There are multiple technology and policy protections in place to protect against audio surveillance: Sensors are placed high above the street typically on building or streetlights to avoid street level sounds and the microphones used are not specialized in any way (i.e. everyday cell phone quality) The system is tuned to listen for loud impulsive […]

The Policing Project of NYU Law School conducted an independent audit of ShotSpotter’s gunshot detection system to evaluate the privacy risk. In July 2019 they published a report that stated that there is an extremely low risk of human voice surveillance. The Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission reviewed ShotSpotter in November 2019 under one the most stringent local […]

There is no ability to listen to live streamed audio from the sensor If the system misses a gunfire incident, police may contact the company to see if there is any audio or location evidence. In this case, only authorized ShotSpotter personnel with proper credentials can access sensor audio to search. Their search is limited […]

While an individual sensor could potentially hear a human voice, that sound would be purged within 30 hours with no ShotSpotter employee, police department customer or other 3rd party having the ability to hear it unless an incident was created Human voices are not loud enough to trigger sensors and are rarely heard as part […]

No personally identifiable information is associated with an incident.

Audio at the sensor level is purged every 30 hours If an incident is created and sent to our Incident Review Center the short audio snippet is stored permanently for evidentiary purposes as well as to train the machine learning model. Per the NYU’s Policing Project recommendation, we only store one second of pre- and post-incident […]

The technology and privacy policies have evolved over time. Up until approximately 2012, police departments had direct access to extended audio and some agencies used that to get auditory evidence of sounds prior to and after a gunshot. Significant new protections have been added so that police no longer have access to extended audio and […]