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by throwawayway9 2161 days ago
I forget where I had read it, but the spotters were also picking up and recording conversations. Inadvertently, of course.
1 comments

These sensors are usually on rooftops, and while I believe they could pick up conversations if we’re next to it or yelled loudly (as in, physically capable of capturing frequencies of human voices), I don’t believe they have a use for recording lots of audio to some permanent storage. Their main purpose seems to be posting time stamped events of a particular sound occurrence with a couple seconds of sound surrounding the event. [0]

> Only two seconds before a gunshot and four seconds after a gunshot are recorded, the company claims.

If they were recording full conversations on purpose without permission that would expose a lot of liability, and unless every customer is in on it (I doubt these distributed public entities are coordinated) I think there would be some documented story by now.

[0] https://splinternews.com/is-nyc-s-new-gunshot-detection-syst...