[HN Gopher] ShotSpotter defamation lawsuit against Vice has been...
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ShotSpotter defamation lawsuit against Vice has been dismissed
Author : danso
Score : 157 points
Date : 2022-07-02 11:41 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| xchaotic wrote:
| ShotSpotter execs learn about Streisand effect the hard way.
| Living in Europe, I have never heard of the company, now I have.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Yeah for the past decade I've had awesome results by not doing
| anything during a controversy, and then sending DMCA requests
| and other digital cleanup methods to every source a few weeks
| later
|
| The idea was that people's system caches would have deleted
| stuff by then, so anyone that noticed _at that point_ couldn't
| go resurrect to attempt to start a Streisand
|
| Browsers and the internet are super different now, but the same
| concept generally applies: people only care if you seem to
| care.
| wbl wrote:
| You can only issue a DCMA request on behalf of the copyright
| holder. There is no takedown for butthurt.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Sometimes the controversy involves resyndication of
| copyrighted material
|
| People don't really care that much about their Streisand
| hopes to argue fair use or bother
|
| But the presence of material makes it a legitimate DMCA
| request (not like legitimacy is enforced, but I cover my
| own bases at least)
| plorkyeran wrote:
| In practice you can issue DCMA requests for any reason and
| there are zero consequences for lying.
| tootie wrote:
| It's actually very clever technology and can be extremely
| valuable when used properly. It's a shame the company isn't
| ethical enough to maintain their reputation.
|
| The way it works is they put audio sensors on roofs (mostly in
| high crime areas) and they listen for bangs. When multiple
| sensors hear a bang, they triangulate the position and try to
| determine if the bang was a gunshot then they can alert the
| police to investigate. The tech fundamentally works very well.
| It's not 100% accurate and it seems they are willing to work
| with police to fudge their analysis when asked.
| discretion22 wrote:
| Alas, because _you_ have not heard of them, does not mean your
| local police have not heard of them (they are probably using
| them already - even if you have astonishingly low gun crime in
| Europe, making the exercise a pointless waste of money).
|
| In Europe, companies selling to the police are extremely
| discrete and generally keep a hyper low profile, particularly
| when selling technology (dubious or otherwise). These deals
| generally work by 'befriending' politicians who can instruct
| police to purchase and that's all back-room type of stuff.
|
| Generally, it's when a politician wants credit by claiming some
| success in reducing/detecting crime that these things get any
| press. The publicity focuses not on the company, but on the
| genius nature of the politicians decision making.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| "...even if you have astonishingly low gun crime in
| Europe...."
|
| Er, no.
|
| You have _astonishingly high_ gun crime in the States.
|
| Sorry 'bout that.
| _jal wrote:
| You're getting downvoted of course, but it is true - the US
| is the outlier among rich nations.
|
| Per capita, the US is just behind Panama; in absolute
| numbers, Brazil is ahead by about 14%.
|
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-
| viole...
|
| Comparing just to other rich countries shows stark
| differences:
|
| https://www.healthdata.org/acting-data/gun-violence-
| united-s...
|
| It isn't even close.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Our gun crime rates _per gun_ are flabbergastingly low. Our
| gun crime rates per capita are excellent, except in some of
| the largest cities.
| _jal wrote:
| > Our gun crime rates per gun are flabbergastingly low
|
| I think I'm going to start reporting our bug resolution
| counts by text editor.
| stepanhruda wrote:
| We have lots of bugs in our product, but you will be
| happy to hear that our ratio of bug per line of code is
| excellent!
|
| Also US numbers per capita are actually very bad
| (https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-us-gun-violence-
| worl...) and worse in rural states, are you just going by
| feelings?
| dtgriscom wrote:
| > astonishingly low gun crime in Europe, making the exercise
| a pointless waste of money
|
| Worse than that; if you listen long enough and carefully
| enough, you will hear gunshots. It's like over-used medical
| testing: look for a problem, find a problem, treat the
| problem, even if had you never looked the patient would
| generally be better off.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Rural Canada here, in an area with no real gun crime.
|
| There are people on their farms shooting things (rabid
| animals), or hunting in season.
|
| I guess you could only use these things in downtown of a
| city, otherwise so many false positives..
|
| I can't even imagine in the US, land of 7 guns per person,
| plus of course the dogs are even armed...
