Audio Surveillance, Intended to Detect Gunshots, Can Pick Up Much More 215
New submitter groovethefish writes "This NYT article highlights the use of electronic listening devices installed on utility poles, buildings, and other structures, then centrally monitored for gunshots. The company SureSpotter claims it helps reduce time wasted by police searching for the source of gunfire in their patrol areas, but the privacy implications are just hitting the courts. If they are monitoring 24/7 and also pickup conversations along with gunshots, can that be used against the people who are recorded?" Evidently, Yes: the linked article describes just such a case. Continues groovethefish: "The company line, from the article: 'James G. Beldock, a vice president at ShotSpotter, said that the system was not intended to record anything except gunshots and that cases like New Bedford's were extremely rare. "There are people who perceive that these sensors are triggered by conversations, but that is just patently not true," he said. "They don't turn on unless they hear a gunshot."'"
No expectation of privacy (Score:5, Informative)
QUOTE: "In at least one city, New Bedford, Mass., where sensors recorded a loud street argument that accompanied a fatal shooting last December, the system has raised questions about privacy and the reach of police surveillance, even in the service of reducing gun violence."
The Supreme Court has ruled people have no expectation of privacy in a public setting or publicly-open facility (like a mall). Note that also includes cops who try to make you turn-off your videocamera or audio recorder. They don't have any right to privacy either, and can not force you to turn them off, or confiscate & erase the evidence.
Re:No expectation of privacy (Score:5, Informative)
QUOTE: "In at least one city, New Bedford, Mass., where sensors recorded a loud street argument that accompanied a fatal shooting last December, the system has raised questions about privacy and the reach of police surveillance, even in the service of reducing gun violence."
The Supreme Court has ruled people have no expectation of privacy in a public setting or publicly-open facility (like a mall). Note that also includes cops who try to make you turn-off your videocamera or audio recorder. They don't have any right to privacy either, and can not force you to turn them off, or confiscate & erase the evidence.
There are twelve states in which all parties must consent to being audio recorded, otherwise it's a felony, one of which is Massachusetts. Ten of those states have an 'expectation of privacy' clause which would make recording people in a park legal. The two which don't are Illinois and, you guessed it, Massachusetts.
Re:No expectation of privacy (Score:4, Informative)
>>>one of which is Massachusetts
Yes and that law is now nullified by the First Circuit Court of the U.S. which declared "citizens have a first amendment right to record their public officials in the performance of their duties." - Then they freed the citizen who was being charged under wiretap laws for recording an law enforcement officer.
In other words, cops may not force you to turn off your camera, per your 1st amendment "freedom of the press" right which allows not just recording conversation with pen-and-paper (like the old days) but also with audio or video.
Re:No expectation of privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, cops may not force you to turn off your camera
Except that they can still ask you to turn off your camera, and they can still arrest you if you don't. They just have to come up with some other charge(contempt of cop), or release you without charge after holding you long enough to miss the shot. And if you got it, oops, the sd card went missing somehow. Too bad about that. That's if your lucky and the officer didn't mistake your camera for a gun.
Has any officer anywhere been disciplined in any way (other than paid vacation) for violating the legal rights of a photographer? Unless you can answer in the affirmative, the circuit court decision doesn't mean anything really.
The protections we actually have against criminals in uniform are vanishingly slim.
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When you live in a place where one man's car costs much more than another man's house you can expect to be treated like a medieval surf (unless you're the guy with the car)!
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Well, there's a difference, but it's slight. Since the moon's orbital distance increases, the difference between a modern surf and a medieval surf is the medieval surf would have been a bit better. Well, except for the lack of decent surfboards, but let's not nitpick minor details like that. :)
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I believe OP was using the car vs. house thing to illustrate income disparity within the US. The further implication is that those who are wealthier (the person with the pricey car in his example) are those who the police do not bother. This happens not as a result of differences in crime rates, but because of differences in power within society.
Either that or he was talking about Chaucer's Endless Summer.
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The fact that there are rich people with fancy cars in a country doesn't have any relevance to an abuse of police power.
Don't think so, huh? Do you think the rich people with the fancy cars see as much abuse from the police as those without money? Who do you think employs the police, and who is being protected from whom?
