Hey Siri, I'm Being Pulled Over By the Police...

Once you install the free shortcut and say "Hey Siri, I'm getting pulled over," it starts recording immediately.

Possibly the only time when users will be happy to know big tech is listening in on them. JL

James Vincent reports in The Verge:

Once you load this (free) shortcut onto your iPhone, all you need to do is say “Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over” and it will kickstart a chain of events. It will dim your phone, pause any music being played, and start recording video from your front-facing camera. It can also send your current location and a copy of that video to an emergency contact.

As protests against racial police violence have spread across the US, we’ve seen how video captured on mobile devices can help identify misconduct by law enforcement. But such evidence isn’t just useful at a protest, but during all sorts of routine interactions with the police, including traffic stops. That’s why the Siri shortcut “I’m getting pulled over” exists.

THE PROGRAM DIMS YOUR PHONE, PAUSES YOUR MUSIC, AND STARTS RECORDING

Once you load this (free) shortcut onto your iPhone, all you need to do is say “Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over” and it will kickstart a chain of events. It will dim your phone, pause any music being played, and start recording video from your front-facing camera. It can also send your current location and a copy of that video to an emergency contact, though you’ll need to confirm a few pop-up messages to complete these steps.

The shortcut itself is the work of Robert Petersen, who first published it in 2018. Petersen has been updating the program since then, though, and the shortcut has gained new attention following protests after the police killing of George Floyd.

Obviously, recording police interactions does not, by itself, stop misconduct and racial discrimination. But it can help name and shame individuals involved. It’s true that not every police interaction needs recording, but that’s no reason not to hit record all the same.

If you’re keen to use the program yourself, there are a few things you’ll have to do first. Importantly, the program isn’t an app you can download from the App Store, but an iOS shortcut that relies on functionality Apple introduced in iOS 12.

YOU NEED TO DOWNLOAD THE SHORTCUTS APP TO GET THE PROGRAM WORKING

So, to get things up and working, you’ll have to first make sure iOS is updated to at least iOS 12. Then, download the Shortcuts app which you can find here on the App store. After that’s done, visit this link on your mobile device from the built-in Safari browser to set-up the shortcut. (Be careful: other browsers won’t work!) You’ll also need to make sure your phone can load unverified shortcuts (go to Settings > Shortcuts and toggle Allow Untrusted Shortcuts to allow this) and give the program access to your location, which you can see how to do here.

Once that’s done you should be good to go, though we recommend giving the shortcut a dry run first as you’ll need to okay certain permissions for it to work properly. When using it, you’ll also need to manually approve certain steps (like sending your video).

There’s also no direct Android equivalent of the program right now, but there are similar apps on the Play Store meant to help discreetly record video footage of law enforcement.

As Petersen told Business Insider in 2018, the app is essentially the same as the body cameras worn by many police officers. “It seemed to me that if you’re getting pulled over it couldn’t hurt to have a recording of the incident,” said Petersen. “The police these days in many places have body cams, so this could be the civilian equivalent.”