Slashdot Mirror
90 Cities Install A Covert Technology That Listens For Gunshots (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Business Insider:
In more than 90 cities across the US, including New York, microphones placed strategically around high-crime areas pick up the sounds of gunfire and alert police to the shooting's location via dots on a city map... ShotSpotter also sends alerts to apps on cops' phones. "We've gone to the dot and found the casings 11 feet from where the dot was, according to the GPS coordinates," Capt. David Salazar of the Milwaukee Police Dept. told Business Insider. "So it's incredibly helpful. We've saved a lot of people's lives."
When three microphones pick up a gunshot, ShotSpotter figures out where the sound comes from. Human analysts in the Newark, California, headquarters confirm the noise came from a gun (not a firecracker or some other source). The police can then locate the gunshot on a map and investigate the scene. The whole process happens "much faster" than dialing 911, Salazar said, though he wouldn't disclose the exact time.
The company's CEO argues their technology deters crime by demonstrating to bad neighborhoods that police will respond quickly to gunshots. (Although last year Forbes discovered that in 30% to 70% of cases, "police found no evidence of a gunshot when they arrived.") And in a neighborhood where ShotSpotter is installed, one 60-year-old man is already complaining, "I don't like Big Brother being in all my business."
When three microphones pick up a gunshot, ShotSpotter figures out where the sound comes from. Human analysts in the Newark, California, headquarters confirm the noise came from a gun (not a firecracker or some other source). The police can then locate the gunshot on a map and investigate the scene. The whole process happens "much faster" than dialing 911, Salazar said, though he wouldn't disclose the exact time.
The company's CEO argues their technology deters crime by demonstrating to bad neighborhoods that police will respond quickly to gunshots. (Although last year Forbes discovered that in 30% to 70% of cases, "police found no evidence of a gunshot when they arrived.") And in a neighborhood where ShotSpotter is installed, one 60-year-old man is already complaining, "I don't like Big Brother being in all my business."
...suuuure...
PoI S0505 ShotSeeker
"SWAT team dispatched at every construction site in the city"... Why ? One of the way to tie a sill plate to concrete is to use a powder-actuated nailer.
Trump voters are retarded. Discuss.
If you know which areas are high crime areas, why not locate the police precinct there?
I'm not sure fan of big brother, but it's illegal to fire guns within most city limits and anyone doing so I doing something that needs police attention. This is one form of surveillance that seems unobtrusive and doesn't violate any form of privacy. That said, if they start listening with better microphones and storing data, that's a whole other ballgame.
ShotSpotter has had this for over 20 years in cities. In some tinfoil hat just learning about it?
Take a brown paper bag, the tall ones you get at liquor stores, blow em up as much as you can, then pop - in the right conditions, in a city, sounds like a fucking gunshot going off. I learned this the hard way when I decided to pop such a bag to scare the crap out of my sister once... XD
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Saved lives? How? The system is only useful after the gun has been fired.
San Francisco Bay Area police departments have been using this technology for years.
ShotSpotter has been used for several years in six Bay Area cities. Police say ShotSpotter has helped them respond more quickly to crime scenes and capture suspects, and provide court evidence to solve homicide cases. Oakland police started using the gunshot detection technology in 2006; it now covers 80 percent of the city, said Capt. Ersie Joyner.
http://www.mercurynews.com/2013/11/11/shotspotter-has-long-history-with-bay-area-police/
These have already existed for about a decade. The only update I can see to this is that they use an app to alert police (and possibly that someone works a night shift to analyze the information).
http://gunfreezone.net/index.p...
Passionately Indifferent
SJWS > FFRQ (Social Justice Warriors > Fat Faggot Republican Queers)
one 60-year-old man is already complaining, "I don't like Big Brother being in all my business."
Damn straight! The government needs to stay out of this guy's hard working life shooting off his revolvers near subway entrances downtown.
Is it really a covert technology when it's publicized? I've heard about these installations for years. Even the Summary talks about an article last year in Forbes.
This isn't secret surveillance, it's highly targeted mass surveillance--it only triggers on a very particular thing that involves a high degree of risk to the public. Save your big brother complaints for things like actual internet surveillance, overreaching electronic searches, or better yet for things like reform around the existing big-brother-esque things that cause massive damage to the economy every day. (E.g. bad uses of criminal records or credit reports)
Real lawyers write in C++
"So it's incredibly helpful. We've saved a lot of people's lives."
