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26 Stan. Tech. L. Rev. 193 (2022-2023)
SoundThinking's Black-Box Gunshot Detection Method: Untested and Unvetted Tech Flourishes in the Criminal Justice System

handle is hein.journals/stantlr26 and id is 193 raw text is: SoundThinking's Black-Box Gunshot Detection Method: Untested and Unvetted Tech Flourishes in the Criminal Justice System Brendan Max* 26 STAN. TECH. L. REV. 193 (2023) ABSTRACT SoundThinking has successfully marketed their ShotSpotter forensic gunshot detection method to police departments and prosecutors as a reliable method for detecting and locating gunfire incidents in urban environments and generating admissible evidence for use in criminal prosecutions. The ShotSpotter method involves networks of microphones deployed in urban settings, which are tasked with detecting the impulsive sounds of gunfire and transmitting the sound recordings to SoundThinking's black-box algorithm and human examiners for forensic analysis. If the impulsive noises are suspected to have originated from gunfire, SoundThinking alerts local police departments so that officers can quickly respond and investigate. SoundThinking promotes ShotSpotter as a high-tech improvement on traditional 911 calls. The reliability of ShotSpotter is hindered by the technically-challenging environments where ShotSpotter systems are deployed (neighborhoods with dense buildings and other infrastructure) and the routine occurrence of impulsive noises (from vehicle traffic, construction equipment, and many other sources) that are known to trigger ShotSpotter false alerts. To assess the ability of methods like SoundThinking's gunshot detection method to reliably complete their forensic tasks and to quantify important rates of error, method developers like SoundThinking are supposed to engage in a multi-step development process involving validation testing, algorithm verification, and error rate analysis. Yet SoundThinking has largely ignored this development process, instead promoting accuracy and performance claims that have no legitimate scientific bases. And neither the scientific community nor the judicial system have engaged in the forms of oversight that should preclude the use of such untested forensic * Chief, Forensic Science Division, Cook County Public Defender Office.

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