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

381–390 of 443 posts

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#381

Post by Fnoord »

392 wrote: post #291
Fnoord wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know how it communicates with ECC? Can it be MITMed? Would it report if you were playing Counterstrike outside with speakers on? What if you were listening to some gangster rap with shots in it? Or just a Raspberry Pi with a speaker on with gunshot? It seems to me something like this can in theory DoS the ECC.

All of these are much more complicated and expensive than just sending someone off in a stolen car to fire some shots wherever you'd like the cops to be in 20 minutes or so. Convenient leash.

Yep. I guess using a gun didn't cross my mind as possession is illegal here in this part of Europe (unless you are licensed, screened, store it safely, etc etc).

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#382

Post by bilbo0s »

ragazzina wrote: post #320
sbierwagen wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No they don't.

We are free here.

These cops acted without justification, then committed a crime to cover up their unjustified actions by attesting to multiple demonstrable falsehoods.

The HN User you are responding to is stretching to make the situation seem reasonable in the US. It is not reasonable in the US and we will continue to demonstrate its unreasonableness to officers who can't seem to understand. We will do so through everything from disciplinary actions to docked pay to dismissals to prison terms if we must.

I'm tired of people seeing these things and saying we aren't free here. It's more accurate to say we have a few nugget headed police officers who can't seem to understand that we are free. And then you get the impression that their nugget headed behavior is normalized because they have a few nugget headed supporters who go out to defend the indefensible. I can assure you, inside police forces nowadays these sorts of loose cannons are very much looked on as liabilities.

Every nation will have some level of corruption, and we obviously have ours as this incident clearly demonstrates. But there is a reason these worms are burrowing under rocks to try to hide. It's because they know they are engaged in explicitly criminal activity. They are the crisis of confidence in the US. Now real police officers will have an even more difficult time operating in the community.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#383

Post by wl »

Retric wrote: post #329
verteu wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, in New Bedford, the "conversation" was not admitted into court [1]. Oakland is the "one" case I mentioned [2]. Do you have a source for the Connecticut case? [1] "New Bedford utilized ShotSpotter, and the following was recorded by the gunfire detection system: “‘Oh my God! You're crazy!’ and then ‘Jason don‘t!’ several times, followed by a number of gunshots. After the gunshots, a female was heard yelling ‘You .…

That's what I get from faulty memory. However, evidence is still being used even when it's not directly brought up in court. "In the 2015 Massachusetts case, the court refused to allow the introduction of ShotSpotter audio after the defendant argued the audio was captured and obtained in violation of that state’s wiretap laws. Police in that case requested and received an extended audio clip from the company that cap…

Those "extended audio clip[s]" don't seem to be available anymore as a matter of policy after 2019, following an external privacy audit done by the Policing Project at NYU Law. It also seems that police don't have access to audio outside of gunshot incidents.

https://www.policingproject.org/shotspotter

https://www.shotspotter.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/ShotS...

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#384

Post by fasthands9 »

sokoloff wrote: post #307
splintercell wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the problem with false positives in this case? I'm pretty sure, "don't bother with this technology which reports shots to the cops, because it has false positives" is a very weak argument.

If the false positive rate is 5%, it’s probably not much of a problem in terms of the overall balance of effectiveness. If the false positive rate is 95%, it’s pretty obviously going to be a diversion of police resources from whatever else they could be doing if not responding to zero-value alerts.

https://www.edgewortheconomics.com/experience-independent-au...

This claims the false positive rate is under 3%. It's based on Shotspotter's statistics and "independent audit" statistics.

Not sure how trustworthy either is, but without better stats from anywhere else I have no reason to doubt the claim the false positive is pretty low.

Seems like even if false positive rate was at 50% it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Cities have police on patrol at all times anyway - it would just mean sending someone to drive 5 minutes away to see if there is visible a disturbance instead of them driving around the area they were currently randomly patrolling.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#385

Post by solarpunk »

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…

Here in Minneapolis we seem to have an officer or someone associated with the MPD that posts screen recordings of their Shotspotter/Soundthinking app on twitter: https://twitter.com/mplsspots

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#386

Post by bilbo0s »

sbierwagen wrote: post #261
9935c101ab17a66 wrote: post #246

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…

Guy, the job is law enforcement. Not Bayesian Reasoning enforcement.

It's just the words on the page. Was a law broken or not.

Let me explain it to you in a fashion you might better understand. Let's suppose a man is late on his child support because the child he was ordered to pay child support for is not his. If you are a Bayesian Reasoner and conclude there is no reason to arrest this man, then you have no place on the police force. Full stop. You see judgement is the job of the courts. It's not my place to decide whether or not someone is being done an injustice or justice by being arrested. The only concern of an LEO has to be the words on the page. He didn't pay child support that I personally believe was unjustly ordered, but I'm still taking him down.

That's the job. You don't believe that kid should be setting off fireworks, that's your business. But you better have a legal reason if you are going to take action against a person in our system. Because it's based on rule of law. It's more critical now than at almost any time in the past that LEOs understand that fact. Those who don't are gonna do nothing but make life hard for a whole lot of decent LEOs out there.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#387

Post by 1000bestlives »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #217
resolutebat wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Let's imagine a city divided in two halves of equal population. West City is poor and has a high crime rate, East City is rich and has a low crime rate. Should police resources be allocated equally to both? How about public health facilities or welfare payments?

In the real world, wealth is relatively easily measured and crime rate is not. The question no one seems to be willing to answer is: why do you believe poor people commit more crime?

Because poor people tend to be stupid and only stupid people commit violent crimes

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#388

Post by Talanes »

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]

You're literally ignoring every argument in favor of your "detector." Who's not acting in good faith here again?

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#389

Post by Miner49er »

bko wrote: post #346
jncfhnb wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying the quoted passage is a lie?

There's two explanations: 1. Cops use enforcement on poor neighborhoods because they like to make their lives difficult and because they hate poor people 2. Cops use enforcement there because that's where the crimes take place Explanation 2 is so obviously much more likely that I can't take the person that purports reason #1 without acknowledging the other explanation. They're playing dumb.

Of course number 2 is the reason. The author knows that too, it's obvious to the point of not needing mentioned. It doesn't change what they say though, the end result is that poorer people are more surveiled.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#390

Post by remram »

392 wrote: post #291
Fnoord wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know how it communicates with ECC? Can it be MITMed? Would it report if you were playing Counterstrike outside with speakers on? What if you were listening to some gangster rap with shots in it? Or just a Raspberry Pi with a speaker on with gunshot? It seems to me something like this can in theory DoS the ECC.

All of these are much more complicated and expensive than just sending someone off in a stolen car to fire some shots wherever you'd like the cops to be in 20 minutes or so. Convenient leash.

I'm sure there are ways to make a gun shot sound without having an actual gun, too. If police responds every time within a few minutes, it's also very easy to find out which device/firework will do.
Post reply on HN