Policing and police violence are at the forefront of public conversation. Some in the tech industry think they can help transform policing with apps, but the results have so far been disastrous, especially with the Citizen app. In essence, Citizen encourages people to take the law into their own hands. It was once called Vigilante. Yes, Vigilante.

Created by Spon Inc., Citizen bills itself as a “personal safety network that empowers you to protect yourself and the people and places you care about.” It offers COVID-19 contact tracing, access to real-time 911 alerts, instant help from crisis responders, and “safety tracking” for friends and families.

In reality, a culture of mass surveillance leads to the creation of apps like Nextdoor, which is known as much for accusations of racial profiling as for enabling friendly neighborhood tips. Like Nextdoor, Citizen easily lends itself to racial bias, harassment, and greater surveillance. One notable example occurred in May, with a Citizen livestream. Receiving over a million views, the livestream started a manhunt in California after Citizen founder and CEO Andrew Frame personally offered a $30,000 bounty for information leading to the arrest of a suspect believed to be the source of a recent wildfire. It resulted in Citizen misidentifying a homeless man. At the time, a Los Angeles police spokesperson described the app’s capabilities as potentially “disastrous.”

“The [Citizen] app gives people the power to say who is and who isn’t suspicious, and who belongs in their community,” Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst at the nonprofit privacy watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation, told CBS MoneyWatch. “These apps are a digital superhighway for racial profiling.”

Read the full article about watchdog apps by Granate Kim at Fast Company.