Leaked emails show crime app Citizen is testing on-demand security force
vice.com
vice.com
https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/21/22447446/citizen-app-inte...
My prediction is someone will go all viligante and beat/maim/kill someone, probably who is innocent. Then the app will get pulled.
I think it's more likely the first time this happens the person is actually guilty, and there will be a huge debate as to whether or not it's a good thing.
No there won't. There have been serial killers who used common apps to find their victims, along with people who rob, assault, harass and stalk people they find on apps. People don't really care. Even the justice system doesn't care because the companies are able to argue that Section 230 means that they aren't liable for what users do with their products[1].
[1] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/women/publicati...
That's always been their intention. Well, not to kill anyone, but to track people down. The app was originally called vigilante and Apple pulled it from the app store, so they rebranded and now we have Citizen. Maybe Apple will do it again before anything even worse happens than the recent $30k bounty on an innocent person.
No. Maybe that’s fine by others but any app I can’t put a zip code into is deleted now.
It’s creepy and weird to ask for location data. Where are the apps that default to zip code and offer me the option to have myself tracked everywhere I go for more personalized output?
With VM you could spoof a different location. Some ppl use emulators but I find them too slow usually.
An app where people accept contracts for quick cash. It’s supposed to be a dystopian element of their society, not a blueprint.
My guess is there will be tiers based on anticipated usage, like AAA. Want X number of monthly reports? That costs $Y. If you want 2X the reports and expedited response time, it costs $2Y.
Not particularly surprised to see it realized in this way
It’s sad that someone else will implement them anyway.
it will more than cover a drone. Especially AI based one instead of being remotely controlled. You can imagine that they can park a lot of drones around the city so the reaction time will be in seconds. While real people sometimes [think that they] have to use deadly force to protect themselves, a drone has no-self-preservation concerns (i hope it will be that way at least for some near future :) and thus can just blanketly use a lot of non-deadly force - acoustic, electric shock, 96GHz beamed power, etc.
You're going for a walk late at night - just a click in the app would get you a drone or a robot dog to accompany you for a walk. The drone or the dog is already imprinted with your voice from the app for the duration of the walk, so you can command it at any moment.
I’ve been jumped several times in my life. And yes, I’d much prefer my child walks outside alone just like I still enjoy walking outside unsurveiled. The world sucks, I’ve yet to find the place were continuous surveillance makes that better.
YMMV, people have different views, I was never harmed beyond a two week long headache in any of my incidents, otherwise I just lost personal belongings like phones and wallets.
The chance of you suffering crime (unless u look for it like join gang) is vanishingly small. Media just constantly reports and massive amplifies fear generation on the most dramatic BS happening anywhere cause fear sells.
For instance more or almost the same number if people die by 2nd Hand Smoke as die if gunshots in USA. About half of gunshots deaths all self inflicted suicides. But every thinks there is some huge issue with gun violence. Wed save tens of thousands of lives every year outlawing smoking. But smoking isn't scary like "assault weapon". Doesn't sell ads and first get you reelected
Now what if you also order one? Did you make sure to get the premium subscription which includes DAD Drone Area Denial to keep other drones out? Because I did...
Also, while people in many places can't get a license to carry various weapons, a large cash flush corporation can push through the regulations Uber-style and get the regulations to allow their robots to carry and use those weapons.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other countries come to mind along with the USA when I think of religious puritanism.
https://inews.co.uk/culture/page-3-why-end-stop-no-more-the-...
For one of the most prominent examples, just compare the US to Germany: For decades Germany censored very mundane video games, like Counter Strike or Doom, for their depiction of violence.
In games like Command&Conquer, Half-Life and others, whole enemy units and models were replaced to appease the German rating boards. The original DOS Doom game was only "unbanned" in 2011.
A lot of violent movies and TV shows are only aired in censored versions in Germany, yet on these very same channels, during late night, there regularly is completely barrier free soft-core erotica content that for many Americans would qualify as "porn".
Another example is the naturism/nudist culture that very much has a old and somewhat popular tradition in Germany as FKK. It's also a thing in the US, yes, but it never was on a comparable mainstream level like in Germany.
These differences exist because there simply isn't this one unified "Western culture" that some people stipulate to be a thing.
Op was about religious ideas from the 1600s that were far from uniquely American. They’re an ingredient! But let’s not get carried away with the 7th grade social studies stuff.
Most of W Europe doesn't seem aligned with 1600 views today. Significant parts of US culture is aligned with 17-1800 us puritanism views.
Not sure how the owners got it through again, but they somehow slipped it through after the namechange.
I suspect it won’t last long on their, particularly after they very publicly and loudly offered money for vigilantes to go after an innocent person.
CIP: Living in downtown Portland, I have way better luck searching recent "#portlandprotests" tweets than I do checking the PPB Twitter feed. The latter usually shows up within 24 hours, but doesn't really solve the immediate curiosity of "why is there a helicopter hovering above my house right now".
Playing with fire. And I don’t mean the arsonist.
Private citizens are not under the same legal scrutiny officers are - evidence obtained in violation of the constitution cannot be admitted in court if an officer is the one that does it. But if a private citizens does it can be acceptable.
If people want rule of law, and not rule of force, then they should become officers not 'security force'. But I have a feeling that the reason they want to be 'securoty force' is to avoid the responsibility.
What matters is that people are voting with their wallets.
People need a solution to rampant crime. Take for example SA, where private security forces are widespread.
The degree of deleriction of duty by public servants has been tremendous in the last 2 years. The NYC Major recently was on the record stating that "there is no security problem in NYC" meanwhile official City hall communication channels have implemented a buddy system where city hall employees can home in groups [1]
If public servants can't provide security for people, there should not be a surprise that the private servicers would emerge.
[1]https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-city-hall-employee...
Someone who is looking at the full situation would realize that hiring private security does not cause the homeless population to suddenly evaporate. An outsider might start to get the impression that the fundamental right of the upper-middle class is the right not to be reminded that people in poverty exist.
In addition, it's not like these people don't have sympathy for the plight of the poor: they voted to spend vast sums on tax money trying to fix the root cause of the problem. It's not their fault that these efforts are failing.
You're looking at the most obvious symptom - people with no home - and saying "well if we just treated that symptom with all this money there would be no problem." But the root cause is an order of magnitude larger than that.
