June 7, 2021 • 20 mins
There is division in the Democratic party as Sen. Joe Manchin has said that he will not vote for the Democrats' voting rights bill or vote to change the filibuster rule. He said that doing this in a partisan manner will only continue to divide Congress. President Trump also made a return in a speech to North Carolina Republicans and threw out many familiar lines about the election being stolen. Ginger Gibson, deputy Washington digital editor at NBC News, joins us for this and the broad strokes of what to expect in the upcoming UFO report...sorry, no aliens.
Next, a look into the public safety app that is pushing boundaries and unfortunately making some mistakes along the way. The Citizen app recently put out a reward for the capture of a man who they believed started a brush fire in Los Angeles. The man that was singled out, didn't actually have anything to do with the fire. The app was also considering branching out into somewhat of a private security force for a monthly fee. Former employees and some experts say that this new aggressive direction could do more harm than good. Cyrus Farivar, investigative tech reporter at NBC News, joins us for a look into the Citizen app.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Monday, June seven. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the Daily Dive. There's division in the
Democratic Party, as Senator Joe Manchin has said that he
will not vote for the Democrats voting rights bill or
vote to change the filibuster rule. He said that doing
this in a partisan manner will only continue to divide Congress.
(00:23):
President Trump also made a return in a speech to
North Carolina Republicans and throughout many familiar lines about the
election being stolen. Gender Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor at
NBC News, joins us for this and the broad strokes
of what to expect in the upcoming UFO report. Sorry
No Aliens. Next, look into the public safety app that
(00:45):
is pushing boundaries and unfortunately making some mistakes along the way.
The Citizen app recently put out a reward for the
capture of a man who they believe started to brush
fire in Los Angeles. The man that was singled out
didn't actually have anything to do with the fire. The
app was also considering branching out into somewhat of a
private security force for a monthly feet. Former employees and
(01:07):
some experts say that this new aggressive direction could do
more harm than good. Cyrus Farvard, investigative tech reporter at
NBC joins us for a look into the citizen app
snooze without the noise. Let's dive in. Look at what
happened on that evening when the election was won and
(01:31):
all of a sudden, vast amounts of votes were taken
in justin certain state swing sets, swing states that I
was leading by a lot, then all of a sudden,
oh something happened. It was a disgrace to our country.
And if you think people don't see it, people see
Joining us now is Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor
(01:54):
at NBC News. Thanks for joining us, Ginger, thanks for
having me. We have some division in the Democratic Party
as we learned that Senator Joe Mansion won't be voting
for the Democrats Voting Rights Building for the People Act.
I think he wrote an apt about it. He said,
voting an election reform that is done in a partisan
manner will all but ensure partisan divisions to continue to deepen.
(02:16):
Um So without Joe Mansion support on this, I mean
that is surely set to fail. Yes, that's right. This
piece of legislation as it's written now, it's just a
Democratic wish list for changes they would like to see
it done. And Joe Mansion says, look, there are some
real issues, there are some problems. We need to find
bipartisan solutions for them. We need to come together and
(02:39):
I agree upon what can be done to address the
real issues that are out there. And Manchine really feel
strongly that if they try to change the rules that
dictate voting or govern the way that people vote, it
will only if done on a partisan line, only breed
more distrust in the system instead of encouraging more trust.
And so he to see both sides come together to
(03:02):
find some type of compromise. And and really it's going
to stand in the way of any democratic sort of wish.
I mean, they didn't have the votes without Republicans anyway
of doing this along some partisan lines, right yeah. And
I mean he's also spoken out about the filibuster two
saying he's not going to take any action to eliminate
or weaken it on the filibuster side of things. You know,
(03:23):
it's not just him, there's I think at least ten
other Democrats that say they don't want to make any
changes to that so, um, these divisions are really kind
of posing some problems for the democratic agenda. That's right,
And you know, the proponents of getting rid of the
filibuster would like to make the argument this is either
past uncontrol or not, or this is either past their
(03:44):
voting bill or not. But really, these Democrats and the
Senate see this as a choice between the voting rights
bill and everything that Mitch McConnell would have done in
seventeen and eighteen when Republicans controlled the Senate and the
House and the White House. They don't gets a sort
of a choice between just the democratic agenda or not,
but also sort of a long term they're not always
(04:06):
going to control government, and they don't want to see
an ability for them to filibuster should Republicans control government
in the future. I wanted to mention former President Trump.
