
Show HN: Witness – Livestreaming for Emergencies - marinosbern
https://getwitness.com
======
marinosbern
Hi HN! I’m Marinos, I made this. Here’s a medium post I just wrote going into
more detail on the motivation & design decisions behind Witness:
[https://medium.com/@marinosbern/witness-livestreaming-for-
em...](https://medium.com/@marinosbern/witness-livestreaming-for-
emergencies-698a62afe1c3). Let me know if you have any feedback/questions
about Witness or live streaming or anything else. One question I get a lot is
whether I am planning to open source this. I am, and I’m also extracting all
the live streaming logic into a drop-in iOS library. Cheers!

~~~
jagermo
This looks really nice - are you planning to support other OS, like Android,
WP or Blackberry?

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bjacobel
Blackberry? Seriously?

~~~
jagermo
What? The Android apps are fairly easily ported.

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secfirstmd
Awesome. I really like it.

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](http://www.secfirst.org) ...Plug for a very cool
Android panic button: Amnesty
[https://panicbutton.io](https://panicbutton.io))...Plugs over :)

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
I'm wondering how I would undo the "natural inbuilt reaction to run like hell"
long enough to tap tap and look at my phone.

~~~
marinosbern
I actually asked a bunch of psychologists about this. Most people will either
freeze or run. If your inbuilt reaction is to run, you are already in the
lucky group. The goal is to use it, if possible, while running, so I tried to
make it as simple as possible to activate. Unfortunately, because of Apple
restrictions, you still need to launch the app, but I'm experimenting with
things like using notification center for faster access

~~~
secfirstmd
Cool. I'm not sure if your part of the community already but if it's open
source etc you should post it on the Stamford University Liberation Tech
mailing list.

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piptastic
Some feedback from a discussion I had after seeing this:

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.

~~~
marinosbern
You've hit the nail right on the head. A 2-stage process (1-record 2-notify)
is definitely the number one feature request. For this version, I wanted to
keep things super simple and get it out there as soon as possible so I can
start getting feedback. I should be adding that to the next version.

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?

~~~
piptastic
Gotcha. Good on you for getting out a simple version quickly, that's the way
to do it.

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.

------
vitorbaptistaa
Congratulations! A similar app won Google's Social Impact Challenge 2014 [1]
in Brazil. It's named PLP 2.0 [2], and it's aimed mainly at women that suffer
from violent partners.

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](https://desafiosocial.withgoogle.com/brazil2014)
[2] [http://www.plp20.org.br/](http://www.plp20.org.br/) [3]
[https://github.com/thacker/botao-do-panico](https://github.com/thacker/botao-
do-panico)

------
shasta
Most phones have really terrible UIs for getting to something like this. In
circumstances where I want to start using an app like this, I usually don't
have 5-10 seconds to take my concentration off of my surroundings to load the
app. I've been in plenty of situations where I wished I could immediately
start recording things but didn't have time to navigate my phone's UI.

~~~
marinosbern
My experience was exactly the same. The record button on the camera app is
small and hard to hit if you're running/your hands are shaky. Also if you
touch the screen while recording it changes the focus and you could also
accidentally end the recording. All these could have serious implications
during an emergency.

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.

~~~
shasta
But how do you get into the app? Don't you have to navigate your phone's OS? I
can appreciate what you're saying. There are probably lots of situations where
you know you might need it where you can have the app already running. I just
wish there was a way to get into something like this or start recording
without even having to look at my phone. I think it would be much more useful
if you had that.

------
semerda
Not a new concept. Many have tried and failed. Even though the social cause is
clear and many people will say great idea, very few will use it if their life
is on the line. And even less will pay for it unless it's bundled with some
sort of home care service/monitoring.

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 ;-)

------
tonywebster
I love this concept, and it is sorely needed. I read in your Medium post[1]
that “Data is wiped from the phone as soon as it’s securely moved to the
Witness servers.” I'm curious what the reasoning for this is. Of course, I get
that the data is streamed/copied to Witness in the event that the device is
destroyed or confiscated, but it's hard for me to think of a use case where
having a local version on the device would would do any harm.

