These days, our artificial ears and eyes are better than ever
---and more ubiquitous than ever. A business recently profiled
by the New York Times seems to embody both what's most promising about such pervasive surveillance and also what's potentially disturbing. ShotSpotter sells and helps run an automated gunshot-reporting system to police departments, for a cost of $40,000 to $60,000 per square mile. Recording equipment is installed in neighborhoods and linked software that records sounds that could be gunfire, analyzes them to identify which are actually shots, and then submits its findings for review by a trained employee in the company's Mountain View office. If a human verifies that the sounds are indeed gunfire, the police are notified with the location of the shots, pinpointed to within 40-50 feet. All this can happen in well under five minutes, meaning police can be there right away. Police officials who spoke to ...
