Surveillance has become a “one-way mirror.” We’re being watched but can’t watch back.

Claudio Guarnieri, the head of Amnesty International’s Security Lab, which conducted the analysis. “The Norwegian app was highly invasive and the decision to go back to the drawing board is the right one. We urge the Bahraini and Kuwaiti governments to also immediately halt the use of such intrusive apps in their current form. They are essentially broadcasting the locations of users to a government database in real time – this is unlikely to be necessary and proportionate in the context of a public health response.”

Citizen, in particular, is ascending in the field of privatized policing and surveillance and needs to be monitored closely by consumers.

Police information is not readily accessed without a scanner; activity notes are not immediately released and often are only packaged in the form of a newsletter the next day. The Philadelphia Police Crime Map, while a helpful tool for organizing and categorizing information, is likewise slow.

There is utility in knowing where crime is happening, especially in neighborhoods where shooters peel around the corner at high speeds and sometimes loop back around; it is important to know where a shooting is happening in case you have a child or loved one on the street,

a former civil rights leader who compares their utility for public safety to street lights.

Citizen was widely criticized by law enforcement officials and former employees for its attempts to brand out in Los Angeles, including offering a $30,000 reward for the capture of a man incorrectly identified as responsible for starting a brushfire and testing a private security force.