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Gunshot Tracking Cameras to be Deployed in LA
apok04 writes "Get out your tinfoil hats (and ski masks). A USC engineer uses his expertise with nerve cells to create a surveillance system that can recognize the sound of a nearby gunshot - and identify the shooter. In a unique pilot program, L.A. and Chicago will deploy test units in high-crime areas. The creator emphasizes that the system cannot recognize voices or words, but his previous research into speech recognition systems suggests otherwise."
Get out your tinfoil hats
Why?
Doesn't seem like a bad idea to know who's shooting who - don't you think?
I don't really know if this is a good or bad thing. I like the idea of having people caught quickly but at the same time I feel that law enforcement agencies would quickly find a way to constantly monitor the cameras, cutting into our privacy even more. Since these cameras are in public it doesn't bother me as much.
Over all I think it's a good idea but it will be exploited so I can't support it fully, even though I'd like to.
This can accurately determine where a gun shot was fired, which is useful, I suppose. But, in the article it states that a camera is used to identify and track the culprit. In order to deter gun related crime properly, there'd have to be cameras EVERYWHERE.
*puts on tinfoil hat*
Big Brother is watching!
Uh, no, it doesn't. The fact that the guy has worked on different types of signal processing doesn't "suggest" that he builds those capacities into every project he touches.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
So how does it deal with multiple gunshots coming from different shooters? (i.e., gunfight)
I can see that camera jumping back and forth trying to catch each shot.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
Just ban the guns and the problem will go away!!!
!!!
In a unique pilot program, L.A. and Chicago will deploy test units in high-crime areas.
Hmmm... Let me guess, the south side of Chicago and Compton?
Rather than looking for pro-active solutions to lowering crime in lower-income neighborhoods, like good education systems, quality health-care, living wages, etc. we continue to see crazy-ass reactive schemes like the above camera system that don't do anything to solve the real problems. In the meantime, as these useless systems become the norm, our society moves closer and closer to the ultimate police heaven, where everyone is monitored every second of every day. When's it gonna end?
Hey, golly-gee-whiz, it sure is a neat technology, Wally.
But like most things of that sort, no one's actually thought about how it actually makes things better, or how it can make things worse. So you catch a few people shooting guns, so what? They end up in jail, their families get torn apart, their chances of actually becoming a productive part of society diminish and they end up back on the street shooting a gun again, which is caught on camera, etc. etc. etc. Wow, crime sure is decreasing now.
It's nice to talk about being tough on crime, but oftentimes what's really needed is not the cracking of a whip, or the monitoring of a camera, but rather a signature on a diploma, or on a paycheck. If you start suspecting everyone as a criminal, then they start seeing themselves as criminals and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you first look at people as raw material that can be shaped and molded into something productive, well, you see what I'm getting at.
I'm getting sick of reading about high-tech crime monitoring systems, but it's appearing to be inevitable that we will live with them in our daily lives now and in the near future, so let me practice my indoctrination recitation:
"I for one, welcome our all-seeing camera overlords."
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
If the shooter is still there, she deserves to be caught.
If the shooter is a criminal, she deserves to be caught whether she's still there or whether she ran away and hid.
When you use a gun to kill a person, that is illegal. Given that you're willing to kill or injure another human being, I'm pretty sure the fact that silencers are illegal does not impose.
A blog like any other.
And incredibly easy and cheap to make, if you only need a few shots.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
A buddy of mine and I did this in a physics lab. We used an array of 5 condenser mics wired into a PC running LabView, wired out to a laser pointer mounted on some toy motors.
Someone would clap 15-30 feet away, and the computer pointed the laser pointer at their hands. We got the position within a foot or so, even in a echoing cinder block room.
Insights:
- You need at least 4 mics to get an object's position. (There are 4 degrees of freedom, x, y, z, and time) If you only need the angle, then you need 3 (for time, theta, and phi).
- There are some places to shoot where due to the symmetries, it would be hard to compute a position. If the mics are arranged in a plane, then one problem area is straight out from the mic, normal to the plane.
- Another project group in my class developed a computer-controlled ball bearing cannon. I wish we had time to link the projects.
- Thermal variation in the air can disrupt your results.
- If you used well-tuned directional mics, you might be better off. Rather than compute the location based on the path-length of the sound to each mic, you could then find out the incident angle of the sound on each mic, based upon how much the sound level is reduced.
I see two benefits: it'll help get medical care to people who've been shot, and it'll be at least something to start with when the cops go after the shooter. Often times in neighborhoods like this, cops know who the likely criminals are; they just need to narrow it down some.
And if you're doing nothing illegal, the police and/or government won't care either, and they'll keep on listening for others.
Unfortunately, the police and/or government are also responsible for defining which activities are illegal, and are increasingly oriented toward keeping their own actions secret in the name of 'security'. There is quite literally no public accountability for much of the security apparatus closing into place right before our eyes, and when even a congresswoman is unable to obtain the federal regulations authorizing someone to search them, something is really fucking wrong.
Additionally, individual members of the police and/or government are uniquely vulnerable to corruption, hiding their betrayal behind the shield of 'security' and 'need to know'.
The tired old 'Law-abiding people have nothing to hide' argument needs to roll over and die already. The only workable safeguard against government hypersurveillance is ensuring that the system is constructed in a completely transparent and publicly-accountable manner.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
Machine sounds are the only ones in SENTRI's vocabulary. It cannot eavesdrop on conversations, the scientist emphasized.
Bullshit...
Innocent people are still vulnerable to harassment, intimidation, and coercion from agents acting on behalf of the government.
When the watchers are the only ones with access to the results of a given surveillance technology, nobody can watch the watchers to see whether they're abusing it.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
On NPR this morning in Chicago they reported that this cameras will work on guns with silencers too. They didn't elaborate, but they did say it.
There are those who are poor, but doing the best they can, trying to create a better life. Then there are those who see nothing wrong with shooting other people. The latter is more likely to be poor, but includes all classes. (drugs are often involved, but they don't have to be)
The first group is who we should help. They are best helped by allowing them to live their life in peace. Allowing their children to get an education. Allowing them to walk to work safely. While their schools might not be as good as what the rich go to, they are good enough that you can get into Ivy League schools if you study hard, a requirement even the rich kids have to meet. (scholarships mean that you can pay for it)
If the shooter is still there, she deserves to be caught.
She? What planet do you live on where women commit gun crimes?
I write in my journal