I was joking about the billion dollar idea.

My actual "MVP" was some kind of automated neighborhood newsletter, that'd monitor emergency services radio traffic, and put together some kind of "here's what happened in your neighborhood" daily newsletter.

Maybe I could get it packaged in a hardware/software package that let anyone set one up in their neighborhood.

But I mostly got stuck in privacy concerns. I'm not sure it's a valuable public service to let people know that, for example, someone had a heart attack a few blocks over.

I did think about the scientific value of some kind of statistical database that process and recorded emergency services calls though. But mostly, my ideas for commercial and moral opportunities were half-baked at the point that I discovered citizen.

One of the technical challenges I came up against was finding transcription software that could semi-accurately transcribe UHF/VHF radio traffic. However, it looks like there's some progress that's been made there since I last checked: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/radiotransciptor-real-time-radio-spe...

> But I mostly got stuck in privacy concerns. I'm not sure it's a valuable public service to let people know that, for example, someone had a heart attack a few blocks over.

In the moment, notifying people who know CPR and may be nearby and able to get to a nearby location and start CPR before emergency services arrives is the base of PulsePoint [1], which seems like a useful public service.

As a digest, yeah, I don't think any usefulness outweighs the invasion of privacy. Maybe just a count of health emergencies responded to for observing trends.

[1] https://www.pulsepoint.org/

The privacy concern is real and not something I'd want to think about too hard myself. One night I heard sirens and checked one of the local scanner type sites. I could hear enough about the call, and that combined with a record of previous calls to that address made me wonder if I really wanted that information. Maybe some obfuscation of the previous codes to the address would have been enough to reduce the feeling of knowing too much.

None of that is to say it isn't a good idea. I appreciate the ability to see roughly what is going on when I hear sirens. Even if the sites aren't always able to show the calls. I think highway patrol doesn't show up for me.

Many metro police are moving towards encrypted communications but it varies by location.

Regarding medical emergencies, I'm pretty sure EMS just says "medical emergency" and gives the address. I've never heard them say specific patient conditions, although sometimes the ambulance can forward that to the ER.

If there were any risk, it would be making it too easy for criminals to monitor and allow them to commit crime more effectively.

I’d encourage you to pursue it. I remember the old @breakingnews on Twitter when it first started, people listening to police scanners and typing info-dense one liners on what they heard. To this day the best news service of my life (until someone bought it).

A real time, AI snips version for my area in a running feed would be amazing. There are lots of formats and use cases; and the info is already out there.

It’s a great idea. Don’t let citizen sway you away from it.