Re: Technology 'secures' gunfire [CNN]

[Steve Schear <azur@netcom.com>]

>>>      Now police have an electronic witness that can provide similar
>>>      assistance: a device called SECURES that pinpoints the time and
>>>      location of gunshots.
>
>This would be a network of microphones and processing stations which could
>perform a reverse-GPS location analysis of sounds picked up by 3 or more
>microphones.  (Sounds common to 2 microphones could be localized with a
>lower degree of accuracy if directional microphone arrays are used.)  Yet
>another instance of Big Brother technology that is of limited value to the
>police.  Of course, this means that you will have the police responding to
>every backfiring car, which will dampen their enthusiasm for responding
>unless full-auto fire or a prolonged gunfight is overheard.  Of course, if
>you have a silenced weapon and some cherry bombs with cigarette time-delay
>fuses, you can use this system to docoy the police into the wrong
>neighborhood.  Or if you confine yourself to single-shot assassinations
>near busy streets, it will probably be written off as a vehicle backfire,
>especially if you are doing a drive-by with a suppressed shotgun.  (Not
>possible to silence completely, but certainly possible to quiet to the
>point that it wouldn't attract undue notice along a busy street.)
>
>In order for this system to be worth anything, it would have to be able to:
>1.  Use voice recognition techniques to classify the type of weapon
>(primarily useful for machine guns--it could evaluate the frequency
>characteristics, rate of fire, etc. to distinguish between an AK-47 and an
>UZI) sufficiently well to distinguish between small-arms fire, fireworks
>(cherry bombs, M-80's, etc) and vehicle backfires.
>

In late 1994 several members of the Wireless Communication Alliance, an
organization related to Joint Venture Silicon Valley, gave a presentation
on such a system for which they were seeking LE/government funding.  As I
recall the pilot was for East Palo Alto (for those of you not familiar, its
a poor neighborhood, mostly minority, neighborhood between the Hwy 101 and
the Bay).  The wireless infrastructure was proposed to reduce costs to
practical levels by providing an inexpensive link to more centralized
processing. I haven't followed up and don't know if the project went
anywhere.

If reliable and used as presented it could reduce LE response to some
violent crimes. The prospects for misuse are truly scary.

--Steve