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Except that they can still ask you to turn off your camera, and they can still arrest you if you don't.
Is there any behavior where this argument could not be invoked by an officier as justification for arrest?
They just have to come up with some other charge(contempt of cop), or release you without charge after holding you long enough to miss the shot. And if you got it, oops, the sd card went missing somehow. Too bad about that. That's if your lucky and the officer didn't mistake your camera for a gun.
Freedom isn't free it is something that must be constantly asserted. It is not supposed to be easy.
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Better yet, stream it directly to the internet!
I can see scope for a website displaying live streams from camera phones etc. and allowing visitors to tag the "good" bits. That way by the time you're asked to turn off your phone, it's already too late for them to cover up whatever dodgy thing they were doing!
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Photobucket
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There have always been big disparities in wealth, and that in itself doesn't indicate anything pathological about a society.
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Big disparities in wealth are unjust.
They're also inefficient. More egalitarian societies have more efficient economic production.
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I believe that applies when there IS an expectation of privacy. I most certainly can video tape in public places and unintentionally (or intentionally) record activities of bystanders. If not, no one would be able to have video of their kids on the beach or at an amusement park or video of any other kind of public activity.
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Normally I'm so far onto the side of privacy where technology is concerned I'm about to fall off the edge of the board (in relation to what are legitimate uses of it by law enforcement to pursue investigations). However, after reading the article, and assuming the system cannot be triggered manually or by non-gunshot events (it apears the false positive rate is very low), there's no expectation of privacy and the exigent circumstances surrounding the legitimate belief any recording involves discharge of a f
Cops can get away with it unfortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't have any right to privacy either, and can not force you to turn them off, or confiscate & erase the evidence.
They may not have any right to privacy but they certainly can, in real life, force you to turn them off, confiscate and erase the evidence. Doesn't mean it is legal for them to do so but they certainly are capable of doing it and probably will get away with it too. After all, once the evidence is deleted it becomes your word against theirs and they tend to hold the advantage there. Obviously cops should be held at least to the same standards as regular citizens (if not higher standard) but we know that it doesn't always work out the way it should in actual practice. The certainly aren't going to get thrown in jail and probably not even reprimanded and they know it.
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A system where it gets sent it real time to the Internet would handle the confiscation of evidence issue.
Re:Cops can get away with it unfortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
A system where they are fired and sent to jail for 20 years as a federal crime would help a bit as well.
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The way unions control things here, they'd probably be sent to jail for 20 years and not be fired... and continue to collect pay.
There are in fact a number of cases of "dirty cops" in jail and also collecting their pension.
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There are in fact a number of cases of "dirty cops" in jail and also collecting their pension.
If so, you should have no problem providing specific examples of at least a few of them.
Re:Cops can get away with it unfortunately (Score:5, Informative)
There are in fact a number of cases of "dirty cops" in jail and also collecting their pension.
If so, you should have no problem providing specific examples of at least a few of them.
My personal favorite. [chicagotribune.com]
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When former Greece Police Chief Merritt Rahn was found guilty of cover-up crimes involving two of his officers, he lost his job, his reputation and his freedom. He didn't, however, lose his taxpayer funded pension. For the past two years, while behind bars, Rahn has been collecting a retirement pension of $55,000 per year.
"Well if he does, he doesn't deserve it, that's for sure," said Greece resident Bob Warnick when we told him of Rahn's pension.
In fact, that's just the tip of the iceberg. We found many public employees convicted of crimes and still collecting their pensions. And it's perfectly legal.
After digging online, we ran the names of some former dubious local public employees into a database that tracks pensions. And here's what I Team 10 discovered:
*Former state assemblyman Jerry Johnson. Convicted of breaking into a staff member's home in Livingston County, he retired in 2000 and now collects an annual pension of $39,807.
*Bob Morone, in prison for his part in the county Robutrad scandal...$18,790.
*Former City of Rochester inspector William Redden, who admitted to taking bribes in a bid rigging scheme...$21,376.
*Former Monroe County Sheriff's Deputy James Telban was found guilty of misdemeanor DWI in a crash that killed a motorcyclist. He still gets his pension...$30,000 a year.