Has that solved crime in SA?
I don't think we want to use as a model a place where police services are only available to the wealthy.
There are already more private security officers than government police officers in the US today. This isn't new. They have co-existed for many decades.
Officers are under scrutiny. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes (not often enough for me) when that scrutiny fails changes happen.
What is the oversight process, and the public input on that oversight, for Citizen?
Your example is an argument specifically for not letting go of that scrutiny, and significantly increasing that scrutiny. It, to some, is an argument of why existing state sponsored efforts at law enforcement simply need to be rebooted entirely - because they operate with scrutiny more akin to a private corporation already.
But for all of the highly visible things wrong with certain police forces, they do at least theoretically have carefully considered constraints and a duty to the public rather than just their subscribers.
Look at South Africa, they have security forces. Or look at India, they too have a police force. But in South Africa, their security force is only available for the wealthy, while in India, they’re actually corrupt police are paid off daily. You don’t want to leave your house without cash to bribe a cop. And if you don’t, you get beat.
I’d rather be in the US with their policing than have a citizens army of security, or almost any police force.
This isn't some abstract hypothetical. We have generations of police who "washed out" of training because they weren't bad enough. It's important to have an accurate diagnosis when proposing a course of treatment.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/racism...
There are millions of police, and hundreds of millions of encounters daily across a huge range of investigations and issues. boiling it down to twitter levels of context is bad and applying such broad strokes is also equally bad. Its certainly not going to encourage good ones to sign up.
I know with the way this type of stuff is being portrayed, its a no win for most police, they could quadruple the salaries overnight and some would still balk, because no matter what it a loss.
That prosecutor's job would be easier if the criminal officer's colleagues would testify against them, which goes back (again) to social mores.
Prosecutors rely on cops to get their prosecutions, and if the prosecutor is the only one who faces repercussions for charging a cop, then obviously they're going to be loathe to charge any cops.
Honestly, though, the system isn't recoverable in most regions. American police, the ideological successors to slave catchers, suffer a rot that is too deep. Many are literally white supremacist gangs. It isn't a system that can be reformed.
Some might see that as a downside when selecting who you want providing your security.
Instead of comlaining about private security forces, why not fix policing in this country so that it actually makes people feel safer?
They do it to have someome to attack the others, someone under their control. They have zero incentive to prevent private security from planting evidence on others.
Gangs in fact did not ended up to be fair non corrupt equivalent of police either.
And in case you are the one calling, you don't need private security as much as private mental health professional. Because that knowledge and exlerience of mental health crisis comes with being mental health professional - not with security.
If private security shoots someone having a mental health crisis, they have far fewer legal protections to help them avoid consequences. This is precisely the point I have been making.
The state can’t bring criminal charges if the violation was due to performing work for the state.
It’s legal to sue government agents as private citizens for violation of rights.
It wasn't necessarily decided by elected representatives, most of these protections have be put in place by courts and are based purely on legal precedent rather than legislation.
> It’s legal to sue government agents as private citizens for violation of rights.
It is legal to sue anyone for anything. The standards of proof required to win such a lawsuit make it generally ineffective at rectifing most cases where rights are violated.
It's weird reading that when I was a kid I was constantly told cops are heroes because they put their lives on the line where most wouldn't or couldn't. Like I'm an untrained bumpkin, unfortunately if someone had a knife and I had a gun, I can't really think of much more than shooting them.
But somewhere along the line the standard for police dropped down to the standard for me? The untrained bumpkin?
Since pretty much every time I hear cop by suicide it's apparent, and people still say "well what would *you* do" like that's the smoking gun...
-
It even extends to more casual cases, the other day there was a video of a lady mooning an officer. The thing is the lady was clearly let go before that fairly stupid act, and last I checked mooning someone doesn't imply you've suddenly become a lethal threat.. but the cop was just so out of shape that shortly after realizing they couldn't keep up with this not very fast person they ended up tasering this person on asphalt.
A fully grown adult out cold at running pace straight into asphalt because a cop is so out of shape they can't chase a person who mooned them
That's not the picture I grew up with...
-
I honestly don't have a problem with that though! I don't think we have to force people to gamble their lives for others. There's a certain sense of, "if I can't do it, I can't make someone else do it".
But if that's the case then we need to drop a lot of the pretence to traditional policing cops have right now.
Like the pay and pensions are all based around the hazard, but it's safer than being a cab driver. Maybe because now fearing for your life is an out to kill people reaching for wallets.
And a lot of interactions they have with people, like speed enforcement should probably be dropped, if we're just admitting lethal force has moved up a few notches.
And maybe they need to have attachments with them for certain calls. If someone is showing signs of mental instability, someone experienced with dealing with that vs applying lethal force should be directly involved.
Why do you think I said I'd be forced to shoot? Because even without training common sense tells you "not allowing the attacker to close enough distance with you to use the knife" is a pretty good course of action
By your logic the moment a person calls 911, the people who are supposed to help, the person has been sentenced to death. Think about that for a second.
1. The cops will arrive
2. "avoid knife getting close to me"
3. Less than lethal is not reliable, hell even lethal force isn't instant, I feared for my life, they're shot very dead.
-
It's not an easy problem, but how is that ok? There's not many ways to fix it other than trying something other than lethal force.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mzPj_IaMzY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G06mi2hVg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgdhxLPJBgQ
Like the stuff in those videos is not easy, I'm not trying to pretend I could do it, or most people could. It requires cops being able to put the most efficient response for self-preservation behind trying to save someone, which again, I'm not saying we require of anyone...
But let's call a spade a spade at that point. That's not the concept of policing I see paraded. That's not the "thin blue line", it sounds more like a cell of civilians that are deployed to bad situations where they then "apply self-defense"...
> Like the stuff in those videos is not easy, I'm not trying to pretend I could do it, or most people could.
I'm not a police officer because I'm not brave enough. I'd fear for my life, and I shoot. So instead of putting myself in a profession that should ideally require more of me, I don't.
Not rocket science.
If the people who were police were better able to keep cool instead of jumping to shoot people in the face in fear... all that would be left would be the criminally insane?
And somehow we'd have less controlled application of protocol?
What the hell are you talking about?
