THREAD: I analyzed Citizen's contact tracing app when they were pitching it to NYC. Unsurprisingly, its approach to privacy is terrible, continues to encourage paranoia-as-a-service, and has wide latitude for law enforcement access. https://twitter.com/awalkerinLA/status/1303905917814013952

This app collects A LOT of personal information, including location data, copies of gov-ID, COVID-19 diagnosis information, and undefined “health information.” They only commit to deleting Bluetooth data & gov-id in 30 days. Nothing else is subject to any regular deletion policy.

Location data is hard to anonymize, but Citizen isn't really interested that. They'll show you a map that makes it easy to re-identify a sick person.

This creates a dangerous opportunity for exposing people’s identities and subjecting them to online/offline harassment.

Citizen retains wide latitude to use "anonymized" and "aggregate" location data. It’s easy to imagine Citizen’s desire to integrate this data into hotspot alerts for users of its crime alerts service.

Communities of color, already subject to over-policing, have also been disproportionately impacted by Covid-19; adding a health layer to crime alerts can further entrench biases over the people and places that are considered "dangerous." It encourages...more policing.

Of course, breeding paranoia is Citizen's MO. They contemplate self-policing as a feature, not a bug.

A familiar tech delusion: it'll be great for BBQs! No thought given to abuse by employers, landlords, schools, and more.

The privacy policy contemplates that users can opt-into sharing diagnosis information with government agencies, but doesn’t specify who those agencies are. Agreeing to share data with public health officials is not the same thing as agreeing to share information with LAPD or ICE.

All of the data they collect be shared with law enforcement under a subpoena or court order, but they also reserve the right to share user data to detect, prevent, and deter “unauthorized, unethical, or illegal activity.” This carve-out leaves Citizen A LOT of discretion.

This language is standard, but salient for a company constantly reinventing itself to ride the latest wave of fear.

It has already gone from an app that encouraged people to film crime scenes to one that pings users’ phones with a constant stream of unverified crime reports.

Ultimately, digital contact tracing will only work if a broad base of the population opts-in to downloading the app. This isn't the way.

It's hard to imagine a company worse-suited to convince Angelenos that public health surveillance isn't a trojan horse for police surveillance