*John Stanwix, former Monroe County Water Authority chairman who pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of steering contracts to a consulting company he owned has an staggering pension of $98,658 per year.
*Nelson Miles, Jr., formerly a teacher in Caledonia-Mumford, who downloaded child porn...$21,705.
*Crooked cop Gary Pignato, now locked up for using his badge in Greece to coerce women into sex, gets $45,494 a year.
and that's just a partial list from one small area that isn't Chicago or New Orleans
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>>>force you to turn them off, confiscate and erase the evidence
Yes they can FORCE you to do it. That's what government is best at: Use of force to suppress natural rights. BUT you can also prosecute the cops under the law for destruction of material evidence. He would be fined or demoted.
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>>>force you to turn them off, confiscate and erase the evidence
Yes they can FORCE you to do it. That's what government is best at: Use of force to suppress natural rights. BUT you can also prosecute the cops under the law for destruction of material evidence. He would be fined or demoted.
I think you meant to say that he will receive 2 weeks on administrative leave with pay (what most of us call "vacation") while the situation is investigated, then he'll be cleared and returned to duty.
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The problem with police recordings are that the police have no responsibility to give the recording in full to the defense; they can limit what they introduce into evidence to just what would be beneficial to securing a conviction, and leave out anything that could help the accused.
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>>> the police have no responsibility to give the recording in full to the defense
Yes they do. If it's later discovered they were withholding evidence, the defendent is automatically freed because he didn't get a fair trial. So the police have a responsibility to turn over everything (else they'd just be stupid).
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I happened to see a headline today which can answer that question. From just this past weekend , 40 shootings, 10 dead.
Detroit is very crime ridden, if not the worst, probably second in terms of overall shootings, drug incidents, etc. That saying about not driving around in certain neighbors after dark applies to a large portion of Detroit even during the day.
a city in a 1st world country might not have enough police officers to respond to every single gunsho
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Wow. Just Wow. I'm in my 40s, grew up in the UK, and live in Germany where there are about 40 murders with guns every year. I don't think I've every heard a gun being fired outside of a firing range or similar, and I live within gunshot of the centre of a city of around 150K people.
I only ever remember seeing a gun once where you wouldn't expect it (i.e. not carried by police/army, and not on a range). That was in Rome about 15 years ago, and even then it might be that the guy wielding it was undercover. It
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I'm a European living a relatively crime-free city, but it boggles my mind that a city in a 1st world country might not have enough police officers to respond to every single gunshot. Just how crime ridden is Detroit, and how long before we see a real life ED209?
Perhaps some visual aids might help you gain a clearer understanding.
A picture of a typical Detroit street might convey the atmosphere found there: http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/stratman_el84/Junk/detro.jpg [photobucket.com]
And this is what happens when you refuse to stop recording cops when they (illegally) order you to stop: http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/stratman_el84/Junk/Cops_government_protecting_and_serving_the_shit_out_of_you.jpg [photobucket.com]
Actually, the "Detroit" photo is, of course, not of Detroit. But not far
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our lack of imagination v. comforting descriptions (Score:3)
We should probably put a more critical eye towards possibilities.
The system turns on when it detects gunshots. But it's extra sensitive, so it often catches things that aren't actually gunshots. And it stays on for half an hour. Effectively, it's recording half the day.
Nominal behavior is not actual behavior.
"They don't turn on unless they hear a gunshot." (Score:5, Insightful)
"They don't turn on unless they hear a gunshot."
So, how are they listening for a gunshot, and then recording the gunshot, after the gunshot was fired?! Is that not a blatant lie or am I being daft?
Re:"They don't turn on unless they hear a gunshot. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they mean the recording portion doesn't turn on unless the sensing portion detects a gunshot. A poorly worded sentence, to be sure. It's like your TV - even when your TV is "off", the small component that listens for your remote is still on.
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How can you verify a sound was a gunshot THEN record it?
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Re:"They don't turn on unless they hear a gunshot. (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree it's not supposed to be permanent, a short circular buffer *is* a recording, and it means the device is on all the time.