| kornhole wrote:
| I live in a neighborhood in SF bay inhabited by only
| billionaires and millionaires. I am always looking up and
| cataloging all the surveillance devices mounted when I am
| moving around. We have plenty of ALPR's and other cameras
| but no shotspotters anywhere near where I live. If I go
| into Richmond, Oakland, or other blacker parts of the
| bay, they are prevalent. I heard what sounded like
| gunshots last night but heard no sirens afterwards. I
| have more cataloging to do with Vespucci app on my phone
| or: https://mapcomplete.osm.be/surveillance.html
| https://sunders.uber.space/
| Fargoan wrote:
| Cool subtle brag
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> There are people on their farms shooting things (rabid
| animals)
|
| I don't really care if "rural people" are using guns but
| to claim shooting rabid animals is a major use-case is
| wrong or initially misleading.
| bbarnett wrote:
| In the US, I know you guys have to be shooting at
| anything and everything, just because you have a gun.
|
| In Canada, people on farms often buy guns just as a tool,
| not for cultural reasons, or pleasure, such as long guns,
| to shoot.... yes, rabid animals, or things preying on
| their livestock.
|
| It _is_ a major use case, if you own a gun for rabid
| animals, and really don 't get it out otherwise.
|
| I also have a chainsaw, and never get it out to cut
| trees, unless it has already fallen, or a danger.
|
| EG, I have a chainsaw, but never use it to cut down trees
| for fuel.
|
| Why do you object? Some areas have a strong local rabis
| population...
| indymike wrote:
| For most Americans... guns are used as a tool just like
| in rural Canada.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Maybe, but every time I bring it up, I find myself having
| to distinguish Canadian usage, from US gun usage. Many
| Americans seem to think the entire planet is Just Like
| Them, not realising that many countries don't have issues
| with guns, and don't have Us VS Them style politics
| either.
|
| Frankly, the biggest problem we have with guns is
| smuggled handguns from the US. That is, illegal gun
| ownership.
|
| Honestly, I think every rural gun owner should get behind
| gun control in the US. It's the nutjobs, those who snap,
| or shouldn't have guns (illegal ownership) which is the
| true problem.
|
| Up here, you have to take a gun safety course to get a
| gun. It's not onerous, and it's taught by another gun
| owner, one who decided to set up shop and do so! If you
| can't pass that course (for example, don't point your gun
| at anyone -- ever!), you don't deserve a gun.
|
| And it's mandated, and you plain and simple can't buy
| ammo, or a gun, unless you have a license. And you cannot
| get a license, if you have a violent past, and a variety
| of other things.
|
| For example, get charged with a violent crime? Your
| license is immediately suspended, and you cannot have
| guns any more.
|
| I guess I have a short fuse here, because your politics
| are infecting our politics, as many people barely
| understand the law, or that "there isn't here".
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I've done it once and I witnessed my mom do it once.
|
| I'm sure it's way, way less then 1% of the shots fired
| but it's absolutely something that happens.
| Jolter wrote:
| You guys actually have rabies over there? Scary.
| einsty wrote:
| More research from Chicagoland on ShotSpotter here too. Hats off
| to the good folks at MacArthur Justice Center
| https://endpolicesurveillance.com/
| timbit42 wrote:
| I thought this was about VICE, the Versatile Commodore Emulator.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| We had a similar case of ShotSpotter faking shots for the cops in
| my city.
| https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2017/11/17/s...
|
| > On April 1, 2016, the ShotSpotter sensors picked up several
| audio bursts from a northwest Rochester neighborhood. Unable
| through its algorithms to detect a specific location, the system
| did not alert 911 or police. The system also thought the sounds
| to be the whirring blades of a helicopter, and not gunfire.
|
| > Police notified ShotSpotter of the shooting, and the company
| revisited the audio from the scene. The analysts at first thought
| there were three shots, then changed to number to four, then
| five. Analysts found the fifth shot after a prosecution request
| to review the audio again, prosecutors say.
|
| Never any evidence he fired a shot. They needed the fifth shot
| "found" because the cop shot four times, so magically it was!
|
| Reuters did a more detailed expose later:
| https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-poli...
| sva_ wrote:
| > The system [...] thought [...]
|
| Weird how people say that.
| delecti wrote:
| It's not _accurate_ to say the system thought, but it 's
| often _easier_ to describe behavior of systems by
| anthropomorphizing them. We 're also just very wired to
| ascribe intent to complex systems; it's safer for a caveman
| to overthink the rustling grass sometimes than to ignore it
| as a rule and get eaten by a lion.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Anthropomorphising automated systems also invokes certain
| other emotions. People are willing to forgive others for
| making honest mistakes, but ausomated systems should never
| be given such leniency because they will not learn from
| their mistakes.
