November 2, 2022 • 61 mins
ShotSpotter is a private company leveraging audio technology and proprietary algorithmns to locate gunfire with an incredibly high degree of accuracy. It's currently deployed across hundreds of square miles of the US -- many proponents argue it saves lives, but critics allege it has some serious problems... including corruption and conspiracy. In the second part of this two-part series, the guys explore the claims, concerns and controversies surrounding ShotSpotter -- including the stories other media made about the company, before those claims were retracted for inaccuracy. They don’t want you to read our book.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Grady. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt Our colleague Nol is not here today,
but we'll return tomorrow very soon. They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission
controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Before we get started, shot Spotter did reach out to
(00:48):
us regarding some of the statistics provided in our episodes
and their position with respect to the Williams case. Shot
spot a disclaims all responsibility and Mr Williams incarceration and
disagrees the associated press is factual assertions regarding changing locations.
If you're interested in reviewing additional information from shot Spotter
on these topics, please visit www dot shot spotter dot com.
(01:13):
Heads up, fellow conspiracy realist. This is part two of
a two part series. We are continuing our discussion of
the famous or infamous, certainly controversial technology known as shot
spot Er. Previously, we discussed the terrifying reality of gun
(01:36):
deaths in these United States. We also looked at the
ways in which law enforcement, local and federal level political bodies,
and average average citizens right just the folks you would
see on next door trying to figure out a solution. Um.
(01:57):
And it's funny, Matt, because in the interim between you
Noel and I recording Part one of shot Spotter and
Part two of shot Spotter, I I went out, I
hit the streets and I looked for some shot Spotter arrays,
(02:19):
and I'm pretty sure I found some. Maybe they're not
brand name, but I'm pretty sure. I like knowing now
what we know about sort of the combo meal of
how these things are set up. Just for a quick
refresher for everybody. Shot Spotter is using some pretty impressive
(02:40):
algorithmic software and some pretty cool microphones. In part one,
we were not able to discern the specific brand name
of these microphones, but we do know the following there's
something like fifteen to twenty per square mile, and these
(03:01):
microphone arrangements also include the following a GPS and onboard
computer transmitter and some never we have some of the
algorithmic stuff on site, so it can quickly do a calculation.
Is that a dump truck? Is that someone with a
(03:23):
legendary fart. I think we nailed down the science, right.
No one can fart such that shot Spotter will mistake
it for a gunshot. Right to our knowledge, that's not possible.
It hasn't happened yet. That isn't to say, you know,
some fast food company will invent something to allow that
(03:43):
to to occur. Just on the microphones, I'm going to say,
their quote audio detection devices unquote are likely proprietary. So
they probably are labeled shot Spotter right as like a
brand name or something like that, And we just don't
know what they are be because it is it's technology
that they've invented or at least patented, right. So the
(04:08):
big thing to be aware of its expensive for a
police department to run this thing in a city, and
it costs taxpayers a ton of money. And what we're
gonna talk about today is that the system itself. While
the company you know says, hey, this thing works great,
while there are a lot of people on the internet
you can find that say hey, this thing is amazing
(04:28):
and it works great. A lot of listeners to stuff
they don't want you to know are saying the same thing, yes,
or at least they're aware of how function it seems
to function well. But there are a lot of detractors,
people who say, there's a whole other side to this coin,
and we're going to explore that today. Yeah, and when
we do a two parter. We don't do these super often,
(04:50):
but when we do a two parter, it's usually because
we have, um, we've got a little bit deeper in
the rabbit hole, and we didn't have time to make
a brief. You know, That's one of the infamous jokes
about writing Matt, which I'm sure you've heard, is I
can't remember who it was. Fellow conspiracy realists help us
(05:11):
out here. But there are multiple instances of these writers
corresponding with each other and sending their version of an
essay length text and ending it with sorry in a hurry,
didn't have time to make this brief, so we didn't
(05:32):
We didn't have the time to make this brief. And
you know, when Matt, Noel and I are hanging out
on air or off, we often run into these sorts
of these sorts of moments where we say, how can
we accurately concentrate the facts, the controversy, the conspiracy into
(05:56):
something that doesn't become a four are our long weird
hangout session. If you want to learn what our endless
hangout sessions are like without the you know, without the
constraints of podcasting, do check out our book. Stuff. They
don't want you to know. We we even had this
(06:21):
is how weird we get with it, folks. We even
had um our publishers come to us several times and say, hey,
this chapter is a little long, but I think we're
able to get a lot of stuff in there. What
do you think. Yeah, to my knowledge, we were able
to fit everything we wanted to in there. We did
(06:41):
have to pare it down to government only stuff from
all the research we gathered right right the the cryptic
chapter cryptozoology chapter is one of my favorites, and maybe
oh yeah, yeah, oh gosh, we went deep on that too. Basically,
we have another book, is what we're saying. We kind
(07:05):
of have another book that will have to will have
to be on the way too soon, and the best
way to help us make that happen is to check
out this first book. We hope that you enjoyed it's
available wherever you find your favorite books, whether that's your
local bookstore, whether that's Amazon. Well, yeah, and and let
(07:26):
let daddy bezos know how you feel about the book
by going on Amazon and reviewing it. Seriously, if you've
got any kind of Amazon account and you do like
the book, please review it. That that helps a ton,
it does it? Weirdly helps a ton? Uh? And yeah,
we want to be we want to be your five
star crew, you know what I mean. And because we're asking,
(07:49):
we're asking you, our fellow listeners uh for for a
little help at the top in terms of ratings, especially,
we want to give you something in return. Right, So
we spend a lot of time and shot Spotter, here
are the facts. Back to the backstory. Okay, Matt, you
and I haven't spoken for a weird amount of time
(08:09):
for us, because we've both been doing some crazy things.
Matt is executive producer on one of my favorite seasonal shows,
Thirteen Days of Halloween. You and are pal Alex Williams,
and I guess our pal Clancy Brown. We can say
it now right, Uh? Yes that guy. Uh. I've been
(08:34):
working on this wonderful horror show and it's coming out
now as you hear this episode, you should be able
to hear all thirteen episodes of Thirteen Days of Halloween.
I'm super biased. I always get a chance to to
write a couple of episodes and it's um it makes
(08:55):
my year, honestly. But in that interim, I was also
working on a secret project, which may hear Matt and
Noel allude to cryptically in our listener mail and strange
news segments. I hate to miss stuff, but it's it's
been that kind of thing, you know, been in the
absence of transparency. M hm, speculation. That sounds good. Who
(09:22):
wrote that? So the the thing I found about shot Spotter,
It's fascinating. It was I I found, but had not
have not confirmed, some sort of audio tracking relays here
in the neighborhood of our old office. Additionally, you know,
as we get, as we get closer and closer to Halloween,
(09:46):
I heard more and more gun shots, and I heard
two very close gun shots, and I was thinking back
to um an earlier conversation we had. I can't remember
whether it was on air or off where we were.
I think it's when we were reading letters from fellow
listeners in law enforcement and we started asking each other
(10:11):
which of us had ever called the police to report
a gunshot. I don't remember what you said, did you know?
For me, it was pointing out that where I lived previously,
I would hear gunshots pretty consistently. Um. I would also
hear fireworks, and it was difficult at times to tell
what was what. Depending on the distance right you could
(10:32):
you could kind of make it out. If I was, like,
if you're standing outside right at the time when one
of these shots or fireworks occurred, you could usually discern
and you could kind of tell even the caliber, often
depending on several factors. But what it sounds like, you
just kind of get used to the sound of certain weapons. Um.
But if you're inside your house, especially like if it's
(10:53):
late at night, many people, including myself, wouldn't be able
to discern and then likely wouldn't call the police unless
you know, you're a particularly I'm not crabby person, but
somebody who's really concerned and is often in contact with
the police, right right, right, right, Um, what may be
called a busy body sometimes. But also we have to
(11:15):
we have to remember that, you know, there's a reason
good Samaritan laws and so on exists. Many people are
rightly concerned about engaging involving themselves in this situation, and
so often people won't call contact first responders or emergency
(11:36):
services unless they feel those gunshots are aimed at them.
Even then, you know, if you think about it rationally,
if you call your local police department, depending on how
close you are to that department, by the time a
shot has been fired, you've heard it, you've called the police,
they've dispatched an officer or two, and then the officer
(11:57):
makes it out there, it's very unlikely the devil police
officer will be able to do anything to prevent further
crime or stop whatever is happening. Uh. It is often
if there was an actual shooting, that officer is going
to be a first responder to a gunshot victim rather
than you know, stopping a crime. The response time is huge.
(12:21):
Also side note, if you are ever in a situation
where you feel someone is outside your house or threatening
you with entering your house or something, or you know,
your apartment, wherever you live, your domicile, always remember a
lot of people mess this part up. Don't say I'm
(12:42):
going to call the police or I'm I'm going to
call nine one one say I have called, they are
on their way. You know what I mean, Because what
you're doing if you threaten to call instead of just
making it is you're essentially telling people there is a
time interval to to your point, Matt, there's a time
(13:03):
interval before these folks arrive, right, And Look, this can
be nasty stuff, but the idea of shot Spotter and
similar technologies is to fight against this, to mitigate that
interval of time between a gunshot being fired and someone
(13:26):
getting to the scene. When it works, as we explain
in Part one, it can definitely absolutely save lives, save
lives of law enforcement individuals, first responders e m t
s can know what they're getting into. Uh, it can
(13:47):
save the lives of civilians. It can also help cut
short spree shooters, you know, mass shooters who might have
might be proceeding on foot through an brewood right or
through some certain region or community. So this can make
a difference when it works. Yeah, and according to shot Spotter,
(14:09):
it also increases the likelihood that ballistics evidence will be recovered,
which would help close a case if there was an
actual crime that occurred that led to a trial or something. Yes, perfect,
that's perfect. Foreshadowing here because you see part two of
this of this series could probably be called shot Spotter
(14:34):
goes to Court. So what happens what happens when this
private company it starts helping save or put people away.