For instance, the circular buffer used by the ReplayTV DVR for live TV pausing is supposed to be transient and inaccessible, but (due to a bug) it is possible to stream that video to other devices on the network. IIRC, the Tivo lets you save the pause buffer.
His statement shows that James G. Beldock is either ignorant of his company's own technology or attempting to "dumb down" the description of the technology to avoid scaring the common folk. Either way, it says nothing good about him or ShotSpotter.
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Or he knows the equipment and when he says "recording" he's talking jargon about the device that is understood by the company the built the device and probably the people who work with the device on a daily basis. And it says nothing good or bad.
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Actually, this could probably be done without recording anything... just have a needle trigger hooked up to an audio compressor tube. If the needle jiggles too much, it trips the recording device.
Of course, in this case it would be impossible to tell if it was really a gunshot that set it off, as you'd never record the gunshot (or other loud noise) itself.
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Detecting impulsive noise, that correlates between sensors is enormously easier than detecting speech.
It's the difference between detecting a car parked on your foot, and a cat.
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A gunshot has a very wide frequency spread. Basically, take the Fourier transform of a delta function...
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It's the difference between "splitting hairs true" and "true for practical purposes"
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Actually what he says is exactly true, the sensor is not triggered except by a gunshot (or presumably an equally loud and abrupt noise).
He didn't say that no audio is being recorded or listened for what-so-ever until a gunshot goes off (since that would be a self-invalidating statement)
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It still would need to record at least a buffer size big enough to go from the start of the gunshot to the time it takes to determine if it is a gunshot or not. It just doesn't save the recording unless it thinks it hears a gunshot.
I wonder if someone is going to go up to one and confess to their killings while shooting a gun continuously in the air.
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TFA talks about an argument recorded by this system, associated with a shooting.
Unless the argument happened AFTER the shooting, it's unlikely they only start recording as a result of a shooting.
And it the argument DID happen after the shooting, I really can't se
Re:"They don't turn on unless they hear a gunshot. (Score:5, Informative)
I posted in more detail elsewhere in this article, but I installed a security camera system that could store some footage from before motion tripped the camera. Basically, once motion was in the frame (or a specific part of the frame), it writes everything from the buffer preceding the motion detection to storage and then appends the live video until X seconds/minutes after the motion stops. Unless there's a trigger, the preceding footage never gets written to storage. Technically, the buffer is a type of storage but it's very small, often overwritten, and only used if a trigger event is detected shortly thereafter.
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Alright, that would work.
So, why do I have a hard time believing that the police are using a system that just throws data away?
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To make a bad analogy, that's like saying that every time a cop draws a gun, it's the same as shooting someone just because the option exists and is trivial to implement. In reality, there's still a big difference between "can" and "does"
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I think they mean the recording portion doesn't turn on unless the sensing portion detects a gunshot. A poorly worded sentence, to be sure. It's like your TV - even when your TV is "off", the small component that listens for your remote is still on.
I think the 'saving' of the always-on recording doesn't get saved unless it 'hears' the sound it's supposed to. After all, how the heck is it supposed to record something after it happened? All this makes me wonder if more of these audio devices (and CCTV) will be destroyed/hunted by local criminals; if so, will that spur a new market for camouflaged devices?
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Maybe, they don't record but use something like DSP analysis to trigger an event when an audio signature event is detected? Considering the audio is being "captured" and "analyzed" it does raise the question; is this equivalent to "recording?"
But why not have a buffer, I wonder? Say, 5 minutes worth? Then, when a gunshot is detected that 5 minutes of audio can be saved along with subsequent audio providing context around the shot. If no gunshot (or automobile backfire?) is detected, the start of the 5 minut
Re:"They don't turn on unless they hear a gunshot. (Score:5, Informative)
I implemented several IP cameras for a previous employer. They had a nifty little "record on motion" feature in which it wouldn't record (could still be monitored live) to the NAS unless there was motion detected. One of the big selling points around this feature was that it could actually record up to 30 seconds BEFORE the motion that triggered it so you could be sure you weren't missing anything before the camera was triggered. I believe it did it by keeping a couple minutes of video in a buffer on the camera. If an event triggered it, that buffer would be written to the NAS first and then it would continue appending the live video to the storage until the motion stopped plus X minutes. This system likely works in a similar fashion - it keeps a buffer that's continually overwritten until an event (IE: gunshot) triggers it to be saved to permanent media.
