To me, something like OpenWatch could help solve a major problem for investigative reporting in an age when newsrooms are shrinking. We've still got plenty of people who can bulldog an issue once it's been flagged, but there are fewer and fewer reporters with deep sourcing in a community, fewer and fewer reporters who have the time to look into a bunch of different things knowing that only one out of a hundred might turn into a big investigation. Perhaps providing better conduits for citizens to flag their own problems can drive down the cost of hard-hitting journalism and be part of the solution for keeping governments honest.

At first, the app did not have grand aspirations. Jones built it for some friends who'd gotten into some trouble with the law and who could have been aided by a recording of their interaction with law enforcement. But Jones' worldview began to seep into the project. Informed by Julian Assange's conception of "scientific journalism," Jones wanted to start collecting datapoints at the interface of citizens and authority figures.

"It's a new kind of journalism. When people think citizen media, right now they think amateur journalism ... I don't think that's revolutionary," Jones told me. "I don't think that's what the '90s cyberutopianists were dreaming of. I think the real value of citizen media will be collecting data."

Already, CopRecorder is in the hands of 50,000 users, who've just happened to stumble on the app one way or another. Jones hopes that they'll upload their encounters with authority figures so that he can start to build a database of what citizens' encounters are like in different places. Then, he figures, patterns will emerge and he'll be able to point out to the world exactly where the powerful are abusing their authority.



* * *

One night earlier this year, Hieu Vu and his fiancee left Oggi's Pizza and Brewing Company in Garden Grove, California, near Anaheim. After they got into their Camry, Vu saw he was headed into a DUI checkpoint at the intersection of Harbor and Chapman, one of dozens that southern California police set up each weekend night.

As they waited in the line of cars, Vu pulled out his cell phone and began recording. From that recording, we know that a police officer approached the car and asked Vu to roll down his window.

"I don't have to roll it down, do I?" Vu asked.

"Yes, you do have to roll it down!" the cop responded. "All the way. All the way. Thank you. What are you guys up to tonight?"

"I'm going home," Vu said.

"From where?" the cop shot back.

"Oggi's."

"Oggi's. Been drinking?"

"I don't have to say anything," Vu said.

"Ok, well, we're going to send you in there [the next level of the checkpoint] and they're going to talk to you," the police officer responded. "I smell alcohol."

"You smell alcohol on me? You really smell alcohol?" Vu retorted incredulously.

"I do," the cop said.

Vu sounds guilty, right? Why else wouldn't he want to roll down the window or talk to the police, we find ourselves asking. But we know that Vu hadn't had a drop of alcohol that night -- and a subsequent breathalyzer test found his blood alcohol content was 0.0 percent.