Translations and translation gaps: the gunshot acoustic surveillance experiment in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This article examines crime prevention as it relates to recent developments in audio monitoring for gun crime control. More specifically, I discuss the adoption of ShotSpotter, a device that detects and locates impulsive sounds. ShotSpotter can alert the police promptly whenever gunshots are fired, providing the location, number and exact time of the rounds fired, the number of shooters and even the shooters’ direction of motion. To convert sound monitoring into crime control, the technology needs to perform a series of delicate translations (a term I borrow from actor-network theory) between a range of actors. The actors include concealed sensors distributed across urban space, software for filtering and analysing sounds, and experts working 24/7 to analyse and classify data. In the early 2010s, ShotSpotter was installed in two urban areas in Brazil with high rates of gun violence: Canoas (in southern Brazil) and Rio de Janeiro. Public officials and private companies involved with the project stated that the technology would revolutionise crime control in the country. However, I argue that several local translation gaps ended up affecting ShotSpotter’s performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Surveillance
• gun violence
• crime
• Brazil
• Latin America
• translation
• actor-network theory

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Marina Peterson, Robert Showen and Liz Einbinder for their insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The al-Qaeda bombing of a US Navy destroyer on the coast of Yemen killed 17 sailors and wounded 39.

2. LRAD, “Fact Sheet,” https://www.lradx.com/about/lrad-public-safety-applications-fact-sheet/ (accessed 20 June 2018).

3. “Chicago Police Sound Cannon: LRAD ‘Sonic Weapon’ Purchased Ahead of NATO Protests,” HuffPost (5 May 2012), https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/chicago-police-sound-cannon-lrad-nato-summit_n_1518322.html (accessed 20 June 2018).

4. “Alerta: La policía utilizó por 1ª vez en Barcelona cañones de sonido para reprimir manifestaciones,” Kaos en la Red (18 January 2014),http://2014.kaosenlared.net/component/k2/item/78576-alerta-la-polic%C3%ADa-utilizó-por-1ª-vez-en-barcelona-cañones-de-sonido-para-reprimir-manifestaciones.html (accessed 20 June 2018).

5. “La polémica detrás del nuevo cañón sónico del Esmad,” El Heraldo (25 January 2015),https://www.elheraldo.co/local/la-polemica-detras-del-nuevo-canon-sonico-del-esmad-181751 (accessed 20 June 2018).

6. “Uso de canhão sônico em manifestação gera polêmica,” O Povo (27 June 2013), https://www20.opovo.com.br/app/fortaleza/2013/06/27/noticiafortaleza,30082072/uso-de-canhao-sonico-em-manifestacao-gera-polemica.shtml (accessed 20 June 2018).

7. Raytheon, “Boomerang III: State-of-the-art Shooter Detection,” https://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/boomerang (accessed 20 June 2018).

8. Ibid.

9. Cardoso (2019).

10. Dr Showen was not involved in the Brazilian project.

11. Personal communication, December 2014.

12. An impulsive noise is characterised by its high-energy (often above 150 dB) and short duration (some milliseconds).

13. Depending on the characteristics of the firearm and bullet, the bullet may also generate a shock wave at supersonic speed, which “expands as a cone behind the bullet, with the wave front propagating outward at the speed of sound” (Maher 2006, 1).

14. Many civil society organisations are apprehensive about the expansion of state-sponsored surveillance, arguing that this practice often infringes the right without citizens’ knowledge. Since its implementation in the US, civil society groups have raised concerns about the type of data ShotSpotter can record and store. Many accused the company and police departments of recording private conversations without consent. One New York Times story noted that the sensors once “recorded a loud street argument that accompanied a fatal shooting, [raising] questions about privacy and the reach of police surveillance, even in the service of reducing gun violence” (Goode 2012).

15. SS, “Corporate Overview: ShotSpotter – the Global Leader in Gunshot Detection, Location, Alerting and Analysis” (2017). https://www.shotspotter.com/system/content-uploads/ShotSpotter-CorpOverview-DS0817_FAe_.pdf (accessed 26 June 2018).

16. SS, “A Comprehensive Approach to Combating Gun Violence through Innovation & Collaboration.” https://transformgov.org/sites/transformgov.org/files/304666_SS_GunViolenceReduction_Whitepaper_FPV.pdf (accessed 26 June 2018).

17. https://www.policeone.com/police-products/communications/articles/1800129-More-police-using-gunfire-detection-system/ (accessed 26 June 2018).

18. See Lum (2017).

19. ShotSpotter, “ShotSpotter Privacy Policy,” https://www.shotspotter.com/privacy-policy/ (accessed 21 October 2018).

20. ASI Brasil, http://www.asibrasil.com.br/english/consulting.php (accessed 26 June 2018).

21. Personal communication, December 2014.

22. Governo do Rio de Janeiro, “Governo do Estado Inaugura Centro Integrado de Comando e Controle” (31 May 2013),http://www.rj.gov.br/web/imprensa/exibeconteudo?article-id=1608500 (accessed 26 June 2018).

23. Personal communication, October 2014.

24. The FIFA Confederations Cup and Pope Francis’ visit in 2013, the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016. See Barrionuevo (2010).

25. Personal communication, January 2015.

26. A few years later, ShotSpotter was installed in two locations in South Africa: in the Kruger National Park (to curb Rhino poaching) and in Cape Town.

27. PRONASCI was created by Law 11530/2007.

28. Personal communication, January 2015.

29. Personal communication, December 2014.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research.

Notes on contributors

Leonardo Cardoso

Leonardo Cardoso is Assistant Professor and Crawley Faculty Fellow in the Department of Performance Studies at Texas A&M University. His book, Sound-Politics in São Paulo (Oxford University Press, 2019), provides an ethnographic account of noise control debates in the most populous city in the Americas. He has published in Current Anthropology, Journal of Latin American Studies and the Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Music. Cardoso was a Visiting Scholar at the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation at ParisTech. He was awarded the Program in Latin American Studies Fellowship at Princeton University and the Max Planck Institute Research Fellowship in Berlin. His second book, State Acoustics in Brazil, examines governance, sound and citizenship in Brazil between the 1930s and the 2010s.