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To continue my analogy above, the camera system could be set to only look for motion in certain parts of the frame. One of the cameras monitored the warehouse, so we could tell it to only trigger recording if there was motion at the warehouse door and to not trigger it if there was motion elsewhere in the frame. The gunshot would be the equivalent of the door and conversations would be the rest of the frame - it passes through the buffer but is never added to the storage medium unless it's occurring at the
Ya ours do this (Score:2)
It is done on the DVR itself, not the cameras in our case. It continually records to memory, in an overwriting fashion, until motion is triggered. Then the data in memory is committed to disk, as well as what happens after that until the event ends (you set how long after it stops detecting motion that it keeps recording).
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Didn't read the TFA again?
That's the entire point of the software.
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I imagine that there is a whole lot of overlap between the acoustic profiles of gunshots and other impulse-type sounds.
Ultimately, a gunshot and a backfire both sound like "impulse convolved with some transfer function depending on the local environment".
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You could do it by listening for *two* impulses, or an impulse followed by some other noise (the thing getting hit)... dunno how hard that would be though.
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I am tangentially aware of a military system that does the same thing and the way its engineered is you record to a time stamped ring buffer constantly. Meanwhile you analyze your ring buffer for a shot signature. IF you find a shot signature, then you perform a somewhat more detailed analysis to figure out the exact timestamp of firing (more or less). Then you uplink a really short data burst to central, something like "I'm sensor 23542542 and at 10:41:02.239582 I detected a shot and the local airtemp
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I am tangentially aware of a military system that does the same thing and the way its engineered is you record to a time stamped ring buffer constantly. Meanwhile you analyze your ring buffer for a shot signature. IF you find a shot signature, then you perform a somewhat more detailed analysis to figure out the exact timestamp of firing (more or less). Then you uplink a really short data burst to central, something like "I'm sensor 23542542 and at 10:41:02.239582 I detected a shot and the local airtemp 73F and local air pressure is 1.0001 bar". Presumably central has a database of sensor locations, but if not a GPS RX on the sensor to generate timestamps works pretty well to report your presumably static location (although the .mil version I've heard about mounts on a movable APC).
Well anyway central optimistically gets about 10 reports, then its mega-triangulation time to pinpoint a location and estimated accuracy of fix.
Now if you dump the ring buffer to disk or something for possible later analysis, and the ring buffer is a minute or two (or an hour?) long, that's how you inadvertently collect street conversations.
This seems the only reasonable way to do this... any other way?
Now if you dump the ring buffer to disk or something for possible later analysis, and the ring buffer is a minute or two (or an hour?) long, that's how you inadvertently collect street conversations.
This seems the only reasonable way to do this... any other way?
Sure, there's other ways that could be considered "reasonable". Since these are permanently mounted recorders, there's no reason why they have to record audio locally and discard old recordings. There's no reason why they can't have enough data bandwidth to let them stream the audio to central audio recorders that keep audio indefinitely (purportedly for further analysis or for "quality control" purposes). Likewise, storage is so cheap that even if data was stored locally and eventually overwritten, they co
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Gunshots are a symptom (Score:2)
How about the police figure out why so many people are getting shot? Police show up after the fact and if drugs are involved the case goes to the bottom of the pile. Maybe someone could figure out why society has these issues in the first place? And don't tell me guns are the cause either because I seem to recall the UK having problems with gangs of knife wielding youths.
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Ok, obviously none of you guys are marksmen, or are forgetting ear protection tech. Let me give you an example which should clarify this and give further clarity to the "always recording" argument.
Guns are LOUD...a lot louder than they seem on tv...typically 140 - 190db. When there is a gunfight in a room and people have a conversation afterwards on tv, I chuckle. Unless they are wearing hearing protection (colloquially: "ears") all they would hear after the gunfight would be ringing. It is mandatory on mos
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Not Hardly (Score:3)
In my state of Wisconsin, it is against the law to record a conversation between two parties without the express knowledge of one of the parties. This instance would most likely be inadmissible in any court case. I believe this is the recording law in many states as well, but I only have experience dealing with it here.
