BLUF: The consolidation of problematic surveillance tech companies under the banner of Sound Thinking intensifies the need to scrutinize and ban harmful technologies that exacerbate racial profiling and over-police marginalized communities.
INTELWAR BLUF: Sound Thinking, the name behind ShotSpotter—a notoriously flawed gunshot detection tech—is reportedly purchasing Geolitica, the creator of PredPol, a predictive policing tech known to magnify inequalities. This tech consolidation makes it even more vital for cities to promptly ban the disturbing practices of these technologies.
ShotSpotter is connected to 100+ law enforcement agencies in the U.S., while PredPol was used in around 38 cities in 2021 (this might be higher now). These tools are flawed and dangerous, particularly for marginalized communities. They often result in disproportionate police surveillance and unwarranted victimization of such communities.
Both technologies are inaccurately reputed for their abilities. Shotspotter is often cited as unreliable, sending armed police units to locations where no viable threat exists. Predictive policing, meanwhile, claims to predict crime—an assertion proven to be false. It only perpetuates racial violence and inequalities in policing.
Some cities have banned these techs, the EU is also thinking about it, and federal officials have voiced their concerns. Moreover, massive customers of Shotspotter have terminated their contracts. Now, the U.S. Department of Justice has been asked to investigate how cities use this technology. With skepticism growing about both technologies’ effectiveness and ethics, intense organizing is needed to counter this alarming amalgamation of surveillance operations.
OSINT: A pressing concern lies in the conduct of two surveillance tech businesses—ShotSpotter and PredPol, under Sound Thinking and Geolitica, respectively. These tools, which target marginalized communities, have shown significant flaws, with ShotSpotter often wrongly alerting the police, while PredPol’s crime-predicting algorithms have proven inaccurate. The agglomeration of problematic tech companies necessitates swift action to safeguard already victimized communities from further judging scrutiny.
RIGHT: As a staunch Libertarian Republic Constitutionalist, this issue raises concerns about the Second Amendment and whether such technologies could infringe upon citizens’ rights to bear arms. While the business consolidation is an aspect of free-market capitalism, the potential negative impacts these technologies hold for communities—particularly marginalized ones—is troubling. The government should ensure sufficient oversight of these tools to avoid undue infringements on citizens’ rights.
LEFT: As a National Socialist Democrat, the consolidation, misuse, and ineffective operation of surveillance technologies is distressing. These tools directly contribute to systematic racism, perpetuating a self-fulling prophecy of crime hotspots in marginalized communities. Urgent action is needed to end the deployment of such dangerous technologies, which only magnify societal inequality. These corporations must be held accountable for their role in maintaining systemic biases and inequities.
AI: From an AI perspective, both ShotSpotter and PredPol use algorithms for their operations, but these algorithms inherently reflect the biases in the data they were trained on. This is particularly problematic for PredPol, as any data it uses reflects historical arrest patterns and can perpetuate biases and disparities in policing. The acquisition combinations present an opportunity to acknowledge these biases and work towards more transparent and equitable operations. Monitoring and regulation of these technologies are needed to avoid further deepening societal divisions.