He's back out there. He gave his speech to the
North Carolina Republican Convention. You know, he's kind of been
in this weird place. Um. You know, he's lost his
favorite megaphone and Twitter. He just shut down his blog
(04:28):
after a very very short time because it wasn't getting
much traction. Um. But there he went out there in
that speech and then kind of pedled some of that
same stuff. The election was rigged and stolen, railed against
Dr Anthony Fauci, he railed against China for coronavirus. So
we saw a lot of the same from him. But
this is kind of triggering this next round of appearances
that he's going to be doing. I think he's got
(04:50):
a rally later in June that's gonna kick all that off. Yeah,
that's right. We're gonna hear a lot more from Donald
Trump in the coming weeks. He's going to be holding rallies,
he's going to be out on the stump, as one
would say, giving these speeches, and it it really is
a preview I think we saw on Saturday night in
North Carolina of what we're going to be hearing him
say a lot of grievances and complaints about the Biden administration,
(05:14):
but also about the election. And if Republicans had hoped
that President Trump would return to the stump to sort
of just focus on their message, which is that they
don't think Joe Biden is doing a good job, but
that's not what they got on Saturday night. They got
a former president who wants to really litigate the last election,
who spoke at length about what he thought were instances
where he had been wronged in this election. And as
(05:36):
much as Republicans are telling us in Washington that they
want to move on, it's clear that that Trump is
not ready to do so. Is that still a winning
message for him right now? I mean, as I mentioned,
he's kind of in this weird place where he hasn't
really been in the news cycle too much. I'm I'm
willing to bet is because you know, that constant presence
on Twitter is not there. But every time he surfaces
(05:58):
up that, you know, he comes back to the same thing.
Or are people kind of getting tired of that? Is
it's still there in the main stay? I mean, what's
going on with that? You know, Oscar, every time we've
thought that former President Trump's message was not playing and
that people were getting tired of it, we've been sort
of proven wrong, I guess, except for the fact that
he lost reelection. But he has demonstrated for a history
of the ability to put his finger on sort of
(06:19):
the pulse of his base and figure out what really
gets them fired up. And I think we saw him
testing a number of those lines last night in North Carolina,
trying to find the message that he thinks resonates with
people who share his perspective that he was wrong, that
the election was stolen, that something was taken from him
and from them. I mean, he's always sort of shown
(06:41):
this message in a way that was about us and
and the people along with him being being deprived of something.
So we'll see how it plays. We'll see, I think,
particularly when he starts holding rallies whether or not people
show up for them. Lastly, for uh, for this week,
I just wanted to talk about UFOs. I love that
talk so much, and we're hearing kind of the broad
strokes of what that report that's going to be coming
(07:01):
out it's supposed to be out. I think about June
and Uh, you know, they're basically saying it's not aliens,
but we don't know exactly what it is. I'm not
sure that this report as is going to do much
to to spell people who would like to believe that
it's aliens from what we know my colleagues that NBC
is reporting, the report's going to say, we're not exactly
(07:22):
sure what it is, but we don't have any reason
to believe that it's aliens. But they're not really ruling
it out either, So I think if you want to
believe um, it will probably be uh some evidence for believing.
And if you're inclined to not believe, you might say, well, look,
if they were aliens, they want to figured it out
and they didn't. So we're going to get this report,
and I think, you know, the talk of aliens, the
(07:44):
kinds that fly in the air in UFOs will continue.
I think they said the only thing conclusive thing was
that it wasn't any U S military or government technology.
There's going to be a classified annex in there, which
is probably gonna feel more speculation about other stuff. So
we'll see when the final report comes out. Ginger Gibson,
Deputy Washington Digital editor at NBC News, Thank you very
(08:06):
much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Information that
is being transmitted to kind of the nine one one
system and then out through this citizen app may in
fact turn out to be incorrect or at least not
(08:26):
quite as threatening as it may have initially seen. Joining
us now, Sirous Farvar, investigative tech reporter at NBC News,
Thanks for joining us. A ruse my pleasure. I wanted
to talk about the Citizen App. They're a public safety app.
The way they described themselves as a safety network that
sends alerts about nearby incidents, including crime. They were in
(08:48):
the news just very recently in Los Angeles after their CEO,
Andrew Frame, put out a thirty thousand dollar reward for
the capture of a man that they thought was responsible
for starting a brush fire that was threatening some homes
in the area. I think there's some internal emails saying, hey,
get this effort and all that stuff like that, but
it ended up being false. He was not the man
(09:10):
sheriff wanted him for questioning. It ended up being another
guy that they charged for the fires. But this kind
of proves, uh, you know, the point that they can
blow something up like this on this public safety app,
go as far as putting out a reward for something,
and you know, can get a lot of people involved,
possibly hurt. So, Cruce tell us a little bit about
Citizen App, and you know what's going on with them.