-
Police would finally fit the shoes they claim they're walking in: https://youtu.be/HPRmzpGyycY
There really would be a line that separates them from the "rest of us", and anti-police sentiment would be a hell of a lot weaker. I mean, how often do we have national anti-firefighter sentiment? Maybe when police use them to mow down humans?
-
If being a police officer is just about carrying a gun and looking out for number one, all we're looking for is people who don't hesitate to pull a trigger.
Just realize, lowering the bar to "willing to shoot to protect self the moment anything threatens me" is a hell of a lot lower than "willing to put other's lives at similar value to mine, even if it risks my own".
Ironically the lower bar sounds like how attract to the "criminally insane/psychopathic unfazed by the utilization of violence"... to become police.
[0] https://www.jiujitsutimes.com/marietta-police-department-imp...
Other countries also have people who threaten cops with deadly weapons, and their numbers are far far lower. Hell, suicide-by-cop is a very real and common thing here in the USA.
US police in general have a lot of issues and need to improve dramatically, but the stories about cases of bad behavior are not representative samples, even if you factor in the amount of bad behavior that goes undiscovered.
I take your point, but not exactly. First, an officer that's planting evidence or attacking unarmed handcuffed civilians has been known to be a bad officer by say the other 50 officers in their department. Second, they're not caught on their first day. Third, the high profile ones are high profile because they're left on the force and continue being bad even after being caught.
So the 0.00014% of people being caught every day is _additive_ over time, this isn't a random sampling. It doesn't mean that 0.00014% of officers are bad, it means that we increase the pool of bad officers by that much every day.
That's not to say these incidents aren't indicative of systemic problems, but that's not the same as saying saying all or most police are like this. What "confirmation bias" means here is that people are looking at the exceptional cases to confirm their opinion of police as a whole, which is objectively a mistake.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/police-officers-convicte...
What are the purported good officers doing about it and why aren't they getting any results?
Not for the purposes of the law, nor their employment. The state has much more power in how to bring them into line than it does for private citizens (it just chooses not to use that power in the US).
The current situation is not good, but I have hope that in the past year we've hit a turning point where we'll actually start seeing some improvements (they will be slow and incomplete improvements, but they will be progress in the right direction).
Privatized police, on the other hand, is about as dystopian as it gets.
If I could cancel the "contract" with my local law enforcement agencies, I would have done that a long, long time ago.
The implication here is that police officers stay within the bounds of the law, and yet a cursory google search will reveal that (at least in the US and Canada) the police are entirely corrupt forces of legally-sanctioned mob violence who flout the law at will without fear of repercussions or consequences.
If there's a high-blood pressure situation and whether I call 911 or if I were to start using Citizen, I have about the same level of confidence that extralegal brutality will occur.
What would you think happens if you abuse this service to call security on your poor neighbors? They keep showing up? I don't think so. I do think the neighborhood watch could take it personally.
Security force is a perfectly respectable and responsible job, and many ex-police and ex-military use their skill set to get into this field.
If officers always showed up, and always showed up on time, then you would not need private citizens. Rule of law is for the government to control. Citizens just want their parents to feel safe, and be able to call security to drive through their street, when they suspect gang/drug activity.
I want my family to feel safe. It is my responsibility to do everything in my capacity as a law-abiding citizen to ensure their safety.
If there are crimes happening which require armed intervention, that is exactly a reason for having a professional security force. If the police does not show for such a crime, but you need to rely on security force, well good luck to you, and glad you have a backup on dial.
A security force is also going to cooperate with the police and perform surveillance. Not like they pull up in an armored van and exit with weapons drawn, because a neighbor called them for an illegal lemonade stand.
I don't think the killing of Ahmaud Arbery was by a neighborhood watch. Professionals would probably not have let it come that far. Same with Trayvon Martin: if a professional force had responded calmly, he may have been alive. So if a neighborhood watch is necessary (either for the feeling of protection or actual crime fighting) then a professional force would seem a lot better.
I am curious as to why you believe that this scenario isn't exactly what would happen. Because I think eventually this is... exactly what would happen.
If I do imagine this would happen, assume it would be true, then just to be clear: I do not agree with armed interventions to shut down these illegal lemonade stands, and I wished the marketing in the leaked e-mails would have made it clear, that armed interventions of all crime, is what this service is meant for.
It hasn't devolved into pulling up in an armored van and exiting with weapons drawn yet. Why would yet another company among thousands (millions?) entering the field change that?
You get gangs. That's how gangs form. Organized crime, almost everywhere, has its roots in this kind of "local security" of an underserved disadvantaged population. People who can't rely on the police for order end up under the thumb of whoever can provide stability.
Now, OK, sure. I get that you're thinking that somehow this startup has found a growth hack to disrupt this millenia-old industry and do it better than the Mafia. Well... maybe. Or maybe it's just another gang.
Funny thing though. With this Citizen nonsense? They might be on mine instead. Bet that makes you sleep better at night knowing those woke hippies might hire "private security" of their own, right?
How about this: let's all get together and decide democratically on how to, I dunno, enforce our laws in a universally acceptable way? We can then hire a bunch of these "law enforcers" together such that they aren't beholden to any part of society, and come up with means to make them accountable to all of us, with like rules and stuff that we can, I guess, amend as we go along. Deal?
Private security is mostly an extremely boring, mundane job and they are extremely worried about liability, very risk averse.
This is different than private military contractors.
Alas, I cannot afford a security guard any more than I can afford a private driver, hence a part-time app-based security guard (or driver). It doesn't replace the police, and is accountable to the law and police; it just a tool to solve a problem.
Government police have qualified immunity and are not subject to market oversight. As you might expect, this fundamental lack of accountability results in abuses, particularly of minorities, historically and presently.
I’m much less concerned about the Starbucks security guards becoming a gang. Unlike government police, as soon as they start bashing gay people or colored people, I can stop supporting them.
This sort of thing happens a lot in Latin America though. One situation sort of like what you're describing is Columbia in the 90s. The cartels throughly corrupted the government, so vigilante groups like Los Pepes[1] formed to attack the cartels, though they may have mostly just been fronts for other cartels. Los Pepes alumni went to form AUC, which was the semi-government endorsed death squad in Columbia at the time and became its own narcotrafficking syndicate over time[2]. AUC was eventually shut down and the leaders arrested for atrocities.