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...](https://medium.com/@marinosbern/witness-livestreaming-for-
emergencies-698a62afe1c3)

~~~
marinosbern
Thanks for pointing this out. The original thinking was twofold: 1) I didn't
want people to get in trouble if their phones were searched and they were in
possession of a recording and 2) Keep the data stored on the phone to a
minimum, in order to increase available space for storing video when Cellular
Data/WiFi is not available. The data is always available later through the
shortlink.

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

~~~
tajen
At the border US customs ask you whether you have "accounts on remote
computers", which means, practically everything. It's better to move the data
offsite so police actually needs a warrant to inspect it (instead of a "I
thought he had a gun" excuse), but it can still require them to provide access
to the remote account to the police.

~~~
marinosbern
Interesting. Have you been asked that before? I've done a fair amount of going
in and out of the country and was never asked

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danso
Cool work...I haven't downloaded the app to my phone yet, but is there a stage
between activating the app and then going into emergency mode, e.g. broadcast
+ emailing all emergency contacts?

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...](https://medium.com/@marinosbern/witness-livestreaming-for-
emergencies-698a62afe1c3))...a lot of nice meditations on making something new
by noticing the small inconveniences and barriers in real-world usage of
existing solutions.

~~~
marinosbern
I completely agree, having a 2-stage process to first stream and then notify
emergency contacts is one of the top feature requests. I should be adding that
in the next version

------
orasis
This is an excellent idea. I wish you the best of luck.

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.

~~~
marinosbern
Thanks! The functionality does not depend on the person's friends joining the
app

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hellbanner
Great idea. What happens if there's no cell network? Does it record AV and
upload later in the background?

~~~
marinosbern
If there's no cell network it will store everything locally (status bar turns
purple) until the cell network comes back up. This happens automatically and
I'm already working on making it more explicit in future versions

~~~
hellbanner
Good stuff, thanks for the update.

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vowelless
Awesome! saw it on techcrunch: [http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/03/witnesss-
livestreaming-app-...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/03/witnesss-
livestreaming-app-is-a-panic-button-for-the-smartphone-age/)

------
jjwiseman
I like the idea of combining this with drones:
[http://www.civileyes.me/](http://www.civileyes.me/)

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josephjrobison
Great work! I've heard of this for Uber in India, but always thought that a
standalone version would be a great idea. Genius all around.

~~~
marinosbern
Yes, I have heard about this as well. A bunch of people from India have
emailed me about using Witness there and some have already been field-testing
it. This version does work in India, with full calling/texting support, but I
definitely want to work on it a little more to better tailor it to places
outside the US

------
__m
The link to the privacy policy just links to the promotion webseite. Do you
plan on selling footage to news organizations?

~~~
marinosbern
I think this goes without saying, but absolutely not. Data will never be
available to anyone in any way, shape or form, except people chosen by you. I
am adding this to the website now.

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ljk
Very good idea! But what happens if something's happening in underground
parking lot where there's no signal?

~~~
marinosbern
It will store everything on the device until the Internet is back up, then it
will resume the stream. If it never comes back up, it will keep storing on the
device until battery/storage runs out. It is designed to never lose data
unless it has to

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chilzap
I've witnessed this app at techCrunch, such a simple yet so powerful tool for
safety.

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Diederich
The title and event his web page led me to believe it was related to this
project: [http://witness.org/](http://witness.org/)

"WITNESS is an international organization that trains and supports people
using video in their fight for human rights."

~~~
marinosbern
I am so sorry for that, I picked the name Witness at 4am during a hackathon
and had no idea it would win. It was an unfortunate choice of name, especially
given that there are a ton of apps in the App Store with "Witness" in them

~~~
Diederich
No, I don't think it's a bad thing! I was actually thinking about how the
areas of overlap could be expanded and connected.

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ihm
Was this inspired by the last 2 episodes of Silicon Valley?

~~~
marinosbern
Haha I've never seen Silicon Valley but I will sure check it out!

