If you've posted publicly about crime, safety or police in Edmonton, that post may be among the conversations an artificial intelligence platform analyzes for the Edmonton Police Service.
The platform is called Zencity. It's an Israeli-founded company that collects and analyzes public online conversations to help governments understand what residents are saying.
EPS has used it for longer than many people realize.
Edmonton Police Commission records show Zencity has run monthly surveys of Edmonton residents since September 2024. A case study the company published in March 2026 shows EPS also uses it to analyze public online discussions and track how sentiment changes by neighbourhood.
The tool drew new attention this week after social media posts questioned why Edmonton police are using an Israeli-founded company to analyze public conversations.
So what can the system see, and how is EPS using it?
What Zencity does for Edmonton police
According to Zencity's case study, the platform:
Analyzes public online conversations about policing, crime and safety, and sorts them by topic and area of the city
Runs recurring resident surveys on perceived safety, trust and satisfaction with police
Maps sentiment by district and neighbourhood, and tracks how it changes
Uses AI to flag big shifts in sentiment and write summaries for police leadership
Brian Harker, EPS director of strategy and innovation, described what the service gets out of it.
"We have this consistent stream of public perception that's searchable within a platform," he said.
According to the case study, the data helped shape EPS's 2027 to 2030 strategic plan. Branch inspectors look at neighbourhood sentiment alongside call volumes and staffing, and the sentiment numbers show up in regular performance reports.
Which platforms Zencity monitors
Zencity says its social listening product, called Listen, collects "publicly available and permitted sources," including:
Facebook: public pages and public groups
X: public posts
Instagram: business profiles
Reddit, Nextdoor, Threads and Bluesky: public content
YouTube and LinkedIn: public content
News sites and online publications
"Private profiles, closed groups, and personal pages are not monitored," the company says.
The company's documents list what the product can collect. EPS hasn't said which of these sources are turned on for Edmonton.
Can EPS search for specific posts?
Zencity's help pages say yes, the software can.
Users can "use the search keyword function in the dashboard to filter content by specific terms." A search brings up the actual "posts, mentions, and articles" that include those words. Results can be filtered by source, sentiment, channel, geography and language. Users can also set up custom topics to track an issue over time.
Zencity's FAQ adds a limit: "we do not use the name or social media handle of the individual posting the message as part of our analysis." It says "all analysis is done on aggregated data, excluding any identifiers."
Those are features of Zencity's product in general. EPS hasn't said which features its staff use, or whether employees can see original posts and the accounts that made them.
Where the data is stored
According to Zencity's FAQ, survey and social media data "is stored in the US." Data from its separate engagement product is stored in the U.K.
The company says it has policies on data retention, but it doesn't publish how long data is kept.
EPS disclosed it in 2025
The platform isn't a secret.
On April 22, 2025, Edmonton Police Commission chair Ben Henderson wrote to Alberta Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis that "EPS has also introduced Zencity, an AI-powered tool that gathers public sentiment," to help shape its strategies.
A March 2026 presentation to the commission confirmed the monthly Zencity surveys.
What those documents don't say is how much EPS pays, how much social media monitoring it does, or what rules govern who sees the data.
Who's behind Zencity
Zencity was founded in Israel in 2016 by CEO Eyal Feder-Levy and chief technology officer Ido Ivri. It works mainly with local governments, most of them in the United States.
In a 2021 profile, Jewish Insider reported that Feder-Levy served in Unit 8200, the Israel Defense Forces' intelligence unit, and that he and Ivri served together in the IDF.
That report doesn't say both founders were in Unit 8200. Some posts online describe the company as founded by "former Unit 8200 officers." The reporting supports only the narrower claim about Feder-Levy.
Feder-Levy's military service doesn't, on its own, mean Zencity works for Israeli intelligence. He has said the company has never had military clients and that "Zencity does not provide any type of surveillance, let alone of a specific community."
Pushback in Minneapolis
Edmonton isn't the first city where Zencity's police work has been questioned.
In Minneapolis, activists campaigned in 2025 to end the city's contract with the company. A Minnesota Reformer commentary put it at a three-year, US$500,000 deal. It also noted Minneapolis was using only Zencity's surveys, not its social media monitoring.
In December 2025, Minneapolis city council passed a non-binding resolution calling for the contract to end. The contract stayed in place.
Why police want this data
Crime statistics don't always show how safe people feel. A neighbourhood can see crime fall while residents still worry about safety or slow response times.
EPS says it uses perception data alongside crime numbers, staffing and other measures. According to the case study, EPS also expects reported crime to rise as trust grows, because people who trust police are more likely to call them. Sentiment data helps it read those numbers.
There's a fair question here, too: the people who post about police online aren't a cross-section of Edmonton. That's part of why EPS also runs structured monthly surveys.
Is it surveillance if the posts are public?
That's the core of the debate.
A police employee reading one public Facebook comment is different from software that collects, sorts and analyzes huge volumes of public posts around the clock.
Zencity says it uses only public sources and works with combined, anonymized data. But public information can still raise privacy concerns when it's gathered systematically, especially when the customer is a police service.
People who publicly criticize police may not expect their posts to end up in reports for police leadership.
None of that shows EPS has misused the tool. It's why clear public answers matter.
What EPS still hasn't explained
Cost: How much EPS pays for Zencity
Start date: When the contract began. Surveys started in September 2024, but that may not be the contract date.
Access: Whether staff can see individual posts or usernames, and which staff have access
Retention: How long Edmonton data is kept
Privacy review: Whether EPS completed a privacy impact assessment
Use: Whether the data is used only for planning, or can also be used in investigations
This article will be updated with any response from EPS or the Edmonton Police Commission.
Sources
Edmonton Police Commission: Letter to Minister of Public Safety, April 22, 2025
Edmonton Police Commission: Citizen Perception Survey 2025 report, March 2026
Zencity: How Edmonton Police Service Embedded Community Perception Into Strategic Planning
Zencity: Listen FAQs
Zencity: FAQ
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