AT&T Technology Sponsorlogo

New iPhone App Allows Users to "Automatically" Record Interactions with Police

Siri Shortcuts allows users to do a variety of things on their phone with very little prompting by the phone's user.

Siri Shortcuts allows users to do a variety of things on their phone with very little prompting by the phone's user.

"Shortcuts includes over 300 built-in actions and works with many of your favorite apps including Contacts, Calendar, Maps, Music, Photos, Camera, Reminders, Safari, Health as well as any app that supports Siri Shortcuts," according to the iTunes App Store.

The general principle is that you can tell your phone to turn on the lights in the living room, or other relatively mundane tasks.

However, one enterprising man in Arizona had something more serious in mind when he created the Police shortcut.

Robert Peterson said in a post on Reddit that his app "pauses any music that may be playing, turns down your brightness, turns on Do Not Disturb, and sends a message to the contact of your choosing letting them know youโ€™re being pulled over and what your current location is. It then opens your front camera to a video recording so you have a video record of being pulled over. Once you stop the recording it sends a copy of the video to a contact you specify, puts the brightness back up, and turns off Do Not Disturb."

"It seemed to me that if you're getting pulled over it couldn't hurt to have a recording of the incident," Petersen told Business Insider. "The police these days in many places have body cams, so this could be the civilian equivalent."

About the Author