The main left-wing guerrilla movement (FARC) also eventually shut down its military activities[3]. The huge economic disaster of Venezuela right next door might have weakened the appeal of left-wing revolution. I've heard that Columbia is a pretty nice place to visit these days where in the 90s it was one of the most dangerous countries on earth.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Pepes
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Self-Defense_Forces_of_...
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Armed_Forces_of_...
This seems written from the perspective of someone who has just come back from a six month vacation during which they had no access to news.
> I've heard that Columbia is a pretty nice place to visit these days
There is literally a country-wide revolt taking place in Colombia (correct spelling) at the moment, with some of the worst police violence the country has experienced in years.
When the law decides it is not interested in protecting the citizens you bet this is going to happen.
My block has been invaded by the drug dealers as of last summer. Not 1. Not 2. But between a dozen and two dozen at a time. They are selling drugs openly on a street so brazen that the people who live here have to walk through the drug deals being done on a sidewalk to get to their apartments. Apartments with rents ranging from $1900 to $6000 a month. Cops don't do anything because the city management frowns upon it. We had five shootings over the past 12 months. If there was a way for us to pay for our own thugs to ensure the drug dealers moved to a different block $200-$500/mo per apartment I'm absolutely sure everyone who lives around here would sign up for it.
We, people who live on this block, want them gone from this block.
Given the moral bankruptcy of America’s police force (note: force, not every officer), I could certainly see someone preferring private security handle their interests over the police.
If crime were less prevalent and the police more trusted, such a service wouldn’t have a niche to exist in.
I don’t like this slide into vigilante justice. But fighting the symptoms of the underlying problem is the wrong approach.
Point is, if the state is not providing these services, then the demand will make it profitable for someone to fill the role.
Public schools in NY not delivering education some folks expect -> market starts for private schools.
Existing delivery service not able to do guaranteed same or next day delivery -> merchants and others will build out their own capacity.
My guess is that as police are defunded (Minneapolis is getting rid of police department entirely) folks who can pay and see a role for security will probably contract for it. In the bay area this is already happening to a small degree.
It used to be you could walk into a lot of office buildings freely, now pretty tight security in some downtown areas (ie, public security option / service options are very poor and not maintained). So we get elevator passes and lockouts, security person downstairs, turnstiles, bathrooms all got doors with RFID door locks.
It's like gated communities on steroids, but starts to include office, mfg and other items like retail (which totally leave places with no security). Can result in shocking differences on both sides of the fence that usually separates these areas. Ironically the police then tend to follow along and provide better security to what are not better areas (if they have any capacity).
As soon as a family has some relatively small amount of wealth they will spend it on ultra-secure apartment buildings, tall walls around their house, razor-wire walls and fences, full coverage security cameras and intruder detection, etc.
(The source of my confusion: I interpreted "overseas" in a quite literal way - I'm from Europe.)
I've always thought security on demand was a great idea- the real killer app in my mind is having a map online of which houses the private security company protects, so as to create an incentive for people who aren't paying to get protection as the thieves know what's ripe for the picking.
i was a victim of a home invasion and maybe 10 years later a violent crime. In both cases only after the real danger was over did a call for help happen.
In the home invasion it ended when the gunman was forcing my roommate to the garage, my roommate opened the door, the gunman walked out, he then slammed/locked the door behind him and we hit the deck calling 911
In the second case i was jumped from behind and knocked nearly unconscious before being robbed. It took me a full 15min to get the brain fog cleared to even think what to do next.
i don't see how an app is going to offer any protection at all. Maybe it speeds up reporting crime??
Is that 'poorer' measured in actual USD $, or old Italian lira or pesos or something?
#wishiwaspoorthere.
Not really a purely American problem- everybody else has this too- which is why young people are so pissed everywhere that they have no future.
The poor get rid of the police in their neighborhoods and the folks who want more policing get it?
We've had a fair bit of retail closing as the police are pulling back out of some areas.
In the 90s when the NYPD started firing lazy/corrupt police commanders and cracking down on street crime, evicting families of drug dealers from public housing, and putting down pit bulls.. poor communities were very much in favor of what was happening.
The tide shifted when the cops went all in on stupid metrics.
"Oh, somebody broke into your car and stole stuff? You shouldn't leave things lying around. We'll never catch the guy. Oh, you have video of the incident and know exactly who it is? Yeah, we can't really do anything with this. Oh you need to file a report for the insurance company? Fill this out and check back with us next month."
I'm very much NOT surprised that people who've actually needed the police for something have decided to there needs to be a private alternative.
The intent behind that movement is to take money spent on policing where it fails and move it to where it might be more effective.
How many lawsuits are there for wrongful deaths where the police showed up for a mental health crisis? Since funding is finite and the police get a lion's share of it (community wise), why not shift some of that money into personnel who are better equipped to handle it?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/06/12/minneapoli...
Also, "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police": https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
Only in your mind. You cite an opinion piece as fact, when it's, like, an opinion, man.
You're projecting Motte and Bailey now by suggesting that is the intent of the movement, and therefore the movement is "bad".
Policing in America needs to be revisited. The word "reform" has been used in the past and has been found wanting. We could make up a brand new word but its still just a word -- the concept itself is worthy of pursuit.
Police funding is now more often used to to acquire military weapons/hardware.
"Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" is a highly recommended study of this problem.
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...
The differences are quite interesting: The soldier swears to always act in ways creditable to the service and the nation, recognizing it as a honored profession not to be disgraced.
While for the warrior the mission always comes first. Honor, credibility, disgrace? Not even in the vocabulary, replaced with "deploy, engage and destroy the enemies of the US, in close combat".
Are you just saying that because weed is being legalized?
Economic inequality sure isn't in decline, and there are a lot of 18-24 year old uneducated men out there with nothing to lose. The turmoil in places like Venezuela and Colombia leaves power voids that cartels step in to fill.
Look at the southern border.
I think in a lot of major metros, even funded police aren't meeting people's needs. If we aren't getting what we're paying for, we should stop paying.
