Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

'Scanner 911' Brings Live Police Feeds to iPhones

by Amar Toor on October 27, 2009 at 06:18 PM

Next time you're sitting on the couch and thinking about what you can do to be a better citizen, just take a little stroll through the iPhone App Store and dive right into the lurid world of real-time crime fighting.

For both the vigilante and the voyeuristic, Scanner 911, a recent addition to the iPhone app megalopolis, provides dutiful citizens with live feeds of police radio from around the country. For more local fare, users can use a special "Near Me" button on the app display to get radio directly from their county (or parish, Louisiana) precinct. Listeners can even record those especially salacious or memorable feeds that stick out from the less scintillating reports of fender benders and cats stuck in trees. It may seem a little weird, but a lot of people are actually crimo-philic enough to buy the app. It's currently holding strong at number 19 in the App Store's most popular list, and its cousin app Police Radio is number 7.


Truth be told, we'd still rather use our iPhone's free memory for jumping on cartoon monsters instead of listening to police feeds. We get the appeal of having a live good guys vs. bad guys narrative at your fingertips, and sure, if everyone's got their ears on, it could make neighborhoods and playgrounds safer. But this kind of transparency is a definite double-edged sword. Besides tragically rendering the bat signal useless, Scanner 911 works both ways; criminals, after all, have iPhones, too. We definitely take our hats off to the community guardians who keep their finger on the pulse of the criminal underworld, but we just think there are some things we'd rather not know. [From: Wired]

Tags: app store, AppStore, crime, iphone, police, scanner 911, Scanner911, top

Comments

1

Add your comments

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular