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> But after the 11:46 p.m. alert came in, a ShotSpotter analyst manually overrode the algorithms and “reclassified” the sound as a gunshot. Then, months later a

> But after the 11:46 p.m. alert came in, a ShotSpotter analyst manually overrode the algorithms and “reclassified” the sound as a gunshot. Then, months later and after “post-processing,” another ShotSpotter analyst changed the alert’s coordinates to a location on South Stony Island Drive near where Williams’ car was seen on camera. That's falsification of evidence. Will there be any consequences? Who watches the watchmen?

jaywalk 5y ago
You say falsification of evidence, they say manual review by an "expert" to correct errors from the automated process.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bluejekyll 5y ago
  Reclassifying the type of sound is possibly reasonable. Changing the coordinates seems like falsification of evidence. Later in the article it mentions adding a fifth shot in a different event. If shotspotter wants to be relied on for evidence, allowing technicians to go back and modify data seems like a recipe to quickly eliminate its use in cities and destroy its market share. Adding notes about manual review after the fact would be the only acceptable thing, but the originals should never be modified/deleted.
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    Sorry, but I’m an expert shooter. I can reasonably identify the round and sometimes the gun on the range next to me - I would say I have an excellently tuned ear for these things… And not a chance I could do that based on microphone playback between firework and gunshot with some random mic in a city. 1/2 the “trick” is knowing the location, at my range I know the echo of a 12ga vs a 45ACP, the crack difference in a 223 or a 6.5prc, if I went to some random place and you shot one random shot, it would be ridiculously less accurate. Shotspotter seems like a ton of bullshit to me after reading this article including… > Both the company and the Rochester Police Department “lost, deleted and/or destroyed the spool and/or other information containing sounds pertaining to the officer-involved shooting,”
    - bluejekyll 5y ago
      > And not a chance I could do that based on microphone playback between firework and gunshot. I’m happy to agree with you on that point, since I don’t have the experience there. My larger point is that I could reasonably say allow for shotspotter to review the sound, but the location I’m assuming is pretty darn accurate. And yes, the article completely destroys their credibility as a reliable source of evidence.
      - jcims 5y ago
        Multipath effects, which for sound are huge in an environment with large flat surfaces, could create phantom origin spots at the fringes of the covered area.
        SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
        So if your point is it’s too complex and variable for automatic processing; how does adding a human arbitrarily changing classification and location going to improve accuracy? Unless it’s the shotspotter tech put there shooting people, seems the company is very successful bullshit either technically or ethically.
        jcims 5y ago
        If there was solid external evidence of when a shooting occurred (eg gps timestamped video of the event) I could see them doing it purely for calibration purposes. Clearly those adjustments should not be admitted as evidence in a court case. ShotSpotter just needs to take the 'L' and they will have to prosecute without (or admit whatever was originally recorded as corroborating evidence).
      - Clubber 5y ago
        >but the location I’m assuming is pretty darn accurate. I remember reading about a similar technology used by soldiers in Afghanistan to find snipers, but Afghanistan is largely an open area. I don't see how it would be accurate when the acoustics of multiple buildings are in effect.
- jkestner 5y ago
  If the source audio is not reviewable in court, none of it should be admissible as evidence. Algorithms are just laundering bad opinions like blood splatter analysis, so that there’s not even a personal reputation at stake.
  - tolbish 5y ago
    "Liability laundering" does roll off the tongue more easily than "machine learning algorithm".
  - aimkey 5y ago