Am I more likely to have a positive or negative interaction with police? I honestly don't know, and I'm white in a nice area. Crime is low and something like a burglary is extremely unlikely. I think police may be providing an unseen benefit to me by enforcing the law on others - I don't want vehicles doing 50 mph on my residential street, maybe they would without police? Or maybe they wouldn't?
I'm not taking a side on this issue, but I do empathize with those who believe they are unlikely to ever benefit from police presence, and thus don't want to pay for police.
Personally, I think the underlying issue is a lack of accountability. Address that, and many issues resolve themselves.
You're saying this like the majority these people have a net-positive impact on tax revenue. It's quite the opposite.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-r...
https://www.newsweek.com/denying-crime-wave-progressives-are...
This is presumably what some people want, but in general the police as protectors of the status quo is, in my view, a bad thing. The status quo sucks and changing it isn't illegal—yet the cops in the US will treat you as it it were.
It's a bad and fiercely unamerican system.
The issue might not be funding level but misuse as you point out.
Would you apply that to government services generally, where we're not getting what we pay for?
Given that: yes, we should absolutely stop funding services where society isn’t getting what it’s paying for—or fix them.
Its a fallacy to assume it is a failure of a public option when it just as easily can be that we've been marketed that we are vulnerable and unsafe. Almost all stats have TODAY being just about the safest moment for violent crime in the history of humanity.
Dont confuse a change in peoples purchasing habits as a logical response to something intrinsic. Its barely ever correlated.
edit: I actually reread and saw you said "perceived value," I agree with you, I just think its a tragedy people are so scared. Although SF seems to be really having a problem.
This is incorrect. The city council made a non-binding “pledge” to dismantle the police department. But according to the New York Times, the pledge "has been rejected by the city's mayor, a plurality of residents in recent public opinion polls, and an increasing number of community groups. Taking its place have been the types of incremental reforms that the city's progressive politicians had denounced." [1]
The ideas behind “defund the police” are simply not popular in the US. A majority of Americans want a police department - but they want a police department that protects everyone equally.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/us/politics/minneapolis-d...
Those folks have a tendency to want to separate themselves from the dirty masses. (Ie gated community) It’s what you did after you sell the family factory business in Ohio and move to Florida or wherever.
Building security theatre was accelerated driven by 9/11 paranoia and federal standards.
At which point the need was filled. No dystopic community mercenary forces were necessary.
This seems like the idea is to supply a rent-a-thug to individuals, on-demand.
Really? How much is a case of beer now?
[you] I think this is for communities
[me] nope. not communities
[you] exactly
There are some very sketchy urban places in the US with legit serious security problems.
There are vast burbs in the US which are actually really safe but have anxious, overzealous citizens.
https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/mounting-violence-casts...
It seems like a better measure would be something related to their actual goal. So why didn't they measure rate of property crime? Rate of homelessness? Poverty? Drug addiction? Supposedly these are the real causes of crime and homelessness.
If they did actually measure those things, I think their evaluation of the program would be different [0] [1].
>> "Denver saw significant increases in most types of property crime in 2020. In comparison to the average of the previous four years, burglaries rose 23% in 2020, larceny rose 9%, auto theft rose 61% and theft from cars rose 39%, Denver police data shows." [0]
[0] https://www.denverpost.com/2021/03/15/denver-property-crime-...
[1] https://denver.cbslocal.com/2021/05/20/aurora-homeless-campi...
[1] https://www.ernst.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2019/1/ernst-i...
Simply wanting to preserve one's life, liberty, and property and live in relative commity with one's neighbors does not generally lead to excessive violence and destruction.
That's not an argument, essentially. Words don't make truth. Either this trick is going to make people safer or it's going to get someone killed.
[1] See what I did there? Words are fun!
Please don't confuse me for a student of Locke.
> And likewise trying to replace police with this private goon squad[1] looks an awful lot like "tearing down existing institutions" to people like me who think it's a shit idea.
Building UPS or Fedex is not the same thing as destroying USPS.
In that same period of time, also on the West Coast, we’ve seen a shift towards a more lenient model of policing and prosecuting. The idea is to not laden people who are already struggling with homelessness, mental illness, drug addiction, or all three with legal problems that arise from those situations. It’s a laudable effort, and a noble goal, but it has meant that people who get arrested for something like auto theft or burglary are quickly released. Sometimes you’ll read in the news about a person who’s been arrested for a serious crime like murder, and the article will mention dozens and dozens of other arrests for things like burglary, assault or theft. The police know this, so they often don’t bother following up on property crimes.
That system as a whole can really make the major West Coast cities feel pretty lawless sometimes, but people don’t really like to talk about it in social settings because it’s hard to talk about problems like that without being misconstrued as a reactionary conservative. But if you get them taking one on one, and they feel like they can trust you, the frustrations come pouring out. So I’m not that surprised that there’s a company trying to capitalize on that sentiment, horrifying as it is. I’ve been feeling for a while now that given the current trajectory of things, a vigilante backlash was likely to become inevitable.
Stuff like that needed to end. But we also need to go further to address the root causes of this problem.
There may be one or more options on the ballot this fall to make the department report to someone different, and/or to remove the current minimum number of officers, but even those are yet to be resolved.
It seems to me like this will be used by the upper-middle class to pester their neighbors over minor annoyances, because they can afford a Citizen subscription. Imagine the poor family across the street, who gets visited by a black SUV and a group of burly looking suited security guards, likely telling them something vague about a "disturbance" that was reported.
Not very different than getting visited by a burly looking neighbor. Except some people can look weaker, or be afraid to approach their neighbor because their small stature
When I had an upstairs neighbor having parties at all hours of the night, I wished there was a service where a bigger / more intimidating person would knock on their door and ask them to cut it out, instead of small and fragile looking me
(And you weren't afraid of potential fallout from escalating things to intimidation either way? What if they hire a BIGGER person to go knock on your door?)
If you don't want to do something, you ask somebody else, if you both agree to the terms and costs you have a deal.
The world can be, how should I put this, difficult a place.
The contracted party might agree to not mention you. Something like: hey, I live across the street, would you mind letting me know if you're going to have music late at night because I'll just stay at my partner's place that evening, here's my number. No sweat, have a good night, here's a complimentary six pack.
It doesn't take a lot of imagination to assume the best possible reading of a comment like yours.
Have a lovely day.
