You’re not falling for this I hope. It sounds at first so incredibly beneficial and even admirable. New York City’s getting ShotStopper. Here’s how it’s supposed to work. Microphones secreted about town whose sole purpose is to identify and triangulate gunshots in order to zero in on crime and make us all safe from the dastards who prey on the innocent. And without so much as questioning a single aspect of the plan or showing just a speck of well-earned incredulity, citizens in addition to the overpriced robots of the Jurassic mainstream media nod in polite Pavlovian obeisance to the latest in high-tech law-enforcement. They ooh and aah over this latest weapon and hi-tech promise to address the scourge of criminal vermin. They do not research, they investigate nothing further and, per usual, they accept the promises of law-enforcement hook line and stinker. So is this even plausible much less effective? Glad you asked?
According to statistics, in 75 percent of cases when people hear a gun shot sound, they do not report it to the police. The ShotSpotter is aimed at fixing that. Its sensors are connected to thousands of cameras set up around the city as part of the its Domain Awareness System, an all-seeing intelligence-analysis complex that collects and analyzes data captured by surveillance cameras, gunshot detectors, license plate readers, Geographic Information Systems mapping and social media feeds. [RT]
But does it work? So, what’s the track record so far? From November 2014, let’s review the following piece from Mikael Thalen.
Although the technology has had some success, multiple police departments across the country have gone as far as completely removing the system due to its multitude of problems.
Police in Oakland, who spent more than $264,000 on ShotSpotter, announced earlier this year that the system would likely be scrapped, calling it expensive and redundant.
In 2012, police in Troy, New York discontinued their system after several years of false alarms, many of which were triggered by firecrackers and squealing car brakes.
That same year, police in Trenton, New Jersey refused a ShotSpotter expansion after the system failed to alert officers to a shooting that left a man dead in the street for hours.
Even ignoring the failures, Seattle residents are unlikely to support the system’s instillation given the city’s involvement with surveillance. Whether it be their controversial mesh network or their secret participation in the TrapWire facial recognition program, the city of Seattle has long traded its residents privacy for alleged security.
Today’s podcast. It’s a surveillance tutorial. The basics, the rudiments the abecedarian fundamentals. Slowly but surely by virtue of our newfangled technology we are consenting to surveillance via the corporate structure versus the government per se. Gone are the Orwellian nightmares of Stasi-like invaders in the middle of the night, planting mics and wiring a room for illegal sound and voice capture. The ultimate goal is your being on a 24 hour real-time panopticon worldview matrix. The nefarious and awful grid. Through keyless entry, cashless bank cards, auto key fobs, and the ubiquitous RFID chip, through everything you do, every step you take not only will Sting be following and watching you but so will Big Brother. Your car will be susceptible to takeover and, in essence, hijacking. Especially after the notion of the driverless car becomes more accepted and cool to the unsuspecting sheeple masses. Since everything you do will be monitored and watched, you will be easily subject to carbon taxes by virtue of the mysterious and magical carbon footprint that you will be leaving and that will be well documented thanks to an intrusive surveillance grid that you allowed to occur when you bought those cool items with cool gadgets and cool features whose dangers you ignored when people like me warned you of what they ultimately meant. How do you feel now?