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Welcome to Observer Vault

When armed thugs attack your community — whether they're with the police, the military, a federal agency, or a militia — your phone's camera is one of the most powerful defensive tools at your disposal. When you observe and document their violence, you build a library of evidence that can be used to defend their victims in court, to publicly expose their abuses, and to ultimately change government policies and the media narrative.

The problem is that these same armed thugs frequently detain or arrest the people observing them. They might steal, break, or confiscate your phone. They might try to force you to delete your video. They might make a copy of all of your media and use it to identify protesters and legal observers.

Observer Vault aims to solve this problem.

How it works​

Observer Vault is a fork of Signal Desktop. You install it on a computer and create a new Signal account for it. Because it uses the Signal network, observers in the field simply use the Signal app.

Once you have an Observer Vault set up, you can:

  • Stream video and audio from the Signal app on your phone to the Observer Vault app on your computer, end-to-end encrypted using Signal. Just start a Signal call with your Observer Vault. It will automatically answer all calls. Flip your camera, and document what's going on in front of you. As soon as the call disconnects, Observer Vault will save a video or audio file to the Downloads folder on the computer it's running on.
  • Take photos directly from the Signal app to send them to Observer Vault, without saving them in your phone's photo library. Observer Vault automatically downloads all attachments, including videos, photos, voice memos, and file attachments.
  • Observer Vault enforces disappearing messages of 30 seconds. If the thugs search your phone, they won't have access to the footage that you recorded. That's all saved remotely on the computer running Observer Vault.

What you'll need​

To use Observer Vault, you'll need a few things:

  • A computer running Windows, macOS, or Linux that stays powered on and running. It needs to always be on, and not be suspended, in order to automatically answer Signal calls.
  • An extra phone number. Observer Vault needs its own separate Signal account, and this requires a phone number. This can be any phone number that can accept SMS messages, including a free Google Voice number.
  • A community. While you can definitely run Observer Vault on your computer at home while you go out observing with your phone, it's better if people supporting observers run the Observer Vaults for them. If you get arrested while observing, ideally the video will already be out there in the hands of your community who can use it, not locked away on your computer at home.