We're gonna pause for word from our sponsor and we'll
be back. Here's where it gets crazy, Matt. You set
(15:01):
this up so very well. That's one that's we're back
in the land of controversies about this technology. And again,
to be clear, we are exploring this stuff that critics
and proponents have said about shot Spotter. Additionally, shot Spotter
(15:24):
is not the only audio tracing software or system out there.
It's like how Coca Cola is not the only soda
you can buy at the grocery store. It's just the
one you might be most aware of. So shot Spotter
probably gets a lot more public attention because it is
(15:49):
more pervasive than a lot of these audio tracking other
audio tracking private entities. What you need to know is
there is more than one. However, shot Spotter is the
and that comes up the most because they right now
have the most data out of again the private companies.
And we're going to get into some sticky stuff about
(16:11):
the future man. I know you saw the stat Matt
shot spotter itself. How accurate is it? Right? Like, how
many times has someone responded on the ground to a
shot spotter report and found it was just a dump truck,
a superhuman farter road construction, you know, stuff like that.
(16:33):
How accurate is it? I saw the statistic and the
statistic feels bold. Yeah, it is a bold statistic. Shots
Water claims that their system has a nineties seven percent
accuracy rate when it comes to identifying gunshots versus other
loud sounds in a city where it's placed seven percent.
(16:57):
It's very important to remember that is accuracy into scarning
whether or not the sound emanated that it's tracking was
a shot right, right? And and with that statistic, we
also have to acknowledge that statistics can be so slippery.
What they're saying is cent of the time they are
(17:18):
right when they say something is or is not a
gun shot. That's not the same thing as saying cent
of the time they're right about the specifics of the firearm,
not at all. It's just it's like up there with um.
You know, before Google went full alphabet, they had that
motto don't be evil, and we used to We used
(17:41):
to joke back and forth about how there's a world
of difference between don't be evil and be good. You know. So,
so they're not saying of the time they can tell you,
you know, this was an a k versus something else. Right.
What they are saying is that they know the difference
(18:02):
between the stuff that is just you know, the burps
of farts of your average city versus actual discharge of
a firearm. The thing is a lot of folks dispute this.
One of the biggest customers for shot Spotter, and specific
in the United States is the beautiful city of Chicago. Chicago,
(18:27):
we miss you. We're gonna hit the road soon and
say hello in person. But the thing about Chicago for
our purposes is that as it is such a huge
customer of shot Spotter, it also generates a lot of
data to pour into to look at this claim of accuracy.
(18:47):
The conspiracy here from the critics is the idea that
shot Spotter is uh being purposely misleading about that percent statistic,
which again is bold. Another other thing we have to
realize about this statistic is you will see different claims.
They're They're always going to be you know, a pretty
(19:09):
high percentile, but you will see different specific claims about
the accuracy. We went to shot Spotter's own website, we
looked at their literature and the nine seven percent claim
is from twenty nineteen, and they said the system overall
(19:30):
had an aggregate accuracy rate across the entirety of their
customer base, which you know, you and I work with
marketing departments. We love ours. But it does sound a
little bit like marketing, doesn't it matter? Yeah, it does
sound quite a bit like marketing. It's strange. They're in
that same statement, they're saying there's a very small false
(19:52):
positive rate of less than half of a percentage of
all reported gunfire incidents. That's that's inten okay. Yeah. They
also point out in their own literature that the system
and the process are evolving constantly. Right, work in progress.
(20:13):
We are building the playing that we are flying, which
can be taken one of two ways. One it can
be seen by the more optimistic as an inspiring thing.
You know, one day, right, there will be a hundred
percent accuracy. The other, more cynical response would be, hey,
(20:36):
why don't you finish building it before you put it out?
You know what I mean? And that just I call
it the Larry David scale, Like, how Larry David, are
you going to be about some stuff? But this is unfortunately,
this is not you know, this is not complaining about
the big salad or whatever. People's lives are at stake,
and the question becomes, is this a tool deployed in
(20:59):
good faith to save human lives or is there's something
else at play? And that's that's the scary part, and
that's why we have to talk about these statistics, which
get a little crazy. So Chicago huge customer for shots Spotter.
Shot spotter itself says percent accuracy overall as of twenty nineteen.
(21:22):
Other cities, other local journalists in the community will will
have better stats about how shot spotter functions in their
neck of the global woods. Uh now, I think I'm
thinking of that San Francisco Examiner article right when they
point into it a different um was that different overall
(21:45):
accuracy rate for shot Spotter? Uh yeah, I can read
you a quote from it. It comes from seventeen and
again it's a statement from shot Spotter. They, according to
this article, guarantee accuracy of the time and that is
speaking again. Well, I don't know, I don't know the
context here. I guess that's in detecting an actual gunshot. Yeah,
(22:09):
and that comes from the CEO, Ralph Clark. Ralph Clark
is named in multiple articles on shot Spotter. Often he's
talking about things he feels journalists got wrong, you know
what I mean. And and it's another get we made
a joke about in part one. But shot Spotter is litigious,
(22:32):
so they're I mean, they're not scientology level litigious. But
that's why if you look at outfits like Associated Press
or Vice News, you will see some specific retractions or
clarifications published. Shot Spotter wants people two avoid criticizing it,
(22:54):
which is, you know, that's what every business wants, right. However,
people are disputing the statistics, and the people who are
disputing these claims are not um, you know, your uncle
on Facebook or whatever. There are places like the MacArthur
Justice Center in Chicago. They studied more than forty thousand
(23:19):
shot Spotter dispatches and they found that eighty nine percent
of those dispatches resulted in no gun related crime. That's
a quote from MacArthur. Uh, and they said eighty six
percent resulted in no crime at all. That's interesting. We
(23:40):
see another three percent discrepancy, right, So so it's like
the did the cops just show up and someone was
like throwing rocks and orphans and they were like, that's
not a gun shot, that's a crime. Well, again, that's
what we're talking about. It doesn't matter how fast and
accurate shot spotter is in detecting a gun shot. By
(24:00):
the time an officer is able to arrive on scene,
there may be no evidence of a gun being fired. Theoretically,
there would be shell casings on the ground if someone
just was firing a weapon and then you know, got
out of there quickly, as is often the case, and
they would probably not take the time to pick up
any shell casings. But it depends on where the thing
(24:23):
where the shots occur. It depends on what the you know,
ground looks like. There. Is it gravel, is it dirt,
is it asphalt? Is it, uh, you know, tall grass,
And there's so many factors. It's tough for me thinking
about that resulted in no gun really crime, no crime
(24:45):
at all when it comes to because that really doesn't
mean that shot spotter is failing. That means that when
officers arrive on scene, there's no evidence of a crime.
There's nobody to apprehend that, there's nobody to even probably
talk to unless there is somebody there, right, and then
they become highly suspicious, no matter what they had to
(25:08):
do or didn't have to do with firing a weapon.
You know, we're talking about someone who is maybe just
hanging out on the street, maybe someone who's unhoused, right,
maybe someone who lives there and is on their porch,
you know what I mean. And that's not that's not
(25:29):
bad police work either. That's hey, let me get an
eye witness, you were here, tell me what's going on.
Or it could be bad police work too. It could
be because that person, that person could automatically be seen
as a suspect as or somebody potentially had something to
do with the gunfire. So it's just it's especially if
(25:51):
that person has priors, right, if they have a jacket already,
you know what I mean. This is amusing jack as
the slang term for your record in a folder in
an incarceration system. But if they already have some priors,
then of course suspicion automatically falls on them. You could
(26:13):
be a good person in the wrong place at the
wrong time, and all of a sudden you're jammed up,
But consider the other side. We're still in Chicago with
this um. The Chicago Inspector General kind of backed up
these findings from the MacArthur Justice Center and they found
(26:36):
that this was expensive for police departments. Just like in
part one, we talked about this really fascinating deep dive
into St. Louis, Missouri, uh in Police Chief magazine, which
I still didn't still surprised that's a magazine, but but
there's this deep dive into the hidden cost of systems
(26:58):
like this. Four police departments and therefore four taxpayers in
those cities, in those towns, in those communities. Anyway, Chicago
Inspector General backs up MacArthur Justice which also backs up
some of the findings in St. Louis, and they say,
(27:19):
these police officers are changing their practice. They're stopping and
searching people, right, stopping frisk basically for no other reason
than they were in that place where shot spotter frequently
gives alerts in the vicinity. Yeah, so not having to
(27:39):
do with with responding to a shot spotter hit. Yeah,
not a specific pop just hey right, that sounds a
little bit like an attempt at predicting crime. Just a
little bit. Sounds like trying to get in front of something,
but it's also missing the big step one. Why are
(28:01):
there many shots spotter alerts? Because you have shot spot
ter there, you wouldn't have those alerts because there would
still be the old dispatch who calls the police kind
of system. But also some l e O s are
not super into this law enforcement officers because they're thinking
of the time it takes. Right, if I normalize responding
(28:26):
to this, I get the call, I get the buzz,
it sounds like it's legit. I'm on the way, it's over.
There's no victim, you know what I mean, there's no
case sing, there's nobody on the street to even you know,
detained for a while. Well, then how many other calls
(28:47):
have I missed while doing that right in a resource
strapped environment? Well, and if you also, I think it
would be hard for a police department to justify not responding.
If you're shot spot er software goes off right or
the hardware detect a gun shot, how could you justify
not investigating that or sending out a car to at
(29:08):
least check it out? Uh? Yeah, which is puts a
real drain. Ye shot spotter told us there was automatic
gunfire at a place that has a lot of reports
of gun crime, and we just chose to ignore it.
That doesn't look good. And there are all of these
factors that we're considering in this episode, and it is
(29:30):
obviously extremely complicated. This is not a clear cut issue, right. Uh.
One of the ways that we could better evaluate this
is if we had more hard information, information that wasn't
let's say, put together by a sales team to go
out and sell more shot Spotters in more cities. If
(29:51):
we if we could actually see how does this system
actually function in the real world. Um, but we're not
really getting that. We are getting specifics coming out of
cases that have arisen because of a Shot Spotter call.
Though m HM and I love what you just did.
