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Paper short abstract

In gentrifying neighbourhoods in Brooklyn, surveillance app Citizen is reimagined to track and record the police as a form of counter-surveillance during protests. Through the lens of technoskepticism, this paper explores ambivalent practices of surveillance that mediate between care and control.

Paper long abstract

Citizen is a live crime and safety tracking app operational across US cities. Citizen scrapes data from 911 calls and police scanners to find incidences that are relevant to “public safety”. It also utilises user-recorded footage, as users near a crime, fire or accident, are prompted to ‘go live’ and film unfolding events. This is a form of lateral surveillance, in which users are encouraged to record their neighbours and unknown others on the street.

Rather, in gentrifying neighbourhoods of Brooklyn, New York City, my research found that women, queer and Latina New Yorkers use Citizen to document, track and record the police at protests. By refusing to perform lateral surveillance on their fellow neighbours, my interlocutors instead turn their gaze back at authority as a form of counter-surveillance and as a means of protest mobilisation. However, digital technologies produce ambivalence and Citizen is no exception. Many of my interlocutors express their concerns about racial profiling, fear-mongering and vigilantism on the app. And yet, they still use Citizen in innovative ways, to watch out for rather than watch over. I conceptualise such ambivalence through the lens of technoskepticism (DISCO Network, 2025), a critical perspective on the use of technology, exploring the mediatory space between refusal and possibility and between care and control. This paper examines how surveillance technology is skeptically reimagined to work for communities. This is essential in the context of the U.S. and the prevalence of police brutality, the terror of ICE on the streets, and rapid gentrification.