i broadly agree with the sentiment in this article, especially the "no public oversight" part.
but this:
> The reader can probably infer how this coverage pattern relates to race and class in Albuquerque. It's not perfect, but the distance from your house to a ShotSpotter sensor correlates fairly well with your household income.
is facetious and is almost certainly argued in bad faith. well, duh. the distance to the nearest "shot spotter" box also correlates with the incidence of crime and gunfire in the area. to bring up racism or classism is unhelpful. that correlation is unfortunate, likely true, and also not the problem at hand.
Actually this is a direct example of how systemic racism works. The goal isn’t to surveil minorities more, it’s just that the system watches places where crimes occur. Consider that, when an area has more surveillance, more people who commit crimes are caught. All of a sudden, you’re disproportionately catching minority criminals. Better put in more surveillance to cover the higher crime rates in those minority communities.
I get they can’t necessarily do anything about this, since they’re gonna put microphones where it’s most efficient, but maybe it’s yet another argument against mass surveillance.
>Consider that, when an area has more surveillance, more people who commit crimes are caught. All of a sudden, you’re disproportionately catching minority criminals.
Turn the coin over to the other side - you're catching criminals victimizing minorities. Nothing is simple, is it.
Uh sure, but that doesn’t effect the placement of new surveillance systems, which is the reason I mentioned it.
Also, I think you’re sort of saying that because you think catching them is a huge success, and that that offsets the harm, but it’s not gonna do a ton of good when nothing has been fixed about the underlying causes. At best the victims get catharsis, where if that money imprisoning the criminal were spent on something like providing economic opportunities or funding schools they’d likely benefit more and be more secure against future crime (not that its either or).
The vast number of reports are false, which if you read the rest of the article as serious consequences. It:
* results in many high-priority calls tying up the patrols in that area so residents who have serious issues, but not "active shooting" serious, get poorer service than people in predominantly white/wealthy neighborhoods. I think you'd be pretty annoyed if something of yours was stolen and police never show because a huge backlog of calls develops while they chase down shotspotter reports, but someone in a wealthier neighborhood reports a suspicious vehicle and police show up in minutes
* results in a lot of aggressive police action with police swarming an area looking for a "shooter." Given how discriminatory and hostile police are toward the poor and minorities, this has serious consequences....ranging from residents feeling like they're constantly being harassed, to death - a boy was shot and killed by police after setting off a firecracker that the shotspotter system reported.
but this:
> The reader can probably infer how this coverage pattern relates to race and class in Albuquerque. It's not perfect, but the distance from your house to a ShotSpotter sensor correlates fairly well with your household income.
is facetious and is almost certainly argued in bad faith. well, duh. the distance to the nearest "shot spotter" box also correlates with the incidence of crime and gunfire in the area. to bring up racism or classism is unhelpful. that correlation is unfortunate, likely true, and also not the problem at hand.