    >Algorithms are just laundering bad opinions like blood splatter analysis You have way too much faith in the legal system. So many pseudo-scientific classes of evidence exist: - Field sobriety tests - Ballistic forensics - Blood spatter analysis, as you mentioned - Bite pattern analysis - Burn / arson forensics - Polygraph - Biometrics under less-than-perfect conditions (your fingerprint reader on your phone works well because it's near perfect conditions. Crime scene partial finger prints are usually insufficient. Same for facial recognition -- works with your iPhone FaceID sensor, doesn't work with the gas station 480x320 camera) - Most DNA and hair analysis Pretty much all hocus pocus. Courts don't care. Anything for the conviction. Anyone hoping for fair scientific analysis in a court of law today is in for a rude awakening.
    - Clubber 5y ago
      To be fair, polygraph tests aren't admissible as evidence in court, but I completely agree with your larger point. You also left out drug sniffing dogs, which are just a prop for the justification of an otherwise illegal search, and apparently drug sniffing cops too. There was recently a case where a cop claimed in court to have smelled unburned pot from several cars away while driving on the interstate. This was fortunately thrown out but it's not guaranteed.
    - jkestner 5y ago
      I agree with you completely, except for the idea that I have too much faith in the legal system.
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  > manual review by an "expert" Sounds like that should be required before the results of automated processes can be used as evidence.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    I'm sure it is, but the point here is that the manual review appears to be "aided" by the police "suggesting" where they believe the sound came from. And then, wow, wouldn't you know it! The manual review agrees. Case closed.
toomuchtodo 5y ago
Journalists, courts, and citizen activists.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  Careful: the number of people on HN who are now firmly in the camp of: "there are no facts, there is no truth, all journalism is propoganda" is astonishingly large, and growing (it seems to me, anyway).
minikites 5y ago
There won't be any consequences, because the police never face any consequences. There's no way to reform modern policing, the evidence shows little progress from decades of trying, which is why modern policing must be abolished and something entirely different needs to take its place. The police have resisted incremental reforms, so the only option now is drastic reforms.
- dolni 5y ago
  This reads like a troll message to me, so I'm not sure I should even engage. But in the off chance it isn't, then if you actually want to convince people of something you should try: * Not using ridiculous hyperbole * Providing a well-reasoned solution instead of just stating what the problem is
  - minikites 5y ago
    >Providing a well-reasoned solution instead of just stating what the problem is I did: >modern policing must be abolished and something entirely different needs to take its place
    - dolni 5y ago
      All you did was state "this thing sucks and it needs to go." Oh and by the way, it should be replaced by "something." That's not a well-reasoned solution. That's not a solution at all. All you're doing is complaining. Put your money where your mouth is, and come up with what the "something" should be.
      - minikites 5y ago
        Okay, how about starting with a new department modeled after incredibly successful programs like these? https://www.npr.org/2021/03/08/974941422/6-month-experiment-replacing-denver-police-with-mental-health-teams-dubbed-a-suc https://www.npr.org/2021/03/08/974941422/6-month-experiment-... https://www.npr.org/2021/07/23/1019704823/police-mental-health-crisis-calls-new-york-city https://www.npr.org/2021/07/23/1019704823/police-mental-heal...
zozin 5y ago
I think you’re jumping to conclusions. We don’t know their standard process for reclassifying alerts. Maybe an analyst reviews every single alert and manual overrides are common. Maybe post-processing several months later is also standard practice. I get how suspicious this looks, especially the changed geo-tag that occurred months after, perhaps at the behest of or influenced by the CPD’s investigation, but we should try to be as objective as possible before accusing people of committing felonies.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  > We don’t know their standard process for reclassifying alerts. and we don't because they withdrew evidence, rather than allowing outside review of said processes.
supergirl 5y ago
not really. the evidence is basically ShotSpotter's final analysis of the incident which they do using a combination of AI and human "experts". it's probably similar for DNA tests. there is still some human reviewing the results, possibly discarding error samples, etc.

