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

41–50 of 443 posts

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#41

Post by [deleted] »

fasthands9 wrote: post #25
delichon wrote: post #7

> It's not perfect, but the distance from your house to a ShotSpotter sensor correlates fairly well with your household income. The wealthier you are, the less surveilled you are. To give ABQ police the benefit of the doubt, that pattern could also be compatible with more gun crime equaling more surveillance. It would be nice to have enough gun crime and sensor location data to see how true that is. When the sensors…

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

[deleted]

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#42

Post by curtisblaine »

bastawhiz wrote: post #29
delichon wrote: post #7

> It's not perfect, but the distance from your house to a ShotSpotter sensor correlates fairly well with your household income. The wealthier you are, the less surveilled you are. To give ABQ police the benefit of the doubt, that pattern could also be compatible with more gun crime equaling more surveillance. It would be nice to have enough gun crime and sensor location data to see how true that is. When the sensors…

> more gun crime equaling more surveillance But if you're not listening for the guns then you're not going to find the crime that does happen, will you? It's either saying "we don't care about it because it's less frequent" (which is stupid—you still build a fire station in places where buildings burn down less frequently) or "it's easier to keep ourselves busy when we fish in a barrel".

If you were to design a system to spot a certain kind of crime in real time, would you place it in zones historically more plagued by that kind of crime or in zones that experienced it scarcely? It's hard to buy into the rhetoric of "it's only fair if you monitor the crime equally" if you have already independently sampled it for decades and by now know the zones where it's much likely to happen.

Would you patrol a desert in the same way you patrol a busy road intersection if you're trying to prevent car accidents?

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#43

Post by itishappy »

What are the potential downsides to police oversight?

> But, if asked, they provide a form letter written by ShotSpotter. Their contract prohibits the disclosure of any actual data.

A potentially dystopian surveillance apparatus is installed citywide, and the police can't discuss about it's efficiency because the company that sold it to them won't let them?

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#44

Post by whatwhaaaaat »

defrost wrote: post #30
delichon wrote: post #7

> It's not perfect, but the distance from your house to a ShotSpotter sensor correlates fairly well with your household income. The wealthier you are, the less surveilled you are. To give ABQ police the benefit of the doubt, that pattern could also be compatible with more gun crime equaling more surveillance. It would be nice to have enough gun crime and sensor location data to see how true that is. When the sensors…

There's an interesting control system feedback complaint with a lot to it; * historically there's been a lot of "black crime" in the US due to the US police watching black neighbourhoods excessively and being absent elsewhere .. take this all the way back in time to Tulsa and before. * Subsequently there's been a lot of "black crime" as neighbourhoods have been destroyed by occasional mobs (Tulsa), frequent division…

[flagged]

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#45

Post by munificent »

spamizbad wrote: post #24
gffrd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has having ShotSpotter in your neighborhood increased the safety? Is there faster response? higher arrest rate? decrease in crime?

In Chicago they will respond to them aggressively . Gang members have figured this out and will have “decoy” shots fired before a hit takes place to tie up police.

What a perfect example of Campbell's Law.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#46

Post by loteck »

I would request that a crowd as technically sophisticated as HN move past marketing claims when discussing this system. "Gunshot detection" is pure marketing.

The devices are hot mics — public audio surveillance. The software layer triggers alerts on loud noises, which are sent off to a facility that is little more than a call center, for characterization by a human worker there. This system detects door slams and popped volleyballs just as well as it detects gun fire (which is to say, imperfectly on all counts).

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#47

Post by wferrell »

simonw wrote: post #26

If anyone wants the raw data, it's available in window._Flourish_data variable on https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/16818696/embed Which means you can extract it with my https://shot-scraper.datasette.io/ tool like this: shot-scraper javascript \ 'https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/16818696/embed' _Flourish_data \ > /tmp/data.json That's a 25MB file. I loaded it into SQLite like this: cat /tmp/data.json | jq .events | \…

Thank you!

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#48

Post by jasonjayr »

fasthands9 wrote: post #25
delichon wrote: post #7

> It's not perfect, but the distance from your house to a ShotSpotter sensor correlates fairly well with your household income. The wealthier you are, the less surveilled you are. To give ABQ police the benefit of the doubt, that pattern could also be compatible with more gun crime equaling more surveillance. It would be nice to have enough gun crime and sensor location data to see how true that is. When the sensors…

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

Also, that there is a veil of secrecy of the system's installation and exact capabilities suggest that incorrect or excessive reports could provide pretense for more invasive policing.

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#49

Post by [deleted] »

jonahx wrote: post #10
delichon wrote: post #7

> It's not perfect, but the distance from your house to a ShotSpotter sensor correlates fairly well with your household income. The wealthier you are, the less surveilled you are. To give ABQ police the benefit of the doubt, that pattern could also be compatible with more gun crime equaling more surveillance. It would be nice to have enough gun crime and sensor location data to see how true that is. When the sensors…

> that could also be compatible with more gun crime equaling more surveillance Not just could -- without more information, it's the far more likely and economical explanation. The phrasing in the article imo is intentionally inflammatory.

[deleted]

Re: ShotSpotter: listening in on the neighborhood

#50

Post by nerdponx »

jonahx wrote: post #10
delichon wrote: post #7

> It's not perfect, but the distance from your house to a ShotSpotter sensor correlates fairly well with your household income. The wealthier you are, the less surveilled you are. To give ABQ police the benefit of the doubt, that pattern could also be compatible with more gun crime equaling more surveillance. It would be nice to have enough gun crime and sensor location data to see how true that is. When the sensors…

> that could also be compatible with more gun crime equaling more surveillance Not just could -- without more information, it's the far more likely and economical explanation. The phrasing in the article imo is intentionally inflammatory.

It's not inflammatory, it's a statement of fact.

Of course the public surveillance is located in the areas where crime is most likely to occur! But an important side effect is that innocent people in those areas now are more surveilled than other people. So it becomes yet another injustice inflicted on people who already tend to suffer more greatly from injustice than others.

Maybe there are offsetting factors. If the surveillance makes neighborhoods significantly safer, then maybe local residents will be happy to be surveilled in exchange.

The article is stating a fact of correlation, not causality. But the particular outcome of "greater surveillance" clearly happens, regardless of why it occurs, and regardless of other offsetting considerations.

Post reply on HN