14 Mar
2014
14 Mar
'14
4:51 p.m.
I guess I should go to a mesh meeting and see how interested that group is
in a project like this. I would be willing to talk to city officials to
see about funding an tying it in with the mesh network, but i would not be
surprised if there are reasons people wouldn't want to do it.
my perspective is that yes, city government is fucked up. so we should
take over and do a better job.
-jake
On Fri, 14 Mar 2014, Patrik D'haeseleer 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(a)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-detec…
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