Technology is good for some things…

Users can immediately send footage to the ACLU with a single shake of their phones. Received videos are systematically reviewed and screened for potential legal action by ACLU staff. This means users don’t risk losing footage if their phones are confiscated or destroyed by police, Jennifer Carnig with the ACLU’s New York chapter, the NYCLU, said.

The Mobile Justice App, which launched last November and has so far been adopted by ACLU chapters in Missouri, Mississippi, California, Nebraska and Oregon, was based on the success of a Stop and Frisk App, launched by the NYCLU in 2012 to tackle stop-and-frisk interactions.

Despite the fall in logged stop-and-frisk incidents in the city, the New York app has been downloaded 35,000 times and 40,000 videos have been submitted – all of which were reviewed by ACLU staff, Carnig said.

The newer ACLU app also enables users to see if they are close to another user either experiencing or witnessing a police-citizen interaction.

This opens a pandora’s box of ways mobile phone users all over the world can coordinate and mobilize against targeted activities.