Citizens New Service Helps Paying Users Summon the Cops
The crime-tracking app is charging $20 per month to give subscribers access to their own virtual security service.Citizen, the app that tracks local crime and lets users film incidents as they happen, has launched a new subscription service. It’s called Protect, and it enables subscribers who pay the $20 monthly fee to contact Citizen’s team of virtual security agents for help whenever they feel threatened.
Tuesday's update marks a significant change in Citizen's business, which until now has involved sending smartphone alerts about nearby crimes and incidents to its users for free. With this paid service, the company is not only taking a step toward actively monitoring the safety of users who pony up the monthly fee, it is also expanding a service that privacy advocates have repeatedly decried as overreaching.
Protect works like a Life Alert button for your phone. If you’re in danger, the pitch goes, just touch the red Get Agent button inside the Citizen app and you'll be connected to a video or text chat with a Protect agent. If you need assistance on the scene, the agent can call the police or other emergency services and guide them to your location. If you have emergency contacts who also have the Citizen app installed, an agent can contact those people in the event you’re incapacitated or just otherwise too busy dealing with your emergency to reach out yourself.
The feature has been available only to select beta testers since early 2021, and today it rolls out in an app update so any Citizen user can sign up.
The new version of the app can even listen for your screams. A feature available to subscribers called Distress Detection uses an algorithm to monitor your mobile handset's microphone for sounds that “indicate trouble,†according to the companyâ€"Citizen cites a human scream as an example. The Distress Detection feature is available only on iOS, though Citizen says it plans to expand the feature to more devices.
“We really are just on this journey to evolve the public safety system and use technology to supercharge it,†says Citizen CEO Andrew Frame.
Citizen says that somewhere around 100,000 users have tried the service in beta. Last week, Citizen provided me with a free trial of the Protect service. In my week of testing, it worked as promised. Pressing the Get Agent button on the bottom of the home screen presented me with options to contact a Protect agent through either a video chat or text chat. In one of my tests, I connected with a Protect agent identified as Agent Aaron, who told me they could see my device's location, battery level, and rate of travelâ€"zero, since I was sitting still. The agent also said that if I had synced Protect with an Apple Watch, they would be able to see my heart rate. That extra layer of data would presumably let them know if I was panicking or physically exerting myself. (Citizen says it isn't commenting on any health-sensor-related features at this time.)
On iOS, a setting called Protect Mode opens up access to the phone’s microphone to allow for the aforementioned scream alerts. It also unlocks a gesture option that lets you shake the phone to text an agent. They both worked when I tested them, though it took a few screams to get the app to send an alert. In practice, Citizen agents can then loop in emergency responders and notify them of your phone’s location. In the event of an official response, Citizen will also create a public alert for the incident that will notify nearby Citizen users.
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Help on the WayProtect is Citizen’s first subscription-based offering, and a paid product of any sort is long overdue. The company has hoovered up venture capital funding since it began in 2016, while only hinting at its plans for eventually building a profitable business. In early 2020, Frame said that Citizen planned to monetize that year. (“The VCs said that they won't continue funding this until you figure that out," Frame told me last year.) The pandemic may have destabilized that timeline a bit, but the company’s lack of profitability doesn’t seem to have fazed investors. Citizen raised $50 million this year alone in a Series C round.
Now, after a few months of beta testing, Protect is available to all of Citizen’s 8 million users. But it’s unclear whether customers will embrace a paid service offered by one of the most contentious tech companies.
While the crime-tracking company has experienced a cavalcade of controversy since it began, things reached a crescendo in May when the company falsely accused a man of starting the Palisades wildfire in Los Angeles, blasted identifying information about him to Citizen users across the city, then offering a $30,000 reward for his capture. Days later, Citizen was spotted testing out a partnership with a private security force in LA. (Citizen quickly downplayed the photos that circulated online of a Citizen-branded security vehicle, stating that it was part of a test that had concluded.) Then it was revealed that Citizen had exposed user data in its Covid-19 contact tracing app, Safe Pass.
As it does when selling the idea of its core app, Citizen’s marketing highlights scenarios in which Protect agents helped beta users find lost dogs or navigate their way to safety after getting lost. These feel-good highlights are all well and good, but Citizen has faced criticism for profiting off of the anxiety of its users.
“The first thing is just to be super diligent about staying responsible and doing things correctly,†Frame says. “It shouldn't stop progress. It shouldn't stop innovation, that there are potential liabilities. And so we're doing everything we can to manage those.â€
But that diligence and responsibility are things that Citizen clearly struggles with. According to reporting by the Verge and Motherboard, Frame himself was the one profanely instigating Citizen’s Palisades manhunt in May, even overriding his own company’s terms of service to do so. And Citizen has gotten incidents wrong before, like when Citizen sent out alerts about a plane crash in Los Angeles that turned out to be just a training exercise.
Citizen has also been accused of stoking paranoia and discrimination. If a user is inundated with a constant flow of notifications about imminent nearby dangers, it can make them feel like they are more unsafe, and more likely to call the policeâ€"an action that can be potentially disastrous for Black people and other people of color.
"They’re essentially creating the Karen of apps,†says Jason Kelley, an activist and associate director of digital strategy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “I wish it were not that way. I wish that such an app would be used only for good. But that's not how it works.â€
As a service, Protect could be a buffer between the Karens, or it could make them even more likely to call the police. Frame acknowledges these problems but says such judgment calls are outside of the purview of Protect agents.
“It’s not up to us to deny them the police,†Frame says. “We will bridge in the police, and they will talk to the police, and they will describe to the police officer, and then the 911 policies come into play. Because they’re not making a police report, they’re now talking to 911. We kind of get out of the way.â€
ContentAs with its core crime alert service, Citizen says it doesn't share details of suspicious person reports or domestic disturbances in Protect. But none of that addresses the underlying problems with Citizen or policing in general.
“There are legitimate concerns with the ability to reach law enforcement and the ability for law enforcement to respond to certain things,†Kelley says. “I don't think that technology is the failure in those cases. I think the failure is clearly one of policing, one of training, one of priorities and, you know, one of generally what we as a country have kind of decided our police are responsible for.â€
And Citizen’s Protect service introduces the possibility for even more human error. The company is actively inserting itself, via its Protect agents, between emergency responders and users who think they are in a crisis situation.
“It’s not comforting that just a few months ago, Citizen started a witch hunt,†Kelley says. “When you look at their previous activity, it doesn't bode well that they would be continuing to grow their relationship with law enforcement.â€
Frame denies that Citizen has trust issues. He dismisses the bad press, citing positive app store ratings and user feedback. He also hasn’t given up on some of the company’s most controversial features. While Citizen temporarily pulled the plug on testing the use of private security forces, it hasn't ruled out the possibility of incorporating them into its Protect service.
“Under any topicâ€"forget private securityâ€"under any topic, I would say the door is not closed,†Frame says. “We'll continue to survey how to keep people safe.â€
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