My solution was to offer to pay them $$$ for their moving fees and, when they turned that down, I just picked up and moved to another building.
That's not really much different.
(Assume everyone involved is armed)
heh that's a "hired goon". This whole discussion is like standard issue organized crime and protection rackets but in app form. Too funny.
That exists, and it's called the police. If your neighbor is violating noise ordinances, they'll get ticketed. If they're not, perhaps they're violating building rules, and can be fined by the building management. If still not, then you unfortunately just live in a shitty building, and hiring a thug to harass your neighbor (regardless of how loud they're being) sounds like a pretty disgusting (and legally risky) thing to do.
Also, this is how people use the police already. They call them when they are annoyed with their neighbors, the infamous woman in Central Park that was covered heavily in the news this year comes to mind.
This seems like an interesting story, got a link?
In some ways I would honestly love to get my door buzzed by these people so I could tell them to get off my property lest I call the actual police to remove them.
(But such is my privilege that I would likely be pretty safe and unafraid in such an encounter.)
I feel like there should be some sort of service that's able to offer some kind of protection in situations like this, or at least able to track down and prevent this kind of person from recommitting after he's shown a willingness to violently attack other people.
It's unpleasant to be physically assaulted, and I'd like to avoid it in the future.
What you want is the ability to pay to get expedited help, to which I say is that the fair option to those who can't afford to pay for protection?
Ideally everyone would be protected from random attacks on the street, not just those able to pay.
Exactly. You are advocating for a paid service, some sort of commercial company to do the enforcement. How do you think they'd generate revenue otherwise? Currently San Francisco is setup that way, you pay private security because the cops are useless. That's not like that everywhere. You should fix your police, not bandaid fix the problem for the people who can afford it while leaving the people who can't to suffer.
I agree it's unpleasant being physically assaulted on the street (happened to me 8 years ago and I still think about it often), as is the utter lack of interest from the police in helping in such situations, but I don't think a private security force is going to do much better.
And to your other point, there is already a thing for tracking someone down after the fact if the police aren't helpful: private investigators.
The sad thing about this is that people can’t figure out that $20 / month won’t buy you a 15 minute phone call. You’re paying $20 per month to be a surveillance endpoint so Citizen can sell the real services to the rich.
America is filled with suckers.
If often, then there's a market for it.
If not often, then you're intentionally using a red herring to distract from the real discussion.
The value in a publicly funded police force is that they don’t have to worry about the economic viability of their countermeasures.
/s (?)
From what I can tell it seem like almost complete open season on property theft and damage in Seattle.
In short, I don't really blame Citizen for doing this, I blame the politicians for not providing an adequately safe or lawful city.
Studies correlating wealth inequality with criminality are less than convincing [1].
A 2016 study, controlling for different factors than previous
studies, challenges the aforementioned findings. The study finds
"little evidence of a significant empirical link between overall
inequality and crime", and that "the previously reported positive
correlation between violent crime and economic inequality is largely
driven by economic segregation across neighborhoods instead of
within-neighborhood inequality". A 2020 study found that in Europe,
the inequality-crime correlation was present but weak (0.10),
explaining less than 3% of the variance in crime with a similar
finding occurring for the United States, while another 2019 study
argued that the effect of inequality on property crime was nearly
zero.
Impoverishment doesn’t cause criminality, see e.g. post-internment Japanese-American and early 20th century E.European Jewish American immigrant populations. Rather, the root causes of systemic poverty are strongly correlated with criminality [2]. Which isn’t to say extreme wealth inequality isn’t bad: the French Revolution readily disproves that notion. But the French Revolution is in a different league from property crime.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_economic_inequality...
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/16/books/what-is-intelligenc...
[2]: https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/1994/10/16/books/what-is-...
I think it could happen too because private police forces benefit the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class. Why pay for police in the poor neighborhoods if you have walls and private police for your gated community?
What we’re seeing in western countries worries me. The progressive tax system is being attacked IMO because breaking it benefits the wealthy. It’s much cheaper for the richest 20% to fund private police forces for themselves than funding a public police force for everyone.
And IMO the reason the police can’t keep up is because we’ve had 40 years of underfunding public institutions so the wealthy can hoard more and more money. It’s not shocking to see increased levels of drug abuse and crime because those correlate with poverty.
We need to force the rich to pay there fair share of taxes. The resources being used for yachts and private jets needs to be getting put into education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc..
This is a great example of a misallocation of capital. Instead of funding an app for a private police force we’d be better off if that money had been collected via taxes and allocated to building schools.
The threat model appears basically to be urban street crime and maybe targeted harassment and political pressure. Unsure what else. If I could get this for airstrikes, I would totally buy it though.
I called the police and they told me all officers were busy on more urgent/violent calls and wouldn't be able to respond.
This was before COVID and the department is even more short-staffed now.
They aren't short-staffed, as much as they are deliberately avoiding doing any work. They were also engaged in a lot of overtime grift over the past decade, which the city started to crack down on in 2019.
Yes, you can cherry-pick one of those problems, and claim that uber-for-mob-justice will solve it. Will it make any of these other problems worse? Better? Worse for people who can't pay, better for people who can?
I don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good, but I am not particularly impressed by this.
I think the idea is to try to catch it in the act. The LAPD is notorious for being slow. I was in a hit and run accident where my car was completely totaled and I was in a daze and it took them an hour to come and I'm pretty sure the only reason they actually came was because a bystander was mad and claimed there was injuries after waiting with me for a while. If they wont' come to an accident in a good time, I doubt they come to a break in. lol
This was also written in late 2020. There are now 1,080 deployable officers, down from 1,325 as seen here: https://www.seattle.gov/police/about-us/about-the-department...
The officer shrugged and walked off in the opposite direction. I think that was the moment that I decided it was time for a change of scenery.
Despite the damage to the cars, that sounds more like a mental health problem than a crime problem.
Which is one of the big problems we have with current policing models. We throw folks trained to use deadly force at issues that are better suited to mental health professionals trained in de-escalation.
I get it that many folks don't really care about their fellow humans except as threats/enemies/potential rivals for mates and resources.
And I also get that, as in your example, many folks don't care about the well-being of other people (as in your example, a 'tweaker'. How do you know that? Were they shooting meth as they spray-painted the cars?), especially if they engage in anti-social behaviors.
