[sudo-discuss] shotspotter will be discontinued

Fri Mar 14 23:56:48 PDT 2014

I don't want to spout rhetoric or stifle conversation. I feel like there's
good intention but I do feel obliged to raise this point:

When you call the police you are not sending helpful helpers who are out to
catch the bad guys and keep Oakland warm and fuzzy and safe. OPD is
completely fucked up.

I can see the shitstorm churning  on the horizon. I extremely encourage
Sudo Room not to collaborate with the police.

Gabby
On Mar 14, 2014 6:49 PM, "GtwoG PublicOhOne" <g2g-public01 at att.net> wrote:

>
>
> Anything that can pick up a gunshot will also pick up false positives such
> as: fireworks going off, automobiles backfiring, loud motorcycles starting,
> and sometimes, basketballs bounced hard on the street and baseballs hit
> with bats.  That's why audio recording & monitoring is useful during
> possible gunshot events.
>
> If all the event-datapoints are logged to a public map that anyone can
> click to examine the data more closely, the risk of abuse of any audio or
> video transmission or recording function is minimal, because any abuse or
> non-essential use of audio/video will be found and exposed quickly.
>
> With appropriate safeguards, audio & video will help catch shooters.
> Safeguards would include a rolling record/erase that stores a maximum of
> e.g. 15 minutes of recording, centered on the event.  With this you can see
> e.g. the car drive up before the passenger shoots the pedestrian, or the
> souped-up motorcycle start up with loud pops and a roar.  The same actions
> that trigger saving a recording for evidence, would also put information to
> that effect on the datapoint on the map.
>
> The contract terms with the city (which should also be public) should
> specify usage for evidence of violent crimes only, and that any abuse of
> the recording capability (such as to pull over that motorcycle driver for a
> loud exhaust system) would trigger a large financial penalty.  If the city
> gov is serious about stopping crime rather than e.g. catching loud
> motorcycles and illegal fireworks, the city should have no trouble signing
> a contract with those terms & conditions.
>
> -G.
>
>
> =====
>
>
> On 14-03-14-Fri 5:46 PM, Steve Berl wrote:
>
> It is a DSP problem that should already be solved. I suspect google can
> turn up a lot of info. I suspect It can likely be implemented on a little
> Linux board computer like a RaspberryPI or similar. Add the cost of a
> microphone, GPS, and mesh networking HW.
>
>  Steve
>
> On Friday, March 14, 2014, Jake <jake at spaz.org> wrote:
>
>> I'm glad somebody knows about this!  however i would suggest that it's
>> not quite as simple to decide "when the big impulse of sound starts"
>> without waiting for it to end and then choosing a peak event.
>>
>> the best i know how to do is a peak detector where you wait for the slope
>> of the amplitude to head downward after a threshold is achieved, but i
>> think we can do better, and i think we would need to if we were going to
>> achieve good results.  and the more versatile the analysis is better, to
>> reduce false alarms (!) and increase detection of events at lower
>> amplitudes.
>>
>> On Fri, 14 Mar 2014, Steve Berl wrote:
>>
>>  You don't need to record and transmit the audio at all. You just need
>> the time of when the big impulse of sound starts, which you can do locally.
>> Just transmit the
>> time stamp.
>> NTP has a lot of the logic built in to discipline a computer clock to a
>> few microseconds of UTC time. It works best attached directly to a serial
>> port.
>>
>> Steve
>>
>> On Friday, March 14, 2014, Jake <jake at 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 at 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 at 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).
>>
>>
>
> --
> -steve
>
>
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