ShotSpotter defamation lawsuit against Vice has been dismissed
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> On April 1, 2016, the ShotSpotter sensors picked up several audio bursts from a northwest Rochester neighborhood. Unable through its algorithms to detect a specific location, the system did not alert 911 or police. The system also thought the sounds to be the whirring blades of a helicopter, and not gunfire.
> Police notified ShotSpotter of the shooting, and the company revisited the audio from the scene. The analysts at first thought there were three shots, then changed to number to four, then five. Analysts found the fifth shot after a prosecution request to review the audio again, prosecutors say.
Never any evidence he fired a shot. They needed the fifth shot “found” because the cop shot four times, so magically it was!
Reuters did a more detailed expose later: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-poli...
ShotSpotter has now an earned reputation as: 1. Generally full of crap 2. Tampering with evidence as a practice
Weird how people say that.
The system didn't think anything, the system followed its programming as set out by the people who designed it. The system is either right or it simply doesn't work.
Original Vice News story: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-sh...
Previous discussion of above story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27959755
Previous related discussion: "A man spent a year in jail on murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28264686
https://shotspottercomplaint.com/gallery/20211011%20ShotSpot...
This provides some interesting background on the company (obviously biased)
In Europe, companies selling to the police are extremely discrete and generally keep a hyper low profile, particularly when selling technology (dubious or otherwise). These deals generally work by 'befriending' politicians who can instruct police to purchase and that's all back-room type of stuff.
Generally, it's when a politician wants credit by claiming some success in reducing/detecting crime that these things get any press. The publicity focuses not on the company, but on the genius nature of the politicians decision making.
Er, no.
You have astonishingly high gun crime in the States.
Sorry 'bout that.
Per capita, the US is just behind Panama; in absolute numbers, Brazil is ahead by about 14%.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-viole...
Comparing just to other rich countries shows stark differences:
https://www.healthdata.org/acting-data/gun-violence-united-s...
It isn't even close.
I think I'm going to start reporting our bug resolution counts by text editor.
Also US numbers per capita are actually very bad (https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-us-gun-violence-worl...) and worse in rural states, are you just going by feelings?
Worse than that; if you listen long enough and carefully enough, you will hear gunshots. It's like over-used medical testing: look for a problem, find a problem, treat the problem, even if had you never looked the patient would generally be better off.
There are people on their farms shooting things (rabid animals), or hunting in season.
I guess you could only use these things in downtown of a city, otherwise so many false positives..
I can't even imagine in the US, land of 7 guns per person, plus of course the dogs are even armed...
I don't really care if "rural people" are using guns but to claim shooting rabid animals is a major use-case is wrong or initially misleading.
I’m sure it’s way, way less then 1% of the shots fired but it’s absolutely something that happens.
In Canada, people on farms often buy guns just as a tool, not for cultural reasons, or pleasure, such as long guns, to shoot.... yes, rabid animals, or things preying on their livestock.
It is a major use case, if you own a gun for rabid animals, and really don't get it out otherwise.
I also have a chainsaw, and never get it out to cut trees, unless it has already fallen, or a danger.
EG, I have a chainsaw, but never use it to cut down trees for fuel.
Why do you object? Some areas have a strong local rabis population...
Frankly, the biggest problem we have with guns is smuggled handguns from the US. That is, illegal gun ownership.
Honestly, I think every rural gun owner should get behind gun control in the US. It's the nutjobs, those who snap, or shouldn't have guns (illegal ownership) which is the true problem.
Up here, you have to take a gun safety course to get a gun. It's not onerous, and it's taught by another gun owner, one who decided to set up shop and do so! If you can't pass that course (for example, don't point your gun at anyone -- ever!), you don't deserve a gun.
And it's mandated, and you plain and simple can't buy ammo, or a gun, unless you have a license. And you cannot get a license, if you have a violent past, and a variety of other things.
For example, get charged with a violent crime? Your license is immediately suspended, and you cannot have guns any more.
I guess I have a short fuse here, because your politics are infecting our politics, as many people barely understand the law, or that "there isn't here".
This is a huge problem in the US, as well. Most gun crimes are committed with unregistered, stolen, borrowed, or otherwise illegally obtained handguns. It's uncommon to have a crime where the weapons were purchased legally by the criminal.
> For example, get charged with a violent crime? Your license is immediately suspended, and you cannot have guns any more.
It is the same thing here. If you are charged with a violent crime, your guns will be seized. If you are convicted, you cannot own legally without a court order re-instating your rights.
> because your politics are infecting our politics, as many people barely understand the law, or that "there isn't here".
All politics are local, and the internet is global. The issue in the US is that the urban areas don't understand the need for firearms in rural areas. Rural people don't understand how dangerous firing even a .22 rifle is in a city, how terrifying seeing someone with a 9mm on their hip in a crowd is, or how many street criminals will target you just to steal your gun.
The idea was that people’s system caches would have deleted stuff by then, so anyone that noticed at that point couldn’t go resurrect to attempt to start a Streisand
Browsers and the internet are super different now, but the same concept generally applies: people only care if you seem to care.
People don’t really care that much about their Streisand hopes to argue fair use or bother
But the presence of material makes it a legitimate DMCA request (not like legitimacy is enforced, but I cover my own bases at least)
The way it works is they put audio sensors on roofs (mostly in high crime areas) and they listen for bangs. When multiple sensors hear a bang, they triangulate the position and try to determine if the bang was a gunshot then they can alert the police to investigate. The tech fundamentally works very well. It's not 100% accurate and it seems they are willing to work with police to fudge their analysis when asked.
People should focus on their investigative stuff rather than the clickbait. They'll be less mad in the long run.
The biggest problem are reflections and multipath (which are also problems for locating earthquakes). Also, classifying whether a noise came from a gun, when heard from far away in an urban environment with lots of other noises around, is hard.
Simplest method is trilateration. By knowing the travel time from multiple places, you can figure out the source point.
Sound waves travel 300m every second.
If you can get devices synchronised to 1ms (which isn't very difficult given very easy access to GPS which is orders of magnitude more accurate), you can triangulate to at least within 1m.
There is some complication like the sound travels at different speed depending on pressure of the gas. The sound might have also arrived to the microphone on not the shortest path. The shortest might have been obstructed, for example, and what you got is a reflection off of a distant object or even sound that was "bent" by layers of air with different properties.
But if you have ever heard a gun shot, most of the time you got first the sound wave that reached you directly and then possibly some reflections. By analysing those reflections and assuming that if multiple gunshots were made, they were made at roughly the same spot, it is possible to discern whether you heard one gunshot with reflections or multiple series resulting from multiple shots.
The microphones are also high up, like in light posts, so it's not the best place for audio surveillance.
I'd worry someone can tap the line the way you used to be able to clip a butt set to a junction box surrounded obscured by a tree planted by the neighborhood association and listen in on the wine moms discussing who they're cheating with this week.
(To be clear, that's something you do a few times as a minor, then hopefully learn your lesson that knowing too much is not fun and it's better to avoid abusing your access at all costs if you value your sanity)