Do you work at Citizen? Do you have access to internal Citizen documents? We’d love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.
- Users are flooded with notifications in what multiple sources interpret as an attempt to make users feel anxious enough about their neighborhoods to buy "Protect," a $19.99 per month service that allows users to livestream their phone's camera and location to a Citizen "Protect agent" who monitors it and sends "Instant emergency response" in case of an emergency.
- The return of a missing autistic teen to his family in the Bronx earlier this month was done by Citizen employees on a "Street Team" that films and interacts with people while pretending to be ordinary app users.
- Employee performance is measured by how many seconds it takes workers to input an incident into the app and how many incidents they cover.
The weekly incidents on Citizen, using data scraped by the hacker. Image: Ishaan Jhaveri, Computational Research Fellow, Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University.
Andrew Frame. Image: Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch.
Ultimately, monetizing its user base has also led Citizen to test a product where users could order on-demand help from a private security service. This month, Motherboard reported that a Citizen-branded vehicle was driving around Los Angeles. Leaked emails showed the vehicle was part of a pilot working with Los Angeles Professional Security, a local security company whose CEO wants the power to arrest people and take them to jail. Citizen told CBS on Wednesday that the trial with Los Angeles Professional Security is now over.The emails also showed Citizen is testing the program with well-known security firm Securitas, and claimed that high-level members of the LAPD said the product could be a game changer. A Citizen spokesperson told Motherboard at the time that the vehicle was part of a trial to test a service for users that, for example, may want an escort to walk them home. But details from internal emails already published by Motherboard explain that Citizen believes it can help with property crime."It’s basically an anxiety sweatshop."
A screenshot of the OnAir broadcast featuring Jeremiah. Redaction by Motherboard. Image: Citizen.
Firefighters battle the Palisades fire in Los Angeles. Image: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images.