(30:12):
Their men. You subtly slid in a reference to a
quote by a Shot spot Ter employee, Paul Green, who said, quote,
our guarantee was put together by our sales and marketing department,
not our engineers. That's referring to the accuracy quote right right,
(30:34):
and then, as we as we know, was apparently seven
percent according to their marketing folks. So you point out
a great thing we can look at specific cases. We
can look at something like the case of Corey Ali Mohammad,
who was a mass shooter apprehended in April with help
(30:59):
from shot Spotter. So being able to triangulate where these
shots were occurring played a massive role in helping law
enforcement in Fresno catch this guy before he killed more people. Um,
(31:19):
this was you know, this was a hate crime, racially
motivated kind of spree killing, and more people probably would
have died if the law wasn't able to get to
this criminal when they did. And that's that's the shot
Spotter story. But the thing is, that's like one, one
specific case, right, that's a success story, as weird as
(31:43):
it sounds, because this guy did get convicted of four murders,
but it's not five, it's not eight, and you know
it's not twenty. And that's what shot Spotter saying. They
helped create the alped to mitigate the situation. And this
is the thing. Shot Spotter is supposed to be a
(32:04):
diagnostic outfit. It's supposed to be an investigative tool for
the police. An investigative tool is not the same thing
as primary evidence in a court of law. In the
United States, evidence is a different thing, and so some
of the critics are saying this is a bridge too far,
(32:26):
This is the wrong rubicon to cross for shot spot
Er data to be shared out as evidence in a
court of law. And this is not just us on
on stuff they don't want you to know saying that stuff,
is saying this can be a sketchy operation. This is
a particular concern to places like the a c l U.
(32:50):
They say they had a quote that really stood out
to me because their accusation is that shot Spotter is
kind of cherry picking the data, the information that it
does or does not share, and it's not showing its
work either, but it's doing it in court, meaning that
(33:16):
people can go to prison without transparency on this stuff. Yeah,
at best, I think shot Spotter could and probably should
be used as supporting evidence. You can if you're going
through a trial and as a prosecutor you are trying
to prove that a gun was fired in this vicinity
(33:36):
at this specific time, you would have time stamps associated
with that weapon being fired with shot Spotter. But again
that's not that's not the primary evidence to prove that
whoever your suspect is, is the person who fired that
weapon that is just supporting the fact that a weapon
was fired at that time. Does that make yes? Yeah,
(33:57):
I was just I don't know if we're on video,
if this will make it into into our YouTube channel,
check that out. But I was, I was doing a
lot of non verbal hyping and agreements. Yes, you have
described it better than I could have. Supporting evidence. There's
a line, you know, so a c LU says, in particular,
(34:22):
they say quote shot spot as methodology is used to
provide evidence against defendants in criminal cases, but isn't transparent
and hasn't been peer reviewed or otherwise independently evaluated. That
simply isn't acceptable for data that is used in court.
A c l U is still on that mid mid
(34:42):
Atlantic or transatlantic voice, and then he goes further than this.
There are allegations of some knoughty things going on at
shot Spotter and between shot Spotter and police departments and
other law enforcement agencies, talking about some corruption, some cover ups,
the things that this show likes to talk about. And
(35:04):
we're going to address that right when we return from
a word from our sponsor, and we have returned cover ups, corruption, conspiracy.
There's a lot here, and just to walk you to
(35:29):
like mid rabbit hole. Let's call this mid rabbit hole
because we can't we can't go too far until the
next book, right unless you know someone's legal department or
our own legal department comes for us. So being objective here,
here's what we can say. Mentioned Vice News Associated Press earlier.
(35:50):
They stated with what appeared to be pretty compelling quantitative
evidence that shot spotters human analysts were changing their judgments
on results. So that's the human peace right We know
that um shot spotter engineers and management themselves that said, yes,
(36:14):
we have algorithms, we have some very fancy monitors and microphones,
but we always have a human they're at the past
right two to help steer. There's the same reason, or
the same way in which autonomous vehicles in testing phases
still have someone sitting behind the driver's wheel. Right, there's
(36:36):
still some there's still a body there, is what they're saying, Well,
there is a body there, and that's one of the
big things that shot spot are always tells there's a
human being making the determination. Highly trained human being will
be able to discern the difference between a gunshot and
whatever backfire. And this is super tricky because shot spot
are also teuts that that analysts, that highly trained person
(36:59):
is going to make it to termination within I think
a minute or ninety seconds or something some time frame
that is super short. So if that person does make
that determination initially this was a gun shot. The coordinates
that were given to us by the shot Spotter system
are here, and it's a gun shot for sure. Then
that person goes back and changes it to something else,
(37:21):
after officers have already been dispatched, Like is that for
shot Spotters records? Is that for, you know, so that
they can change their accuracy rating and put it on
their website, Like what is that for? Why would they
do that? Or hypothetically, what if it gets changed after
conversations with with the local law enforcement right before something
(37:46):
goes to court. Spooky stuff, you know. This is a
shot Spotter, by the way, disputes this idea of the
company's analysts changing those judgments, and they dispute I mean
very diplomatic when I say dispute. By the way, they
dispute the idea of law enforcement being able to put
(38:09):
their thumb on the scale right and say no no
no no, no, no no no call this a gunshot
or or no no no no, no, no, change the
time stamp here. Uh, they did have Vice and associated
Press change part of their original reporting after threatening lawsuits.
(38:29):
So if you read these Vice articles, if you read
the AP articles, you read a couple other things, you'll
see at the very end there's this, Hey, we got
this court case and this specific thing is not exactly
the way it may have sounded in the original article.
But that's not the same thing as saying, oh wait,
(38:50):
there's no problem at all. There's huge problems. There are
huge problems. I don't think that's a hot take. I
don't think that's too far for us to say that
there is opportunity for corruption and conspiracy in this thing,
right because also, I mean this is this could run
into some of the same problems as um automated facial
(39:14):
recognition technology bias against people of color. It's a little
more complicated because it goes into intergenerational things, right, kind
of like how um god, I love that food deserts episode. Man,
Big food deserts are an accidental conspiracy. They're just people
(39:37):
not knowing, people in power, not understanding nor caring about
the full consequences of their actions for short term gain.
And now you know uh, with shot Spotter. We see
you know, really went to bat with him. I know
you read this. Two man who really went to bat
with shot Spotter was the A C l You And
(40:01):
they're like clarifications in corrections. Part of their report is
much longer, and it's all about how they had a
fight on the phone and how the the CEO called
the folks at the a c l U and said
no no, no, no, no no no. But you know
(40:22):
the A c l U is lawyers, so threatening them
with a defamation lawsuit that's not really going to swing
the needle. So back to our guy Clark, the CEO
of shot Spotter. He was saying, look, these algorithms are
doing the math. They're not spooky robo minds. They're doing
(40:43):
basic math that could be done by hand, pen and paper.
They're just doing it faster. Again, it's all about the
response time to your earlier pointment. But he then he
talks about the more complex algorithm. Both of these are proprietary,
by the way. That's the black box stuff. Also, the CEO,
(41:03):
Mr Clark does not like us using the phrase black box,
but it kind of is a black box. No one's
been under the hood, No one can peer review this stuff.
That's a huge problem if you're going into a court
of law. Right you're saying, Hey, I have proof that
(41:25):
this is the kind of gun that was fired here.
So what's your proof? Do you have by witnesses? No?
Do you have a recording? Yes? How does it work? Magic?
It just doesn't. It doesn't look good. And I again,
I'm not trying to dunk too hard. I know these
are good faith actors, but if you can't show your work,
(41:48):
then the law gets really tricky, right, Yeah, it does.
It gets extremely tricky. Why don't we jump to what
the other critics are saying, Like there's a there's a
lot of criticism of this thing that we're talking about Chicago.
Earlier in this episode we talked about nineteen and as
of I believe it's this year and maybe the summer
(42:10):
of two. There's a case right now, a lawsuit that
is attempting to remove shot Spotter completely from the city
of Chicago because there's a thirteen year old boy named
Adam Toledo who was killed, and there's a ton of
information coming out about how shot Spotter technology is actually
being used in the city right now, And I want
(42:32):
to stay in Chicago there because we're it's had problems
for a long time with this system. In March of
this year, the Associated Press reported how there's a person
named Michael Williams living in Chicago, but he went to
jail in August one for the murder of of somebody
in his neighborhood. Okay, he went to jail for murdering somebody.
(42:57):
And a key part of that evidence, guess what it
will us It was a quote clip of noiseless security
video showing a car driving through an intersection and allowed
bang picked up by shot spotter. Uh yeah, okay, okay,
So again, is this wrong place, wrong time, or is
(43:19):
it working perfectly? Is that exactly what happened? Or is
that exactly what happened? How would you put how can
you put those things together? I mean, if they if
they're time stamped, then logically it would make sense if
you can track that sound down and you know, triangulated
the way shot Spotter allegedly does and it's supposed to do,
(43:40):
then maybe that's great evidence, but it does seems it
seems tough to connect an audio and video feed from
separate sources like that and call it enough evidence to
send somebody to jail. Yeah, that's that's the thing. Like, um,
he does go to jail. Williams ends almost a year
(44:01):
in jail. And this is this guy has lived in
this neighborhood for a while. He's got grandkids, you know
what I mean. He's not some hot shot, unhinged, lunatic
nineteen year old pulling pranks for TikTok cloud. He's a dude.
(44:21):
He's a dude who has children and grandchildren. He's not
the person you would look at and automatically think criminal.
But Shah Sponner said he was because it pinpointed where
that gunshot came from. Supposedly. And again, like we said
in part one, the that system, when it works, it
(44:42):
has a high degree of fidelity or sophistication. Right, I
don't want to say accuracy, sophistication, I'll say but but
good news for Williams here. Eventually the case is dismissed.
