Citizen, the real-time crime alerting app, is growing in big cities using Scanners

[radio3353]

If your tax dollars paid the people using the system as part of their job, then they are obligated to be fully transparent, it is much easier to just let the public listen in then write a transcript. In the name of transparency 99% or transmissions should open. I do however believe that active tactical operations transmissions should NOT be open, but still should be released in 24-48hrs after the operation is completed or a conviction in case of surveillance activity.

Your opinion. I asked for proof (like give me a legal citation to back up your statement.) You are just repeating misinformation.

 

[cajunjerry]

Just what all EMS/PD/ FD's want...said absolutely no one.

Yes they do, we support the constitution of the United states especially 1st admenment

 

[radioman2001]

Quote"
I would rather see laws to stop streaming LE to the public rather than more e.

FCC already ruled on this years ago, there is no law against it and Congress is the only one who could pass one.

 

[jhsands]

To comment on a few things:
1] What state does not allow scanners in a business?
2] Why does Michigan think they can regulate a scanner in a vehicle?
3] Departments that have encryption should put them on a time delay to feed Broadcastify like North Little Rock and Bryant, Arkansas.
4] It is well known that departments that use the % button get close to zero calls when the department is looking for suspects, lost, kidnapped, etc.
5] Anything besides a dispatch or event channel should be encrypted. Tac, SWAT/SRT, NARC, NCIC (Records), ADMIN, etc.
6] I am going to go and read about the public owning the airwaves as mentioned above. Seems interesting. Has anyone taken a department with full encryption to court? [radioman2001 just answered that]

 

[wtp]

jhsands, Florida has a law about putting a scanner in a business.
Statutes & Constitution :View Statutes : Online Sunshine

 

[DaveNF2G]

Scanners in cars are regulated as equipment, which the states have the constitutional power to do.

 

[wtp]

as far as i know the FCC is there to assign frequencies and to avoid interference.
what you do with the signal is your choice.
they have specs on what kind of signal but that is about it.
like they don't know what talkgroup number and who it is.
so if an agency or someone like yourself wants to encrypt it is up to you.
yes i know some areas can't, but far and few.

 

[fleef]

You can bet media fixated, attention starved, work place shooters will find importance in using this. My state bans scanners or radios capable of receiving public safety transmissions in a business.

Oh I absolutely concur with this. Narcissistic sadistic dweebs/loners live for being in the headlines even if it's social media or even if it's after they're dead. That's how evil works- it comes to steal, kill and destroy. I think this iCitizen is a rotten idea- I also predict it will fizzle out and die from lack of interest pretty soon. They're probably looking for investors- and won't get any.

 

[Venice311]

Looks like their biz model has hit pause: Dear Guardians,


We started GuardianNet in September of last year with the goal of giving heroes like you with the desire to help others a chance to serve communities by keeping them safe and informed.


We've been blown away by the incredible contributions from the Guardian community over these last months. You alerted thousands of people to immediate danger. There were multiple shootings at malls, a gunman on the loose near a school campus, and countless robberies and burglaries. You helped get the word out for missing persons, kept residents up to date on power outages, and alerted on numerous fires.


The people of New Jersey, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Baltimore are grateful for your work, as is everyone at Citizen.


And so, I regretfully announce that GuardianNet’s incident report feature will be temporarily paused for the near term future.


To be clear, GuardianNet will continue to be accessible as the world’s best scanner site, and we will continue to add channels for new cities as we expand. The chat room will also remain open if you want to chat with other Guardians.


The reason we are pausing incident reporting is because we want to come back to GuardianNet development when we have the proper resources to support this amazing community. We see the awesome potential of GuardianNet and in order to realize it, we will return with a full team to help implement the features many of you have requested.


As wistful as I am about pausing incident reporting, I am honestly excited about the future of GuardianNet 2.0. We will be back as a truly high-tech public protection platform and I hope you will be ready to rejoin the future of community safety when we reboot.


Best Regards,


David

[citizen] judopower

 

[nowires]

Fewer people in government believe in the existence of law-abiding citizens nowadays.

They don't do anything to promote it either.

 

[nowires]

Quote"
I would rather see laws to stop streaming LE to the public rather than more e.

FCC already ruled on this years ago, there is no law against it and Congress is the only one who could pass one.

Didn't the ruling elite think that they had it in on us when they invented the internet and then it backfired on them? So it wasn't just the scanner thing, it was people could use the internet to come together to stay on top of what their government is doing and organize a peaceful protest. So...yes I'd like for us that use scanners to be able to scan our local fuzz and other city departments. But you could practically find just about anything they will allow to stay on the internet, however, why would we need the FCC to regulate the internet? Whatever they tell us, the internet is not the issue, they'd just prefer we didn't know what they were doing. The military originally held all of the radio spectrum, and now they want 5G...hmm....and the FCC is not going to bother regulating it...

