Crime-Tracking Apps Are Plagued by Ethical Dilemmas — Design to the Rescue?
Ahead of Citizen’s redesign, a look into whether designers can put the company on more solid footing
By Leo Shaw
It’s the middle of the workday in New York City and I’m watching a shaky phone video of a transit worker being rescued from a subway track. I scroll through the list of 76 comments, which range from “wow hope the person is ok,” to “I’m just tryna get to work.” Most just are just one word: “Damn.”
Over 25,000 people have seen the video, but my fellow rubberneckers and I aren’t on Instagram or Twitter. We’re on the crime-spotting app Citizen, which listens to public 911 calls and turns them into real-time alerts about local emergencies. With a foothold in five U.S. cities and over a million users in New York alone, Citizen is part of a new generation of security apps using quasi-public spatial data to transform the way people inhabit their communities.
Until now, the company has been building a solution in search of a problem. Citizen has sparked controversy in its two years of operation for…