(09:32):
There's a lot of concerns about them. Yeah, that's right, um,
and I think you just gave a very accurate summary
of the reason why we're talking about it now. In
this incident in Los Angeles. That's certainly very troubling. Yeah,
my colleague David Ingram and I spoke to a handful
of former employees at Citizens, and I think it was
remembering that this company, which got started just not too
(09:53):
long ago, several years ago, was originally called Vigilante, and
it was originally designed to be, as you say, a
public if the app. But in recent years it's gone
through something of a shake up. Some of their leadership
has you know, turned over, and it's not really clear
what the company's business model is, despite the fact that
they have drawn considerable investment from venture capital firms. Yeah,
(10:15):
a lot of people, and some of the former employees
you spoke to said that the way the app and
the structure there the company has kind of evolved is
almost a return to that beginning to that Vigilante aspect
of it. Now, I just want to kind of preface
it for people that don't really know much about this app.
You know, it shows up a map of your local area,
(10:36):
looks like a little radar screen or something, and and
it pinpoints things that are going around, crimes, fires, you
know a bunch of different things. You know. My own
personal experience, one time I was at home. My wife
was on her way home, and I said, hey, there's
a lot of helicopters around. I don't know what's going on.
Just be careful, you know. Two seconds later she text
me back, she's like, oh, there was a shooting nearby
(10:56):
because she found it out in the Citizen app. So
in that respect, it does kind of work to alert
people about things going on in their community. But you know,
all these other problems kind of arise after that. Yeah,
and I think there's kind of a larger concern about
what's sometimes called the fear economy, you know, other apps that,
in the name of public safety, make people just very
(11:16):
you know, in the worst cases, kind of paranoid about
the environment in which they live and work. And you know,
I think a lot of times you get an alert
on an app like that and it tells you, you know, hey,
there was a robbery or there was some other kind
of violent crime that's happening near you, and it's not
always clear, at least not to me, what action users
are supposed to take if it's you know, if they're
(11:37):
supposed to call the police, if they're supposed to avoid
the area, Because you know, I think a lot of times,
the plethora of you know, of those kinds of alerts
can be a little bit overwhelming. Yeah, exactly. You know,
some of those other kind of surveillance act you were mentioning,
a lot of them use Amazon's ring Cameras, next Door App,
Neighbor's App. I think Amazon has some partnerships with law
enforcement agencies to get some of those videos to help
(12:00):
their investigations. So you know, there is this kind of
network that ends up being used in all of this. Okay,
so let's talk a little bit more about the early
start of the Citizen app and how it started as vigilante.
I mean, what is their overall goal with the app,
because they talk about how they want to provide a
line between law enforcement in the community. Also, does does
(12:21):
law enforcement use this app at all? Well, it's interesting
you say that because the former Chief police of the NYPD,
Bill Bratton, is on the company's board, So it's clear
that they're trying to make inroads with the law enforcement community.
But as you say, they're kind of trying to be
I think, a way for people to find out about
(12:41):
things that first responders are working towards faster than perhaps
conventional police and fire and other emergency services can inform
the public as to what's going on. You know, it's
worth noting kind of something that one of the former
employees told me, which is that, you know, the way
that this company works is that they're relying entirely on
raw audio, you know, nine one one traffic, other kinds
(13:03):
of first responder radio traffic, and a lot of times,
you know, if you call in, you know, if you
see a car accident or you see something outside your
window and you call it into one and you tell
them what you've seen, you may be reporting something wrong,
not because you're intending to deceive anybody, but because you
know your angle may not be correct. You may be
assuming that something is happening when it's not. And so
(13:27):
it's important to remember that information that is being transmitted
to kind of the nine one one system and then
out through this Citizen app may in fact turn out
to be incorrect or at least not quite as threatening
as it may have initially seen. Yeah, and that's kind
of the other component too, Right, So you see a
ping on the app, something's going on. You know, if
(13:48):
you're nearby, somebody else using the Citizen app might feel
compelled to go check it out, and then you know,
when you do open the app, you see photos, videos,
live videos. In a lot of cases of whatever is
going on in really becomes this YouTube TikTok Instagram type
thing where you're just kind of sitting there looking at
some of the actions that are happening on the app.
