Police are using 50,000 apps to influence public sentiment

So Joe Cadillic wrote a post about how police are using tens of thousands of apps to influence public sentiment by asking questions about the app users’ attitudes toward police, etc. The post was inspired by some reporting in May, 2017 by the New York Times and then a follow-up by TechCrunch last summer.

But Joe says the concern is not just that police may be trying to influence public opinion – they may be collecting info on users.  Joe writes:

Police use 50,000 apps to spy on citizens

If you are like me, trying to find out which apps are secretly spying on your location etc., is bad enough. But now, we have to worry about 50, 000 apps that happily ask us questions about the police.

Where does the madness end?

According to the NY Times, ELUCD uses location (tracking) technology to ask citizens questions like “do you feel safe in your neighborhood? Do you trust the police? Are you confident in the New York Police Department? 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

“The questions stream out every day, around the clock, on 50,000 different smartphone applications and present themselves on screens as eight-second surveys.”

Read more on MassPrivateI.

So…. where is the privacy policy and security assurances from ELUCD so that we can begin to assess any risk?  The media coverage was last year. Surely there would be more development and information about them by now, right?

I went to ELUCD’s web site today and there’s nothing about privacy or data security. No privacy policy, no assurances, nothing.  They were quick to announce that they received more funding this month, but where is there anything on consumer privacy and data security?