5 ms·

Related existing tech is Shotspotter. Placed on rooftops in cities it can detect and triangulate the sound of gunfire. Picks up the occasional backfiring car th

by tootie 5y ago

Related existing tech is Shotspotter. Placed on rooftops in cities it can detect and triangulate the sound of gunfire. Picks up the occasional backfiring car though. https://www.shotspotter.com/ https://www.shotspotter.com/

Judgmentality 5y ago
> Picks up the occasional backfiring car though. Never really used it, but from what I've heard (which is just comments on the internet) it's unreliable enough that it's not particularly useful.
- munk-a 5y ago
  Do you work in law enforcement? This sort of tech seems particularly useful to move units in to respond to in progress shootings especially to reinforce and pinpoint the source of distress for 911 calls.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    Some law enforcement seems to love it, though others have rejected it (some after using it for a while) because of cost, studies of its low reliability (particularly, high false positives), low benefit because actual gunshots tend to get as much information from 911 calls as Shotspotter provides, and community relations concerns.
- btilly 5y ago
  Actually it is extremely useful. However it won't work as well if you use a silencer. (Which are better named suppressors, the gun is still quite loud but won't be doing as much damage to your hearing.) As in, we can make it work. But making it sensitive enough to catch quieted guns inside of houses will also make it sensitive enough to generate a ton of false positives. This is one of the main reasons why there is a debate about the use of silencers. And people who want to be able to use silencers have an agenda to make the technology seem less useful than it is.
  - salawat 5y ago
    Did you know lawn mowers, weed whackers, and automobiles already use this verboten technology? Otherwise known as the innocuous 'muffler'. Don't kid yourself, there's agendas on both sides, and a hefty chunk of law related to firearms accessories is nothing more than prosecutorial/political window dressing to provide ammo for throwing massive numbers of charges at defendant's to increase the likelihood an AG can secure a conviction through plea deal, or strip yet another citizen of a fundamental civil right. Note how the involvement of a firearm in anything can double or triple the number of charges that can be levied against a person. It means anyone unfortunate enough to develop a passion for firearms as a hobby has an uphill battle to fight just to prove that by default "they didn't do anything wrong". Those same silencers also protect the hearing of those around a shooter as well. Add the ATF to the mix, and simply having tools and trying to modify a firearm for better ergonomics can land the unaware in hot water when the ATF finds out and make a determination you illegally converted something into something else, and they don't like it one bit. The humble remote hole punch has become a favorite poster child for the more authoritarianly bent to convince people to part with Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. I have no silencers/suppressors other than on previously mentioned equipment, and possess no firearms for which I'd be interested in acquiring any, but I did do a short stint wading through the regulatory more that is firearm regulation in the United States. Abandon all hope, you who enter the domain where a string and a rifle can become constructive possession of a machine gun.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > it's unreliable enough that it's not particularly useful. Any machine or black box that law enforcement can use either as pretext for doing whatever they want, or as something to point to to absolve themselves of responsibility, has value.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Any machine or black box that law enforcement can use either as pretext for doing whatever they want, or as something to point to to absolve themselves of responsibility, has value. I think you left out “negative social” before the last word there.
sschueller 5y ago
Is there any open source project like this? Locate a sounds direction using multiple microphones?
jfultz 5y ago
The television show Person of Interest had an episode that featured a technology called "ShotSeeker" that was modeled after ShotSpotter. In the storyline, ShotSeeker is paired with human oversight to help distinguish real gunfire from other sounds. However, the police develop such high confidence in the results that the program is co-opted to both hide real crimes (by declaring actual gunshots fake) and to set up an attempted murder by effectively "swatting" one of the characters. https://personofinterest.fandom.com/wiki/ShotSeeker https://personofinterest.fandom.com/wiki/ShotSeeker
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Picks up the occasional backfiring car though. It picks up more than occasional backfires besides actual gunshots, which is connected to concerns about its use being a pretext for selective policing in minority communities (or even outright manufacturing evidence to support police narratives): --- https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/police-surveillance-shotspotter-fireworks https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/police... --- “...a study of Chicago police data found that over a nearly 22-month period ending in mid-April, almost 90% of ShotSpotter alerts didn’t result in officers reporting evidence of shots fired or of any gun crime.” https://apnews.com/article/chicago-police-crime-shootings-be9e44796bd7e6e3c94108c5e3905ede https://apnews.com/article/chicago-police-crime-shootings-be... --- https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/jun/19/pros-and-cons-gunshot-detection-system/ https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/jun/19/pros-and-cons-gunshot-... (The series of “ifs” used in the police lieutenant's defense of the value of the system is...quite impressive.) --- Simmons was accused of firing the first shot and charged with the attempted murder of a police officer, among other offences. Recordings by ShotSpotter were used against Simmons at trial, but evidence surfaced that the service had initially categorized loud noises in his neighborhood as the sound of a helicopter overhead — until Rochester police notified the service that an officer-involved shooting had taken place. ShotSpotter would then change the number of gunshots that it had reportedly detected from three shots to four shots, and then five shots. After spending 18 months in jail and eventually being cleared of attempted aggravated murder, aggravated assault of a police officer, and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, Simmons is now suing the city of Rochester, two police officers, a former police chief, and ShotSpotter. Matters were complicated when Paul Greene, the Forensic Services Manager of ShotSpotter, admitted in court that the audio file from the time of Simmons’ shooting was gone. Greene also admitted that unlocked or unencrypted ShotSpotter audio files can be altered by ShotSpotter employees or police. https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/gun-violence-police-shotspotter/ https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/gun-violence-po...
- tootie 5y ago
  I don't think any of that is an indictment of the system. If 10% lead to arrests for gun crimes that might have otherwise been missed, then that's pretty good.
rapnie 5y ago
There's this cool application of using old smartphones to locate chainsaws in the rainforest indicative of illegal logging. https://www.livingcircular.veolia.com/en/eco-citizen/topher-white-connects-and-protects-rain-forest https://www.livingcircular.veolia.com/en/eco-citizen/topher-...