(14:08):
And that's part of the other issue too. You know,
people are saying it could be dangerous for people to
show up at scenes like this when you don't know
exactly what's happening just yet, right, I think it's not
very clear, you know. I think you know, if you
see a video of you know, a fire or police
responding to something, you know, it's not totally clear what
exactly is happening. It takes time typically for law enforcement,
(14:29):
for fire agencies to even know what's going on and
be able to communicate that to the public. And so
I think it's important to remember that just because you know,
somebody has called in with a nine or one call
reporting a possible threat of some kind doesn't necessarily mean
that that is actually the case. As an app, How
successful is it? How many downloads do we see? How
many uh in what locations is it centered? Yeah, I
(14:53):
mean you know, a chech firm that does, you know,
these kinds of analytics called app Topia, reports that it's
been downloaded about almost twelve million times. It's you know,
fairly popular, particularly in recent years, but you know, it's
not really clear kind of where that is going. The
downloads for the app peaked of last summer about a
year ago when there was nationwide protests in the wake
(15:15):
of the George Floyd murder. But it's not really clear
how the company is going to continue forward. It obviously
still exists, people can download it, people continue to use it,
but again it's still not clear what the company's real
business model is. Going back a little bit to that
incident in Los Angeles, it was their CEO, Andrew Frame,
who kind of signed off on this reward reward for
(15:37):
the capture of that man who they thought started that fire,
which was wrong. But Andrew Frame himself has a pretty
interesting background. He was a teenage prodigy as a hacker
and did a lot of stuff. Andrew Frame is certainly
quite a character. There was a profile of him in
Forbes magazine in August twenty nineteen that kind of, as
(15:59):
you say, talks about his background as an apparent hacker,
and you know how he wants to use his computer
knowledge and and interest in public safety to make an
app that would be useful to the public. And you know,
if you take him at his word, yeah, he breached
NASA computer systems when he was younger. He made tens
of millions of dollars working at Facebook for building a
(16:22):
network architecture there. So it's super interesting on that respect.
And you know, as you mentioned, they're kind of business
model isn't clear. They're constantly evolving. Uh somewhere are worried
that they might be getting into this thing about calling
people out. They were also thinking about maybe doing some
private security, doing some type of monthly service for subscribers.
(16:43):
How was that supposed to work? Yeah, that's right, you know,
and I should give credit work credits to do. There
was some reporting done by Motherboard about how citizen was
driving around an SUV in Los Angeles just after this
brush fire and said that you mentioned, and it appeared
that this was some sort of initial test for a
private security force run by citizens. But it's not really
(17:07):
clear how that would be better or worse than the
you know, existing law enforcement that does exist. Not to
mention other types of private security that already do exist.
I think that was gonna be a twenty dollar month service,
and you know, it could be as simple as, uh,
I'm walking home, I need to talk to somebody just
in case something happens. But I think they kind of
(17:28):
scrapped that for the meantime. But we'll see if something
you know, evolves out of there in the end. And
all the people, all the former employees of Citizen that
you spoke to, what were their top concerns? I mean,
what are they thinking that's going to happen with all
of this? Because somebody even mentioned in there that there
was always kind of this red line that they were
pretty confident that Andrew Frame wouldn't cross going into some
(17:51):
of this crazier territory. But what are their concerns with
all of this? Yeah, I mean I think this red
line that you mentioned. This was one former employee who's oldest,
that there was a quote clear red line that he
meaning and Reframe could never cross, which was to not
identify specific people in the app, not to start man hunts.
And he seems to have broken apparently his own rule.
(18:12):
And it's it's I think troubling when we see a
scenario on the Internet in general, where a platform, a company,
a CEO uses their power to target someone, whether that's
on Twitter or other kinds of Internet platforms. And then
here you add the kind of higher stakes of public
safety and an active fire that's burning in an urban area.
(18:36):
That certainly adds to the tension, and it is extremely troubling.
I think when it turns out that the person that
the CEO has targeted and is offering money up or
is wrong, and local law enforcement says as much, you know,
I think that that's certainly troubling. What was their response
to that whole situation. I mean, they obviously got it
wrong and we're falsely accusing somebody. How did they react
(18:57):
to that? It's not totally here. The Los Angeles Sheriff's
Department said that this reward was disastrous because it could
have led to someone getting heard. However, that wasn't didn't
turn out to the case. Deputies eventually found this person
that citizen named, They questioned him, they released him, They
had no evidence to charge him with anybody with anything,
(19:17):
and eventually there was another suspect who was charged with
starting this fire. So rus RVaR Investigative Tech reporter at
NBC News. Thank you very much for joining us. You're welcome.