He us is almost a year of his life at
(45:03):
an age where one year matters quite a bit. And
the prosecutors dismissed this because they ultimately say they have
insufficient evidence. They say, this video footage, this, uh, the
statements of people in the neighborhood, and particularly this data
from shot Spotter, which again overall the process cannot be
(45:27):
pure reviewed. They say it's just not enough. So Associated
Press goes on to say, look, our investigation found some
really troubling stuff here, like some Orwellian style surveillance economy
kind of stuff. Uh, it's the idea that we'll just
(45:47):
give you the quote already did a quote? Do you
want to do this quote? Yes. According to the AP quote,
shot Spotter employees can and often do change the source
of sounds picked up by its sensors after listening to
audio recordings, introducing the possibility of human bias into the
gunshot detection algorithm. That's a great point. In the end,
(46:09):
it is a human using their training and their understanding
to make the determination and possibly leveraging their relationships. Right
because still, you know, if you're listening to this and
you're human, you know the score, you know the game.
You know humans are often so AP continues and they
(46:30):
claim quote employees can and do modify the location or
number of shots fired at the request of police, according
to court records. And in the past we're still in
this quote. And in the past, city dispatchers or police
themselves could make some of these changes end quote. Not
(46:55):
a good look. Well yeah, and of course shot spotter says, no,
that is not true. No, no, And they say that
too many claims that are similar to this, um And
ultimately it's not it's not necessarily like you're completely wrong.
It's more like this is misleading. This isn't quite accurate,
(47:17):
this is not accurate. Nice. Yeah, I mean, of course,
of course there are going it's a business. This is
not a nonprofit, this is not a foundation. They're out
here to hustle and sell and hopefully, um, hopefully save
human lives. Again, that's that's the idea. But because it's
(47:43):
a for profit business, what are they going to say?
What are they can be like, oh, geez a, p
you got me, good game. No, they're going to use
some of these massive profits to sue the Christ out
of people who are making them look ad. That's just
rational actors. Right. So shot Spotter spoiler Alert vigorously contest
(48:09):
these and similar claims. And like you said, Matt, there
saying these are missing nuance, misleading, they don't paint the
full picture. Look, we require this human participation. Our algorithms
are constantly being evaluated tweaked you know what I mean,
we're building the plane we're flying, and we think that
(48:31):
as a good thing, just like Vice. Associated Press later
issues a statement correcting their original claims because both articles
are talking about uh, these court cases, right, specific instances
of court cases. But this is a moment where we
need to exercise not um analysis of anecdotes, not analysis
(48:55):
of specific cases. We need to exercise structural thoughts. Right.
The problems are bigger than one sick tree in the forest.
We need, we need what we need. What the suits
at our job called the what was it? There's the
forty foot view and then high level views. Yeah, I
(49:17):
mean you go, you can see most things in your
general area. Yeah, the full picture, sure, the whole shebey.
So shot Spotter is still a business. It is actively
is actively expanding or attempting to of course, as all
businesses do. It is actively you know, um monitoring about
(49:43):
nine hundred and eleven square miles of the United States
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, no holidays.
But a number of cities are spooked by this, by
this court of public opinion and stuff going on, right,
and they've stopped using shot Spotter technology because they going
(50:07):
back to what you pointed out earlier, Man, they have
decided that shot Spotter creates too many false positives and
false negatives. Could you break down for us what what
is a false positive and false negative? In this context?
False positive would be shot Spotter says there was a
gun shot when there was not. A false negative would
be shot Spotter missing a real gun shot that occurred
(50:30):
in the city, missing a gun shot, calling it something else. Right,
Oh wow, Yeah, that's just a fart, That's just a
dump truck. I gotta get off this fartest gunshot thing.
It's it's ruining the show. But the but but so
a false false negative. It's kind of like going to
(50:52):
a McDonald's and they don't have fries. Right, that's exactly right.
Isn't this your job? Is it? Is it that like
your main thing to do? Yeah? What profits center? Right?
One of McDonald's biggest profits as a corporation is actually
real estate. Just like Target, the department store here in
(51:15):
the US makes a ton of money off surveillance systems.
We're fun at parties here. We know we're going long.
But one last piece of this episode is incredibly important.
We hope We have done an all right job of
giving you the lay of the land, the forty foot view,
(51:37):
and showing you some of the support, some of the
reasons why people believe in systems like this, and some
of the reasons why people are concerned. But we have
to end on the future. Shot Spotter is not going away.
Technology like this is not going away. It is evolving.
(51:58):
We found this stat the Department of Justice says that overall, UM,
quite recently Uncle Sam has spent six point nine million
dollars on gunshot detection systems. This includes shot Spotter. But
this number, it feels kind of small. Six point nine million, right,
(52:20):
but that doesn't count many more millions spent by state
and local governments. It's just the fetes. This is a
good business, and we we kind of teased cynically the
idea of predicting crime. This is Yeah, this is the
spookiest part, at least for me, Matt. This is the
spookiest part. Yeah, because shot spot already has all this technology.
(52:44):
It's already in all of these cities across the United States.
And then in they went and did a little thing
called an acquisition. They acquired another company. Sorry, in the words,
UM they acquired a company called hunt Lab, and then
hunch Lab takes its AI model and integrates it with
(53:06):
shot spotters shot detection models and guess what they can
predict where gunshots may happen or are going to have
a an increased likely likelihood of happening. Wait wait, wait,
wait wait wait, the algorithms and the machine learning and
the data can predict or the marketing department says they
(53:28):
can predict because this is part of the problem. Right,
Let's put it this way. It's again it's building the
plane as you go kind of thing. So it will
likely increase. Their accuracy will likely increase if they put
it in enough places, if they have it active for
long enough, then it probably will increase and it will
get more predictive. But right now, who knows, well, I
(53:51):
mean they've had a couple of years. We'll see what happens.
How is that not violating fundamental aspects of US governance? Right,
Innocent until proven guilty, you know, like you are, you
are prejudged. That's the idea. Ultimately, that's that's where this goes, right,
(54:13):
the we and we don't have visibility on how granular
this might get. And I know that's how that also
sounds like corporate gobbledegook. But since we don't know whether
they're saying hey the month this month in December, we
we statistically will see higher levels of carth after something
(54:37):
versus three forty two pm April seventeen on the corner
of ninth and two below. We need to have two
cop cars because they're going to be there's going to
be a heist, you know what I mean. We don't
know how how close they can zoom in on the future,
but they're definitely trying to zoom in on the future
(54:59):
a little bit. And that should scare you because there
are no real laws yet. There's no real precedent to
protect civilians right and to protect law enforcement. To be
about it, there are no real laws in effect to
(55:20):
protect human beings in a situation that becomes closer and
closer to prophetic algorithmic time travel. And I know I'm
like styling a little bit on this Welcome to our
creepy accidental spoken word performance. But but you do need
to worry about this. Whether you are a supporter of
(55:43):
things like shot spot or whether you are an opponent.
The reason you need to worry is that I would
posit this evolution in technology is already happening. It's on
the way, It's inevitable. And Matt, I thought of you
when I was when I was thinking this part. It
feels like a classic Matt thing man. People are so
(56:03):
worried about these proprietary audio surveillance systems. Oh, microphones are everywhere.
What kind of world is that gonna be the big hurdle? Oh,
I'm sure I'm doing the class. I'm doing your move man,
where you like you hold up the phone whenever people
talk about you know, I can't be tracked, and then
(56:26):
they're like tweeting us and stuff. I had that conversation
yesterday with a couple of really nice A D T
reps that came out to the house to try and
sell me a security system, and we ended up talking
for about forty minutes outside on my front stoop. And
that was there. One of the big concerns was like
government spying and that kind of thing, and I did
exactly that, just held up my phone. Was like, you
(56:48):
guys were really worried about the government. I said, meta
in alphabet already got you, bro? You know what help
us mess up the search terms I'll I'm pretty sure
I know how the I'm pretty sure I got under
the hood of the targeted advertise on social media and
(57:09):
not I'm nine seven percent sure that I figured it out, Matt,
And it might be an off conversation. Yeah, we gotta
figure You and I have to have to, you know,
huddle up and decide whether or not it's worth going
to air with. But it doesn't involve the dismantled microwave
(57:33):
you do, you know one, look, don't try it at home.
But it's like, it's kind of cool, right, you would
have done it if you were if you were hanging out.
This is before we knew each other, you would have
been so down. We should have continued anyway, the like.
So the surveillance state, dismantled mike waves aside, I think
(57:53):
the legal department requires us to tell you not to
do it, dismantled mic waves aside the to The only
real big hurdles to a constant surveillance state now would
be privacy concerns, if you want to put it really simply,
privacy concerns, right, the software of the mind and the
(58:15):
community and society. That's what we mean with privacy concerns,
how could it be normalized? And the second thing would
be the physical aspect infrastructure. But as we said, we're
holding up our phones. The infrastructure is already there. It
is technically easier. I know this. Some people may have
(58:38):
problem with this. It is technically easier to deploy a nationwide, pervasive,
around the clock surveillance system than it is to have
everybody driving electric cars. Because you need you need physical infrastructure.
It's already there. It's the easiest part of the equation
(58:58):
to solve millions of Americans or US residents, I should say, well, no,
North American continent, South American continent millions, millions, millions already
carry a phone constantly, and ethics aside, How difficult is
it to do the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight Batman trick
(59:19):
and just link them all up and have the best
echolocation ever, the kind of stuff that would make a
bat jealous or a batman. That was awkward, but let's
keep it in You like, uh, Jez thinks, well, you
know any landing you can walk away from, right shot spotter,
(59:42):
build your play. No, that was too far. Alright, Well
that's our show. Thank you so much for tuning in
our pal Noel will be back soon. I personally can't
wait to listen to our strange news listener mail segments. Uh.
And we also can't wait for you to be a
(01:00:02):
part of the show, folks, So let us know your
thoughts again. One of the reasons this was a two
part episode is entirely because we received so much in depth,
well thought out correspondence with people who clearly are on
different have different perspectives about whether or not shot Spotter
(01:00:27):
is good, whether or not this technology is inevitable, whether
or not it's even worth the money, right, and everybody
came with fire, you know what I mean? And this
this is one of the reasons we do this show.
So we can't when we say we can't wait to
hear what you think, we mean it. We try to
be easy to find online Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. Do we
(01:00:50):
have the MySpace Yeah, no, still know MySpace one day man.