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A similar argument has been used for red light cameras - quick way around it is to put announcements in the paper/radio/etc and put signs up. That way they can argue that they did their due diligence in informing the public, so it should be general public knowledge that your conversation could be recorded. Not sure how well it would stand up in court, but it'd be enough to at least give a fight.
Sound familiar? (Score:5, Insightful)
The TSA scanners didn't store images until we found out they stored images. Then we were told they only stored images for testing until we found out they stored images all the time. Then we found out the images were easily accessible to anyone after being reassured that there were ample security measures to prevent any yahoo from distributing humiliating or enticing images of some people.
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Given a choice (Score:3, Insightful)
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Given a choice between outlawing guns and having a sensitive listening device on every street corner that can listen in on conversations like Big Brother, I'd prefer to outlaw guns.
Unfortunately or not, for you, the U.S. constitution has no explicit right to privacy like you desire, yet it has a right to gun ownership, to some arguable degree.
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Considering that many of the authors of the constitution were lawyers, it is a
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>>>I'd prefer to outlaw guns.
But when some future Julius Caesar takes-over as president, and starts writing his own laws (thus making the House/Senate impotent like the real Caesar did), how are we supposed to overthrow those dictator if we don't have guns?
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But when some future Julius Caesar takes-over as president, and starts writing his own laws (thus making the House/Senate impotent like the real Caesar did), how are we supposed to overthrow those dictator if we don't have guns?
Count the guns in this picture [the-romans.co.uk].
Take all the time you need.
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Technically the Constitution says "right to bear arms" so that would include swords and knives. Whatever it takes to remove the dictator from power. If that means having all 200 million adult Americans storm the capitol and stab President-Dictator Julius to death, so be it. (Though I'd rather we have semi-automatics.)
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Given a choice between outlawing guns and having a sensitive listening device on every street corner that can listen in on conversations like Big Brother, I'd prefer to outlaw guns.
Outlawing guns will only serve to guarantee that there will be listening devices on every corner - and in your house, workplace, transportation, and anywhere else BB wants to watch you.
Do you not realize why we have a guaranteed right (and some will go so far to say, duty) to keep and bear arms in this country? Hint: it has nothing to do with gathering food.
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It's a false choice. There is no reason we can't allow guns and not allow the listening devices. We managed for over 200 years without them.
Of course, they COULD restrict the resolution of the system so that it can detect gunshots but cannot make out human speech. OR they could just note a detected gunshot and record nothing.
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Why does it have to be a choice of what rights you give up? Just to make law enforcement easier? To hell with THAT!
"Unless they hear" (Score:2)
We had these in Iraq (Score:3)
The overall issue of surveillance (Score:2)
The recent ruling that banned cops placing GPS trackers on suspects without a warrant was criticized by some of the justices themselves for not going far enough to clear up privacy issues in public. This is just another example of how those justices are being proven right, and at some point, the limits of what forms of warrantless, electronic surveillance (by private or public entities) can be used as evidence in court will need to be clarified once and for all. (I hope this happens sooner rather than later
Mr. Camera (Score:2)
Ok, I had to read it twice but yes... the lawyer for one of the defendants in the New Bedford case is Mr. Camera.
Vancouver Skytrain (Score:2)
Please complete this sentence... (Score:2)
"A ______ is to a public microphone as a 1W laser from http://www.wickedlasers.com/ [wickedlasers.com] is to a traffic camera."
-- Terry
Are gunshots illegal? Is gunshot a crime? (Score:2)
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. [wikipedia.org]
I can't believe I had to invoke the 2nd, all the way down here at the bottom of the comments. Shameful, /. , just shameful.
But it possibly stands to reason that the deployment of such surveillance devices domestically is a clear violation of the 2nd Amendment, if not also the 4th Amendment [wikipedia.org] .
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No. It is always on and they are always listening. They are lying. There is no incentive for them not to record .
Not having to store and listen to endless hours of recordings and phenomenal amounts of data that end up being 99.9999999999% useless, avoiding legal liability, staying in business...