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.

I know there's an app built by a French antipolice group. It's sends the video to their server for safekeeping. Can't remember what it's called.

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.

Used to be the ACLU but it looks like that got shut down about a month ago: https://www.aclu.org/mobilejustice

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Dash cams do this continuously I thought. Good? Bad? IDK.

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.