Police use corporate 'Public Safety' apps to spy on everyone (Updated)
Law enforcement and more than one hundred colleges and universities have convinced their students to download 'public safety' apps that send tips to police in real-time.
The apps go by names like 'LiveSafe' and 'SafeTrek' and their selling point is, helping students feel safe.
These apps use GPS technology which allows law enforcement to monitor a students' location in real-time.
Update 5/21:
TeenSafe phone monitoring app leaked thousands of user passwords
An app called TeenSafe which lets parents spy on their child's text messages and phone calls stored their ID's and email addresses in plain text.
"TeenSafe, bills itself as a "secure" monitoring app for iOS and Android, which lets parents view their child's text messages and location, monitor who they're calling and when, access their web browsing history, and find out which apps they have installed."
"The database stores the parent's email address associated with TeenSafe, as well as their corresponding child's Apple ID email address. It also includes the child's device name -- which is often just their name -- and their device's unique identifier. The data contains the plain text passwords for the child's Apple ID. Because the app requires that two-factor authentication is turned off, a malicious actor viewing this data only needs to use the credentials to break into the child's account to access their personal content data."
As you will see from the videos below, playing to one's fear of crime and terrorism is a great marketing ploy.
Safe Trek's scare ads
Is crime in America so prevalent that we need to use scare tactics to give companies and police our exact location in real-time?
No, it's not. In fact the exact opposite is true.
Following a nationwide trend, violent crimes in Boston, Massachusetts are decreasing. Violent crimes in Dorchester and Mattapan are down by 27-37 percent.
It's the the same story across the country.
Three years ago, Reuters reported that violent crime in America was at 1970's levels. And not much has changed since then.
Last year, CBS News reported that violent crime in America is still at historic lows, saying it was far from the levels of the 1980's and 1990's. (Click here to watch CNN's,'The Great US Crime Decline'.)
LiveSafe's website has a video of former U.S. Secretary of DHS, Tom Ridge wishing the public would use their app. You know to keep Americans safe, wink, wink.
As you will see, DHS wishing that more American's would use LiveSafe is a huge red flag.
LiveSafe's private intelligence company to send 'fear reports' to police
By mid-year 2018, LiveSafe will have created their own private intelligence company that sends 'fear reports' to law enforcement. (See above videos.)
"LiveSafe has announced the Anteo Private Security Community, the first-ever private, peer-to-peer security community where trusted security and risk professionals from businesses and universities come together to share information and threat intelligence."
LiveSafe's Anteo Community, is really a private corporate intelligence network that uses an app to gather public intelligence.
“The Anteo Community enhances our ability as security officials to collaborate by securely sharing specific threat or risk-related information, ” said Jim Cawley, Global Director of Corporate Security, Hearst.
DHS and law enforcement embrace private intelligence spying.
"The Anteo Community provides an opportunity to aggregate more sources and provide timely and relevant information that helps someone, somewhere, someplace hopefully avoid the perils associated with that risk, whatever it might be,” said Governor Tom Ridge, the first U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security."
Law enforcement is using corporate 'public safety' apps to do an end run around the Fourth Amendment.
Just how bad is corporate app spying?
Thankfully LiveSafe has given us a clue, claiming that in the past eighteen months, two hundred enterprises, corporations and universities have convinced employees and students to use their app.
DHS and law enforcement encouraging corporations to spy on the public is illegal and must be stopped.