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ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

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Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#361

Post by Jun8 »

Here’s my ask before you enter your perfectly argued comment here: if you have 30 mins read these NYT profiles of 12 children lost to gun crime: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/14/magazine/gun-....

If you’re passionate about this subject and have lots of time go and volunteer at high crime communities (if you dare), for example in high schools.

I did the latter for three years, volunteering to help the Ace Tech High School (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACE_Amandla_Charter_High_Sch...) more than 10 years ago, as part of their Robotics Team. The problems I saw were myriad but it was common to see lockers decorated with flowers, for kids who died recently.

I totally understand and agree with the educated person’s poverty, bias, etc. arguments. But when a problem gets this bad first you need to stop it, and then work on long term goals.

Just answer this question: if your child had 10% chance of getting shot and killed walking to/from from school, what would your position be on any technology that can reduce that by even 1%.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#362

Post by reaperman »

wl wrote: post #316
reaperman wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dis…

How are you privy to the underlying algorithms/source-code being made available to defense teams? I thought the source code (algorithm) doesn't have to be made available to defense teams.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#363

Post by jncfhnb »

bko wrote: post #360
lolinder wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two thoughts: 1) Why is this conversation happening in this subthread? What does this have to do with nonrandomstring's experience in doing similar work for the military? 2) Nothing in the passage you quoted insinuates anything about the reasoning for surveiling poor neighborhoods more than rich. It simply points out that this is a thing that is happening. Earlier they said this: > Many assumed that ShotSpotter cover…

[flagged]

Police presence increased the detection of crime and thus increases the statistics of crime in the area

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#364

Post by bko »

mcmcmc wrote: post #323
bko wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wow you did a great job cherry-picking from that article. Notice how the survey mentioned “police”, not covert surveillance. People want more, better-trained police, not a third party listening in and directing police resources based on biased data, proprietary algorithms, and human analysts with dubious training and no public accountability. All you’re telling me is that you lack human empathy and aren't interested…

So people want more police presence but they draw the line of microphones to listen to gunfire to triangulate crime and arrest murderers? Seems like the second one is a lot less egregious but I guess since I don't have "source" you win the argument.

I'm pretty sure we should start arresting people who kill other people and remove them from society. Pretty high on priority

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#365

Post by boxed »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #339
boxed wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being that they convinced doctors to hand this stuff out like candy. It was all legal . Which is why it got that bad in the first place.

Right, which is why it’s asinine to talk about “crime rate” as though it weren’t wholly dependent on whom we as a society want to call criminals.

"Asinine" is a bit much. There can be huge problems that aren't illegal, but that doesn't mean the crime rate is totally useless. You just have to treat it carefully, like any measurement.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#366

Post by lolinder »

Jun8 wrote: post #361

Here’s my ask before you enter your perfectly argued comment here: if you have 30 mins read these NYT profiles of 12 children lost to gun crime: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/14/magazine/gun-... . If you’re passionate about this subject and have lots of time go and volunteer at high crime communities (if you dare), for example in high schools. I did the latter for three years, volunteering to help the A…

> Just answer this question: your child had 10% chance of getting shot and killed walking to/fro from school, what would your position be on any technology that can reduce that by even 1%.

Just to put some actual perspective on the numbers: about 40 kids are killed in all of New Mexico each year and about 20 of those are suicides (still tragic but not the walking-home-from-school kind). That's still too many, but is nowhere near 10%. You're inflating the numbers to trigger emotions.

Making wide scale policy decisions based on your emotions surrounding anecdotal incidents is not a good policy. I feel for the families that lose their children, but I don't believe that acting for the sake of acting is safe.

Acting in the heat of a crisis is how we got the TSA and the NSA, which we still haven't managed to get rid of. The risk of creating an enormous and impossible to get rid of surveillance state to save 1% of 20 kids per year (2 kids every 10 years) frankly isn't worth it.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#367

Post by wl »

reaperman wrote: post #362
wl wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dis…

How are you privy to the underlying algorithms/source-code being made available to defense teams? I thought the source code (algorithm) doesn't have to be made available to defense teams.

Daubert requires that expert testimony be based on "reliable principles and methods" and Frye requires "the thing from which the deduction is made must be sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance," both essentially requiring the disclosure of underlying algorithms if not the actual source code.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#368

Post by Jun8 »

lolinder wrote: post #366
Jun8 wrote: post #361

Here’s my ask before you enter your perfectly argued comment here: if you have 30 mins read these NYT profiles of 12 children lost to gun crime: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/14/magazine/gun-... . If you’re passionate about this subject and have lots of time go and volunteer at high crime communities (if you dare), for example in high schools. I did the latter for three years, volunteering to help the A…

> Just answer this question: your child had 10% chance of getting shot and killed walking to/fro from school, what would your position be on any technology that can reduce that by even 1%. Just to put some actual perspective on the numbers: about 40 kids are killed in all of New Mexico each year and about 20 of those are suicides (still tragic but not the walking-home-from-school kind). That's still too many, but is…

I’m talking about high crime areas in big cities. Here’s a data point from Chicago: in May 2021, up to that time in the year 108 children were shot, 16 of them died: https://abc7chicago.com/amp/chicago-shootings-child-shot-tee...

It’s not the “heat of the crisis”, this has been going on for years now here. See this WaPo article from 2013, from when Michelle Obama attended the funeral of a 15 year-old girl: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michelle-obama-heads...

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#369

Post by wl »

Retric wrote: post #355
jjallen wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this whole article about shooting though and not drug crime? How would you hear drug crime? Are shooting crimes known to be fairly evenly distributed across different incomes?

ShotSpotter is recording conversations inside peoples homes and on the street. You can definitionally hear someone making a drug deal or talking about the joint their smoking etc. I'm reasonably concerned that once recordings exist getting access to them is much easier, especially as police have already heard many conversations taken from these recordings.

Can you point to an example of a ShotSpotter sensor recording a conversation inside somebody's home? That seems unlikely given that these sensors are installed outdoors.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#370

Post by wolrah »

soraminazuki wrote: post #251
modriano wrote: post #159

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?

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

100% this, IMO any of these law enforcement vendors like ShotSpotter, Harris (stingray), Taser/Axon, etc. which insist on keeping any and all details secret deserve zero trust. Anything they say without actual data analyzed by an independent third party is worth less than what I scooped out of my cats' box this morning.

The public conversation relies on public data, so if your company doesn't want the public to have the data then your company and its clients should not be given any benefit of the doubt by the public.

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