But you got there after they were shot... :|
Ooooo! "Covert"!!! Big Brother Bad!
My guess is it's not "covert" if you follow city politics and the city council approval at public meetings necessary to buy and install this technology.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"We've saved a lot of people's lives."
They could save even more lives by working on preventing violence, not just gun violence, in the first place.
More money/effort in social programs to help those at risk, more officers actually walking around these areas, more MARKED police cars patrolling the streets (unmarked cars are not about preventing crime, they are for catching people after they break the law).
That is, if they really wanted to save lives.
or a poison dart.
Nobody cares that you like fondling your surrogate metal cock while fantasizing about using it to kill minorities. Maybe if you put down your toys you'd actually catch the big black dick plowing your wife while you're at work.
Fuck the NRA, but more importantly: Fuck you.
From the Summary:
demonstrating to bad neighborhoods that police will respond quickly to gunshots
If the only places that these devices are placed are in "Bad Neighborhoods", then the Police State is demonstrably racist. Kind of like when Michigan, through its enactment of the Emergency Manager law, effectively deprived over 50% of the State's black residents from casting a vote for city and schoolboard leaders.
is making sure the crime doesn't spill over from the poor neighborhoods to the rich ones. Crime 'fighting' is about containment. If you're old enough to remember the Rodney King riots you might also remember people asking why they just destroyed their own neighborhoods. The reason was the neighborhoods were surrounded by swat teams. The teams didn't move in and quell the riots, they just kept 'em in.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
When the City of Pittsfield installed these the amount of gun shootings went down noticibly. My neighborhood is quiet now. I am now very much pro ShotSpotter.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
...an audio file.
The company's CEO argues their technology deters crime by demonstrating to bad neighborhoods that police will respond quickly to gunshots.
Showing up is the tip of the iceberg. Communities of color suffer the paradox of being over-policed for trivial shit (jaywalking, open container, etc) and vastly under-policed for serious crimes like assault, rape, robbery and murder. The cops are happy to take the easy "wins" that barely matter, but even when they do respond to calls for serious crimes, there is rarely any follow-up. That's a big factor in the "don't snitch" attitude - talking to the cops doesn't help but it makes you a target for the criminals. Best to keep your mouth shut and hope "street justice" deals with it.
Shot-spotter isn't a solution for crime, its a solution for police public relations. Shiny high-tech gizmos play well in the news especially if they net a couple of "trophies," but actually stopping crime takes boring old police work and the manpower to back it up.
need to be beaten and put in prison. This will help in finding their kind.
I've always liked the idea of sensors over a city to detect gunshots, but police still take some time to arrive to see what is going on.
I think a big improvement on this would be a fleet of camera drones around the city that could be launched as soon as a gunshot was heard, so you could have a view of the scene in under 30 seconds anywhere in a city...
It would also be really helpful for 911 calls so police could get a video of what was happening at the scene of a call even as they were en-route.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't like microphones in my neighborhood. Only criminals have microphones. Microphones don't kill, people do. It's ok for guns to be in my neighborhood, but only white guns. No foreign microphones.
As a gun lover, and privacy lover I can't see how this is a bad thing. Cities have gun regulations making it illegal to fire a firearm. If it is a justified self-defence act the person being attacked would like the police to come anyway. If it's an illegal firing then we want the police to respond.
Make it so it's not possible to be used for any other use than dispatching armed officers/first responders even with a warrant or national security issue though without being put forward as vote by all of the voters. It's reasonable to allow surveillance uses of automated technology as long as the public interest and their privacy is protected.
This tech does more harm than good when dealing with professional killers (governments). This type of audio triangulation is easily defeated, primarily because of how weak the signal detected is (audio, even from a 170 dBm source, is very low energy 1km away). With a single phase array emitter directed at the detectors, you can simulate a gunshot anywhere you want with less than 1 watt output. Such devices have already been built (by both Israel and Germany) to defeat this technology, which has been deployed near battlefields for a lot longer than in cities.
-- sometimes AND gates turn me on.
Human analysts in the Newark, California, headquarters confirm the noise came from a gun (not a firecracker or some other source).
How? .22s from a handgun/revovler sound just like a fire cracker. Especially .22 shorts.