by tootie 5y ago

Judgmentality 5y ago

> Picks up the occasional backfiring car though. Never really used it, but from what I've heard (which is just comments on the internet) it's unreliable enough that it's not particularly useful.

munk-a 5y ago
Do you work in law enforcement? This sort of tech seems particularly useful to move units in to respond to in progress shootings especially to reinforce and pinpoint the source of distress for 911 calls.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  Some law enforcement seems to love it, though others have rejected it (some after using it for a while) because of cost, studies of its low reliability (particularly, high false positives), low benefit because actual gunshots tend to get as much information from 911 calls as Shotspotter provides, and community relations concerns.
btilly 5y ago
Actually it is extremely useful. However it won't work as well if you use a silencer. (Which are better named suppressors, the gun is still quite loud but won't be doing as much damage to your hearing.) As in, we can make it work. But making it sensitive enough to catch quieted guns inside of houses will also make it sensitive enough to generate a ton of false positives. This is one of the main reasons why there is a debate about the use of silencers. And people who want to be able to use silencers have an agenda to make the technology seem less useful than it is.
- salawat 5y ago
  Did you know lawn mowers, weed whackers, and automobiles already use this verboten technology? Otherwise known as the innocuous 'muffler'. Don't kid yourself, there's agendas on both sides, and a hefty chunk of law related to firearms accessories is nothing more than prosecutorial/political window dressing to provide ammo for throwing massive numbers of charges at defendant's to increase the likelihood an AG can secure a conviction through plea deal, or strip yet another citizen of a fundamental civil right. Note how the involvement of a firearm in anything can double or triple the number of charges that can be levied against a person. It means anyone unfortunate enough to develop a passion for firearms as a hobby has an uphill battle to fight just to prove that by default "they didn't do anything wrong". Those same silencers also protect the hearing of those around a shooter as well. Add the ATF to the mix, and simply having tools and trying to modify a firearm for better ergonomics can land the unaware in hot water when the ATF finds out and make a determination you illegally converted something into something else, and they don't like it one bit. The humble remote hole punch has become a favorite poster child for the more authoritarianly bent to convince people to part with Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. I have no silencers/suppressors other than on previously mentioned equipment, and possess no firearms for which I'd be interested in acquiring any, but I did do a short stint wading through the regulatory more that is firearm regulation in the United States. Abandon all hope, you who enter the domain where a string and a rifle can become constructive possession of a machine gun.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> it's unreliable enough that it's not particularly useful. Any machine or black box that law enforcement can use either as pretext for doing whatever they want, or as something to point to to absolve themselves of responsibility, has value.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Any machine or black box that law enforcement can use either as pretext for doing whatever they want, or as something to point to to absolve themselves of responsibility, has value. I think you left out “negative social” before the last word there.