jaywalk 5y ago

You say falsification of evidence, they say manual review by an "expert" to correct errors from the automated process.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bluejekyll 5y ago
Reclassifying the type of sound is possibly reasonable. Changing the coordinates seems like falsification of evidence. Later in the article it mentions adding a fifth shot in a different event. If shotspotter wants to be relied on for evidence, allowing technicians to go back and modify data seems like a recipe to quickly eliminate its use in cities and destroy its market share. Adding notes about manual review after the fact would be the only acceptable thing, but the originals should never be modified/deleted.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  Sorry, but I’m an expert shooter. I can reasonably identify the round and sometimes the gun on the range next to me - I would say I have an excellently tuned ear for these things… And not a chance I could do that based on microphone playback between firework and gunshot with some random mic in a city. 1/2 the “trick” is knowing the location, at my range I know the echo of a 12ga vs a 45ACP, the crack difference in a 223 or a 6.5prc, if I went to some random place and you shot one random shot, it would be ridiculously less accurate. Shotspotter seems like a ton of bullshit to me after reading this article including… > Both the company and the Rochester Police Department “lost, deleted and/or destroyed the spool and/or other information containing sounds pertaining to the officer-involved shooting,”
  - bluejekyll 5y ago
    > And not a chance I could do that based on microphone playback between firework and gunshot. I’m happy to agree with you on that point, since I don’t have the experience there. My larger point is that I could reasonably say allow for shotspotter to review the sound, but the location I’m assuming is pretty darn accurate. And yes, the article completely destroys their credibility as a reliable source of evidence.
    - jcims 5y ago
      Multipath effects, which for sound are huge in an environment with large flat surfaces, could create phantom origin spots at the fringes of the covered area.
      - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
        So if your point is it’s too complex and variable for automatic processing; how does adding a human arbitrarily changing classification and location going to improve accuracy? Unless it’s the shotspotter tech put there shooting people, seems the company is very successful bullshit either technically or ethically.
        jcims 5y ago
        If there was solid external evidence of when a shooting occurred (eg gps timestamped video of the event) I could see them doing it purely for calibration purposes. Clearly those adjustments should not be admitted as evidence in a court case. ShotSpotter just needs to take the 'L' and they will have to prosecute without (or admit whatever was originally recorded as corroborating evidence).
    - Clubber 5y ago
      >but the location I’m assuming is pretty darn accurate. I remember reading about a similar technology used by soldiers in Afghanistan to find snipers, but Afghanistan is largely an open area. I don't see how it would be accurate when the acoustics of multiple buildings are in effect.
jkestner 5y ago
If the source audio is not reviewable in court, none of it should be admissible as evidence. Algorithms are just laundering bad opinions like blood splatter analysis, so that there’s not even a personal reputation at stake.
- tolbish 5y ago
  "Liability laundering" does roll off the tongue more easily than "machine learning algorithm".
- aimkey 5y ago
  >Algorithms are just laundering bad opinions like blood splatter analysis You have way too much faith in the legal system. So many pseudo-scientific classes of evidence exist: - Field sobriety tests - Ballistic forensics - Blood spatter analysis, as you mentioned - Bite pattern analysis - Burn / arson forensics - Polygraph - Biometrics under less-than-perfect conditions (your fingerprint reader on your phone works well because it's near perfect conditions. Crime scene partial finger prints are usually insufficient. Same for facial recognition -- works with your iPhone FaceID sensor, doesn't work with the gas station 480x320 camera) - Most DNA and hair analysis Pretty much all hocus pocus. Courts don't care. Anything for the conviction. Anyone hoping for fair scientific analysis in a court of law today is in for a rude awakening.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    To be fair, polygraph tests aren't admissible as evidence in court, but I completely agree with your larger point. You also left out drug sniffing dogs, which are just a prop for the justification of an otherwise illegal search, and apparently drug sniffing cops too. There was recently a case where a cop claimed in court to have smelled unburned pot from several cars away while driving on the interstate. This was fortunately thrown out but it's not guaranteed.
  - jkestner 5y ago
    I agree with you completely, except for the idea that I have too much faith in the legal system.
stronglikedan 5y ago
> manual review by an "expert" Sounds like that should be required before the results of automated processes can be used as evidence.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  I'm sure it is, but the point here is that the manual review appears to be "aided" by the police "suggesting" where they believe the sound came from. And then, wow, wouldn't you know it! The manual review agrees. Case closed.

toomuchtodo 5y ago

Journalists, courts, and citizen activists.

SavantIdiot 5y ago
Careful: the number of people on HN who are now firmly in the camp of: "there are no facts, there is no truth, all journalism is propoganda" is astonishingly large, and growing (it seems to me, anyway).

minikites 5y ago

There won't be any consequences, because the police never face any consequences. There's no way to reform modern policing, the evidence shows little progress from decades of trying, which is why modern policing must be abolished and something entirely different needs to take its place. The police have resisted incremental reforms, so the only option now is drastic reforms.

dolni 5y ago
This reads like a troll message to me, so I'm not sure I should even engage. But in the off chance it isn't, then if you actually want to convince people of something you should try: * Not using ridiculous hyperbole * Providing a well-reasoned solution instead of just stating what the problem is
- minikites 5y ago
  >Providing a well-reasoned solution instead of just stating what the problem is I did: >modern policing must be abolished and something entirely different needs to take its place
  - dolni 5y ago
    All you did was state "this thing sucks and it needs to go." Oh and by the way, it should be replaced by "something." That's not a well-reasoned solution. That's not a solution at all. All you're doing is complaining. Put your money where your mouth is, and come up with what the "something" should be.
    - minikites 5y ago
      Okay, how about starting with a new department modeled after incredibly successful programs like these? https://www.npr.org/2021/03/08/974941422/6-month-experiment-replacing-denver-police-with-mental-health-teams-dubbed-a-suc https://www.npr.org/2021/03/08/974941422/6-month-experiment-... https://www.npr.org/2021/07/23/1019704823/police-mental-health-crisis-calls-new-york-city https://www.npr.org/2021/07/23/1019704823/police-mental-heal...

zozin 5y ago

I think you’re jumping to conclusions. We don’t know their standard process for reclassifying alerts. Maybe an analyst reviews every single alert and manual overrides are common. Maybe post-processing several months later is also standard practice. I get how suspicious this looks, especially the changed geo-tag that occurred months after, perhaps at the behest of or influenced by the CPD’s investigation, but we should try to be as objective as possible before accusing people of committing felonies.

FireBeyond 5y ago
> We don’t know their standard process for reclassifying alerts. and we don't because they withdrew evidence, rather than allowing outside review of said processes.

supergirl 5y ago

not really. the evidence is basically ShotSpotter's final analysis of the incident which they do using a combination of AI and human "experts". it's probably similar for DNA tests. there is still some human reviewing the results, possibly discarding error samples, etc.