The Davis Square Community

I once talked to someone who worked on that project, or one like it. Apparently the job is tricky, since bullet moves and generates a conical shock wave as it travels. The microphones detect the shock wave as it passes over the microphone. Whereas a firecracker generates an expanding spherical shock wave. I'd guess that the system can differentiate the two, and would have to in order to not drive whoever is monitoring it crazy with false alarms.

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keithn.livejournal.com

I 110% support installing shot spotters in Somerville. I am also a software engineer, which is entirely irrelevant.

Even if "the bad guys" (what?) take over the shot spotter system, when you are shouting so loud that a shot spotter detects your voice, I think you have completely lost any reasonable expectation of privacy related to the content of that audio.

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teko.livejournal.com

Thank you. Yes.

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clevernonsense.livejournal.com

I agree, I also think the civil liberties angle is more of a slippery slope argument at this point that can be eliminated by calling our representatives/councilors/etc. about ensuring safeguards are put in place. Though, I'm pretty sure the constitution has taken care of most of that as well.

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kelkyag

Civil liberties and new technologies can take rather a while to be sorted out. I'd rather see rules what data is collected, how long it is stored, and who has what access with or without a warrant discussed before such a system is installed than afterward.

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bikergeek.livejournal.com

Any technology that can be misused, eventually will be misused.

I know the usual argument is that "you have no expectation of privacy in a public area," but that was the rule before the evolution of technology that enabled mass surveillance of entire populations. Used to be that you had to target a specific individual and assign a detective to tail them, stake out their house, plant a listening device, etc. Now you can just cast a huge net and capture everything, and then use computer processing to find items of "interest", whatever those may be.

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siderea

In light of the revelations that the NSA was compromising commercial products, I'm concerned whenever the Federal government encourages/bribes municipalities to buy a specific thing.

Maybe I have attained a higher level of paranoia than most, but I think we have to consider the possibility that, quite aside from whatever capabilities the devices advertise, they may be carrying additional software (or even hardware) that only Feds know about and which are much more invasive or otherwise problematic than what makes it into the discussion.

I mean, I'm now at the point where if the DHS offered a grant for buying Acme brand shovels to fill pot holes -- or any shovels from the DHS Approved Vendors list -- I'd be like, "How do we know those shovels aren't bugged?"

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trysha.livejournal.com

this. *helps pass out tinfoil hats*

As bikergeek said.. Any technology that can be misused, eventually will be misused.

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and is.

england has wide cctv/micrphone coverage.

so does DC now. people have been listened too, and approached for having convos.

there's no reason why a new set of boxes going in can't have all kinds of goodies. the microphones i would expect to not only be very sensitive, but directional per node. the system could let anyone easily monitor on the street conversations. "triggering" (lol) the system via gun shot is another set of functions entirely.

we have a lot of rad sensors in place on highways and various bridges and city areas. they could add that. heck, a cornucopia of sensors! bring it. the police state is here.

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it will be interesting in use, since i would expect most of the gun shots will be FROM the police.

mmm...

perhaps it'll be harder to cover things up.

if the bad guys know about the microphones, they will be more likely to use suppressors...

perhaps we should be more concerned about the toys to intercept cell phones? or all the cameras? plate scanners? and more. police state much? :D

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i would expect most of the gun shots will be FROM the police.

This being the US, that seems unlikely to me. Do you have any statistics on that?

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stats you would trust / believe?

having followed many a story the last couple decades, i get a sense that since the police have gone militarized, they tend to be the ones doing most of the shooting - as in, overkill mode. overwhelming force.

take for example that couple shot to death in their car recently. 120+ rounds in 30 seconds. they were innocent. they could not fire back, because they had no guns. one detective in particular executed them at close range with multiple magazine changes.