You are a fucking moron.
It's a waste of money and only useful for catching the absolute dumbest of criminals... the rest will find ways around it, from using decoys and distractions(folks shooting off guns through a hole in the floor of their car or dropping large firecrackers for example...) to silencers, smart criminals can easily evade such a system... of course the police and the companies that made the systems won't tell you that because they love wasting your tax dollars and are scared to admit that the only real solution is to give up on the worthless expensive war on drugs and the fight for more gun control and instead focus on drug treatment and making it easier to good law abiding citizens to adequately arm themselves for protection.
It's in the fucking press, why on earth is this 'covert'?
"(Although last year Forbes discovered that in 30% to 70% of cases, "police found no evidence of a gunshot when they arrived.")"
The word you're looking for is a 'revolver' or a guy who isn't too lazy to pick up his casings.
This is yet another liberal assault on the second amendment. Donate today to the NRA and the Trump campaign for 2020 to stop this insidious creeping liberal conspiracy,
Just in time for the fourth of july. So all those fireworks going off will render this expensive tech useless... yet more security theater.
Discontinued:
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Troy-will-turn-off-ShotSpotter-3994808.php
http://www.troyrecord.com/article/TR/20121101/NEWS/311019985
TFA: "At a cost of $250,000, the system was touted as a boon early on, but it has been more than two years and not only does the system not hear all shots, it sometimes issues false reports, either due to sound waves bouncing off terrain or failing to differentiate between shots fired and fireworks, or cars backfiring."
System For Sale:
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Troy-plans-to-sell-ShotSpotter-system-4042434.php
I wonder if it can distinguish between a gunshot and a 2-step anti lag system. i wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of false positives.
I'm not sure I agree with you. Just because something is illegal doesn't mean it's 100% wrong in all instances to do something.
They've been using this for decades. Back around 2000 our house was raided by the police after I had turned on a TV show that had the sound of a gun shot. It was too loud and I turned it off. They raided our house alleging that an anonymous call said a woman was being raped, which would give them reason to raid our house. There was no justification to raid our house. I was just a gun shot on a TV show.
Additionally, these microphones also pick up other sounds, like car sounds, which have been used as evidence too. They also pick up conversations.
As a gun lover, and privacy lover I can't see how this is a bad thing.
The bad thing about it is that it is basically an admission of defeat in preventing people from shooting at each other in the first place. It solves the wrong problem. The problem that needs to be solved is how do we prevent the violence before it occurs rather than how do we catch offenders more quickly after the fact. Something like this makes sense in a war zone but if you need to install it during what is ostensibly peacetime then something is terribly wrong with public policy. Peaceful cities don't get that way because of a rapid response police force. They get that way because of good public policy and economic opportunity.
I'm not saying technology like this is a bad idea in a violent locale. Being able to quickly identify, localize, and respond to violent acts is a worthy goal as a general proposition and if the problem already exists you have to deal with it. I'm just saying that there about a thousand other more productive ways to work this problem. Technology like this should be a last resort, not standard procedure.
If it is a justified self-defence act the person being attacked would like the police to come anyway. If it's an illegal firing then we want the police to respond.
While true, it's important to remember that few gunshots actually come from justifiable acts of self defense. The vast majority of shots fired aimed at humans are either attempts at murder or suicide. This is the flaw in this as a matter of public policy. It's like installing smoke detectors instead of ensuring the wiring in your home is safe and proper. While better than nothing it's not really the best approach to solving the problem.
It's reasonable to allow surveillance uses of automated technology as long as the public interest and their privacy is protected.
Agreed. The concerning bit is that people routinely disagree on what constitutes "the public interest" and the importance of privacy. People who are scared tend to have a rather different view of those ideas than those who aren't.
Make up your mind: is it a waste of money or is it useful?
I think most of the time it will be a waste of money. Reason being that it solves the wrong problem. What we should actually want is not a police force that response quicker but public policy that makes it so police response isn't necessary in the first place. Peaceful cities don't get that way by having a hyper-vigilant police force that can respond instantly - if anything that tends to make things worse in most cases. No, cities become peaceful through good public policy and economic opportunity. The details can vary by location but if you need technology like this it's a CLEAR indication that public policy is in bad shape.