That's it for today. Join us on social media at
(19:38):
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a comment, give us a rating, and tell us the
stories that you're interested in. Allow us on I Heart Radio,
or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. This episode of
The Daily Divers produced by Victor Wright and engineered by
Tony Sargantino. I'm Oscar Ramires and this was her Daily
(19:58):
Dive budded
It's Monday, June seven. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the Daily Dive. There's division in the
Democratic Party, as Senator Joe Manchin has said that he
will not vote for the Democrats voting rights bill or
vote to change the filibuster rule. He said that doing
this in a partisan manner will only continue to divide Congress.
(00:23):
President Trump also made a return in a speech to
North Carolina Republicans and throughout many familiar lines about the
election being stolen. Gender Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor at
NBC News, joins us for this and the broad strokes
of what to expect in the upcoming UFO report. Sorry
No Aliens. Next, look into the public safety app that
(00:45):
is pushing boundaries and unfortunately making some mistakes along the way.
The Citizen app recently put out a reward for the
capture of a man who they believe started to brush
fire in Los Angeles. The man that was singled out
didn't actually have anything to do with the fire. The
app was also considering branching out into somewhat of a
private security force for a monthly feet. Former employees and
(01:07):
some experts say that this new aggressive direction could do
more harm than good. Cyrus Farvard, investigative tech reporter at
NBC joins us for a look into the citizen app
snooze without the noise. Let's dive in. Look at what
happened on that evening when the election was won and
(01:31):
all of a sudden, vast amounts of votes were taken
in justin certain state swing sets, swing states that I
was leading by a lot, then all of a sudden,
oh something happened. It was a disgrace to our country.
And if you think people don't see it, people see
Joining us now is Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor
(01:54):
at NBC News. Thanks for joining us, Ginger, thanks for
having me. We have some division in the Democratic Party
as we learned that Senator Joe Mansion won't be voting
for the Democrats Voting Rights Building for the People Act.
I think he wrote an apt about it. He said,
voting an election reform that is done in a partisan
manner will all but ensure partisan divisions to continue to deepen.
(02:16):
Um So without Joe Mansion support on this, I mean
that is surely set to fail. Yes, that's right. This
piece of legislation as it's written now, it's just a
Democratic wish list for changes they would like to see
it done. And Joe Mansion says, look, there are some
real issues, there are some problems. We need to find
bipartisan solutions for them. We need to come together and
(02:39):
I agree upon what can be done to address the
real issues that are out there. And Manchine really feel
strongly that if they try to change the rules that
dictate voting or govern the way that people vote, it
will only if done on a partisan line, only breed
more distrust in the system instead of encouraging more trust.
And so he to see both sides come together to
(03:02):
find some type of compromise. And and really it's going
to stand in the way of any democratic sort of wish.
I mean, they didn't have the votes without Republicans anyway
of doing this along some partisan lines, right yeah. And
I mean he's also spoken out about the filibuster two
saying he's not going to take any action to eliminate
or weaken it on the filibuster side of things. You know,
(03:23):
it's not just him, there's I think at least ten
other Democrats that say they don't want to make any
changes to that so, um, these divisions are really kind
of posing some problems for the democratic agenda. That's right,
And you know, the proponents of getting rid of the
filibuster would like to make the argument this is either
past uncontrol or not, or this is either past their
(03:44):
voting bill or not. But really, these Democrats and the
Senate see this as a choice between the voting rights
bill and everything that Mitch McConnell would have done in
seventeen and eighteen when Republicans controlled the Senate and the
House and the White House. They don't gets a sort
of a choice between just the democratic agenda or not,
but also sort of a long term they're not always
(04:06):
going to control government, and they don't want to see
an ability for them to filibuster should Republicans control government
in the future. I wanted to mention former President Trump.
