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Here Are the Secret Locations of ShotSpotter Gunfire Sensors
(www.wired.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Privacy
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The only problem ShotSpotter solves is not enough public money into private hands. What information does it actually give the police, even assuming that it is 100% accurate?
At a certain time and place a gun was fired. Great? Who cares. That isn't worth $1million/mo.
If there are 3 people in the general location and time that a gun was fired, what has shotspotter done to help?
Fortunately Chicago is getting rid of this finally. https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2024/02/22/shotspotter-contract-cost-mayor-brandon-johnson-cancel-extension-summer
And, it gives cops another excuse to overpolice Black and brown neighborhoods.
People usually call in shots fired. So all they've done is create an expensive device that maybe tells them a bit sooner than a concerned citizen.
This is where I disagree. I think a transparent, publicly run system to triangulate gunshots is actually a great idea. As long as the microphones are placed evenly throughout a city, they can instantly let police know where and when a gunshot happened.
However, with no way to publicly verify the fairness of the a private system, there's only one way this could go.
Doesn't triangulation get fucked up by the presence of buildings? I don't imagine these give much more precision, even in the ideal situation you describe.
I imagine that theoretically you could have algorithms or machine learning to calibrate this. Like make test sounds so you see how the sound diffuses and then filter it out.