Protip: If you don't break the law, you don't have to worry about being """overpoliced""" (That is, you don't have to worry about being a criminal if you are not a criminal). It's that simple.
No it is not that simple. Every single black man I know has had the lovely experience of being harassed by police for driving while black. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. They were not breaking any laws or causing any problems when it happened. Just because you haven't broken any law does not even begin to mean that you do not have to worry about being over policed.
Just because you have nothing to hide doesn't mean you have nothing to fear.
that's the big one (save for the occasional raid on somebody selling sex toys in Texas).
It's the same thing. Our drug laws are used to contain the poor and keep them from spilling over. If group of poor people wanders into a well to do neighborhood to use their services (parks, schools, etc) odds are one of them has pot on them. The (selectively enforced) laws let the cops crack down when it's convenient. In parts that want it racial segregation can be maintained without bringing down the feds. Hell, if you look at the history of making drugs illegal it was done for pot to chase Mexicans out and for Opium to crack down on the Chinese.
None of this is racism for racism's sake. At the end of the day it's to create lower classes that it's OK to abuse and divide the working class. Works too.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
There would hardly be any crime anymore
...heard of home stereos, car stereos, jamboxes, guitar amps, PA systems, etc.
They could ID the type of gun 15+ years ago. I remember when the city near bye installed it. They said it was accurate within a block and they could tell the type of gun and between guns and firecrackers and car backfires.
By now I would expect the thing to tell you in more detail about the guns used. If 1 person has a hand gun and the other rifle ... it will know who shot first.
"...We've saved a lot of people's lives."
Sure..., after they were shot?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
I'm just saying that's not their main purpose; any more than prison's main purpose is to rehabilitate people.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
and calling someone a racist aren't even remotely the same thing. If we're going to tackle a problem we have to acknowledge it's existence. You can't really believe Philando Castile was shot just because the cop thought he was reaching for his gun. Hell, the worst thing was the cop probably really thought he was. The cop was more likely to believe a black man would shoot him than hand over his driver's license.
That's institutionalized racism in a nutshell. When you don't even realize you're doing it. When you can say with a straight face "my black friends are fine but..." and mean it. Are law enforcement practices are a huge part of that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
No.
The Americans here seem to take it as normal that people shoot each other in the street.
Weird.
when we took action during the civil rights movement. The point is to get folks to take action, particularly at the polls, by making sure the narrative is steered away from "Everything's fine now and there's no racism or oppression" when nothing could be further from the truth.
So yeah, it's helps.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Is it against the law to play back the sound effect of a gunshot? Perhaps even at high volume?
Look! It's the Keystone Cops!!
cops aint going to get there in time, or do shit but mop up.
Yes I totally agree, that was my point. But wouldn't it be better for them to be able to be much less hesitant moving in because they knew exactly what had happened and if there were still armed suspects on-scnee? It's certainly better for the people who are shot that medics can move in more quickly.
and surveillance societies, by the government already far too big
Here again I actually agree with you (well except the part where I suck balls or want anything to do with the corporate state which I am way more against than you are).
This is not surveillance though. The drones are asleep most of the time, only go out when responding to a specific gunshot location or a 911 request from a citizen where you know there's a problem already and someone needs help. That is not surveillance it's simply quicker response and data flow to units that are going there anyway, to provide more details than gunshot sensors or a caller alone may provide.
This is a perfect match for drone use because drones really can't be out for long periods anyway so they literally CANNOT be used for classic surveillance like a CCTV can, and are cheap enough you could easily blanket a city with great coverage for very little cost.
They are also far better for this use because CCTV's simply cannot be looking everywhere or can be easily disabled ahead of time, whereas drones being very mobile are much less prone to being blocked from monitoring the aftermath of a shooting - including cars and/or people leaving the scene.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That would be useless against the kind of criminal that is most problematic right now, the kind that do not care if they get caught because they are on a suicidal mission.
It would be extremely useful for the kinds of attacks we have seen it cities, with a small number of attackers shooting civilians. You would have a drone in the area super quickly and it could follow any suspect(s) found, but even MORE importantly than that lets police know where attackers are NOT. Lots of people wait for medial care while police clear an area, but using the drones police could know in the minutes (or tens of minutes) it took to arrive that an area was safe to send medical aid and offices into and through.
You can get a view of the scene if you like but that's not going to solve the problem. What's likely to solve the problem is people able to shoot back...
