Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/05/04/business-is-booming-for-the-su.html
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And I thought it was a bit icky working for the bomb factory… working at this kind of place would feel much worse.
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At some level, this feels like a genie-out-of-the-bottle problem, and I don’t want LEOs to be the only people with this information.
Crowd-funded, open-source, shareware for the masses?
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Geez, if ‘they’ keep saying that America is a scary and dangerous place, I might actually start believing them - if I were a dim-bulb.
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Wasn’t this a major plot point in one of the Spiderman movies, or maybe a Batman?
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Gee, I’d think the NRA would be all over this like a wet rag. You know “My guns are none of you Gubermint’s biznus” and listening in on them when they are shoot’n is 2nd amendment violation.
Then even though nobody will be listening when they are shooting rats in the woods behind their cabins, they’ll get it outlawed, just like they get the gun-control for urban centers outlawed.
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Drones equipped with acoustic gunfire simulators. Add-on device for existing drones. IPO imminent!
Perfect for feckless pranksters, armed robbers, people with shenanigans to have that require a relaible means of locating, distracting and/or re-directing nearby law enforcement units.
Additional purchase of console and software units allows for control of multiple drones. Use with friends to stage races between law enforcement units, or entire agencies! Great fun!
Brought to you by Last Laugh LLC "If the end is near make em pay dear"
With all that fancy invasive hardware, how long before the office prankster makes a real-time map of where officers are tinkling into the toilet?
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I could have sworn they were claiming to triangulate gunfire in Manhattan in the 80s, or early 90s.
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My understanding is that the idea is one of those where the math and technology required to think that it is worth a try are actually quite old(it’s essentially radio acoustic ranging with a less cooperative sound source; but receivers that aren’t floating around); but where difficulty escalates rapidly once you step out of physics experiment land and into a noisy urban environment with a wide variety of structures that attenuate or reflect sound, nasty multipath reflection issues, and so on. A problem with lots of room for ‘solutions’(even sincere attempts) that don’t actually work all that well; but if you’ve bought one; might as well talk it up and hope for deterrence.
(It would also be interesting to know if whatever New York was doing in the 80s or early 90s was based on the acoustic and other sensors used in IGLOO WHITE during the Vietnam war, shopped around for new markets once that program wound down. The technology would be applicable; but I’m not sure how soon any of the contractors would have been free to pitch it for law enforcement; or whether there is in fact any relation.)
It is telling that, even today, this ‘shot spotter’ system is using trained humans in addition to whatever fancy DSP tricks are involved. I strongly suspect that this is because getting the computer to provide the right answer is hard; not because they like payroll costs.
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I’m waiting for 3d printed guns.
The NRA is all about the gun manufacturers. When everyone has a gun but the manufacturers aren’t seeing a dime, the NRA will be about gun control 
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Given that the per-station cost of the necessary listening hardware is probably not all that high; and likely to decline over time; I suspect that only the ones who live deep in the sticks; not just in the suburbs and exurbs and towns, actually have any good reason to suspect that economics will keep them exempt(you have to be a fair way from civilization for there to not be at least some tall structures, cell towers, utility poles, radio masts, etc. to stick these things on; and if the 1033 program taught us anything; it’s that apparently even random Podunk sheriffs are in love with the idea of having enough hardware to fight a small ground war); but it doesn’t exactly take a cutting-edge social theorist to suspect that the NRA cares a lot less because this program is aimed at the, um, ‘urbans’.
(See also, NRA’s less-than-passionate reaction to the fact that even looking like you might have a gun; much less actually having one, no matter how compliant with all applicable regulations for ownership and carry in your jurisdiction, is de-facto a capital offense punishable by summary execution unless you are ethnically wholesome enough to qualify as an ‘open carry patriot’. A naive observer might suspect that they would regard the ability of the cops to shoot you with impunity if they don’t like the look of the gun you may or may not have to be a downright existential 2nd amendment issue; but not so much.)
Will go back to being about gun control.
I’m in need of employement…
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