One thing. We do have an Instagram conspiracy stuff. We
do have a phone number one eight three three st
d w y t K. Just call in. It's a voicemail,
super easy, three minutes. Give yourself a nickname and let
us know if we can use your message and voice
(01:01:11):
on the air. If you don't want to do that,
why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
We are conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff
(01:01:39):
they don't want you to know. Is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Grady. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt Our colleague Nol is not here today,
but we'll return tomorrow very soon. They called me Ben.
We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission
controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you. You are here.
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Before we get started, shot Spotter did reach out to
(00:48):
us regarding some of the statistics provided in our episodes
and their position with respect to the Williams case. Shot
spot a disclaims all responsibility and Mr Williams incarceration and
disagrees the associated press is factual assertions regarding changing locations.
If you're interested in reviewing additional information from shot Spotter
on these topics, please visit www dot shot spotter dot com.
(01:13):
Heads up, fellow conspiracy realist. This is part two of
a two part series. We are continuing our discussion of
the famous or infamous, certainly controversial technology known as shot
spot Er. Previously, we discussed the terrifying reality of gun
(01:36):
deaths in these United States. We also looked at the
ways in which law enforcement, local and federal level political bodies,
and average average citizens right just the folks you would
see on next door trying to figure out a solution. Um.
(01:57):
And it's funny, Matt, because in the interim between you
Noel and I recording Part one of shot Spotter and
Part two of shot Spotter, I I went out, I
hit the streets and I looked for some shot Spotter arrays,
(02:19):
and I'm pretty sure I found some. Maybe they're not
brand name, but I'm pretty sure. I like knowing now
what we know about sort of the combo meal of
how these things are set up. Just for a quick
refresher for everybody. Shot Spotter is using some pretty impressive
(02:40):
algorithmic software and some pretty cool microphones. In part one,
we were not able to discern the specific brand name
of these microphones, but we do know the following there's
something like fifteen to twenty per square mile, and these
(03:01):
microphone arrangements also include the following a GPS and onboard
computer transmitter and some never we have some of the
algorithmic stuff on site, so it can quickly do a calculation.
Is that a dump truck? Is that someone with a
(03:23):
legendary fart. I think we nailed down the science, right.
No one can fart such that shot Spotter will mistake
it for a gunshot. Right to our knowledge, that's not possible.
It hasn't happened yet. That isn't to say, you know,
some fast food company will invent something to allow that
(03:43):
to to occur. Just on the microphones, I'm going to say,
their quote audio detection devices unquote are likely proprietary. So
they probably are labeled shot Spotter right as like a
brand name or something like that, And we just don't
know what they are be because it is it's technology
that they've invented or at least patented, right. So the
(04:08):
big thing to be aware of its expensive for a
police department to run this thing in a city, and
it costs taxpayers a ton of money. And what we're
gonna talk about today is that the system itself. While
the company you know says, hey, this thing works great,
while there are a lot of people on the internet
you can find that say hey, this thing is amazing
(04:28):
and it works great. A lot of listeners to stuff
they don't want you to know are saying the same thing, yes,
or at least they're aware of how function it seems
to function well. But there are a lot of detractors,
people who say, there's a whole other side to this coin,
and we're going to explore that today. Yeah, and when
we do a two parter. We don't do these super often,
(04:50):
but when we do a two parter, it's usually because
we have, um, we've got a little bit deeper in
the rabbit hole, and we didn't have time to make
a brief. You know, That's one of the infamous jokes
about writing Matt, which I'm sure you've heard, is I
can't remember who it was. Fellow conspiracy realists help us
(05:11):
out here. But there are multiple instances of these writers
corresponding with each other and sending their version of an
essay length text and ending it with sorry in a hurry,
didn't have time to make this brief, so we didn't
(05:32):
We didn't have the time to make this brief. And
you know, when Matt, Noel and I are hanging out
on air or off, we often run into these sorts
of these sorts of moments where we say, how can
we accurately concentrate the facts, the controversy, the conspiracy into
(05:56):
something that doesn't become a four are our long weird
hangout session. If you want to learn what our endless
hangout sessions are like without the you know, without the
constraints of podcasting, do check out our book. Stuff. They
don't want you to know. We we even had this
(06:21):
is how weird we get with it, folks. We even
had um our publishers come to us several times and say, hey,
this chapter is a little long, but I think we're
able to get a lot of stuff in there. What
do you think. Yeah, to my knowledge, we were able
to fit everything we wanted to in there. We did
(06:41):
have to pare it down to government only stuff from
all the research we gathered right right the the cryptic
chapter cryptozoology chapter is one of my favorites, and maybe
oh yeah, yeah, oh gosh, we went deep on that too. Basically,
we have another book, is what we're saying. We kind
(07:05):
of have another book that will have to will have
to be on the way too soon, and the best
way to help us make that happen is to check
out this first book. We hope that you enjoyed it's
available wherever you find your favorite books, whether that's your
local bookstore, whether that's Amazon. Well, yeah, and and let
(07:26):
let daddy bezos know how you feel about the book
by going on Amazon and reviewing it. Seriously, if you've
got any kind of Amazon account and you do like
the book, please review it. That that helps a ton,
it does it? Weirdly helps a ton? Uh? And yeah,
we want to be we want to be your five
star crew, you know what I mean. And because we're asking,
(07:49):
we're asking you, our fellow listeners uh for for a
little help at the top in terms of ratings, especially,
we want to give you something in return. Right, So
we spend a lot of time and shot Spotter, here
are the facts. Back to the backstory. Okay, Matt, you
and I haven't spoken for a weird amount of time
(08:09):
for us, because we've both been doing some crazy things.
Matt is executive producer on one of my favorite seasonal shows,
Thirteen Days of Halloween. You and are pal Alex Williams,
and I guess our pal Clancy Brown. We can say
it now right, Uh? Yes that guy. Uh. I've been
(08:34):
working on this wonderful horror show and it's coming out
now as you hear this episode, you should be able
to hear all thirteen episodes of Thirteen Days of Halloween.
I'm super biased. I always get a chance to to
write a couple of episodes and it's um it makes
(08:55):
my year, honestly. But in that interim, I was also
working on a secret project, which may hear Matt and
Noel allude to cryptically in our listener mail and strange
news segments. I hate to miss stuff, but it's it's
been that kind of thing, you know, been in the
absence of transparency. M hm, speculation. That sounds good. Who
(09:22):
wrote that? So the the thing I found about shot Spotter,
It's fascinating. It was I I found, but had not
have not confirmed, some sort of audio tracking relays here
in the neighborhood of our old office. Additionally, you know,
as we get, as we get closer and closer to Halloween,
(09:46):
I heard more and more gun shots, and I heard
two very close gun shots, and I was thinking back
to um an earlier conversation we had. I can't remember
whether it was on air or off where we were.
I think it's when we were reading letters from fellow
listeners in law enforcement and we started asking each other
(10:11):
which of us had ever called the police to report
a gunshot. I don't remember what you said, did you know?
For me, it was pointing out that where I lived previously,
I would hear gunshots pretty consistently. Um. I would also
hear fireworks, and it was difficult at times to tell
what was what. Depending on the distance right you could
(10:32):
you could kind of make it out. If I was, like,
if you're standing outside right at the time when one
of these shots or fireworks occurred, you could usually discern
and you could kind of tell even the caliber, often
depending on several factors. But what it sounds like, you
just kind of get used to the sound of certain weapons. Um.
But if you're inside your house, especially like if it's
(10:53):
late at night, many people, including myself, wouldn't be able
to discern and then likely wouldn't call the police unless
you know, you're a particularly I'm not crabby person, but
somebody who's really concerned and is often in contact with
the police, right right, right, right, Um, what may be
called a busy body sometimes. But also we have to
(11:15):
we have to remember that, you know, there's a reason
good Samaritan laws and so on exists. Many people are
rightly concerned about engaging involving themselves in this situation, and
so often people won't call contact first responders or emergency
(11:36):
services unless they feel those gunshots are aimed at them.
Even then, you know, if you think about it rationally,
if you call your local police department, depending on how
close you are to that department, by the time a
shot has been fired, you've heard it, you've called the police,
they've dispatched an officer or two, and then the officer
(11:57):
makes it out there, it's very unlikely the devil police
officer will be able to do anything to prevent further
crime or stop whatever is happening. Uh. It is often
if there was an actual shooting, that officer is going
to be a first responder to a gunshot victim rather
than you know, stopping a crime. The response time is huge.
(12:21):
Also side note, if you are ever in a situation
where you feel someone is outside your house or threatening
you with entering your house or something, or you know,
your apartment, wherever you live, your domicile, always remember a
lot of people mess this part up. Don't say I'm
(12:42):
going to call the police or I'm I'm going to
call nine one one say I have called, they are
on their way. You know what I mean, Because what
you're doing if you threaten to call instead of just
making it is you're essentially telling people there is a
time interval to to your point, Matt, there's a time
(13:03):
interval before these folks arrive, right, And Look, this can
be nasty stuff, but the idea of shot Spotter and
similar technologies is to fight against this, to mitigate that
interval of time between a gunshot being fired and someone
(13:26):
getting to the scene. When it works, as we explain
in Part one, it can definitely absolutely save lives, save
lives of law enforcement individuals, first responders e m t
s can know what they're getting into. Uh, it can
(13:47):
save the lives of civilians. It can also help cut
short spree shooters, you know, mass shooters who might have
might be proceeding on foot through an brewood right or
through some certain region or community. So this can make
a difference when it works. Yeah, and according to shot Spotter,
(14:09):
it also increases the likelihood that ballistics evidence will be recovered,
which would help close a case if there was an
actual crime that occurred that led to a trial or something. Yes, perfect,
that's perfect. Foreshadowing here because you see part two of
this of this series could probably be called shot Spotter
(14:34):
goes to Court. So what happens what happens when this
private company it starts helping save or put people away.
We're gonna pause for word from our sponsor and we'll
be back. Here's where it gets crazy, Matt. You set
(15:01):
this up so very well. That's one that's we're back
in the land of controversies about this technology. And again,
to be clear, we are exploring this stuff that critics
and proponents have said about shot Spotter. Additionally, shot Spotter
(15:24):
is not the only audio tracing software or system out there.