In fact, many folks would support it if we just killed/imprisoned anyone who makes them uncomfortable or unhappy.
The issues that we lump into a black box called "mental illness" are poorly understood and even more poorly addressed in our society.
Even worse, more often than not we dump the "mental illness" black box into a larger black box called "criminals".
As Hubert Humphrey put it[0]:
The moral test of government is how that
government treats those who are in the dawn of
life, the children; those who are in the twilight
of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows
of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
Why is it generally the former rather than the latter? I'd say that it was a culture of selfishness, greed and a lack of empathy buried under several layers of soft-soaping like "personal responsibility", "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps", "poverty is a moral failing" and a bunch of other tropes.
Sentient life is precious. We should treat it that way, IMNSHO. But we don't. And more's the pity.
[0] https://www.columbian.com/news/2016/nov/11/letter-quote-from...
In the long term, I agree with you. In the short term, it would be nice if the people who we are forced to pay for the task of preventing antisocial behavior would stop the person who is causing tens of thousands of dollars in property damage, since broadly speaking nobody else has the right to do so.
To put it another way, how much more damage does this person need to do before you consider it a crime problem?
I don't disagree with you. At all. This is a complicated set of issues that will require complex solutions (note the plural).
It would be great if we could stop such folks from causing property damage.
Our society is governed by laws and, more importantly, respect for those laws by the vast majority of us.
Unless we kill or imprison everyone who might engage in such activities, I'd say that we'll likely always have some of that sort of activity.
Reducing the number of folks without strong ties to society/the community seems the best way to address these issues over both the medium and long term.
As for short term solutions, that's much more difficult, as we've spent centuries demonizing the mentally ill, the poor and others society has deemed as "lesser."
>To put it another way, how much more damage does this person need to do before you consider it a crime problem?
A valid question. Without a lot of reflection I'd say that it's less important to determine whether or not some act (or collection of acts) is "criminal" than it is to identify the appropriate mechanism(s) to minimize the likelihood of such behavior from that individual in the future.
And there are many mechanisms to choose from. That incarceration has been the default for a long time doesn't always (or even most of the time) make it the right mechanism.
A broad and complex set of issues underlie this discussion and I haven't done it justice here. That said, I urge people to look beyond the display and use of force as the only mechanism to address these issues.
An uber ride is cheaper than hiring private security to walk you through the hood. An elderly asian person is more likely to die crossing the road to a bank than be robbed at a bank. Urban photographers who wouldn't already be operating with a small crew are probably too broke to hire a bodyguard, nor is there some big wave or urban photographers being targeted currently. Chances are if that gear is your work its also already insured. The store owner probably already hires private security for not much more than minimum wage, and in the case of a looting, chances are the store owner would rather you go home and have insurance pay for the damages, than deal with the legal headache of their hired gun potentially killing someone in their store. Keep in mind when D.C. police who were defending the capitol building faced a mob, they allowed them to breach the building. I doubt private security is going to stick out their neck for your little shop more than D.C. police did for the U.S. capitol. You probably aren't hiring Blackwater mercenaries. The owner of the bar is paying their bouncers under the table already, the last thing they want is some pricey contract for a job they are already getting done just fine.
I don't think you've been keeping up with the news of the wave of attacks targeting Asian elders. Many of them have been beaten and robbed on the way to run errands.
in the case of a looting, chances are the store owner would rather you go home and have insurance pay for the damages, than deal with the legal headache of their hired gun potentially killing someone in their store.
You're way overestimating the number of small business owners who have sufficient insurance to cover a looting event, and way underestimating the extent to which small business owners are willing to protect their store (e.g. Roof Koreans)
Keep in mind when D.C. police who were defending the capitol building faced a mob, they allowed them to breach the building
That actually demonstrates the value provided by an app offering on-demand private security. When cops failed to stop the insurrectionists, they faced minimal negative consequences. On the other hand, if your hired private security fails to stop looters, they can expect a negative review from you on the app which in turn threatens their career on the app.
The owner of the bar is paying their bouncers under the table already
I said late night restaurants, not bars. When was the last time you've seen a bouncer at a late night restaurant?
I agree that some of the cases I brought up are a bit far fetched. That being said, here's a great use case that I'm sure we can both agree on for on-demand security:
- Domestic violence prevention. In cases where a spouse feels threatened but does not have enough evidence for the cops to get involved, on-demand private security is the best option.
A tragedy like the Adam Matos case would have been prevented had the victim used on-demand private security. The victim was threatened by Matos, her ex, and she called the cops, who didn't/couldn't do anything, which resulted in her and her family being killed by said ex within 24 hours.
I would love to hire security to watch for dumpers and report them to the city's dumping hotline, along with descriptions and plate numbers.
This would be peak gentrifier behavior, but a (hopefully) handful of bad actors are trashing an otherwise nice neighborhood and I'm at the end of my rope.
>I would love to hire security to watch for dumpers and report them to the city's dumping hotline, along with descriptions and plate numbers.
If that's really a serious problem in your area, you and your neighbors can set up a neighborhood watch/surveillance cameras/etc. to address that without hiring private security to do it for you.
Or are you too good to support your neighbors and neighborhood with your time and effort?
Want to have a good neighborhood? Be a good neighbor.
I have no more time but I do have money.
Supporting my neighbors and neighborhood is exactly what I want to do - assuming they also want clean streets - so your criticism is really a stretch.
Since both services are lacking, everyone that can pay, either from out of pocket or as a employment benefit, uses the private healthcare system. The more well to be pay for private security, bullet-proof cars, and other measures.
It's symptomatic to see people using private services, as it may show the state provided ones are falling short. Defunding only hurts the poor that can't afford to pay for good private services.
when the employees at a company that only exists for the sake of authoritarian bullshit start pushing back, it's not really encouraging in the same way, because Citizen has no "good part of the business" to shift to.
This could get interesting.
The US Marshalls service has a "special deputy" program where bodyguards of the rich and famous become federal law enforcement with little to no oversight. This allows them to carry firearms nationwide regardless of state or local laws.
Really? Which one?
Every time I can think of that people have predicted (with hope or fear) the Information Age will bring about an erosion of state authority, the state's control of existing levers of power have trumped the mere ability to organize/communicate.
