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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."
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?
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/
A powder-actuated nailer doesn't use a traditional barrel or fire a round that files through the air, so the sound made is different.
A system like this is going to have some false-positives, and is going to miss some actual gunshots. This is a given. The point of a system like this is to have a significantly more likely chance of detecting firearms discharge than just relying on people to report it. People in bad neighborhoods may have a snitches-get-stitches attitude, or may just be so jaded to gunshots that they don't bother calling anymore. Either way, this is a somewhat independent way getting information.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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++
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.
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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/
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.
Perhaps not, but enforcement gives dignity to the law. People begin to respect the law when it is consistently and quickly enforced.
It's probably less expensive to move a sensor that listens for gunshots than an entire police precinct. It also doesn't really matter where you locate the precinct either since the police can take their cars and patrol wherever they're most needed. You'd want to have your precincts located in such a way that it makes it easy and efficient for police to deploy anywhere in the city, otherwise if you locate them nearest the worst neighborhoods you'll probably not have a very even distribution as bad neighborhoods tend to be clustered.
Not really. Unless you really have a barrel length of zero and a round of zero mass, there will be a sonic boom from the bullet for at least a little while. A microphone staged downrange will pick up two cracks: one from the sonic boom of the bullet and a second one from the charge exploding. The bullet is supersonic, so the sound from it originates closer to the microphone, whereas the gun is stationary and its sound will arrive later. The reverse is true if the microphone is behind the gun, and there's an area of ambiguity if you're perpendicular to the muzzle on either side, which is why multiple microphones.
Firecrackers, nail guns, and anything else that doesn't send a supersonic projectile doesn't have that double crack. It's not hard to tell by ear in many cases and certainly not too hard to automate classification to some acceptable level of false alarm rates.
Slight nitpick, sub-sonic .22LR rounds are a thing.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Shannon's Law was directed specifically at celebratory gunfire, such as firing into the air for New Year. This is a feature of, um, a certain culture. Shannon was a young girl who went outside with her family to see the New Year in and suddenly dropped dead of a round that had been fired miles away.
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.
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Han shot first. Greedo never shot at all.
Yeah, I've never understood the "laws are useless because criminals break laws" approach. You hear it a lot in the Second Amendment community.
If you are referring to "when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns." Well, that is one of those word games that proves itself. What it is really going after is that by outlawing guns, law abiding citizens are not allowed to have guns. If you wade past the extremist (AKA the absolutely no gun regulations crowd) you will find that most people agree to background check as long as it is reasonable. When I took my Concealed Weapons class, even my instructor called "constitutional carry" asinine.
~Less think, more do