It's like how Coca Cola is not the only soda
you can buy at the grocery store. It's just the
one you might be most aware of. So shot Spotter
probably gets a lot more public attention because it is
(15:49):
more pervasive than a lot of these audio tracking other
audio tracking private entities. What you need to know is
there is more than one. However, shot Spotter is the
and that comes up the most because they right now
have the most data out of again the private companies.
And we're going to get into some sticky stuff about
(16:11):
the future man. I know you saw the stat Matt
shot spotter itself. How accurate is it? Right? Like, how
many times has someone responded on the ground to a
shot spotter report and found it was just a dump truck,
a superhuman farter road construction, you know, stuff like that.
(16:33):
How accurate is it? I saw the statistic and the
statistic feels bold. Yeah, it is a bold statistic. Shots
Water claims that their system has a nineties seven percent
accuracy rate when it comes to identifying gunshots versus other
loud sounds in a city where it's placed seven percent.
(16:57):
It's very important to remember that is accuracy into scarning
whether or not the sound emanated that it's tracking was
a shot right, right? And and with that statistic, we
also have to acknowledge that statistics can be so slippery.
What they're saying is cent of the time they are
(17:18):
right when they say something is or is not a
gun shot. That's not the same thing as saying cent
of the time they're right about the specifics of the firearm,
not at all. It's just it's like up there with um.
You know, before Google went full alphabet, they had that
motto don't be evil, and we used to We used
(17:41):
to joke back and forth about how there's a world
of difference between don't be evil and be good. You know. So,
so they're not saying of the time they can tell you,
you know, this was an a k versus something else. Right.
What they are saying is that they know the difference
(18:02):
between the stuff that is just you know, the burps
of farts of your average city versus actual discharge of
a firearm. The thing is a lot of folks dispute this.
One of the biggest customers for shot Spotter, and specific
in the United States is the beautiful city of Chicago. Chicago,
(18:27):
we miss you. We're gonna hit the road soon and
say hello in person. But the thing about Chicago for
our purposes is that as it is such a huge
customer of shot Spotter, it also generates a lot of
data to pour into to look at this claim of accuracy.
(18:47):
The conspiracy here from the critics is the idea that
shot Spotter is uh being purposely misleading about that percent statistic,
which again is bold. Another other thing we have to
realize about this statistic is you will see different claims.
They're They're always going to be you know, a pretty
(19:09):
high percentile, but you will see different specific claims about
the accuracy. We went to shot Spotter's own website, we
looked at their literature and the nine seven percent claim
is from twenty nineteen, and they said the system overall
(19:30):
had an aggregate accuracy rate across the entirety of their
customer base, which you know, you and I work with
marketing departments. We love ours. But it does sound a
little bit like marketing, doesn't it matter? Yeah, it does
sound quite a bit like marketing. It's strange. They're in
that same statement, they're saying there's a very small false
(19:52):
positive rate of less than half of a percentage of
all reported gunfire incidents. That's that's inten okay. Yeah. They
also point out in their own literature that the system
and the process are evolving constantly. Right, work in progress.
(20:13):
We are building the playing that we are flying, which
can be taken one of two ways. One it can
be seen by the more optimistic as an inspiring thing.
You know, one day, right, there will be a hundred
percent accuracy. The other, more cynical response would be, hey,
(20:36):
why don't you finish building it before you put it out?
You know what I mean? And that just I call
it the Larry David scale, Like, how Larry David, are
you going to be about some stuff? But this is unfortunately,
this is not you know, this is not complaining about
the big salad or whatever. People's lives are at stake,
and the question becomes, is this a tool deployed in
(20:59):
good faith to save human lives or is there's something
else at play? And that's that's the scary part, and
that's why we have to talk about these statistics, which
get a little crazy. So Chicago huge customer for shots Spotter.
Shot spotter itself says percent accuracy overall as of twenty nineteen.
(21:22):
Other cities, other local journalists in the community will will
have better stats about how shot spotter functions in their
neck of the global woods. Uh now, I think I'm
thinking of that San Francisco Examiner article right when they
point into it a different um was that different overall
(21:45):
accuracy rate for shot Spotter? Uh yeah, I can read
you a quote from it. It comes from seventeen and
again it's a statement from shot Spotter. They, according to
this article, guarantee accuracy of the time and that is
speaking again. Well, I don't know, I don't know the
context here. I guess that's in detecting an actual gunshot. Yeah,
(22:09):
and that comes from the CEO, Ralph Clark. Ralph Clark
is named in multiple articles on shot Spotter. Often he's
talking about things he feels journalists got wrong, you know
what I mean. And and it's another get we made
a joke about in part one. But shot Spotter is litigious,
(22:32):
so they're I mean, they're not scientology level litigious. But
that's why if you look at outfits like Associated Press
or Vice News, you will see some specific retractions or
clarifications published. Shot Spotter wants people two avoid criticizing it,
(22:54):
which is, you know, that's what every business wants, right. However,
people are disputing the statistics, and the people who are
disputing these claims are not um, you know, your uncle
on Facebook or whatever. There are places like the MacArthur
Justice Center in Chicago. They studied more than forty thousand
(23:19):
shot Spotter dispatches and they found that eighty nine percent
of those dispatches resulted in no gun related crime. That's
a quote from MacArthur. Uh, and they said eighty six
percent resulted in no crime at all. That's interesting. We
(23:40):
see another three percent discrepancy, right, So so it's like
the did the cops just show up and someone was
like throwing rocks and orphans and they were like, that's
not a gun shot, that's a crime. Well, again, that's
what we're talking about. It doesn't matter how fast and
accurate shot spotter is in detecting a gun shot. By
(24:00):
the time an officer is able to arrive on scene,
there may be no evidence of a gun being fired. Theoretically,
there would be shell casings on the ground if someone
just was firing a weapon and then you know, got
out of there quickly, as is often the case, and
they would probably not take the time to pick up
any shell casings. But it depends on where the thing
(24:23):
where the shots occur. It depends on what the you know,
ground looks like. There. Is it gravel, is it dirt,
is it asphalt? Is it, uh, you know, tall grass,
And there's so many factors. It's tough for me thinking
about that resulted in no gun really crime, no crime
(24:45):
at all when it comes to because that really doesn't
mean that shot spotter is failing. That means that when
officers arrive on scene, there's no evidence of a crime.
There's nobody to apprehend that, there's nobody to even probably
talk to unless there is somebody there, right, and then
they become highly suspicious, no matter what they had to
(25:08):
do or didn't have to do with firing a weapon.
You know, we're talking about someone who is maybe just
hanging out on the street, maybe someone who's unhoused, right,
maybe someone who lives there and is on their porch,
you know what I mean. And that's not that's not
(25:29):
bad police work either. That's hey, let me get an
eye witness, you were here, tell me what's going on.
Or it could be bad police work too. It could
be because that person, that person could automatically be seen
as a suspect as or somebody potentially had something to
do with the gunfire. So it's just it's especially if
(25:51):
that person has priors, right, if they have a jacket already,
you know what I mean. This is amusing jack as
the slang term for your record in a folder in
an incarceration system. But if they already have some priors,
then of course suspicion automatically falls on them. You could
(26:13):
be a good person in the wrong place at the
wrong time, and all of a sudden you're jammed up,
But consider the other side. We're still in Chicago with
this um. The Chicago Inspector General kind of backed up
these findings from the MacArthur Justice Center and they found
(26:36):
that this was expensive for police departments. Just like in
part one, we talked about this really fascinating deep dive
into St. Louis, Missouri, uh in Police Chief magazine, which
I still didn't still surprised that's a magazine, but but
there's this deep dive into the hidden cost of systems
(26:58):
like this. Four police departments and therefore four taxpayers in
those cities, in those towns, in those communities. Anyway, Chicago
Inspector General backs up MacArthur Justice which also backs up
some of the findings in St. Louis, and they say,
(27:19):
these police officers are changing their practice. They're stopping and
searching people, right, stopping frisk basically for no other reason
than they were in that place where shot spotter frequently
gives alerts in the vicinity. Yeah, so not having to
(27:39):
do with with responding to a shot spotter hit. Yeah,
not a specific pop just hey right, that sounds a
little bit like an attempt at predicting crime. Just a
little bit. Sounds like trying to get in front of something,
but it's also missing the big step one. Why are
(28:01):
there many shots spotter alerts? Because you have shot spot
ter there, you wouldn't have those alerts because there would
still be the old dispatch who calls the police kind
of system. But also some l e O s are
not super into this law enforcement officers because they're thinking
of the time it takes. Right, if I normalize responding
(28:26):
to this, I get the call, I get the buzz,
it sounds like it's legit. I'm on the way, it's over.
There's no victim, you know what I mean, there's no
case sing, there's nobody on the street to even you know,
detained for a while. Well, then how many other calls
(28:47):
have I missed while doing that right in a resource
strapped environment? Well, and if you also, I think it
would be hard for a police department to justify not responding.
If you're shot spot er software goes off right or
the hardware detect a gun shot, how could you justify
not investigating that or sending out a car to at
(29:08):
least check it out? Uh? Yeah, which is puts a
real drain. Ye shot spotter told us there was automatic
gunfire at a place that has a lot of reports
of gun crime, and we just chose to ignore it.
That doesn't look good. And there are all of these
factors that we're considering in this episode, and it is
(29:30):
obviously extremely complicated. This is not a clear cut issue, right. Uh.
One of the ways that we could better evaluate this
is if we had more hard information, information that wasn't
let's say, put together by a sales team to go
out and sell more shot Spotters in more cities. If
(29:51):
we if we could actually see how does this system
actually function in the real world. Um, but we're not
really getting that. We are getting specifics coming out of
cases that have arisen because of a Shot Spotter call.
Though m HM and I love what you just did.
