Is France's capital city lying to its citizens about a new audio surveillance project?

[SeamusBellamy]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/03/is-frances-capital-city-lyin.html

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[anon3072533]

@SeamusBellamy

That they’re plopping sensors for the study out front of bars and in front of significant buildings seems, to me, like a weird choice for testing the technology: they’re locations where there’s always going to be a lot of noise. If they were serious about wanting to make an impact on the noise levels presented by loud vehicles, placing the sensors in high traffic residential areas would make a hell of a lot more sense.

1. I wonder…maybe they want to catch noisy cars before the cars get to the residential areas? I mean, once you’re woken up by noise on your street, well, then you’re already awake…

2. It looks like at this point it’s a test to see how it works and figure out what levels of noise should be fined…maybe they can get more data to use, at this point, by placing them in noisier public places?

[Alvin_Goodman]

Whispering will be considered an effort to counter this surveillance technique and will result in jail time. Please speak loudly and clearly about what sidewalks you intend to drive your rental van on. Merci.

[Dabidoh]

I’d almost rather be shot at than live amidst America’s ultra posturing, toxic testosterone fueled mega noise making Harleys, lowered shit-can Hondas, muscle cars and every other conveyance that turns gas & diesel into MAX NOIZ. Americans stationed in Germany have recently seen a backlash at their noisy cars and the Japanese have an “exhaust noise awareness month”. I’m not condoning shady government surveillance, but …

[Parcival]

It’s not surveillance, it’s an art installation commenting on surveillance. Pinky swear!

[bolamig]

Well if you want to shake out the system to eliminate false positives, you would want a noisy area.

Also these seem to use a different configuration of mics than shotspotters which space the mics much wider by orders of magnitude.

[davide405]

Passive detection is so dull

What you need is active countermeasures…

Bass

[Avery_Thorn]

I don’t know if anything nefarious is going on, I would imagine that a system designed for pinpointing loud noises like gunshots could probably be reprogrammed to pinpoint loud cars pretty easily. Plus, while I don’t know French bar culture as well as American bar culture, I’d probably expect to find people who drive intentionally loud and annoying vehicles at a bar as opposed to, say, the opera or national parks.

Besides, France has strong gun control laws. Why would they need a gun shot location system?

[someguy]

@Dabidoh

I’d almost rather be shot at than live amidst America’s

WhyNotBoth.gif
Americans are kind of known for shooting each other.

[Dabidoh]

I’d be okay with all the shooting if we just used silencers.

{very much jk}

[garph0]

I reckon that you’re applying American metrics to Europe. Barring recent terrorism attacks, shootings are not so common: according to https://www.gunpolicy.org the annual death by firearms is .2 per 100000 inhabitants in France.
It may be gunshot detection in disguise, but noise seems equally probable to me.

[SteveT]

@Avery_Thorn

Besides, France has strong gun control laws. Why would they need a gun shot location system?

Paris - and France in general - has not been short of terrorist massacres in recent years.

[davide405]

@garph0

It may be gunshot detection in disguise, but noise seems equally probable to me.

Thanks for good input