Yes there are apps, but they are clunky to use, requiring lots of click-throughs making them fairly useless under pressure. They stream to a public video that can be viewed by friends, meaning they are potentially invasive of privacy. What I'm proposing is to stream to secure storage that can only be accessed by a court order. That means there are no Privacy Act issues and that the recording is not the property of the user, making it an independent record.

The service has to be transparent and act independently of the user to some extent. Activation by key phrases, such as "hello Officer" or some such thing set by the user would be one useful way to go. There are other mechanisms as well, of course.

There are lots of applications in situations other than Police interactions. For example, anyone who has dealt with bureaucracies like Centrelink will have tales of being told one thing and having another thing happen, with the only record normally being the entry made by the Centrelink staff member. This can lead to significant consequences in time-critical situations, where there is a small window for completing an application or responding to a request for information.

It seems to me that in any situation where an independent record of events may be helpful, this could be applied. I focused on the US situation because it's so horrific.

Over time, the likely presence of such an app may be sufficient to improve the behaviour of people on both sides of such situations.

Thanks for the interest. Feel free to get in touch if you would like more information and please spread the word!

I"d be wary if not very wary about doing anything like this over the internet. With it's current security protocols and procedures for transmission of data packets, its scary enough even doing online banking these days let alone communications between members of the public and government staff.

Unfortunately the internet was not primarily designed for such rampant communications that nearly everybody these days takes for granted. Ever since its invention back in 1969 there has been a plethora of band-aid solutions and patch-ups for what is fundamentally a non secure communication system aka internet. Security was an afterthought when it was first setup.

There is no privacy issue.

The Queensland Police Service likes the idea.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-21/queensland-police-get-body-cameras-amid-major-rollout/7648028