(30:12):
Their men. You subtly slid in a reference to a
quote by a Shot spot Ter employee, Paul Green, who said, quote,
our guarantee was put together by our sales and marketing department,
not our engineers. That's referring to the accuracy quote right right,
(30:34):
and then, as we as we know, was apparently seven
percent according to their marketing folks. So you point out
a great thing we can look at specific cases. We
can look at something like the case of Corey Ali Mohammad,
who was a mass shooter apprehended in April with help
(30:59):
from shot Spotter. So being able to triangulate where these
shots were occurring played a massive role in helping law
enforcement in Fresno catch this guy before he killed more people. Um,
(31:19):
this was you know, this was a hate crime, racially
motivated kind of spree killing, and more people probably would
have died if the law wasn't able to get to
this criminal when they did. And that's that's the shot
Spotter story. But the thing is, that's like one, one
specific case, right, that's a success story, as weird as
(31:43):
it sounds, because this guy did get convicted of four murders,
but it's not five, it's not eight, and you know
it's not twenty. And that's what shot Spotter saying. They
helped create the alped to mitigate the situation. And this
is the thing. Shot Spotter is supposed to be a
(32:04):
diagnostic outfit. It's supposed to be an investigative tool for
the police. An investigative tool is not the same thing
as primary evidence in a court of law. In the
United States, evidence is a different thing, and so some
of the critics are saying this is a bridge too far,
(32:26):
This is the wrong rubicon to cross for shot spot
Er data to be shared out as evidence in a
court of law. And this is not just us on
on stuff they don't want you to know saying that stuff,
is saying this can be a sketchy operation. This is
a particular concern to places like the a c l U.
(32:50):
They say they had a quote that really stood out
to me because their accusation is that shot Spotter is
kind of cherry picking the data, the information that it
does or does not share, and it's not showing its
work either, but it's doing it in court, meaning that
(33:16):
people can go to prison without transparency on this stuff. Yeah,
at best, I think shot Spotter could and probably should
be used as supporting evidence. You can if you're going
through a trial and as a prosecutor you are trying
to prove that a gun was fired in this vicinity
(33:36):
at this specific time, you would have time stamps associated
with that weapon being fired with shot Spotter. But again
that's not that's not the primary evidence to prove that
whoever your suspect is, is the person who fired that
weapon that is just supporting the fact that a weapon
was fired at that time. Does that make yes? Yeah,
(33:57):
I was just I don't know if we're on video,
if this will make it into into our YouTube channel,
check that out. But I was, I was doing a
lot of non verbal hyping and agreements. Yes, you have
described it better than I could have. Supporting evidence. There's
a line, you know, so a c LU says, in particular,
(34:22):
they say quote shot spot as methodology is used to
provide evidence against defendants in criminal cases, but isn't transparent
and hasn't been peer reviewed or otherwise independently evaluated. That
simply isn't acceptable for data that is used in court.
A c l U is still on that mid mid
(34:42):
Atlantic or transatlantic voice, and then he goes further than this.
There are allegations of some knoughty things going on at
shot Spotter and between shot Spotter and police departments and
other law enforcement agencies, talking about some corruption, some cover ups,
the things that this show likes to talk about. And
(35:04):
we're going to address that right when we return from
a word from our sponsor, and we have returned cover ups, corruption, conspiracy.
There's a lot here, and just to walk you to
(35:29):
like mid rabbit hole. Let's call this mid rabbit hole
because we can't we can't go too far until the
next book, right unless you know someone's legal department or
our own legal department comes for us. So being objective here,
here's what we can say. Mentioned Vice News Associated Press earlier.
(35:50):
They stated with what appeared to be pretty compelling quantitative
evidence that shot spotters human analysts were changing their judgments
on results. So that's the human peace right We know
that um shot spotter engineers and management themselves that said, yes,
(36:14):
we have algorithms, we have some very fancy monitors and microphones,
but we always have a human they're at the past
right two to help steer. There's the same reason, or
the same way in which autonomous vehicles in testing phases
still have someone sitting behind the driver's wheel. Right, there's
(36:36):
still some there's still a body there, is what they're saying, Well,
there is a body there, and that's one of the
big things that shot spot are always tells there's a
human being making the determination. Highly trained human being will
be able to discern the difference between a gunshot and
whatever backfire. And this is super tricky because shot spot
are also teuts that that analysts, that highly trained person
(36:59):
is going to make it to termination within I think
a minute or ninety seconds or something some time frame
that is super short. So if that person does make
that determination initially this was a gun shot. The coordinates
that were given to us by the shot Spotter system
are here, and it's a gun shot for sure. Then
that person goes back and changes it to something else,
(37:21):
after officers have already been dispatched, Like is that for
shot Spotters records? Is that for, you know, so that
they can change their accuracy rating and put it on
their website, Like what is that for? Why would they
do that? Or hypothetically, what if it gets changed after
conversations with with the local law enforcement right before something
(37:46):
goes to court. Spooky stuff, you know. This is a
shot Spotter, by the way, disputes this idea of the
company's analysts changing those judgments, and they dispute I mean
very diplomatic when I say dispute. By the way, they
dispute the idea of law enforcement being able to put
(38:09):
their thumb on the scale right and say no no
no no, no, no no no call this a gunshot
or or no no no no, no, no, change the
time stamp here. Uh, they did have Vice and associated
Press change part of their original reporting after threatening lawsuits.
(38:29):
So if you read these Vice articles, if you read
the AP articles, you read a couple other things, you'll
see at the very end there's this, Hey, we got
this court case and this specific thing is not exactly
the way it may have sounded in the original article.
But that's not the same thing as saying, oh wait,
(38:50):
there's no problem at all. There's huge problems. There are
huge problems. I don't think that's a hot take. I
don't think that's too far for us to say that
there is opportunity for corruption and conspiracy in this thing,
right because also, I mean this is this could run
into some of the same problems as um automated facial
(39:14):
recognition technology bias against people of color. It's a little
more complicated because it goes into intergenerational things, right, kind
of like how um god, I love that food deserts episode. Man,
Big food deserts are an accidental conspiracy. They're just people
(39:37):
not knowing, people in power, not understanding nor caring about
the full consequences of their actions for short term gain.
And now you know uh, with shot Spotter. We see
you know, really went to bat with him. I know
you read this. Two man who really went to bat
with shot Spotter was the A C l You And
(40:01):
they're like clarifications in corrections. Part of their report is
much longer, and it's all about how they had a
fight on the phone and how the the CEO called
the folks at the a c l U and said
no no, no, no, no no no. But you know
(40:22):
the A c l U is lawyers, so threatening them
with a defamation lawsuit that's not really going to swing
the needle. So back to our guy Clark, the CEO
of shot Spotter. He was saying, look, these algorithms are
doing the math. They're not spooky robo minds. They're doing
(40:43):
basic math that could be done by hand, pen and paper.
They're just doing it faster. Again, it's all about the
response time to your earlier pointment. But he then he
talks about the more complex algorithm. Both of these are proprietary,
by the way. That's the black box stuff. Also, the CEO,
(41:03):
Mr Clark does not like us using the phrase black box,
but it kind of is a black box. No one's
been under the hood, No one can peer review this stuff.
That's a huge problem if you're going into a court
of law. Right you're saying, Hey, I have proof that
(41:25):
this is the kind of gun that was fired here.
So what's your proof? Do you have by witnesses? No?
Do you have a recording? Yes? How does it work? Magic?
It just doesn't. It doesn't look good. And I again,
I'm not trying to dunk too hard. I know these
are good faith actors, but if you can't show your work,
(41:48):
then the law gets really tricky, right, Yeah, it does.
It gets extremely tricky. Why don't we jump to what
the other critics are saying, Like there's a there's a
lot of criticism of this thing that we're talking about Chicago.
Earlier in this episode we talked about nineteen and as
of I believe it's this year and maybe the summer
(42:10):
of two. There's a case right now, a lawsuit that
is attempting to remove shot Spotter completely from the city
of Chicago because there's a thirteen year old boy named
Adam Toledo who was killed, and there's a ton of
information coming out about how shot Spotter technology is actually
being used in the city right now, And I want
(42:32):
to stay in Chicago there because we're it's had problems
for a long time with this system. In March of
this year, the Associated Press reported how there's a person
named Michael Williams living in Chicago, but he went to
jail in August one for the murder of of somebody
in his neighborhood. Okay, he went to jail for murdering somebody.
(42:57):
And a key part of that evidence, guess what it
will us It was a quote clip of noiseless security
video showing a car driving through an intersection and allowed
bang picked up by shot spotter. Uh yeah, okay, okay,
So again, is this wrong place, wrong time, or is
(43:19):
it working perfectly? Is that exactly what happened? Or is
that exactly what happened? How would you put how can
you put those things together? I mean, if they if
they're time stamped, then logically it would make sense if
you can track that sound down and you know, triangulated
the way shot Spotter allegedly does and it's supposed to do,
(43:40):
then maybe that's great evidence, but it does seems it
seems tough to connect an audio and video feed from
separate sources like that and call it enough evidence to
send somebody to jail. Yeah, that's that's the thing. Like, um,
he does go to jail. Williams ends almost a year
(44:01):
in jail. And this is this guy has lived in
this neighborhood for a while. He's got grandkids, you know
what I mean. He's not some hot shot, unhinged, lunatic
nineteen year old pulling pranks for TikTok cloud. He's a dude.
(44:21):
He's a dude who has children and grandchildren. He's not
the person you would look at and automatically think criminal.
But Shah Sponner said he was because it pinpointed where
that gunshot came from. Supposedly. And again, like we said
in part one, the that system, when it works, it
(44:42):
has a high degree of fidelity or sophistication. Right, I
don't want to say accuracy, sophistication, I'll say but but
good news for Williams here. Eventually the case is dismissed.
He us is almost a year of his life at
(45:03):
an age where one year matters quite a bit. And
the prosecutors dismissed this because they ultimately say they have
insufficient evidence. They say, this video footage, this, uh, the
statements of people in the neighborhood, and particularly this data
from shot Spotter, which again overall the process cannot be
(45:27):
pure reviewed. They say it's just not enough. So Associated
Press goes on to say, look, our investigation found some
really troubling stuff here, like some Orwellian style surveillance economy
kind of stuff. Uh, it's the idea that we'll just
(45:47):
give you the quote already did a quote? Do you
want to do this quote? Yes. According to the AP quote,
shot Spotter employees can and often do change the source
of sounds picked up by its sensors after listening to
audio recordings, introducing the possibility of human bias into the
gunshot detection algorithm. That's a great point. In the end,
(46:09):
it is a human using their training and their understanding
to make the determination and possibly leveraging their relationships. Right
because still, you know, if you're listening to this and
you're human, you know the score, you know the game.
