From http://witness.org/ : "WITNESS trains and supports activists and citizens around the world to use video safely, ethically, and effectively to expose human rights abuse and fight for human rights change."
They are also on github: https://github.com/witness
It's a good idea, so good luck!
In fact, I think it would be valuable for evidentiary purposes to have the original on the device. I'm assuming that the streamed/copied version is probably lossy in some regard, while the local version might be higher resolution or frame rate, also.
[1] https://medium.com/@marinosbern/witness-livestreaming-for-em...
You raise a very good point though. Offering an option to keep data locally (or save it in the camera roll) in a future version would make sense
Hostile environments. It becomes incriminating evidence against you (think recording police brutality or excessive uses of force).
An initial thought...Perhaps, it's use case is possibly a little more Western World-centric due to the audio/video aspect of things. Where recording a perpetrator is a deterrence against further aggression.
We do a lot of work with NGOs and human rights defenders where security, especially in developing nations, is a different concept. What I mean is that in many emergency situations, the last thing you want a normal person (starting to panic and who's decision making process is starting to slow down and become impaired under pressure) to do is start holding a video camera up. Especially in the context of a case like a kidnapping or under fire. That will only have only the effective of a) probably antagonising the attacker, leading to the phone being snatched and/or thrown away (thus breaking the most important aspect, the real time reporting of current location)...b) in the most high risk situations, the user needs to be getting themselves to safety, as this initial 30 second reaction is the most important - focusing on the video and audio on the phone will slow this down and undo the natural inbuilt reaction to run like hell...
Anyway, just a thought, awesome project and good on you for doing it.
(Please excuse the following: Plug for our security planning tool, which aims at preventing physical and digital security incidents http://www.secfirst.org ...Plug for a very cool Android panic button: Amnesty https://panicbutton.io)...Plugs over :)
Well worth reading "The Unthinkable" by Amanda Riley, for an interesting overview. Though there is tons of academic literature on the subject.
three modes: 1 - immediate life threatening danger, call police (and notify friends/family) 2 - non-immediate, but still notify friends/family 3 - possible danger (just scared) - record everything (remote server), hold for 24 hours before sending to friends/family.
I think #3 could be one of your best use cases: A lot of people don't like walking to their car alone at night, or through a dark alley, or meeting someone on a first date. But they also don't want to stream that to their friends/family for no real reason. This gives them time to stop/erase content where nothing happens. In the case where something does happen, evidence is still maintained even if the phone is knocked/dropped out of their hand immediately, or whatever. You could also have a quicker way to "upgrade" to #1 in this mode, in case the threat turns more immediate and the user still has time/thought process to act.
Would you prefer an automatic 24-hour notification or a manual 2-stage process where you first record and then notify the emergency contacts if needed?
Personally I prefer automatic notification, because the user may be impaired and can no longer perform the second step.
However, I would suggest you make this all user customizable. Length of time before automatic notification, automatic vs manual, etc.
That's why for Witness I made sure you could touch anywhere on the screen while recording and it would be almost impossible to do any damage. So you can conceal your phone while your fingers rest on the screen.
"WITNESS is an international organization that trains and supports people using video in their fight for human rights."
I could foresee situations in which someone is fearful, but not yet ready to raise the alarm...in which case, having the phone go into video/audio/geo-broadcast mode would be nice, but not "email/text everyone".
I really liked the accompanying blog post (https://medium.com/@marinosbern/witness-livestreaming-for-em...)...a lot of nice meditations on making something new by noticing the small inconveniences and barriers in real-world usage of existing solutions.
I have experience with social networking apps and a BIG challenge that you'll have is if the functionality depends on the person's friends onboarding for the person to get value.
I would encourage you to think very hard about providing value for the user without any of their friends necessarily being on the app. Even if you had a 90% completion rate for each step of your on boarding funnel, the longer you make your funnel, the more you'll trend toward 0% activation.
A few friend and I built something similar for a hackathon made by the brazilian Chamber of Deputies on Genre [3]. Our main differentiator was that we didn't rely on having a smartphone at all, as our focus was on low-income women in Brazil, which (we thought) is the class that needs something like this the most. Although smartphone use is increasing very quickly in Brazil, only 20% of the brazilians had one in 2014.
Ours worked by having a phone number where people would call via a fast-dial number (so it would need just one button press), then it would start recording the audio and send an SMS to NGOs that work with women's protection so they could call the cops or whatever was deemed necessary.
Obviously, by not requiring a smartphone we wouldn't have access to the person's location. The solution was based on the fact that ~70% of the attacks occur on the victim's home. We would pre-register the person's number and addresses (home, work, etc.), so that when we received a "help request", we would know where to start looking for her. This was the best we could do with a dumb phone.
[1] https://desafiosocial.withgoogle.com/brazil2014 [2] http://www.plp20.org.br/ [3] https://github.com/thacker/botao-do-panico
The 1st point is actually a big liability problem. If your life is at risk will you make a 911 call (which even works without data coverage) or trust an app that you have not started in a while to work as expected? And you must have data for it to work too right. Apps need consistent updates to fix bugs and when a OS update breaks it, you are putting people at risk. Too much of a risk to take to rely on an app to save your life.
The 2nd point, is whether you will end up having a business. You have a business when someone pays for your product/service. Until then it is not a business. Who will pay for this luxury of a better 911 and why do they really need it when 911 is free and more reliable? If the emergency is not 911 serious level than what role does the app play?
Hope these questions help you flesh your thinking around this space/product. Just because you build it don't mean they will come ;-)
