High Tech Tagger Terminator

March 15, 2004 9:34 AM

Police using aerosol can's distinct audio signature to bust graffiti artists. An Escondido, CA company, Traptech, offers an area monitoring system, Taggertrap, to law enforcement that allegedly distinguishes the sound of an aerosol can in the act of spraying. How soon before someone builds an aerosol audio signature cancellation device to fight back?
posted by bz (20 comments total)

Of course, maybe a cancellation system could be as simple as a cheap boombox playing an audio recording of a tagger at work to create Taggertrap false positives.
posted by bz at 9:40 AM on March 15, 2004

How soon before someone builds an aerosol audio signature cancellation device to fight back?

This would increase the cost of the can, so manufacturers would never do it, as nobody would pay extra for "vandalism safe" paint cans.

I think a good way to defeat this would be to simply paint something -- a bike or whatever -- in an area protected by this device. Repeatedly.
posted by kindall at 9:46 AM on March 15, 2004

A better way would be to get the permission of building owners - many would love to have a wall protected against tags and scribbles by a major and respectable graf piece - instead of just tagging where you damn well please.
posted by jon_kill at 9:50 AM on March 15, 2004

Er, um, actually, kindall, I was thinking about a portable electronic countermeasure device rather than some change in the design of aerosol cans.
posted by bz at 10:01 AM on March 15, 2004

This was already invented in an old episode of Police Squad!.
posted by Diddly at 10:11 AM on March 15, 2004

To effectively cancel the noise, though, the cancellation device would have to be quite near the source of the sound. The higher the pitch, the closer it would have to be.

If you knew where the mic was, you could of course put the cancellation device there, or simply cover it in sound-deadening material.
posted by kindall at 10:29 AM on March 15, 2004

If you knew where the mic was, you could of course put the cancellation device there, or simply cover it in sound-deadening material.

Or take a brick to it.
posted by MrMoonPie at 10:34 AM on March 15, 2004

The easier method is tried and true. Right now, the punishment fits the crime. You want less graffitti? Make the punishment harsher than the crime.
I'm sure creative sadists could come up with something wildly inappropriate. Caning? Public humiliation? Chain gangs?
posted by kablam at 10:37 AM on March 15, 2004

I think a good way to defeat this would be to simply paint something -- a bike or whatever -- in an area protected by this device. Repeatedly.
How sensitive is an "aerosol audio signature"?
Sprays like, whipping cream, hair spray, Raid & CO2 would it distinguish them form paint. Imagine someone using fix-a-flat having a patrol car sicced on them.
posted by thomcatspike at 11:15 AM on March 15, 2004

> If you knew where the mic was, you could of course put the cancellation device there, or simply cover it in sound-deadening material.

The surveyor model looks just like a spotlight and can presumably be mounted up high. Even a cheap pressure zone microphone can pick up amazingly faint noises at quite a distance, so height is unlikely to be a problem.
I seriously doubt that this product would be used in isolation. These things would be very cheap to manufacture compared to a camera and wouldn't increase the cost of a security installation by a relatively large amount.
A collection of these things hooked up to a big security consultancy firm's existing surveilance network could be set to alarm a human with access to a nearby camera. Deploying it in that way also enormously reduces the effectiveness of false positive 'attacks'.
posted by snarfodox at 11:53 AM on March 15, 2004

As a techno-positivist, I think this is great. But that's me :P
posted by abcde at 12:34 PM on March 15, 2004

Just wait until the sea of vine overtakes all your precious human structures. Soon my inevitables.
posted by Satapher at 12:46 PM on March 15, 2004

ha . you can't catch me . i don't use spray paint .
posted by mishaco at 2:45 PM on March 15, 2004

Police using aerosol can's distinct audio signature to bust graffiti artists.

I'm sure they're using that to bust many people who spraypaint buildings, including graffiti artists. I'm all for the four elements of hip-hop, culture jamming, etc., but most people who experiment with graf tend to suck.

I highly recommend Style Wars, in part because you see that (despite the fact many of these people were talented and threw up really amazing pieces under bizarre circumstances) the NYC subway system is much nicer now and, moreover, how many of the people from the golden age of NYC graffiti, again, tended to suck or were purely in it for the joy of vandalism. 99% of these people should channel their creative energies into learning how to breakdance or build puppets or something.
posted by subgenius at 2:56 PM on March 15, 2004

thank god. now we can better focus our efforts fighting terrism without fear of graffiti distraction.
posted by quonsar at 3:16 PM on March 15, 2004

ha . you can't catch me . i don't use spray paint .
You're a marker since you don't paint.
posted by thomcatspike at 4:58 PM on March 15, 2004

marker ? care to define that ?

i paint .
posted by mishaco at 5:06 PM on March 15, 2004

Of course, now all you've got to do to really piss off the police is wander around the streets applying deodorant ... :)
posted by kaemaril at 5:54 PM on March 15, 2004

So ya make a little tin cone or some other mute (like a trumpet's) that you spray through, changing the spraycan acoustic signature to something else.

How long 'til kids find out how to ffffffffffffft close enough to make false triggers?
posted by Twang at 11:46 PM on March 15, 2004

I read somewhere a while ago (here maybe?) that graf has become more about tags than 'pieces' over time partially because the increasing prevalance of 24 hour convenience stores, supermarkets and pubs has meant that it's harder to find an area that no-one is going to be walking past for 2-3 hours, so there's no time for more complex stuff.

I also notice that more taggers seem to be using stencils and home-made stickers, presumably because they're faster to put up and reduce the chance of being caught.

Maybe the TaggerTrap will usher in a new trend in 'brush tagging'. Watch for increased sales of Taubman's house-paint sample tins...
posted by backOfYourMind at 2:50 AM on March 16, 2004