Truemors
Coming out of the FBI is news of a private sector crime fighting technology named ShotSpotter. Though it sounds very much like Science Fiction, this new technology:
..... is a new crime-fighting tool that helps locate and track gunfire using “acoustic triangulation”—caused when sound waves are recorded at two or more locations.
The technology was suggested to the FBI by Special Agent Ron Chavarro, who had apparently heard of the technology elsewhere. I put the details into a search engine and got multiple listings, so ShotSpotter is widely available to anyone who cares to buy it - and if they have the money.
ShotSpotter costs police departments around USD$325,000, which includes the sensors placed on the top of buildings which are hooked up to a central computer. I'm sure this price varies, depending on the location, how many sensors are required and ease of installation.
What worries me about the technology being publicly available, is that terrorist technophiles would easily be able to reverse engineer the software and eventually be able to combat the way it works, by developing something else. I don't pretend to know exactly how the actual software works, but how difficult would it be to introduce something like a "scrambler" to distort the electronic information that the FBI receives?
ShotSpotter's first real public test-run, was conducted along I-270. It was only a matter of hours before the software registered the sound of gunfire. The data was so incredibly spot-on, that investigators were able to immediately recover shell casings from the shooting - which led to the arrest of Charles McCoy Jr.
Currently in America, (and very quietly installed,) there are now 27 cities protected by ShotSpotter;
82.7 total miles are protected by the software;
543,548 citizens are protected;
40 gunshots detected per night during December.
In Palo Alto, California, just earlier this month, Frost and Sullivan presented ShotSpotter for its "Innovative Gunshot Location System that Enhances Public Safety." Krishnakumar Srinivasan, a research analyst for Frost and Sullivan, said:
“Irresponsible firearm use is an increasing problem worldwide and ShotSpotter has been very successful at developing a proprietary technology that detects and locates gunshots in urban and war torn environments,”
If the technology is so fantastic (I'm not questioning it,) why aren't the military using it in Iraq and other war zones? Surely it would save hundreds of lives there. A good example would be the current American/Iraqi war. Before taking over a town, could not a reconnaisance soldier, covertly install temporary sensors (that don't have to be removed,) before the rest of the Army moves in?
They could also carry a (smaller) central computer to immediately interpret the data and turn any snipers waiting for them, nto dust
In addition to providing the exact location of gunfire events, the system captures the actual audio of gunfire events heard by its sensors. This information allows dispatchers and law enforcement officers to have invaluable situational awareness prior to arriving at the crime scene. Additional information available to dispatchers, patrol officers, and investigators include the number of shots fired, the number of shooters, and moving speed of the shooters if they are in motion.
Very impressive are the patent-protected technologies not available anywhere else, which include:
* Low Sensor Density – ShotSpotter’s patented spatial filter technology makes ShotSpotter the only company to offer sensor densities lower than 25 sensors per square mile. (In fact, ShotSpotter systems generally use only eight to twelve sensors per square mile.) No other company can offer a sensor network with fewer than 25 sensors per square mile. And sensor density is critical, not only for the speed and ease of installation and low cost, but also for accuracy.
* GPS-Synchronized Sensors – ShotSpotter holds patents on GPS-integrated gunshot detection sensor. This key advance allows ShotSpotter users to “install and forget” sensors—with no difficult surveyor’s tools, external GPS devices, or data entry required. Moreover, because the clocks in GPS-enabled devices are accurate to 20 nanoseconds or less, ShotSpotter sensors are always precisely time-synchronized, thereby eliminating the time-consuming and costly task of time-calibrating disparate arrays of sensors.
Even more impressive is that the product is easily able to distinguish shots from other noises that can sound like gunshots; such as car backfires; bottle rockets and even nail guns have confused past witnesses who thought it was gunfire.
If you want to be even more impressed, read this report coming out of Wired, which describes how Stanley Bai, a computer programmer with ShotSpot rode with Officer Dadgar on his shift in Oakland, to first test the software. The officer describes how there had been "a shooting spree on pretty much every block we just passed." Scary stuff.
It was in that article that I found a reference to their mobile version of the gunshot-location system, so yes it seems I was on target - the Army can definitely make good use of ShotSpot. It really is a very good article.
You might also enjoy this article from Jolt at the UCLA Journal of Law and Technology.
This statement coming from police in Gary, Indiana is high praise for the product:
“As fast as bullets went into the air, we were arresting shooters.”
If you'd like to see exactly how ShotSpotter works, you'll probably be interested in one of the short movie explanations (to the right.)
When I've finished this article, I'll be uploading a few movies to do with this amazing crime fighting technology - so if they're not visible here (on the right) yet, they'll still be uploading to Now Public.
Sources:
ShotSpotter
Frost and Sullivan on ShotSpotter
Wired
Jolt: UCLA Journal of Law and Technology - by Christopher Benjamin
Image Sources:
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