{"id":335551,"date":"2017-03-11T03:40:24","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T19:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1463377"},"modified":"2017-03-11T03:40:24","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T19:40:24","slug":"banned-crime-reporting-app-vigilante-returns-as-citizen-says-its-report-incident-feature-will-be-pulled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/banned-crime-reporting-app-vigilante-returns-as-citizen-says-its-report-incident-feature-will-be-pulled\/","title":{"rendered":"Banned crime reporting app Vigilante returns as Citizen, says its \u2018report incident\u2019 feature will be pulled"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Remember Vigilante? The controversial crime reporting app<\/a> was kicked out of the App Store in November shortly after its release because Apple believed it encouraged\u00a0private citizens to engage in, well\u2026vigilantism<\/em>. Now the app is back, under different\u00a0branding. The new \u201cCitizen\u201d app<\/a>, operating in New York City, will send you real-time crime reports based on 911 calls as well as offer a way for users to live stream crimes, and comment on them.<\/p>\n

In its launch\u00a0blog post,<\/a> the Vigilante app had cited a former police officer who said that \u201caverage and ordinary\u201d citizens should approach the problem of crime \u201cas a group.\u201d\u00a0Combined with the app\u2019s name \u201cVigilante,\u201d there seemed to be a very real danger that people would take this as a direction to\u00a0put themselves in harm\u2019s way, or take on crime directly, sans<\/em> police.<\/p>\n

The new Citizen app dials down the potential for direct involvement from its users. Citizen instead\u00a0suggests that\u00a0users live stream crimes and\u00a0incidents for others to see and comment on. It also pops up a window to offer \u201cstronger guidance\u201d to \u201cnever approach a crime scene, interfere with an incident, or get in the way of police,\u201d as the\u00a0app\u2019s description states.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0what isn\u2019t immediately clear is that the app\u2019s content comes from a curated selection of 911 calls.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are about 10,000 911 calls per day in NYC. We include 300-400 on average,\u201d\u00a0says sp0n CEO\u00a0Andrew\u00a0Frame. (sp0n is the maker of the application.)<\/p>\n

The company says\u00a0the app only lists those calls that are a threat to \u201cpublic safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has not published the vetting criteria it uses, however, saying that\u2019s a work in progress. Frame says that calls of \u201csuspicious people,\u201d \u201csuspicious bags\u201d or suitcases, and drug incidents are not shown in the app at present.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The app does, however, allow users to see incidents as red dots on a map, which is something that could make it a tool for avoiding particular areas.\u00a0This is by design.<\/p>\n

Its take on crime mapping is a little different from the horrible apps\u00a0\u201cGhettoTracker\u201d and \u201cSketchFactor<\/a>,\u201d which used public data to\u00a0help (white) people avoid (non-white) supposedly \u201cdangerous\u201d neighborhoods. Citizen, however, is displaying current incidents as reported to 911, and it alerts you through push notifications when those are taking place.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

That way if there\u2019s a \u201cfight at Applebee\u2019s\u201d (yes, this is a real incident the app included today), you can avoid heading there to eat right now.<\/p>\n

However, an article by The\u00a0Outline<\/a> noted that a feature that lets users report crimes and incidents is still live. And indeed, the app today sports a \u201cReport Incident\u201d button.<\/p>\n

Not all incidents reported meet the qualifications for being posted to the app, and the feature is hardly used, says Frame. But the fact that it\u00a0exists and the app\u2019s intentions are unclear (does it want user-generated content or not?)<\/em>\u00a0remains\u00a0an issue.<\/p>\n

Frame says the next version of the app will remove this button.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of misunderstanding. We need to do a better job of explaining it,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re treading very carefully. That\u2019s why it\u2019s buried in the other part of the app. If \u2018report incident\u2019 was the central part of the app, as soon as you opened it there would be a central exclamation point that you\u2019d be lured into pressing.\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems obvious to an outsider, in Trump\u2019s America where people are encouraged to report \u201cvoter fraud\u201d with their smartphones,<\/a> that an app offering the ability for users to report their own interpretations of crime could be heading into dangerous territory. Just look what happened with Nextdoor, where racial profiling became so prevalent, the product had to get a makeover<\/a> to prevent it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cI promise you I\u2019m removing it,\u201d Frame\u00a0says of the user-reporting button, saying the feature has become a distraction to the app\u2019s core mission. That\u00a0mission is \u201cto reduce crime, not the exploitation of people,\u201d he argues.<\/p>\n

But The Outline also suggested<\/a> that asking users to live stream incidents could lead to other issues, too. The identity of a crucial witness could be revealed, it noted, quoting Sam Gregory, program director for WITNESS, a nonprofit that trains people on how to ethically use video to expose human rights violations. He also pointed out that Citizen could be used to share \u201can incredibly humiliating video of someone being assaulted,\u201d or \u201cmake someone appear like they\u2019re guilty when they may not be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frame responded to these issues initially by saying that they simply hadn\u2019t come up yet.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Pressed for detail, he added that \u201cthis is a transparency app. Transparency eliminates bias. Transparency eliminates insecurity and all the misunderstandings around what happened. The result of the transparency, we can\u2019t control,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

We\u00a0also asked Frame if he had read Dave Eggers\u2019 \u201cThe Circle.\u201d He had not.<\/p>\n

The book, soon to be a movie, features a Google-like tech company whose\u00a0\u201cSeeChange cameras\u201d are worn all the time by people, including politicians wishing to be \u2018transparent.\u2019 The cameras are surreptitiously mounted all over the world\u00a0by citizens, as well.<\/p>\n

Basically, it\u2019s a riff on \u201c1984\u201d but one where \u201cBig Brother\u201d becomes crowdsourced.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t believe in surveillance everywhere,\u201d argues Frame. \u201cWhen there\u2019s an incident, that\u2019s the only time you can go live on this app,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Yet\u00a0cameras are<\/em> everywhere, thanks to smartphones. And Citizen\u2019s premise is that all crimes threatening public safety should be aggregated and streamed, consequences be damned, because this is how crime will be reduced.<\/p>\n

One could argue, though, that a\u00a0better path to crime reduction is through employment<\/a>, higher wages<\/a>, and education<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Citizen is backed by $3 million in seed funding from Peter Thiel\u2019s Founders Fund (via FF Angel), Slow Ventures, RRE Ventures, Kapor Capital (via Ben Jealous, a\u00a0former CEO of the NAACP), and other angel investors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Remember Vigilante? The controversial crime reporting app was kicked out of the App Store in November shortly after its release because Apple believed it encouraged\u00a0private citizens to engage in, well…vigilantism. Now the app is back, under different\u00a0branding. The new “Citizen” app, operating in New York City, will send you real-time crime reports based on 911 calls as well… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-335551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}