Last month, video footage emerged that appeared to show something illegal: A U.S. marshal approached a woman who was filming him on duty, snatched her smartphone, and smashed it on the ground.
That incident only became news because someone else was filming the encounter. But not every bystander filming a police encounter can have a backup. What should a person do when there's no one else on the scene?
A new app tries to answer this question by offering, in effect, a different kind of backup. Called Mobile Justice CA, the app uploads all video footage as it’s being captured to servers owned by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Even if the phone is destroyed, the video will survive.
The app was co-released Friday by the ACLU of Southern California and the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and it’s available now for iOS and Android devices.
Mobile Justice CA does more than automatically upload video. It includes a “witness” button, which a user can press to notify other app users within a three-mile radius that they are observing a police interaction. It also lets users file written reports with a local ACLU office and includes versions of the ACLU’s “Know Your Rights” guides for photographers, protesters, and citizens.