Many of the reasons our government wants to do things that we disagree with (usually taxes or laws), are usually pretty lame excuses that don't hold water. Broken Arrow didn't even ask for anyone in the public to have extra eyes looking over their recent blunder of a drone ordinance. They don't know anything about quad-copters or heli-copters either (there's an ordinance for that too from 20 years ago), but just as long as the government is still allowed to operate; they don't care. They aren't writing laws in our favor (and the weed heads voted for the State Question and didn't even bother to vote for any of the candidates). Then Broken Arrow wrote a weed ordinance that landed them in a lawsuit, because they were just ridiculous as all get out. Broken Arrow is just as ridiculous making it a class A felony to run a quad copter (even if it doesn't kill anybody). And the city attorney was writing it for the peepy toms, and ironically couldn't understand the part (borrowed from FAA regs), about weaponized drones.

 

[EMTJD]

Don't get me wrong, I totally see your point of view in that regard. In fact back when Michigan only allowed licensed amateur radio operators to have a scanner in their vehicle I was able to obtain a Scanner Radio Permit, signed by the State Police only for the asking, I had to fill out a simple application and stating why I wanted/needed it. My reason? I lived in Detroit at the time, had a wife and two kids and I wanted to be aware of what's happening in my area such as accidents, high speed chases, car jackings, flooded roads, hospital status, large fires, shooters, etc, so I could avoid them. That and having a squeaky clean record got me approved, that easy!

Wow. Seems like a lot of trouble to "prove" your needs. I know you said it was "a simple application", but here in CA, we don't even need that. I'm pretty sure even an amateur radio license is not a requirement. Although, if it was, I have that, as well.

 

[EMTJD]

With the biggest cons being people going to scenes.
And another big one being criminals using them.

That may have been more of an issue in the past, before systems became more sophisticated with digital modes and encryption. It was very common, back in the day, after an arrest was made for the police to display all of the "tools" that they found with the bad guys they arrested, including weapons and police scanners. Can't say the last time I saw anything like that. Your average punk thug likely won't be carrying a Uniden BCD436HP while breaking into someone's house. Possible, but unlikely.

As for "people going to scenes", I do fire photography for my local county fire department. To be honest, the only people I've seen walking around fire scenes with scanners are… other photographers and news media. I haven't seem much of "Joe Looky-Loo" standing off to the side, holding his scanner. Just my observation.

 

[rustyhodge]

From what I've seen of Citizen app, it's getting feeds from the CAD systems at major agencies. It's not the first thing that's gotten those feeds; there have been other (now defunct) sites that showed near real-time crime info.

I do agree, however, that apps like this are serving the purpose that scanners (and scanner aps) have filled in the past. At a minimum you don't have to remember all the numeric codes, and all the mundane operational chatter is excluded.

As Citizen says on their website:

Citizen monitors a variety of public data sources using proprietary technology, allowing us to provide real-time alerts for crime and other emergency incidents. All of the incidents in the Citizen app have already been reported to 911.
Our central operations team—a group of analysts with writing and public safety backgrounds—are trained to make on-the-fly decisions about what goes into the app based on complex criteria. We also conduct supplementary research that enriches our content compared to 911 reports.

 

[ladn]

I have mixed feelings about this app. I like the "scanner" and notification aspects, but I'm not sure about the competency of whomever curates and interprets the real audio feeds. As a professional journalist, I have serious concerns about encouraging citizen journalists to live stream from the scene of action. More cell phone toting, self-entitled, whackers at a breaking news scene are not going going to be well received by either the emergency services nor professional media.

 

[DaveNF2G]

I think the term "citizen journalist" has become a pejorative in the minds of those who have been convinced that only commercial news reporters can be journalists. The First Amendment grants freedom to use "the press" (to publish the news of the day and other information) to all Americans. Politicians and self-interested media businesspersons have corrupted the original intent so that it applies only to a select and officially recognized group of companies and their employees.

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

My local PD loves their helicopter and it is up flying around on a weekly basis. I get nervous when in hovers too long overhead because of the "Jeeesus Nut" that seems to fail on those things.

My neighbors likewise get concerned and actually call the 911 center to ask whats going on and then share with Nextdoor or Facebook. I could not imagine myself bothering the 911 call center at such a time as a chase or armed robbery going on.

The helicopter is actually a running joke and topic here, like the time on Easter they dropped marshmallows for kids to pick up, yet they were all somehow frozen together and fell in 75 pound lump. No Kidding!.

Anyway I do tune in my un-encrypted P25 system to listen and find out why they are overhead because I live in a dead end subivision and the bad guys might bail out in here looking to hide and I need to lock doors and take precautions.

 

[DaveNF2G]

"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." - Less Nessman, WKRP in Cincinatti

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." - Less Nessman, WKRP in Cincinatti

Yep, a lot of folks here said exactly that.

Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

 

[prc117f]

I am glad I got decades of enjoyment of this hobby before the internet carpetbaggers swooped in to capitalize on the hobby and suck it dry leaving a hollow carcass.


Looks like the founder and VCs will get rich on all the free labor buying scanners and keying in the data. So far 12 million is the initial value of the company.