He's back out there. He gave his speech to the
North Carolina Republican Convention. You know, he's kind of been
in this weird place. Um. You know, he's lost his
favorite megaphone and Twitter. He just shut down his blog
(04:28):
after a very very short time because it wasn't getting
much traction. Um. But there he went out there in
that speech and then kind of pedled some of that
same stuff. The election was rigged and stolen, railed against
Dr Anthony Fauci, he railed against China for coronavirus. So
we saw a lot of the same from him. But
this is kind of triggering this next round of appearances
that he's going to be doing. I think he's got
(04:50):
a rally later in June that's gonna kick all that off. Yeah,
that's right. We're gonna hear a lot more from Donald
Trump in the coming weeks. He's going to be holding rallies,
he's going to be out on the stump, as one
would say, giving these speeches, and it it really is
a preview I think we saw on Saturday night in
North Carolina of what we're going to be hearing him
say a lot of grievances and complaints about the Biden administration,
(05:14):
but also about the election. And if Republicans had hoped
that President Trump would return to the stump to sort
of just focus on their message, which is that they
don't think Joe Biden is doing a good job, but
that's not what they got on Saturday night. They got
a former president who wants to really litigate the last election,
who spoke at length about what he thought were instances
where he had been wronged in this election. And as
(05:36):
much as Republicans are telling us in Washington that they
want to move on, it's clear that that Trump is
not ready to do so. Is that still a winning
message for him right now? I mean, as I mentioned,
he's kind of in this weird place where he hasn't
really been in the news cycle too much. I'm I'm
willing to bet is because you know, that constant presence
on Twitter is not there. But every time he surfaces
(05:58):
up that, you know, he comes back to the same thing.
Or are people kind of getting tired of that? Is
it's still there in the main stay? I mean, what's
going on with that? You know, Oscar, every time we've
thought that former President Trump's message was not playing and
that people were getting tired of it, we've been sort
of proven wrong, I guess, except for the fact that
he lost reelection. But he has demonstrated for a history
of the ability to put his finger on sort of
(06:19):
the pulse of his base and figure out what really
gets them fired up. And I think we saw him
testing a number of those lines last night in North Carolina,
trying to find the message that he thinks resonates with
people who share his perspective that he was wrong, that
the election was stolen, that something was taken from him
and from them. I mean, he's always sort of shown
(06:41):
this message in a way that was about us and
and the people along with him being being deprived of something.
So we'll see how it plays. We'll see, I think,
particularly when he starts holding rallies whether or not people
show up for them. Lastly, for uh, for this week,
I just wanted to talk about UFOs. I love that
talk so much, and we're hearing kind of the broad
strokes of what that report that's going to be coming
(07:01):
out it's supposed to be out. I think about June
and Uh, you know, they're basically saying it's not aliens,
but we don't know exactly what it is. I'm not
sure that this report as is going to do much
to to spell people who would like to believe that
it's aliens from what we know my colleagues that NBC
is reporting, the report's going to say, we're not exactly
(07:22):
sure what it is, but we don't have any reason
to believe that it's aliens. But they're not really ruling
it out either, So I think if you want to
believe um, it will probably be uh some evidence for believing.
And if you're inclined to not believe, you might say, well, look,
if they were aliens, they want to figured it out
and they didn't. So we're going to get this report,
and I think, you know, the talk of aliens, the
(07:44):
kinds that fly in the air in UFOs will continue.
I think they said the only thing conclusive thing was
that it wasn't any U S military or government technology.
There's going to be a classified annex in there, which
is probably gonna feel more speculation about other stuff. So
we'll see when the final report comes out. Ginger Gibson,
Deputy Washington Digital editor at NBC News, Thank you very
(08:06):
much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Information that
is being transmitted to kind of the nine one one
system and then out through this citizen app may in
fact turn out to be incorrect or at least not
(08:26):
quite as threatening as it may have initially seen. Joining
us now, Sirous Farvar, investigative tech reporter at NBC News,
Thanks for joining us. A ruse my pleasure. I wanted
to talk about the Citizen App. They're a public safety app.
The way they described themselves as a safety network that
sends alerts about nearby incidents, including crime. They were in
(08:48):
the news just very recently in Los Angeles after their CEO,
Andrew Frame, put out a thirty thousand dollar reward for
the capture of a man that they thought was responsible
for starting a brush fire that was threatening some homes
in the area. I think there's some internal emails saying, hey,
get this effort and all that stuff like that, but
it ended up being false. He was not the man
(09:10):
sheriff wanted him for questioning. It ended up being another
guy that they charged for the fires. But this kind
of proves, uh, you know, the point that they can
blow something up like this on this public safety app,
go as far as putting out a reward for something,
and you know, can get a lot of people involved,
possibly hurt. So, Cruce tell us a little bit about
Citizen App, and you know what's going on with them.