In policing, since they can't figure out how to keep certain groups from committing crimes at higher rates than other groups, they're going to just stop policing. Rich people will get their own police forces.
If it's just a random person who signed up as a responder i think they'd make the situation worse instead of better.
Like I said in another thread... You’re paying $20 per month to be a surveillance endpoint so Citizen can sell the real services to the rich.
What's the problem, Customer? Did that nasty man demand you leash your dog in an area where dogs are required to be leashed? Let us just sit on him and hit him with sticks for a bit.
Oh, I see.
This isn’t the cyberpunk dystopia I signed up for.
Now they want to be judge, jury and executioner. This should be banned
Things have gotten worse regardless of which side of the debate you're on
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/police-in-philly-and-be...
I was just expecting AI and robots to take over ala Robocop and Little Sister cameras everywhere. I did not foresee the gig companies like Bannerman and Citizen doing it, but here we are.
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/12/675359781/americas-growing-co...
Yes, I agree that US police forces need heavy reform, starting with decreasing the power and influence of their unions, then with limiting their function (e.g. they should be escorted by a health professional for mental health related calls), and then with increasing their increasing pay and expecting better and more educated results.
If we're just going to swing far right ("Nothing is wrong. Everyone else is wrong and we should stay the course"), or far left ("the police can never be reformed, let's abolish it") hammers to solve or ignore the problem, then both solutions will just lead to the same result: no one wants to be a police officer anymore which imo will also increase police brutality and crime as a side effect. If we go down either extreme route, I predict that eventually machines will be our judge, jury, and executioner. I hope I'm wrong.
It is also entertaining to watch
Finally, a Pinkerton in every pocket...
Its not the end if law enforcement, it's the end of equal (supposedly) law enforcement.
There always has been a market for immediate response private security, if one has the money.
* without any of the cool stuff
I always wondered why they smirked quietly at calls to defund the police...
Detroit was going broke so they privatised Detroit police, OCP made the winning bid, then their plan was to replace expensive human police with cheap-to-run Robot-cops. That’s why the film was satire /first/, Hollywood-action-film second.
Unfortunately I don’t think Paul Verhoven can save us from this...
and
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...
I can't afford a private security force, but I could afford an on-demand subscription.
You want to defund the tax-paid police? Go right ahead! Now I want to collectively fund my own security force, for crimes that the police is understaffed for, what _exactly_ is the problem?
If your concerns about police abuse or neighbors calling security on minorities, then focus on fixing that (defund them?) and let me interact with the private market. Or is this controversial from a rich-get-security perspective?
> I can't afford a private security force, but I could afford an on-demand subscription.
And if you run into hard times in life and can not afford this subscription? Are we going to have "levels" of policing depending on which company you are subscribed to and the higher cost ones offer "better" policing?
The "defund the police" movement will never be successful in a way that dismantles law enforcement. We'd have a lot more problems at that point than being forced to deal with for-profit security companies.
If anything, if 50% of the neighborhood has this subscription, and you are too poor to afford it, you can freeload on the enhanced security.
I do agree it is dystopian to require money for basic protection, and that this would not be collectively provided with tax money. Less if the protection is just enhanced (compare basic healthcare vs. being able to afford a private clinic).
If it was possible, I'd like to pay more taxes, then vote (could be democratic, not scaled to amount paid) on where it goes. If the neighborhoods really are problematic, then maybe the local government could hire on-demand security forces for when their police capacity is low (and hold them accountable and to government standards).
For luxuries, I agree that would be a ridiculous point to make (a poor person can't afford a new BMW, but we as a society think that's ok). But stratification among basic services that everyone should have is the opposite of equitable. This is in part why American health care is so awful if you're poor, and it's not a situation we want to duplicate with policing.
> then maybe the local government could hire on-demand security forces for when their police capacity is low (and hold them accountable and to government standards)
Not exactly the same thing, but we've done that with military contractors, and that has not worked out particularly well for accountability.
Once basic protection, education, healthcare, etc. is offered to anyone (I do not see America in the future relying on private security forces for basic protection, so I think basic protection is covered), then private protection, education or healthcare should not be a problem.
If America really needs private forces for maintaining basic protection, then it is probably better they have oversight of local government and serve the wider public, not secluded to a gated community.
This is already a false assumption, you know nothing about me.
> you can freeload on the enhanced security
Great thanks I'm glad I got cancer, had to declare medical bankruptcy, and can now "freeload" off the rest of you hard workers who are doing the exact same thing I did for decades.
Please.
So the police force just got funded enough to be bigger than all of the private companies. They are now the biggest private security service provider (yes, for profit company, separate from public police but run by the state, full of ex-police/military). It's quite ridiculous tbh.
If you're rich, you're untouchable, while poor people eat dirt in prison even if they're not guilty. Not that different from the US.
Incidentally, our military is full of used American equipment. Great value, maybe a bit too much for a country that wouldn't last a week in a war with any neighbour.
IMO The entire justice system should be revamped with a focus on rehabilitation in society and viewing most drug-related "criminals" as victims who need treatment for their addiction or illness. Also concerned about the militarization of the police, and feel their budget could be spend better.
In many states, security guards can be armed in public, but so can private citizens.
The endgame for this will be large-scale gated communities that are town-level. A surefire to prevent homelessness in a particular town is for the entire town to be private property. If you can't card-in, you don't get in. Dystopian yes, but probably inevitable, and the trail was blazed by the modern corporate campus that operates on the same principles.
Funny thing about the second amendment, people always gloss over the well regulated militia, and we're accelerating away from that, pedal to the metal
Well, 'well regulated' did not mean the same thing in 1791 that it does now. And that part of the amendment was the prefatory clause anyway, so it's moot.
I look forward to this being used to violate the rights of minorities, union strikers, women, and the homeless!
Just like how rideshare apps increased the availability of car services in areas underserved by traditional taxies, on-demand security services like this can provide value in a similar way, by making available security services in areas underserved by the police.
Seems like a bit of overselling here. "Rapid emergency response..." would be more like it. Although the request and communication to initiate response may take only seconds, the actual arrival time is unlikely to resemble "instant".
Marketing getting ahead of the ability to deliver...