3d ago

Are there any apps for recording police interactions?

imagine an app that is sort of like a panic button. You get pulled over, you open the app and hit the button which then (depending on your preferences), starts recording/streaming video and audio, locks the phone, and maybe starts recording accelerometer/gps data, etc.

It would need to be thoroughly developed/tested before actually it could be ethically recommended.

What do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? unfeasible? Already existing?

43 comments

You could build such an app to serve the same purpose for robberies, road rage, etc and have it host the incident data to a personal cloud.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/84ad422bdfaa45a695422cf6aab41b7f

I had a setup with a remote Asterisk server, and a Tasker app on my phone.
If I pressed a button on the phone, it placed a call to the Asterisk server, which dumped the call into a recorded conference room.
That was simple enough. The fun part happened next. The cops are always shown telling stopped subjects to stop recording and hang up phones. They'll take the phone out of your hand, and attempt to delete recordings. I wanted to address that.
I worked out a script on the Asterisk server where if the phone hung up, it would immediately dial back, and dump the call right back in the recorded conference room. Tasker on the phone would silently answer a call from that number.
That was about as far as I got. I had planned on some way of the asterisk server dialing a contact list and adding them to the conference.
- These are the niche things I subscribe for. I need guides
  
  I never got beyond proof of concept, and definitely didn't keep any documentation.
  I used voip.ms as a VPN trunk provider. They handled the incoming and outgoing calls to/from the PSTN, connecting them to my server.
  If you're not familiar with Tasker, I wholeheartedly endorse it. I thought it was a little unintuitive at first, but I use it for all kinds of things now.
- That sounds pretty awesome

I feel like there was an app from the ACLU or EFF that did exactly that. Locked the device and started recording on panic button combo, and if I am remembering correctly had the ability to auto-upload to a cloud in case of device seizure.
EDIT: Ah, ok I was confused. It was the ACLU Mobile Justice app which was cloud based, but it was shutdown just last month. They point to external entities having access to their database as the reason.
- Dang, this was the first I heard about mobile justice shutting down.
  It had been on my phone and thankfully unused for a long time.
- They have shut it down exactly when you needed it.

Used to be the ACLU but it looks like that got shut down about a month ago: https://www.aclu.org/mobilejustice
- Wow, too bad they didn't at least open-source it. Take it off the app stores and disconnect the cloud service, but at least let others develop it

That is so dystopian, holy shit... I mean, if you see it as something people would want/need, then yeah, that sounds good. I don't know if such a thing exists, though. This link shares some things, features, and apps that maybe do some of what you're talking about.
- That is so dystopian, holy shit…
  Hey you, you're finally awake.
  
  IDK man, over here I don't think police interactions are as violent as they are in the US...

CopWatch used to be pretty active and has apps for iOS and Android, but I see they haven't been updated in a couple of years.

Also interested in this. The ideal solution would stream to a private server for storage in real-time, with access control so you can grant trusted individuals access.
This would allow retention of evidence in a scenario where your phone is seized/destroyed/lost or you are detained, and would give you (and whoever you choose to grant access) the ability to control distribution, unlike a livestream to Twitch or YouTube or whatever.
- In addition, it would be useful to have a dead mans switch function as well. For example, it uploads the livestream to a private server and a timer starts for a predetermined amount of time. The uploader has to enter a passkey or do a mfa or some similar security mechanism to stop the timer before it runs out. If it does run out or too many incorrect attempts are made, the uploaded video gets forwarded to a list of contacts, created by the video taker. Perhaps to a bunch of press contacts, civil rights groups, family members, next of kin or maybe a lawyer in the event of an incarceration.

I never could find an elegant solution for video, but I do use Easy Voice Recorder on Android. Records audio only on a locked phone and streams it to your Google Drive. I've used it in a pinch a couple of times and it's performed perfectly. I keep looking for the video version of the same thing but alas....haven't found it. Anyway, it really is a fantastic, free app.