(09:32):
There's a lot of concerns about them. Yeah, that's right, um,
and I think you just gave a very accurate summary
of the reason why we're talking about it now. In
this incident in Los Angeles. That's certainly very troubling. Yeah,
my colleague David Ingram and I spoke to a handful
of former employees at Citizens, and I think it was
remembering that this company, which got started just not too
(09:53):
long ago, several years ago, was originally called Vigilante, and
it was originally designed to be, as you say, a
public if the app. But in recent years it's gone
through something of a shake up. Some of their leadership
has you know, turned over, and it's not really clear
what the company's business model is, despite the fact that
they have drawn considerable investment from venture capital firms. Yeah,
(10:15):
a lot of people, and some of the former employees
you spoke to said that the way the app and
the structure there the company has kind of evolved is
almost a return to that beginning to that Vigilante aspect
of it. Now, I just want to kind of preface
it for people that don't really know much about this app.
You know, it shows up a map of your local area,
(10:36):
looks like a little radar screen or something, and and
it pinpoints things that are going around, crimes, fires, you
know a bunch of different things. You know. My own
personal experience, one time I was at home. My wife
was on her way home, and I said, hey, there's
a lot of helicopters around. I don't know what's going on.
Just be careful, you know. Two seconds later she text
me back, she's like, oh, there was a shooting nearby
(10:56):
because she found it out in the Citizen app. So
in that respect, it does kind of work to alert
people about things going on in their community. But you know,
all these other problems kind of arise after that. Yeah,
and I think there's kind of a larger concern about
what's sometimes called the fear economy, you know, other apps that,
in the name of public safety, make people just very
(11:16):
you know, in the worst cases, kind of paranoid about
the environment in which they live and work. And you know,
I think a lot of times you get an alert
on an app like that and it tells you, you know, hey,
there was a robbery or there was some other kind
of violent crime that's happening near you, and it's not
always clear, at least not to me, what action users
are supposed to take if it's you know, if they're
(11:37):
supposed to call the police, if they're supposed to avoid
the area, Because you know, I think a lot of times,
the plethora of you know, of those kinds of alerts
can be a little bit overwhelming. Yeah, exactly. You know,
some of those other kind of surveillance act you were mentioning,
a lot of them use Amazon's ring Cameras, next Door App,
Neighbor's App. I think Amazon has some partnerships with law
enforcement agencies to get some of those videos to help
(12:00):
their investigations. So you know, there is this kind of
network that ends up being used in all of this. Okay,
so let's talk a little bit more about the early
start of the Citizen app and how it started as vigilante.
I mean, what is their overall goal with the app,
because they talk about how they want to provide a
line between law enforcement in the community. Also, does does
(12:21):
law enforcement use this app at all? Well, it's interesting
you say that because the former Chief police of the NYPD,
Bill Bratton, is on the company's board, So it's clear
that they're trying to make inroads with the law enforcement community.
But as you say, they're kind of trying to be
I think, a way for people to find out about
(12:41):
things that first responders are working towards faster than perhaps
conventional police and fire and other emergency services can inform
the public as to what's going on. You know, it's
worth noting kind of something that one of the former
employees told me, which is that, you know, the way
that this company works is that they're relying entirely on
raw audio, you know, nine one one traffic, other kinds
(13:03):
of first responder radio traffic, and a lot of times,
you know, if you call in, you know, if you
see a car accident or you see something outside your
window and you call it into one and you tell
them what you've seen, you may be reporting something wrong,
not because you're intending to deceive anybody, but because you
know your angle may not be correct. You may be
assuming that something is happening when it's not. And so
(13:27):
it's important to remember that information that is being transmitted
to kind of the nine one one system and then
out through this Citizen app may in fact turn out
to be incorrect or at least not quite as threatening
as it may have initially seen. Yeah, and that's kind
of the other component too, Right, So you see a
ping on the app, something's going on. You know, if
(13:48):
you're nearby, somebody else using the Citizen app might feel
compelled to go check it out, and then you know,
when you do open the app, you see photos, videos,
live videos. In a lot of cases of whatever is
going on in really becomes this YouTube TikTok Instagram type
thing where you're just kind of sitting there looking at
some of the actions that are happening on the app.