|
| The system didn't think anything, the system followed its
| programming as set out by the people who designed it. The
| system is either right or it simply doesn't work.
| heretogetout wrote:
| Further, people are too quick to dismiss the culpability
| of engineers in the design and implementation of these
| technologies. It was programmed by software engineer;
| people like many of us on HN. This should serve as a
| cautionary tale for us and not just written off with the
| familiar "they were just doing their jobs" meme.
| humanistbot wrote:
| We need to stop calling it "machine 'learning'"
| [deleted]
| jbirer wrote:
| To be fair, everytime I ask a local about their city, they
| always tell me it's very safe and nothing happens until I
| arrive there and it's not really so. You might be biased as a
| local and ShotSpotter does regular updates based on their
| information.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Have you considered that if this happens every time, that the
| miscalibration might be on your end?
| gebruikersnaam wrote:
| You're on to something: "nothing happens until I arrive
| there"
| xbar wrote:
| Possibly the greatest abuse of "to be fair..." I have ever
| seen.
| TillE wrote:
| That's just replacing their anecdotes with your anecdotes.
| Why not look at actual data, which is likely to tell you that
| crime has plunged everywhere since the 80s.
| chitowneats wrote:
| That's part of the story. What has happened to violent
| crime rates since June 2020 in the US? I'll leave that as a
| googling exercise but something tells me you already know
| and are hand-waving.
| not2b wrote:
| You are cherry-picking an endpoint. June 2020 was close
| to the height of Covid restrictions.
|
| Climate change deniers pulled a similar trick, choosing
| 1998 as an endpoint because it was an unusually hot year.
| chitowneats wrote:
| I am identifying the beginning of a trend of increasing
| violent crime. It is still increasing. Murders are higher
| in 2022 than they were in 2021, which were higher than
| they were in 2020, in most American cities.
|
| Nowhere else in the world had a crime spike like the U.S.
| Covid restrictions surely exacerbated the situation but
| they are not the cause.
| millzlane wrote:
| Did it plunge though, or did people stop reporting, and
| police stop taking reports? Do we know why it plunged?
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| The murder rate has dropped by about half, and unless you
| think police are somehow managing to not report corpses,
| we can probably trust that as at least directionally
| accurate.
|
| Two more trends to consider, over the same period of
| time: the funding for police has skyrocketed, and the
| murder clearance rate has plunged. So despite fewer
| murders occuring and record funding, the police are still
| solving less of them than at any point in recorded
| history.
| selectodude wrote:
| >and the murder clearance rate has plunged. So despite
| fewer murders occuring and record funding, the police are
| still solving less of them than at any point in recorded
| history.
|
| Eh, there is no shortage of cops who have gone away for
| torture and planting evidence to attain those clearance
| rates. For better or worse, I prefer a low clearance rate
| than the 99+ percent clearance rate in say, Japan. At
| least we can be pretty damn sure the people going away
| for murder right now actually did it.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I agree with you up until the part where we can be pretty
| sure the people going away for murder right now did it.
| This very thread is on an article about how, when a
| forensic gunshot analysis tool was found to be
| fabricating evidence, they sued for defamation instead of
| fixing it. Police still lie and plant evidence all the
| time, and our carceral system is set up to coerce those
| suspects into guilty pleas to avoid going to trial.
|
| Here's a Twitter thread with the clearance rate details,
| if you're interested [1]. Another damning trend: since
| the 90s, the decrease in clearance rate has been driven
| disproportionately by failure to solve murders with Black
| victims.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/chrishnews/status/1542173173008957441
| mistrial9 wrote:
| add another factor -- an Emergency Room Nurse told me
| that the murder rate would be substantially higher except
| for advances in trauma medicine over the last few
| decades, as well. This is from a city you have heard of
| in the USA with consistent, serious urban murder rates.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Other forms of crime, including violent crimes like the
| sort that might've lead to death before our advances in
| trauma care - assaults, stabbings, shootings, etc. - are
| similarly down. It's not just a drop in murder; it's
| across the board.
| Hellbanevil wrote:
| steve76 wrote:
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| >Why not look at actual data, which is likely to tell you
| that crime has plunged everywhere since the 80s.
|
| Overall _yes,_ _but_ not everywhere in my opinion. Many
| places got safer, but some places got much worse
|
| edit: added "Yes, but" for clarification.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Sorta true - there will always be outliers - but not in
| the way you may think.
|
| https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/em/summer16/hi
| ghl...
|
| > Disadvantaged neighborhoods have experienced _larger_
| drops in crime, although significant disparities persist.
