What protections are in place to protect community privacy?

There are multiple technology and policy protections in place to protect against audio surveillance:

• Sensors are placed high above the street typically on building or streetlights to avoid street level sounds and the microphones used are not specialized in any way (i.e. everyday cell phone quality)
• The system is tuned to listen for loud impulsive sounds that are gunshots or similar to gunshots (fireworks, car backfires) and takes no action on other sounds that would include street level sounds or human voices
• The sensors store a limited amount of audio locally and that audio is automatically purged every 30 hours
• Sensors are triggered and an incident created only when 3 or more sensors hear the same loud impulsive sound and can verify a location. This creates an incident and sends a short audio snippet to the ShotSpotter Incident Review center. The snippet has the gunfire and 1 second of audio prior to and after the gunfire to establish an ambient noise level. Audio snippets are typically only a few seconds long unless there is a gun battle.
• The company’s culture of privacy protection builds in proper measures when new features or processes are contemplated

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