sschueller 5y ago

Is there any open source project like this? Locate a sounds direction using multiple microphones?

jfultz 5y ago

The television show Person of Interest had an episode that featured a technology called "ShotSeeker" that was modeled after ShotSpotter. In the storyline, ShotSeeker is paired with human oversight to help distinguish real gunfire from other sounds. However, the police develop such high confidence in the results that the program is co-opted to both hide real crimes (by declaring actual gunshots fake) and to set up an attempted murder by effectively "swatting" one of the characters. https://personofinterest.fandom.com/wiki/ShotSeeker https://personofinterest.fandom.com/wiki/ShotSeeker

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Picks up the occasional backfiring car though. It picks up more than occasional backfires besides actual gunshots, which is connected to concerns about its use being a pretext for selective policing in minority communities (or even outright manufacturing evidence to support police narratives): --- https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/police-surveillance-shotspotter-fireworks https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/police... --- “...a study of Chicago police data found that over a nearly 22-month period ending in mid-April, almost 90% of ShotSpotter alerts didn’t result in officers reporting evidence of shots fired or of any gun crime.” https://apnews.com/article/chicago-police-crime-shootings-be9e44796bd7e6e3c94108c5e3905ede https://apnews.com/article/chicago-police-crime-shootings-be... --- https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/jun/19/pros-and-cons-gunshot-detection-system/ https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/jun/19/pros-and-cons-gunshot-... (The series of “ifs” used in the police lieutenant's defense of the value of the system is...quite impressive.) --- Simmons was accused of firing the first shot and charged with the attempted murder of a police officer, among other offences. Recordings by ShotSpotter were used against Simmons at trial, but evidence surfaced that the service had initially categorized loud noises in his neighborhood as the sound of a helicopter overhead — until Rochester police notified the service that an officer-involved shooting had taken place. ShotSpotter would then change the number of gunshots that it had reportedly detected from three shots to four shots, and then five shots. After spending 18 months in jail and eventually being cleared of attempted aggravated murder, aggravated assault of a police officer, and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, Simmons is now suing the city of Rochester, two police officers, a former police chief, and ShotSpotter. Matters were complicated when Paul Greene, the Forensic Services Manager of ShotSpotter, admitted in court that the audio file from the time of Simmons’ shooting was gone. Greene also admitted that unlocked or unencrypted ShotSpotter audio files can be altered by ShotSpotter employees or police. https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/gun-violence-police-shotspotter/ https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/gun-violence-po...

tootie 5y ago
I don't think any of that is an indictment of the system. If 10% lead to arrests for gun crimes that might have otherwise been missed, then that's pretty good.

rapnie 5y ago

There's this cool application of using old smartphones to locate chainsaws in the rainforest indicative of illegal logging. https://www.livingcircular.veolia.com/en/eco-citizen/topher-white-connects-and-protects-rain-forest https://www.livingcircular.veolia.com/en/eco-citizen/topher-...