Policing the Police: The Apps That Let You Spy on the Cops

After the recent Vancouver riots, it became clear that the world is surveiling itself at an unprecedented scale. Angry citizens gave police one million photos and 1,000 hours of video footage to help them track down the rioters. If we aren't living in a surveillance state run by the government, we're certainly conducting a huge surveillance experiment on each other.

Which is what makes two new apps, CopRecorder and OpenWatch, and their Web component, OpenWatch.net, so interesting. They are the brainchildren of Rich Jones, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate who describes himself as "pretty much a hacker to the core." Flush with cash and time from a few successful forays into the app market, nine months ago Jones decided to devote some of his time to developing what he calls "a global participatory counter-surveillance project which uses cellular phones as a way of monitoring authority figures."

CopRecorder can record audio without indicating that it's doing so like the Voice Memos app does. It comes with a built-in uploader to OpenWatch, so that Jones can do "analysis" of the recording and scrub any personally identifying data before posting the audio. He said he receives between 50 and 100 submissions per day, with a really interesting encounter with an authority figure coming in about every day and a half.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/06/policing-the-police-the-smartphone-apps-that-let-you-spy-on-cops/240916/

Hmmmm.......

A typical encounter with the power-drunk LAPD "who can do anything they want" getting pissed as hell that a polite yet firm citizen isn't buying the shit they are selling. This application is brilliant.

Bravo and kudos to you Rich Jones, entrepreneur and software developer.

With a bad heart, I can't afford a confrontation with a taser armed psychopath.

Our local police department now has an armored assault vehicle for crowd control. Our local tactical unit wears camouflage and carries automatic weapons. They were brought into a residential neighborhood to "talk down" a distressed (he was armed but threatened only himself) teen who refused to come out of his home. People get tased for no good reason.

IMO, inappropriate police response has become a threat to the safety of the general public.

Every time you turn around some other act has been abridged that had been taken for granted before.

In addition, IMHO President Obama has taken more liberties with the law and used different signing statements than anybody has. That is saying something. I know he has access to intel we don't, but consider the source. I wouldn't believe all of it by a long shot.

He may believe he is acting in the best interests of the country to protect us. However, he is rapidly developing and protecting some place I don't recognize. BFEE certainly got the ball rolling, but I thought we were electing somebody who would try to stop it.

Oy vey!

Yeah, I was laboring under the same misimpression at the polls, too. Absolutely has nothing to slow our headlong descent into a police state. We're corporate-driven and corporate-owned. It used to be that the courts offered some redress against abuses but that has long-since been (you guessed it) corporate-tainted.

Good to see you again.

Now we have a cop problem.

K&R

Even if the cops take/destroy the phone (as they seem to often do after finding out they are being recorded), the copy has already been uploaded to a safe location.

It does sound like a great idea though.