shotspotter is like a DVR. It's always "recording", but it is running on a very very short recording loop. The detection of gunshots is based on an algorithm. When triggered, it saves a few seconds before the sound and several seconds afterward. It is different than police just being able to pull up the recordings for a certain street corner from 2 weeks ago or even a day ago and listen in o…

> it is running on a very very short recording loop

I'm curious what your source for that information is

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#145

Post by fargle »

i broadly agree with the sentiment in this article, especially the "no public oversight" part.

but this:

> The reader can probably infer how this coverage pattern relates to race and class in Albuquerque. It's not perfect, but the distance from your house to a ShotSpotter sensor correlates fairly well with your household income.

is facetious and is almost certainly argued in bad faith. well, duh. the distance to the nearest "shot spotter" box also correlates with the incidence of crime and gunfire in the area. to bring up racism or classism is unhelpful. that correlation is unfortunate, likely true, and also not the problem at hand.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#146

Post by whimsicalism »

redeeman wrote: post #108
fasthands9 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if the author lives in the wealthier or non wealthy region. I do not own a gun. I currently live in a city and would be happy to learn they were installing shot spotter near me. It's maybe the least intrusive type of surveillance there is. It just says a signal if there is a loud noise in public. edit: previous statement not correct but leaving it up as it's been responded to

just remember, the shotspotter may well make police come.... AFTER you were shot... why the aversion to getting a gun??

[flagged]

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#147

Post by lifeformed »

jacurtis wrote: post #117
loteck wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shotspotter falsely classifies popped volleyball as gunshot: https://www.wtol.com/article/news/local/false-shotspotter-al... Slamming doors: https://www.axios.com/2022/04/07/campaign-zero-against-shots... This list can go on. Jackhammer, nail gun, normal hammers. https://voiceofsandiego.org/2020/09/22/shotspotter-sensors-s...

Yes there are false positives. This is an alert system and doesn't have to be perfect. This is the difference between a sensor in a self-driving car and a sensor for something like Shotspotter. If a self-driving car sensor has a 1% fail rate, then it is useless and would cause crashes and death. It couldn't be used. But if shotspotter is 1% inaccurate, then it just sends police to a street corner where there is actua…

> The consequences are pretty low to nil.

Having American cops rush to your door thinking violence is happening is not inconsequential. Just a few days ago they shot at a kid who was playing with fireworks, due to a false positive. Also, see swatting and its fatal consequences.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#148

Post by kstenerud »

Aurornis wrote: post #73
bombcar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like shotspotters are likely to be near where shots are; and that the wealthier you are the more likely you’d NOT want to be where the shots are.

Putting surveillance for gun crime in areas with the highest rates of gun crime is obviously what’s happening. I think the author and some commenters are nervous about claims that gun crime is inversely correlated with neighborhood wealth, which creates some of these strange accusations that some other bias is at play. If you pull up a map of crime in most cities the inverse correlation with home prices is obvious. I…

> Putting surveillance for gun crime in areas with the highest rates of gun crime is obviously what’s happening.

This is in fact the crux of the problem. By significantly increasing monitoring of areas with higher crime rates, you inadvertently create a vicious cycle feedback loop: The more you monitor an area, the more samples you get, biasing the stats (because your sampling is no longer uniform). Then these stats are used to justify more monitoring and policing in the area, further biasing your data.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#149

Post by gmerc »

A few year down the road the Shirky principle demands a revelation that ShorSpotter sponsored the NRA.

It’s amazing lime 500 years later, there’s still a developed country on earth that hasn’t figured the externalities of gunpowder

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#150

Post by rconti »

JoeyBananas wrote: post #3

I've experienced living in a neighborhood covered by shot spotter and hearing gun shots outside, and I think shot spotter is great. I want the cops to actually show up and arrest whoever is terrorizing everybody. Thank you very much

Just yesterday the cops apparently showed up at a house 5 doors down from me and shot someone's dog right in front of their family.

Not sure if we have shotspotter, but at least I know the police responded!

(I say apparently because, while I heard the gunshots, and I later saw a heavy police presence and animal control hauling away what appeared to be a dead small animal, I don't ACTUALLY know what happened because I wasn't present at the time. All I know is what a resident of the house told me).

Post reply on HN