- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Flock Safety, the police technology company most notable for their extensive network of automated license plate readers spread throughout the United States, is rolling out a new and troubling product that may create headaches for the cities that adopt it: detection of “human distress” via audio. As part of their suite of technologies, Flock has been pushing Raven, their version of acoustic gunshot detection. These devices capture sounds in public places and use machine learning to try to identify gunshots and then alert police—but EFF has long warned that they are also high powered microphones parked above densely-populated city streets. Cities now have one more reason to follow the lead of many other municipalities and cancel their Flock contracts, before this new feature causes civil liberties harms to residents and headaches for cities.
So what ways could these devices be disabled with the minimum amount of risk? I suspect a strong enough laser could damage the image sensor. But what about the microphones?
Because I highly doubt we can count on the law to protect us from this.