Citizens Looking To Safely Record Interactions With Law Enforcement Have A Couple Of New Options To Consider

by Tim Cushing
Techdirt
May. 06, 2015

The ACLU has a "new" app available that allows users to record interactions with the police and automatically upload them to the ACLU's servers to preserve the footage in case the phone is seized… or smashed on the ground.

The app itself is not new, although it is new to California. Previous ACLU apps that serve the same purpose have already debuted in New York (as "Stop and Frisk Watch"), New Jersey (the now-defunct "Police Tape" app that generated 'flash mob' fears all the way across the country in Burbank, CA), Mississippi, Oregon, Nebraska and Missouri.

Each version has been tweaked to comply with local recording laws and presumably more versions are on the way. The Mobile Justice app also provides a handy list of rights citizens have when interacting with law enforcement (subject to law enforcement recognition of those rights, of course) as well as incident forms that can be filled out post-interaction to give the ACLU more detail on the recording itself.

Inarguably, it has been footage obtained by citizens that has blown the lid off police misconduct in this country -- ranging from seemingly routine harassment of camera-wielding citizens to incidents like the death of Walter Scott at the hands of South Carolina police officer Michael Slager, who shot him in the back as he was running away.

If your local ACLU chapter hasn't put together an app to automatically archive recordings of law enforcement interactions, there's another app on the way that will give anyone the ability to capture footage and ensure that, not only will it survive attempts to destroy evidence, but that it will possibly be seen by others as the event unfolds.

[O]ver the course of the weekend, developer Marinos Bernitsas demoed an app that immediately begins recording live audio and video as soon as you tap the app’s icon, but doesn’t actually display the video stream being recorded on the smartphone’s screen.

Meanwhile, instead of having the stream sent out to the public via social networks like Twitter, only designated contacts you’ve previously configured in the app’s settings are alerted to the incident via phone calls and text messages.

Unlike the ACLU's app, Bernitsas' program isn't specifically aimed at police accountability. It's also meant to act as a form of protection against any potentially dangerous interaction. Because it hasn't been crafted with an eye on local recording laws, there's a chance that footage captured could result in charges being brought against the person recording and streaming the incident.

It does have two advantages over the ACLU's app: First off, the app doesn't need to be opened to initiate a recording. Secondly, anyone who grabs the phone will have little clue they're being recorded. The only indicator that anything out of the normal is happening is a red banner across the top of the screen, which may look like nothing more than phone UI customization. The app also makes it possible to capture and stream recordings in areas where coverage is less-than-optimal.

What’s also clever about the app is that even if the user loses their Internet connection, Witness will record video in 10-second chunks and store them locally on the end user’s iPhone. When their connection returns, that video is uploaded to the server.

With the footage going to any contacts the user chooses rather than a neutral party only interested in certain incidents and interactions (like the ACLU), this app holds potential for abuse. One could easily "repurpose" this public safety app to stream sexual encounters, private conversations, etc.

The upside of this downside is that doing so will violate many states' wiretapping laws, which would provide for prosecution of those who use this app for purposes other than what was intended. That the perpetrator creates his or her own damning evidence is helpful and one would imagine captured footage (if still stored at the pass through point) could easily be obtained from Witness' servers with a subpoena. The ACLU notes that footage sent to it is also potentially accessible to law enforcement via subpoenas or other court orders, but does point out that it will fight these requests, rather than simply hand over whatever's requested.