Steve

On Friday, March 14, 2014, Jake <jake@spaz.org> wrote:

I think it would be a positive move. When you hear a gunshot outside you want to believe it's far away, somebody else's problem.

when you can look at a website and see where the gunshots have been over time, you can figure out if it is your neighborhood, and decide to talk with your neighbors about it. Maybe everybody knows who it is and nobody knows what to do about it. You can have subtle, problem-solving conversations with people that the police obviously are not capable of.

as for the timing data, i think GPS clock is necessary to remain synchronized with all the other nodes (plus it serves as a handy location resolver) but i'm not sure yet what is the right way to stamp the audio data. My best guess would be to put the timestamp into the audio stream as a second audio channel, so that the central processing computer can sort it all out and pinpoint the source.

I do think this would be a good opportunity to grow the mesh network but i don't know if the mesh group would be excited to do it this way.

-jake

On Sat, 15 Mar 2014, Hol Gaskill wrote:

setting up a system like this would have a powerful effect on the public safety narrative - if the public is able to self-organize a better solution at a low cost and
share the data directly with everyone, it makes alot less sense for public officials to propose alternatives wherein our freedoms are demanded in exchange for
whatever degree of security is theoretically offered. who's saying it has to be the police that respond? if the data is made public people could show up and
videotape or whatever, or reconsider going to that area within the next hour, generally use that info however they see fit.

i think using gps clock signal or a realtime clock IC such as a ds1307 we could get pretty good time data. a condenser mic doing amplitude and spectral (audio range)
analysis would be enough to check for gunshots, maybe car crashes, sirens, etc, without storing or transmitting the actual audio. could this be a potential optional
addon module to the mesh nodes?

on Mar 14, 2014, Patrik D'haeseleer <patrikd@gmail.com> wrote:
Very interesting! That $264,000/yr fee does seem outrageous - once the system is installed, there should be relatively little maintenance to keep it
running.

I wonder if the company will be disabling or retrieving the microphones when the contract ends. It's possible the city is only "leasing" the equipment. Or that
the company has build in some sort of self-destruct to prevent cities taking over the network without them...
FWIW, I do think ShotSpotter is a useful technology, but it needs to be designed with some ethical issues in mind (e.g. not collecting and transmitting more
information than is required for its stated purpose). I think that Sudo Room taking over and overhauling the existing network in a completely open-source
fashion would be a great thing to do. That way people could satisfy themselves that the technology only does what it claims to do.
Patrik

On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 3:23 PM, Jake <jake@spaz.org> wrote:
what do people think of the shotspotter system installed in oakland?

it's a network of microphones on telephone poles, each with a GPS (for a precise clock) and a network connection. When a gunshot-like sound is
detected, they send the sound and its precise timing to a central server that determines the location of the shot, and tells the police to go there.

some people have expressed concern that the microphones are used to spy on people, but it would be impossible to hear a conversation from the top of
a telephone pole that wasnt already loud enough to be heard inside nearby houses (or the phone in your pocket).

apparently the city pays $264,000 per year to keep shotspotter going. I think sudoroom people could do it for much less if they thought it was a
useful thing. They would be discontinuing it to save money, or perhaps to avoid having to send cops to do actual work once in a while...

i mean.. sending police toward the gunfire? sounds like a good idea...

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Oakland-cops-aim-to-scrap-gunfire-detecting-5316060.php
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