or take Watertown recently with the Boston bombers. the guy that hid in the boat. the police used a number of grenandes on him, then they shot the boat up pretty good, and hit more than a few houses while they were at it. the bad guy didn't have a gun. so, there's a nice case of tracking how many shots actually happened during the excitement. at least one guy has a new chair due to the bullet hole ;)

what's interesting with some of the tracking systems i've read about, is that coupled with cameras, they can FIND the scene of the shoot, potentially even get some facial recognition on the perp, and TRACK them while they attempt to run. combine that with some other stuff, and well, it could be an interesting window on shootouts. course, the other things it can be used for... not so great.

if the police weren't so good at losing data when convenient, a bullet tracking / counting system could be used against them, much like their own dash cams tend to do.

there are many very good police out there, but it seems a number of the bad ones end up on youtube sooner or later.

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I'm not sure how accurate spotcrime.com is, but assuming they have access to any public records of shootings, you have to go back to November of 2010 to find one in Somerville. Googling for "shooting somerville ma" the most recent one I find is 2007. This isn't saying that the police are doing a lot of shooting either. Here we prefer our arsons to our guns, apparently.

To my mind even using an police administrator to open a cardboard box containing one of these things would already be a waste of public resources. Use the time that would be spent installing and monitoring them to find the Summer Arsonist, that would be good for everyone.

Edited Date: 2014-06-19 03:05 am (UTC)

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using an police administrator to open a cardboard box containing one of these things

It might well be a waste of time, but I expect that the time is paid for by the DHS grant, and heaven knows, every bureaucracy likes being able to spend money given to it by an outside source.

The irony of all this is that the idea was conceived a couple of decades ago, when random gunfire on the streets of poor neighborhoods was unpleasantly common. IIRC, that was parodied in Last Action Hero (1993) when the Bad Guy is boasting about how the city is hell. He fires a few shots and shouts "Attention! I have just killed a man." After a few seconds, a faraway voice replies "Shuuut up!!!".

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According to Da Google (heh), there were 11,000 "firearms-related" homicides in the US in a recent year, and 587 "citizens killed by police officers". Of course, those numbers can be bent a long way, and those are deaths, rather than shootings. But it seems reasonable to estimate that citizens fire at least 10 times as many shots as police.

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Do you have any reason to believe that these units, which transmit data to the police, are only transmitting the data they say they are and only to whom they say they are? It would be shit-simple and dead cheap to have them also transmit IDs of every cell-enabled device they can pick up.

But, no, wait a sec. I'm wrong. These are being distributed by the NSA which is a respected government agency, so that couldn't possibly be going on with these.

Dear Somerville, do the right thing. Say "No thanks" to the NSA. Gun-shots are not exactly a huge issue in S'ville. Take all the money you would spend to install and monitor these things and use that to clean some storm drains instead. You'll prevent an actual real threat to life from rats, instead of inviting more rats (the NSA) into our community.

Edited Date: 2014-06-18 04:03 pm (UTC)

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this.

unfortunately, some of these govt offers aren't actually offers. more like "we'll install them, and but you maintain them ..."

like cities getting those nice "tanks". the tanks are free, but the $50k or so a year in upkeep, is on the city. it's basically just a "loan" as the govt can "borrow it" as they want. which means a nicely distributed set of equipment. it's a good military strategy. plus pushes costs back down the line.

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ron_newman

wait, the NSA is distributing these? I don't see that in the original post.

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trysha.livejournal.com

The Department of Homeland Security is giving out grants to urban police forces for this.

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Yeah, sorry, somehow I get NSA and DHS confused sometimes. Not hard to do. Still Department of Homeland Security is distributing them (or giving grants and specifying which specific equipment those grants can be used for), But given that NSA has been able to force independent consumer electronics and software companies to provide NSA access, we have to assume that the have no *less* power over DHS.

Edited Date: 2014-06-19 03:07 am (UTC)

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The phone system is already logging where cellular devices are.

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enhf94.livejournal.com

I'm with you, but my sense has been that most folks are less concerned about these things than I. Previous thread about Som'l surveillance cameras: http://davis-square.livejournal.com/3272953.html

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Cor, don't discuss your illegal business loudly on street corners!

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