| dmix wrote:
| That case was mentioned in the original Vice article and was a
| big part of the complaint.
| xbar wrote:
| Thanks for the corroboration.
|
| ShotSpotter has now an earned reputation as: 1. Generally full
| of crap 2. Tampering with evidence as a practice
| nikanj wrote:
| 2. As a _service_. Why do you think they get paid?
| tootie wrote:
| ShotSpotter is a private company that is 100% dependent on
| police for their business. It's a relationship that is bound
| to end up corrupt. Whenever ShotSpotter makes the police look
| bad, they'll end the contract.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The worst part about this is that there are plenty of other
| companies that contract with the police with similar
| incentives and collusion.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| Consider also they didn't just start doing all this
| yesterday. Lots of policy/legal cases/social conclusions
| based on their performance is suspect.
| remram wrote:
| How is this admissible as evidence in court? Unknown
| proprietary processing commissioned and paid for by one of the
| parties?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| drone vendors for badged-types here in California are
| absolutely promoting on-board processed data products, with
| every doubt that raises, in place. To be complete, there are
| great advantages possible with correct and reproducible on-
| board signal processing. For a market comparison according to
| me, see the "reproducible data" for academic papers problem
| system-wide, multiply the stakes and take some small
| percentage of the general intelligence, and you get this
| drones market. :-/
| Jolter wrote:
| According to the article, the evidence has sometimes been
| thrown out or rescinded in court.
| 1-6 wrote:
| Genuine question though, can one get accurate/precise
| triangulation from microphones? This isn't comparable to Richter
| scales distributed across the land to measure locations of
| earthquakes. Are we dealing with sham tech?
| mlyle wrote:
| In principle you can.
|
| The biggest problem are reflections and multipath (which are
| also problems for locating earthquakes). Also, classifying
| whether a noise came from a gun, when heard from far away in an
| urban environment with lots of other noises around, is hard.
|
| Simplest method is trilateration. By knowing the travel time
| from multiple places, you can figure out the source point.
| twawaaay wrote:
| Sure we can. And it is surprisingly easy.
|
| Sound waves travel 300m every second.
|
| If you can get devices synchronised to 1ms (which isn't very
| difficult given very easy access to GPS which is orders of
| magnitude more accurate), you can triangulate to at least
| within 1m.
|
| There is some complication like the sound travels at different
| speed depending on pressure of the gas. The sound might have
| also arrived to the microphone on not the shortest path. The
| shortest might have been obstructed, for example, and what you
| got is a reflection off of a distant object or even sound that
| was "bent" by layers of air with different properties.
|
| But if you have ever heard a gun shot, most of the time you got
| first the sound wave that reached you directly and then
| possibly some reflections. By analysing those reflections and
| assuming that if multiple gunshots were made, they were made at
| roughly the same spot, it is possible to discern whether you
| heard one gunshot with reflections or multiple series resulting
| from multiple shots.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| VICE is so frustratingly good at doing investigative journalism
| while simultaneously being filled to the brim with total crap.
| lom wrote:
| What for crap?
| millzlane wrote:
| I think some of the total crap is what drew me to them. I don't
| think it was the hard hitting journalism as it was the bit of
| gonzo style stuff.
| mwt wrote:
| I was also surprised to learn (years ago) BuzzFeed has a
| decently-sized investigative team
| NobodyNada wrote:
| *had: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/22/buzzfeed-investors-
| have-push...
| jbirer wrote:
| [deleted]
| pjc50 wrote:
| ? It seems the news in question is not fake.
| mesofile wrote:
| Direct link to ruling:
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22077446-shotspotter...
|
| Original Vice News story:
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-sh...
|
| Previous discussion of above story:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27959755
|
| Previous related discussion: "A man spent a year in jail on
| murder charge that hinged on disputed AI evidence":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28264686
| dmix wrote:
| Also a link to the original complaint filed by ShotSpotter,
| which someone else posted here but has been flagged dead:
|
| https://shotspottercomplaint.com/gallery/20211011%20ShotSpot...
|
| This provides some interesting background on the company
| (obviously biased)
| aaron695 wrote:
| dontbenebby wrote:
| Can they abuse those mics to pick up human conversation?
| dmix wrote:
| They claim in the complaint that the microphones protect
| privacy by only recording audio when sharp high pitched sounds
| happen and they limit recordings to 30 seconds. Of course they
| are listening 24/7, it's just the persistence part that's
| capped.
|
| The microphones are also high up, like in light posts, so it's
| not the best place for audio surveillance.
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