Elsewhere on this blog today, we noted that Citizen was scrapping it’s police-on-demand program.
Now read this report by Joseph Cox and Jason Koebler to fully grasp how dangerous some apps — and some businesses — may be:
It was Saturday night two weeks ago, and Frame, the CEO of the crime and neighborhood watch app Citizen, was on Slack, whipping himself and his employees into what he’d later call at an all-hands meeting a “fury of passion” about a wildfire that had broken out earlier that afternoon in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
Citizen had gotten a tip that the wildfire was started by an arsonist, and Frame had decided earlier in the night that the fire was a huge opportunity. Citizen, using a new livestreaming service it had just launched called OnAir, would catch the suspect live on air, with thousands of people watching. Frame decided the Citizen user who provided information that led to the suspect’s arrest would get $10,000. Frame wanted him. Before midnight. As the night wore on, Citizen got more information about the supposed suspect. They obtained a photo of the man, which they kept up on the livestream for large portions of the night. More information trickled in through a tips line Citizen had set up.
“first name? What is it?! publish ALL info,” Frame told employees working in a Citizen Slack room who were working on the case.
“FIND THIS FUCK,” he told them. “LETS GET THIS GUY BEFORE MIDNIGHT HES GOING DOWN.”
Read more on Vice.