Mobile Witness

Mobile Witness is an application for collecting potential evidence through your mobile phone by continually recording and safely uploading GPS coordinates, audio, or video footage. Recordings will even continue whilst the screen is turned off.
The purpose of this application is twofold:

• overcome situations where the phone may be stolen or destroyed during recording, and,
• to enable covert evidence gathering.

Normal recording applications are not suitable for evidence gathering tasks as they make sounds upon starting the recording and stop recording when the screen is turned off. Alternative upload strategies such as cloud backups fail in situations where the phone may be damaged as they will only upload completed recordings. Mobile Witness is a solid defence against aggressive persons and dubious law enforcement officers; periodically and silently uploading the recordings.

Features
• Record GPS/Audio/Video in intervals
• Immediately upload completed recording intervals to various server options
• Record while the screen is off and when the app is minimised
• Supports uploading to Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, or custom servers (https://github.com/p0087/mw-personalhost)
• Simple Material UI designed for speed and simple recordings

FAQ
Q. How can I host my own personal server?
A. See instructions at https://github.com/p0087/mw-personalhost.

Q. Why is the video preview blank when I resume the app whilst recording a video?
A. Due to the limitations in the Android camera APIs, a few tricks are required to continue recording when Mobile Witness loses focus. All you have to do is wait until the current interval expires (dictated via Video interval time in settings), and the preview will be recreated.

Q. Why are all these permissions required as soon as starting the application?
A. To obtain sensor readings, GPS, microphone, and camera permissions are all required. To store the data before uploading to the server, writing on the external storage is required. Android 6 uses runtime permissions, differing from previous versions where permissions were granted at install time. Due to the purpose of Mobile Witness, permissions are asked for upfront to avoid interruptions.

Q. What happens in the event of flaky internet access?
A. Files are uploaded to the selected server only if internet access is available at the time of the request. In the case of failed file uploading, you will need to manually upload the local copy of the file.

Q. Why does the app require I disable Doze for it?
A. Doze is a battery saving method on Android 5.0 and above, which limits task alarms and network access after the screen is turned off. Therefore, to ensure that files upload to the server as expected whilst the screen is turned off, Mobile Witness must be whitelisted from Doze.

Privacy
No data (neither your recordings, nor any telemetry), are sent to our servers. You are in complete control of your data.

Issues
Camera apps are notoriously difficult to create, as manufacturers implement cameras quite differently. If you run into any issues, send us an e-mail with a description of the problem as well as your phone model.

Tested On:
• LG G3, G5
• Moto G
• HTC M8