4 ms·

It's a shame because setting up some microphones around the city to detect a firearm discharge seems like a great idea. It's an idea, yes, but a great idea?

by loteck 5y ago

It's a shame because setting up some microphones around the city to detect a firearm discharge seems like a great idea. It's an idea, yes, but a *great* idea? There are so many technical, social and civil rights issues wrapped up in this idea on its face, I think its performance history should be part of whether it gets to enjoy the label of being a "great idea." Since it misclassifies noises, isn't exactly sure of the origin, and can read echos as additional shots, is it useless? Furthermore, since it can and does record human voices speaking, and creates permanent records into the private hands of a for-profit company that is allowed to sell that data to 3rd parties, does it actually cross a line from being useless to being harmful? It might.

oehpr 5y ago
Right... but I don't classify its performance of "saying 5 gunshots when their was 4" a failure. If it can say "I heard a gunshot, sounded like it came from around here." and a gunshot occurred somewhere around there, with only a few false positives. That's fantastic. In my view, that's "great". It's just not iron clad evidence, prosecutors are overstating its statistical power. That needs to be checked. Furthermore, since it can and does record human voices speaking, and creates permanent records into the private hands of a for-profit company that is allowed to sell that data to 3rd parties, does it actually cross a line from being useless to being harmful? It might. Yah absolutely. But the thing is gunshots are pretty loud noises compared to human speech. There's no reason to think a microphone needs to be sensitive enough to capture human speech to capture a gunshot, nor placed in a location that is well suited for capturing human speech, nor would a place that IS well suited for capturing human speech a good location for capturing gunshots. If I was placing a microphone to capture the sound of gunshots, I'd be putting it on the tops of streetlights, telephone polls, and the corners of buildings. You're not going to be hearing people from there. So if we see that behavior of ShotSpotter sticking microphones in inappropriate places for public surveillance purposes, then I think they should be taken to task for it.
- deleted 5y ago
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- josefx 5y ago
  > Right... but I don't classify its performance of "saying 5 gunshots when their was 4" a failure. Where there four? The part of the recording containing the fifth shot disappeared, there is no way to reexamine it as there where no steps taken to protect the original data against tampering. If your method is so bad that no one else can reproduce your results and the data you base your results on just keeps changing and disappearing to suit the expected result then it has the scientific rigor of a fortune teller.