You know humans are often so AP continues and they
(46:30):
claim quote employees can and do modify the location or
number of shots fired at the request of police, according
to court records. And in the past we're still in
this quote. And in the past, city dispatchers or police
themselves could make some of these changes end quote. Not
(46:55):
a good look. Well yeah, and of course shot spotter says, no,
that is not true. No, no, And they say that
too many claims that are similar to this, um And
ultimately it's not it's not necessarily like you're completely wrong.
It's more like this is misleading. This isn't quite accurate,
(47:17):
this is not accurate. Nice. Yeah, I mean, of course,
of course there are going it's a business. This is
not a nonprofit, this is not a foundation. They're out
here to hustle and sell and hopefully, um, hopefully save
human lives. Again, that's that's the idea. But because it's
(47:43):
a for profit business, what are they going to say?
What are they can be like, oh, geez a, p
you got me, good game. No, they're going to use
some of these massive profits to sue the Christ out
of people who are making them look ad. That's just
rational actors. Right. So shot Spotter spoiler Alert vigorously contest
(48:09):
these and similar claims. And like you said, Matt, there
saying these are missing nuance, misleading, they don't paint the
full picture. Look, we require this human participation. Our algorithms
are constantly being evaluated tweaked you know what I mean,
we're building the plane we're flying, and we think that
(48:31):
as a good thing, just like Vice. Associated Press later
issues a statement correcting their original claims because both articles
are talking about uh, these court cases, right, specific instances
of court cases. But this is a moment where we
need to exercise not um analysis of anecdotes, not analysis
(48:55):
of specific cases. We need to exercise structural thoughts. Right.
The problems are bigger than one sick tree in the forest.
We need, we need what we need. What the suits
at our job called the what was it? There's the
forty foot view and then high level views. Yeah, I
(49:17):
mean you go, you can see most things in your
general area. Yeah, the full picture, sure, the whole shebey.
So shot Spotter is still a business. It is actively
is actively expanding or attempting to of course, as all
businesses do. It is actively you know, um monitoring about
(49:43):
nine hundred and eleven square miles of the United States
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, no holidays.
But a number of cities are spooked by this, by
this court of public opinion and stuff going on, right,
and they've stopped using shot Spotter technology because they going
(50:07):
back to what you pointed out earlier, Man, they have
decided that shot Spotter creates too many false positives and
false negatives. Could you break down for us what what
is a false positive and false negative? In this context?
False positive would be shot Spotter says there was a
gun shot when there was not. A false negative would
be shot Spotter missing a real gun shot that occurred
(50:30):
in the city, missing a gun shot, calling it something else. Right,
Oh wow, Yeah, that's just a fart, That's just a
dump truck. I gotta get off this fartest gunshot thing.
It's it's ruining the show. But the but but so
a false false negative. It's kind of like going to
(50:52):
a McDonald's and they don't have fries. Right, that's exactly right.
Isn't this your job? Is it? Is it that like
your main thing to do? Yeah? What profits center? Right?
One of McDonald's biggest profits as a corporation is actually
real estate. Just like Target, the department store here in
(51:15):
the US makes a ton of money off surveillance systems.
We're fun at parties here. We know we're going long.
But one last piece of this episode is incredibly important.
We hope We have done an all right job of
giving you the lay of the land, the forty foot view,
(51:37):
and showing you some of the support, some of the
reasons why people believe in systems like this, and some
of the reasons why people are concerned. But we have
to end on the future. Shot Spotter is not going away.
Technology like this is not going away. It is evolving.
(51:58):
We found this stat the Department of Justice says that overall, UM,
quite recently Uncle Sam has spent six point nine million
dollars on gunshot detection systems. This includes shot Spotter. But
this number, it feels kind of small. Six point nine million, right,
(52:20):
but that doesn't count many more millions spent by state
and local governments. It's just the fetes. This is a
good business, and we we kind of teased cynically the
idea of predicting crime. This is Yeah, this is the
spookiest part, at least for me, Matt. This is the
spookiest part. Yeah, because shot spot already has all this technology.
(52:44):
It's already in all of these cities across the United States.
And then in they went and did a little thing
called an acquisition. They acquired another company. Sorry, in the words,
UM they acquired a company called hunt Lab, and then
hunch Lab takes its AI model and integrates it with
(53:06):
shot spotters shot detection models and guess what they can
predict where gunshots may happen or are going to have
a an increased likely likelihood of happening. Wait wait, wait,
wait wait wait, the algorithms and the machine learning and
the data can predict or the marketing department says they
(53:28):
can predict because this is part of the problem. Right,
Let's put it this way. It's again it's building the
plane as you go kind of thing. So it will
likely increase. Their accuracy will likely increase if they put
it in enough places, if they have it active for
long enough, then it probably will increase and it will
get more predictive. But right now, who knows, well, I
(53:51):
mean they've had a couple of years. We'll see what happens.
How is that not violating fundamental aspects of US governance? Right,
Innocent until proven guilty, you know, like you are, you
are prejudged. That's the idea. Ultimately, that's that's where this goes, right,
(54:13):
the we and we don't have visibility on how granular
this might get. And I know that's how that also
sounds like corporate gobbledegook. But since we don't know whether
they're saying hey the month this month in December, we
we statistically will see higher levels of carth after something
(54:37):
versus three forty two pm April seventeen on the corner
of ninth and two below. We need to have two
cop cars because they're going to be there's going to
be a heist, you know what I mean. We don't
know how how close they can zoom in on the future,
but they're definitely trying to zoom in on the future
(54:59):
a little bit. And that should scare you because there
are no real laws yet. There's no real precedent to
protect civilians right and to protect law enforcement. To be
about it, there are no real laws in effect to
(55:20):
protect human beings in a situation that becomes closer and
closer to prophetic algorithmic time travel. And I know I'm
like styling a little bit on this Welcome to our
creepy accidental spoken word performance. But but you do need
to worry about this. Whether you are a supporter of
(55:43):
things like shot spot or whether you are an opponent.
The reason you need to worry is that I would
posit this evolution in technology is already happening. It's on
the way, It's inevitable. And Matt, I thought of you
when I was when I was thinking this part. It
feels like a classic Matt thing man. People are so
(56:03):
worried about these proprietary audio surveillance systems. Oh, microphones are everywhere.
What kind of world is that gonna be the big hurdle? Oh,
I'm sure I'm doing the class. I'm doing your move man,
where you like you hold up the phone whenever people
talk about you know, I can't be tracked, and then
(56:26):
they're like tweeting us and stuff. I had that conversation
yesterday with a couple of really nice A D T
reps that came out to the house to try and
sell me a security system, and we ended up talking
for about forty minutes outside on my front stoop. And
that was there. One of the big concerns was like
government spying and that kind of thing, and I did
exactly that, just held up my phone. Was like, you
(56:48):
guys were really worried about the government. I said, meta
in alphabet already got you, bro? You know what help
us mess up the search terms I'll I'm pretty sure
I know how the I'm pretty sure I got under
the hood of the targeted advertise on social media and
(57:09):
not I'm nine seven percent sure that I figured it out, Matt,
And it might be an off conversation. Yeah, we gotta
figure You and I have to have to, you know,
huddle up and decide whether or not it's worth going
to air with. But it doesn't involve the dismantled microwave
(57:33):
you do, you know one, look, don't try it at home.
But it's like, it's kind of cool, right, you would
have done it if you were if you were hanging out.
This is before we knew each other, you would have
been so down. We should have continued anyway, the like.
So the surveillance state, dismantled mike waves aside, I think
(57:53):
the legal department requires us to tell you not to
do it, dismantled mic waves aside the to The only
real big hurdles to a constant surveillance state now would
be privacy concerns, if you want to put it really simply,
privacy concerns, right, the software of the mind and the
(58:15):
community and society. That's what we mean with privacy concerns,
how could it be normalized? And the second thing would
be the physical aspect infrastructure. But as we said, we're
holding up our phones. The infrastructure is already there. It
is technically easier. I know this. Some people may have
(58:38):
problem with this. It is technically easier to deploy a nationwide, pervasive,
around the clock surveillance system than it is to have
everybody driving electric cars. Because you need you need physical infrastructure.
It's already there. It's the easiest part of the equation
(58:58):
to solve millions of Americans or US residents, I should say, well, no,
North American continent, South American continent millions, millions, millions already
carry a phone constantly, and ethics aside, How difficult is
it to do the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight Batman trick
(59:19):
and just link them all up and have the best
echolocation ever, the kind of stuff that would make a
bat jealous or a batman. That was awkward, but let's
keep it in You like, uh, Jez thinks, well, you
know any landing you can walk away from, right shot spotter,
(59:42):
build your play. No, that was too far. Alright, Well
that's our show. Thank you so much for tuning in
our pal Noel will be back soon. I personally can't
wait to listen to our strange news listener mail segments. Uh.
And we also can't wait for you to be a
(01:00:02):
part of the show, folks, So let us know your
thoughts again. One of the reasons this was a two
part episode is entirely because we received so much in depth,
well thought out correspondence with people who clearly are on
different have different perspectives about whether or not shot Spotter
(01:00:27):
is good, whether or not this technology is inevitable, whether
or not it's even worth the money, right, and everybody
came with fire, you know what I mean? And this
this is one of the reasons we do this show.
So we can't when we say we can't wait to
hear what you think, we mean it. We try to
be easy to find online Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. Do we
(01:00:50):
have the MySpace Yeah, no, still know MySpace one day man.
One thing. We do have an Instagram conspiracy stuff. We
do have a phone number one eight three three st
d w y t K. Just call in. It's a voicemail,
super easy, three minutes. Give yourself a nickname and let
us know if we can use your message and voice
(01:01:11):
on the air. If you don't want to do that,
why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
We are conspiracy at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff
(01:01:39):
they don't want you to know. Is a production of
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