Technology. Open Book

• Author: Jason Tashea
• Pages: 20-21

Business of Law edited by

VICTOR LI

victor.li@americanbar.org

TECHNOLOGY

Open Book

Amid privacy concerns, a gunshot detection technology company

voluntarily submitted itself for an audit—and reaped the benefits

BY JASON TASHEA

Placing microphones around a

city for the police can make

residents uneasy, which makes

life tough if that’s your busi-

ness model.

ShotSpotter is a gunshot detec-

tion technology company that places

microphones in high gun-crime areas.

At the request of local governments, the

company has deployed its technology in

almost 100 American cities .

Its sensors can detect a gunshot

quickly and lead to the deployment

of police without the need for a ser-

vice call.

While ShotSpotter had privacy pro-

tections in place, they weren’t enough

for some. The Toronto Police Service,

for example, was considering a con-

tract with the company until Ontario’s

Ministry of the Attorney General and

privacy/legal experts raised concerns.

Toronto police decided against a

ShotSpotter contract in February 2019.

What happened in Toronto was

not a new experience for ShotSpotter.

Believing concerns that its microphones

could allow for eavesdropping on pri-

vate conversations were largely because

of a misunderstanding of the product,

the company did something radical:

It opened itself up to an independent

privacy audit conducted by the Polic-

ing Project at the New York University

School of Law .

ShotSpotter had been through  nan-

cial and security audits, but a privacy

audit was something new. The process

gave researchers at the Policing Proj-

ect access to ShotSpotter’s technology,

contracts, employees and procedures to

hunt for possible privacy issues.

Concluding that ShotSpotter created

a “low privacy risk,” the report , pub-

lished in July 2019, found no egregious

privacy violations but recommended

11 areas for possible improvement,

including keeping the precise location

of sensors from local police , more

vigorously denying data requests and

challenging subpoenas , and updating

its policy for sharing data with third

parties . ShotSpotter has adopted or

is in the process of adopting all of

the recommendations except one that

Photo illustration by Sara Wadford/Shutterstock

ABA JOURNAL | APRIL–MAY 2020

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