I wonder what's the difference between countries that makes the police behave so differently as to citizens having to come up with video surveillance to back up their case?

In Scandinavia you'd have to be genuinely paranoid to not trust the police. The presence of police generally has an aura of safety: actually, with the reductions in force we've been quite unhappy to not see officers patrolling in the city centre in the evenings as much as before.

I'll have to assume that most cops in the US must be friendly and considerate but there seems to exist a minority (hopefully?) that seems to suggest it might be safer to hang out with criminals rather than be confronted by the police.

It's somehow mind-boggling but there must be a path of history and reason why the behaviour of the police forces have diverged so much between countries.

it starts recording using the iPhone's front-facing camera. Once you've stopped recording, it can text or email the video to a different predetermined contact and save it to Dropbox.

Too bad it seems to record locally first -- it'd be nice if it could stream the recording online, in case the phone is seized or powered off before it can save the recording.

Maybe it could have a checkpoint feature where it sends the current recording to the cloud while continuing to record, maybe triggered by a keyword or a cough or something.

Note that this shortcut was built by someone who is a lawyer and had only minor experience with "scripts for macOS in the past". It's great to see Apple building technologies for this audience on the iPhone like they have with Automator on macOS.

More accountability for police can't hurt. In other private professions bad accountability results in loss of job, so I don't think many can complain about this.

A cool feature, maybe given attention due to the hot political climate around cop shootings. But useful nonetheless.

Genuine question: is getting pulled over in the US really that hazardous that people have to record it in case things go wrong?

I would like to introduce to you a really unique youtube channel called "PoliceActivity".

It currently has about 1.2 million subscribers, with about 600 videos.

The channel basically shows police bodycam footage from various US law enforcement agencies, mostly local police/sheriff departments. The videos are not edited, other than to show perspectives from different officers at the same scene, and etc. There are some footage taken by police cruiser dashcam and also cameras mounted on police helicopters. Most are 10 - 30 minutes long. After watching some on the channel, you might even think some of the videos are too boring. But you know both good/bad are included.

Some of the footage show police beating on already arrested suspect, letting loose K9 dog on handcuffed suspect, police (I believe Chicago PD) planting fake drug evidence, swatting, etc. BUT, such cases are rare among the nearly 600 videos uploaded onto the channel so far.

Many videos do include active shooting incidents (some justified, some not) and might be a bit intense. But this channel is a really unique window into what Police encounter everyday. I highly recommend it.

I've never seen the horrors of post-modernity summed up so well in a single headline.

Won't this be illegal in states that require both parties to consent to recording?

At least in the U.S. the fear with this type of thing is twofold:

* It instantly triggers an antagonistic mood for the entire encounter with police. It should not of course; police should always be under legal scrutiny considering how much power (and weaponry) they have access to...But police get aggravated when the laws are applied to them, so if they see something like this app, they tend to respond negatively and in a hostile manner (by hostile, not necessarily using force, merely that their biases begin to manifest). So, what might have started out as a mild case could be exacerbated by simply using this shortcut.

* Also, reaching for a phone, that police might "mistaken" for a gun, could almost instantly trigger a police officer to draw - and of course worse, set off - their firearm.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of this shortcut...but i don't think it is enough. In fact, I think car makers should just sell cameras and recording equipment in their cars for this purpose - as added features! i think built-in devices - to protect US! - would go a long way. Of course, what this says about society - that i would even consider offering a feature for a car that monitors our own police - is a saddening state of affairs.

undefined

I've been waiting for smartphone to have similar facilities for situations like these.

- police brutality - mugging - robbery

Basically evidence recording / storing / uploading and possibly pinging trustworthy people or nearby strangers to alert them.

I've often thought about the use of Facebook Live video in this situation. If I have done nothing wrong it would only be minimally embarrassing to have friends and family see the encounter, on the other hand to have a silent witness with redundant friends, family and a preserved recording of it would be useful in the case of abuse of power or worse. Of course along with this thought, I've done mental exercises of how to address an officer with respect and how to not make sudden moves which would cause increased concern.

I love Siri Shortcuts.

Apple gets criticized on HN quite a bit and some of it is warranted but Siri Shortcuts feels like the return of the old Apple.

One thing though about this Shortcut it does not automatically send anything to your recipients. It asks you got confirmation before it does.

About 90% of my experience with police has been profesional and unremarkable.

The other times should’ve been recorded and discipline may have been appropriate even though I was not harmed.

Off topic: If the article doesn't show even after you disable the adblocker, turn on the Reader mode.

This is what Workflow changed to?

Siri, I just landed in New Zealand.

  * changes passcode to a random 256 character alpha-numeric string, locking you out of the phone *

or maybe...

Siri, they're forcing me to use face unlock.

  * erases data and performs a factory reset *

“Siri, there’s a future supreme court nominee in my dorm room”.

you'd think car manufacturers would have cameras for when being pulled over.

Just get rid of the police or make them more corrupt so they can be bribed better.

Can you imagine the s___storm if they had named this function "Siri I'm getting mugged"?

Wouldn't just "Siri start recording" make more sense?