Live data from Hacker News

ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

computer.rip

311–320 of 443 posts

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#311
post #284
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did we read the same article? The main concern is that millions are being pumped into a surveillance program of dubious efficacy with zero accountability and clear biases. Budget that could be allocated to social programs that have a dollar for dollar higher impact on reducing violent crime is instead going into the police industrial complex, increasing surveillance on underprivileged communities instead of actually…

Could you give some statistics that back up the claim that social programs have a higher impact on crime than Shotspotter?

[deleted]

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#312
Several of us are noting the less than 5% success rate in finding definitive evidence of shots fired, and calling the tech a failure.

I disagree, because of the importance of preventing active shooters. With this kind of system you are going to want to lean toward false positives vs false negatives.

There is definitely a lot of room for improvement though. Improvement could come through better ML use/training, better sensors, and better human in the loop analysts.

I am firmly with Benjamin Franklin, in that "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.". But Franklin himself was in favor of collective security, and Franklin said this in support of the state's authority to provide collective security ( https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou... ). Also, these sensors monitor public spaces, where no expectation of privacy exists.

So I am for more sensors, video cameras on the sensors, more ML on the sensor data, and better training for analysts, but I am also for complete transparency on where sensors are and how they are used, with a publicly released report from annual external party review of police conduct in the use or abuse of sensor data.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#313

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…

The tone of your article makes me honestly, really angry. You know damn well that the reason the sensors are in those neighborhoods are because that's where people are getting shot. You even talk about how a school where some little kid got shot has a sensor, as if it's some sort of punishment for the lower income people there. Perhaps it's because the police and the city government want to deter or solve murders tha…

I don't think you realize how invasive this technology is on it's own, but if you read the article you'll also realize that it's even worse as other layers of technology have been added in (cameras, LPR, facial recognition, etc).

Does ShotSpotter prevent shootings? Does it suppress would-be shooters? $5M can go a long way to do good in a community. Effectiveness of systems that taxpayer dollars purchased should be transparent. If there isn't transparency in these systems then they should have to be paid for out of pocket. And that means that since law enforcement doesn't sell services they would have to raise the money publicly and sell citizens on the improvements that the system would bring to those residents.

The fact that you had to post what you did with a throwaway speaks volumes about your self-awareness of your position and how it would resonate. Feels good to be able to choose privacy, right?

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These devices don't send audio over the network unless a shooting-like noise is detected. How does this jibe with the fact that the police can apparently request a ShotSpotter operator review of audio recordings for up to 30 days if a known shooting is missed by the system? How does this jibe with the fact that the system has apparently at least twice recorded voice conversations that were used (and thrown out in o…

The website says the audio buffer on the sensor holds the last 30 hours before overwriting. So police have less than 30 hours to flag a missed shooting so shotspotter staff can check sensors for audio around the shooting time. Regarding the court cases, I literally included the entire linked info for one of those Court cases in the post you're responding to. For both of the cases, the verbal exchange was at the same…

[dead]

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#316
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t change the data. They change their interpretation of it. The police say the classifier got something wrong, so the classification gets updated, both for the record and to improve the classifier. The police say that the location is wrong. The company looks at the data, maybe finds that the system automatically located on an echo at one or more sensor and then recomputes the location using the primary pulse.

The “data” which gets presented in court is the classification. So they changed the “data”. The underlying algorithm wasnt subject to examination by defense teams until a rules change like, last week.

What gets presented in court is a "Detailed Forensic Report" that includes the timestamped audio waveforms, sensor locations, and screenshots of the multilateration computations. These reports, when used as evidence, are required to be available to the defense for rebuttal and crossexamination. One could, if one was so inclined, calculate shot locations by hand from these reports. The time stamped audio files are discoverable.

The underlying algorithms have been made available to defense teams in countless Daubert and Frye hearings. I have no idea what you're referring to by "a rules change like, last week."

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The voice recordings were only picked up because they were incident to shootings. Without the shooting, the audio wouldn't have been written out to file or ever be heard by anyone.

Says who? The people behind these invasive systems who push back hard on the slightest attempt at basic accountability?

You know who else pushes back at accountability? Criminals. The more data the good guys collect, the safer they can keep us from bad guys.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me put it this way. The biggest drug epidemic of this century was the opioid crisis. Half a million Americans died. The primary people responsible are white billionaires, and we know exactly who they are — yet they were never even arrested.

This is whataboutism. Some sort of system which detects prescription abuse should not be deployed over utility poles in low income neighborhoods. It should be deployed where abuse is happening, for instance in pharmacy computers etc. Also "white billionaire" part is low key racist against blacks. They are "incidentally" whites billionaire criminals, they can as well be black billionaire criminals, unless there's a fu…

Or a fundamental difference in billionaire tendencies, don't forget that possibility.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#319
post #304
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did we read the same article? The main concern is that millions are being pumped into a surveillance program of dubious efficacy with zero accountability and clear biases. Budget that could be allocated to social programs that have a dollar for dollar higher impact on reducing violent crime is instead going into the police industrial complex, increasing surveillance on underprivileged communities instead of actually…

If I were in one of these high crime neighborhoods where people are getting shot, I would want more surveillance and police. This position that they're being exploited by surveillance is mostly a rich white cosmopolitan belief rooted in fantasy > In fact, large majorities of residents in low-income “fragile communities” — including in both urban and rural areas — want more police presence, not less. In the more than…

> If I were in one of these high crime neighborhoods where people are getting shot, I would want more surveillance and police. This position that they're being exploited by surveillance is mostly a rich white cosmopolitan belief rooted in fantasy

But ARE you though? I'm in Chicago where we're in the tail end of phasing this system out specifically because it did not address the problems it claimed to. All it did was aggravate and harass locals _after_ the fact that had nothing to do with the initial crime.

The deterrence factor was not insignificant, but it definitely wasn't worth the far greater instances where it was not only creating false positives but also proactively CREATING crime in accordance with other "high tech" solutions like predictive crime algorithms which only really served to reinforce existing biased patrolling practices (which were driven by data generated by shot spotter, in part).

See: https://www.theverge.com/c/22444020/chicago-pd-predictive-po...

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask why you’re concerned about the legitimacy of the kids reasoning for setting off fireworks? Like, if he was shot and killed on a holiday, it’s not his fault, but it’s perfectly reasonable to be shot and killed by a police officer when a opaque surveillance system reports gunshots on non-holidays?

Cops are Bayesian reasoners. If you set off fireworks inside the White House, right now, would you be surprised to suddenly meet the acquaintance of many armed men? Fireworks don't often go off in the Oval Office. Loud banging noises are therefore assumed to be gunfire, not fireworks. If you set off fireworks on the South Pole on July 4th, would you meet police? No, and for two reasons: July 4th is a well known day f…

On the American internet I often find the Freedom Indeterminacy Principle, where "it's a free country, you should be able to light a firework on a random Thursday in January if you want" and "if you light a firework outside of public holidays you should expect to be killed" coexist in harmony.
Post reply on HN