(14:08):
And that's part of the other issue too. You know,
people are saying it could be dangerous for people to
show up at scenes like this when you don't know
exactly what's happening just yet, right, I think it's not
very clear, you know. I think you know, if you
see a video of you know, a fire or police
responding to something, you know, it's not totally clear what
exactly is happening. It takes time typically for law enforcement,
(14:29):
for fire agencies to even know what's going on and
be able to communicate that to the public. And so
I think it's important to remember that just because you know,
somebody has called in with a nine or one call
reporting a possible threat of some kind doesn't necessarily mean
that that is actually the case. As an app, How
successful is it? How many downloads do we see? How
many uh in what locations is it centered? Yeah, I
(14:53):
mean you know, a chech firm that does, you know,
these kinds of analytics called app Topia, reports that it's
been downloaded about almost twelve million times. It's you know,
fairly popular, particularly in recent years, but you know, it's
not really clear kind of where that is going. The
downloads for the app peaked of last summer about a
year ago when there was nationwide protests in the wake
(15:15):
of the George Floyd murder. But it's not really clear
how the company is going to continue forward. It obviously
still exists, people can download it, people continue to use it,
but again it's still not clear what the company's real
business model is. Going back a little bit to that
incident in Los Angeles, it was their CEO, Andrew Frame,
who kind of signed off on this reward reward for
(15:37):
the capture of that man who they thought started that fire,
which was wrong. But Andrew Frame himself has a pretty
interesting background. He was a teenage prodigy as a hacker
and did a lot of stuff. Andrew Frame is certainly
quite a character. There was a profile of him in
Forbes magazine in August twenty nineteen that kind of, as
(15:59):
you say, talks about his background as an apparent hacker,
and you know how he wants to use his computer
knowledge and and interest in public safety to make an
app that would be useful to the public. And you know,
if you take him at his word, yeah, he breached
NASA computer systems when he was younger. He made tens
of millions of dollars working at Facebook for building a
(16:22):
network architecture there. So it's super interesting on that respect.
And you know, as you mentioned, they're kind of business
model isn't clear. They're constantly evolving. Uh somewhere are worried
that they might be getting into this thing about calling
people out. They were also thinking about maybe doing some
private security, doing some type of monthly service for subscribers.
(16:43):
How was that supposed to work? Yeah, that's right, you know,
and I should give credit work credits to do. There
was some reporting done by Motherboard about how citizen was
driving around an SUV in Los Angeles just after this
brush fire and said that you mentioned, and it appeared
that this was some sort of initial test for a
private security force run by citizens. But it's not really
(17:07):
clear how that would be better or worse than the
you know, existing law enforcement that does exist. Not to
mention other types of private security that already do exist.
I think that was gonna be a twenty dollar month service,
and you know, it could be as simple as, uh,
I'm walking home, I need to talk to somebody just
in case something happens. But I think they kind of
(17:28):
scrapped that for the meantime. But we'll see if something
you know, evolves out of there in the end. And
all the people, all the former employees of Citizen that
you spoke to, what were their top concerns? I mean,
what are they thinking that's going to happen with all
of this? Because somebody even mentioned in there that there
was always kind of this red line that they were
pretty confident that Andrew Frame wouldn't cross going into some
(17:51):
of this crazier territory. But what are their concerns with
all of this? Yeah, I mean I think this red
line that you mentioned. This was one former employee who's oldest,
that there was a quote clear red line that he
meaning and Reframe could never cross, which was to not
identify specific people in the app, not to start man hunts.
And he seems to have broken apparently his own rule.
(18:12):
And it's it's I think troubling when we see a
scenario on the Internet in general, where a platform, a company,
a CEO uses their power to target someone, whether that's
on Twitter or other kinds of Internet platforms. And then
here you add the kind of higher stakes of public
safety and an active fire that's burning in an urban area.
(18:36):
That certainly adds to the tension, and it is extremely troubling.
I think when it turns out that the person that
the CEO has targeted and is offering money up or
is wrong, and local law enforcement says as much, you know,
I think that that's certainly troubling. What was their response
to that whole situation. I mean, they obviously got it
wrong and we're falsely accusing somebody. How did they react
(18:57):
to that? It's not totally here. The Los Angeles Sheriff's
Department said that this reward was disastrous because it could
have led to someone getting heard. However, that wasn't didn't
turn out to the case. Deputies eventually found this person
that citizen named, They questioned him, they released him, They
had no evidence to charge him with anybody with anything,
(19:17):
and eventually there was another suspect who was charged with
starting this fire. So rus RVaR Investigative Tech reporter at
NBC News. Thank you very much for joining us. You're welcome.
That's it for today. Join us on social media at
(19:38):
Daily Dive Pod on both Twitter and Instagram. Give us
a comment, give us a rating, and tell us the
stories that you're interested in. Allow us on I Heart Radio,
or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. This episode of
The Daily Divers produced by Victor Wright and engineered by
Tony Sargantino. I'm Oscar Ramires and this was her Daily
(19:58):
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