This exists but doesn't do the streaming part: https://cryptocam.gitlab.io/
The idea is that you (or a friend ideally) have a private key on your computer at home, and your recorded video is encrypted with the public key so that if you lose your phone or it gets into the hands of an adversary, they can't decrypt the files. You won't have them either though, unlike the ACLU app.
I think the use case is more situations where you want video of something cool, but where the raw footage would put people in danger if it got into the wrong hands. Like blurring or cutting stuff out before you release it
- Ah, cool. That sounds useful for like if you're recording at a protest/action

If you’re on iOS, there’s a shortcut that dims your screen, begins recording video, and sends the video to anyone you choose from your contact list. Pretty basic, but also free.
- Could I get a link?
  
  Sorry, my bad. Here you go:
  https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2d68cb1ee7b84f08ace2fd600b9855b5

I will second the suggestion for a dash camera, they can record audio automatically without need for user intervention.
Another option is to just use a voice assistant, I usually quickly ask my watch to start a voice recording beforehand to ensure there is a record of the interaction.
- Do any dash cams stream to the cloud or a self-hosted server? If the police spot the dashcam they may just delete the footage.
  
  Here in America, they might also shoot the camera, you know, in self defense.

Dash cams do this continuously I thought. Good? Bad? IDK.
- This is a bit of self promotion, but I built an entirely open-source dash-cam that excels in this scenario. Instead of recording to an SD card inside the camera, the camera is connected to a capture device installed somewhere else in the car.
  It's not perfect, but it's very time consuming for a potential adversary to locate the video storage. It was designed like this primarily for car break-ins, but it would work well here as well.
  It all runs on a generic Linux SBC, so there's technically nothing stopping you from encrypting the SD card too.
  
  That's pretty cool! Any hardware info? I had thought a diy dashcam project would be most about hardware (rpi zero and 3d printed enclosure maybe) with the software being relatively simple. Using an old phone might be another approach.
- You need something that streams to a secure server, so the police can't just delete the video.
  
  Do the police take your dash cam if they pull you over? Does that show on their own badge cam?
  Streaming live video takes a lot of bandwidth and connectivity from a car can be intermittent, but maybe it's enough to send a timestamped hash every few seconds, so there is tamper evidence in case of a deletion.
  Anyway, deleting video through a dashcam user interface is like deleting a file on a computer: basically a little bit of metadata is overwritten but the underlying data can usually be mostly recovered with filesystem repair or forensic tools. To really delete it for sure you have to either destroy the media or use special tools to overwrite the data blocks. Or just running the camera for a long time (to make sure the freed blocks get re-used) might do it.
  You could also stream to another phone or computer tucked away elsewhere in the car, unless you expect the whole car to be seized.
- Dash cams are a bad option, cops have and will delete footage that doesn’t fit their narrative in court.

Not something I have heavily looked into before, but a police watch type channel I've followed for a long time has patrtnered with Attorney Shield which is quite similar to described, but goes one step further and connects you directly to a lawyer from my understanding.

You could use any trustworthy sync service with automatic camera uploads, but they will all wait until the video has finished recording before uploading it. Ideally there would be an app that streams live to a remote server that's recording. There used to be. A sync service might be second best though.

Is it illegal to film police where you are? If it's not illegal then just use your camera app. You can probably configure it so that you can open the camera app from the lockscreen without a password, but then of course make sure you can't e.g. access anything from your gallery from the camera app. I have always just used my camera app to film police. There also used to be "secret recording" apps for Android at least, but I believe modern Android security doesn't allow for that kind of app behaviour anymore.

I think I've read about something like that a few years ago but I don't remember exactly. Was originally made for traffic accidents where you want to collect evidence against the other driver threatening you or similar, but should be exactly that.

Ethics. Police.
In the same post.
I'm not police, but I am in the legal industry. Ethics is talked about a lot. Not seen much.
I think most phones have recording apps.
- ?
  
  Thank-you for your eloquence and loquacious reply.

43 comments