Yes I totally agree and that is a great idea, I would also be happier if everyone were armed and also think we'd not see as many attacks, certainly not with the same degree of success...
But imagine this - what if all of the people in the area could ALSO see this drone footage? They would know if an attacker was on the way to where they were and could find good cover to shoot from. It would prevent people from being caught unawares. Imagine it being like an Amber Alert, only now your phone is pulling up a video feed and map automatically comparing your location to the location of known attackers...
That last part is probably a pipe dream as the police are super-reluctant to share that kind of data real time, but I think because it would be data about the attackers and not police positions, they could be persuaded.
The drones could only be up for 30 minutes or so but that's probably enough time to resolve the situation, especially in a world where everyone around the attacker was more fully aware.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Police catch shooters because of it and it is in the news all the time here. It's no secret. I wish it worked better since I live across the river in Iowa and we don't have it yet. I love the idea of this system
I thought smartphones are already listening to important stuff in addition to the "ok google" phrase. It is a no-brainer: they already have their mics on all the time, they have internet synced clock and they have GPS. It is all too easy to make them take note of loud sharp noises and send location info to interested parties.
And it would also be very nice if the PUBLIC could get a video of what happened when one of those "extremely rare" incidents involving the POLICE shooting an innocent CITIZEN. ...
Then we could all monitor what's going down, and the police don't get to filter or censor the video of their own acts too.
Just a thought
I wish they'd use them to detect dogs barking during prohibited hours.
Cue trolls everywhere playing gunshot sounds on their cellphones.
forgot the number of the tv series)
Funny because I have an extensive black family that doesn't have that problem. You do not get pulled over for being black, you get pulled over because there was cause,
That's just bullshit and there is copious evidence to prove it. People get pulled over routinely because of the color of their skin. This isn't a debate. It happens and if you deny it happens you are either lying or delusional. Happens to black people and latinos so often it borders on cliche. Perhaps you live in a location where it is relatively uncommon. Those do exist. But to pretend it doesn't happen is to have your head in the sand at best.
not to mention it's very hard to see race when someone is speeding past you at 60mph, from an angle in the dark.
There are PLENTY of times when it is trivial to note the ethnicity of the driver/occupants.
I'm white and I've been pulled over many times, oftentimes without receiving a ticket.
Ahh, we have an answer.
not enough people report gunshots when they're heard, for reasons or not. not enough people can discern a gunshot from a firework like well-made software can (should be able to).
i just always figured that cellphone masts were being used for this, along with being able to created 3d images of the area within their triangle.
As we all know. But aren't allowed to say.
I've seen it at work in Memphis as well.
I'd never seen one before and asked my taxi driver who just happened to be an off duty cop what that was on some of the light poles. His response, "shot detector, tells us where someone probably just got hurt so we can get there faster", sounds like a pretty good reason to me.
Now that was downtown Memphis... another time I arrived at my hotel for the week about 20 minutes from downtown and there was a mobile shot detector in the parking lot so I asked the hotel driver what was going on (we know each other as I stay there quite a bit) and he told me "some asshole has been driving around shooting at churches, but they caught him last night so it will be gone on Monday" and it was.
This site has been following ShotSpotter tech for a couple of years now:
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.c...
Near as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a huge reduction in gun crime as a result of this technology - mostly due to the fact that many gun crimes are committed with stolen guns (that are ditched after a shooting) and the fact that criminals don't hang around after a shooting waiting for the cops.
This technology stinks of Redflex and the red light camera fiasco there...
Additionally, these microphones also pick up other sounds, like car sounds, which have been used as evidence too. They also pick up conversations.
Could you source that info? I'm not saying they can't, but it seems unlikely that microphones on poles and building tops that are designed to be triggered by 140+db gunshots, but not by 120db thunder are being used to record even loud 70db conversations.
Not to mention, if they are talking that loud, they should expect people to overhear.
They installed this Puerto Rico a few years ago. Hefty price tag for it I believe it was a 1million a year for 1^2km? or 10^2 km
They had a really high rate of false positives and police started going to crime scene since the only thing they found was old broken cars or nothing most of the time.
A few times they found shell casings and after all the years I believe only once did it work but the police officer was a minute away.
Honestly without a published accuracy rate of how many shots are detected vs not I still don't believe they are that great.