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Instructions for observers

Here are some things to keep in mind when you're observing violent thugs using an Observer Vault bot.

Use your back-facing camera​

When you start a Signal video call, it always starts using your front facing camera. If you can, flip to your back-facing camera immediately before Observer Vault picks up.

It's fine to flip to your back-facing camera after Observer Vault picks up too. You'll just likely want to trim your face from the video before doing anything with it.

Film horizontally​

When observing violent thugs, it's best practice to rotate your phone so that it's horizontal instead of vertical, because this allows you to film more of the scene at a time.

Before starting a Signal video call with the Observer Vault bot, rotate your phone horizontally. When the call starts, it will start recording horizontally.

Take photos directly from the Signal app​

If you want to take photos and send them to Observer Vault, take photos directly from Signal. While your conversation with the Observer Vault bot is up, tap the camera icon in Signal to do this.

When you do this, the photos get immediately sent to Observer Vault, and get deleted from your phone automatically after 30 seconds. They won't touch your photo gallery, which means that you won't risk having them automatically synced to a cloud service like iCloud or Google Photos.

Focus on the agents, not the victims or bystanders​

In general, focus on filming what the police, ICE agents, soldiers, etc. are doing, rather than what bystanders are doing. The goal is to observe and document their violence and abuse of power, and you won't do that if you're focused on filming other people.

Obviously, this is objective and you should do what feels right in the moment. Images or footage of the victims might be very powerful (with their or their family's consent).

If you need high quality footage, use the Camera app​

Video calls over Signal are lower quality than recording a video on your phone with the Camera app, especially if you have spotty internet access. If you want to ensure that the quality of your videos is as good as it gets, you can optionally choose to record video with your camera app instead.

After recording the video, you can text it as an attachment to the Observer Vault bot, and then delete it from your Photos app. There are few things to keep in mind if you do this:

  • Signal has a file size limit, so if you film for too long at a time, the video may be too big to send over Signal without splitting it into chunks.
  • If you film with your Camera app, you won't be privately streaming the video to Observer Vault. So if you get arrested during filming, the bot won't have a copy of your video yet.
  • If you want to delete photos and videos from your phone after sending them to the Observer Vault bot, make sure to also delete them from your deleted items folder.