I've filed a few reports, and I found the process frustrating and error-prone. The forms are fiddly, there's way too much information that needs to be copied down from the video by hand, you have to use a third-party app to take a timestamped video and a different app to compress it before uploading, and approximately none of it can be done on your phone — the device you probably used to record your video in the first place.
I built Idle Reporter to make filing complaints into a five-minute process that you can do entirely from your phone.
Idle Reporter uses AI to automatically extract all the required information and screenshots from the video and fill out the form for you. It compresses your video, adds the required screenshots, and uploads the whole thing to DEP. All you have to do is log in, give it a final check, and submit.
The AI features cost me money to run, so I put those behind a subscription ($5.99/month, which can pay for itself after a single report). There's a one-week free trial so you can test it out. All the other features — including a fully-featured timestamp camera, which other apps charge for, and an editor for filling out the forms manually and submitting in a single step — will be free forever, as a service to the community.
The app is iOS-only for now — part of this was an exercise in learning SwiftUI in my spare time.
Check it out on the App Store and let me know what you think!
[1]: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air...
[2]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-idling-law-report...
I think this is dystopian. Paying people to rat out their fellow citizens. Nightmarish.
What if this idea was applied to the laws ICE is trying to enforce? Would you think that's dystopian?
I bet that the friction in the submission process was deliberately added to avoid abuses, but maybe it's just incompetence. Depending on the reason, this app can be either good or against the spirit of the rule.