<i>Then, when the user is in a safe location...</i><p>Unfortunately, this leaves the reporter vulnerable to having their device confiscated/destroyed. Live uploading would be better, but it's unlikely that the internet infrastructure is in place to allow this in an area where "war crimes" are a serious concern.<p>There's also the "releasing images to proper authorities" bit - I can't think of a reason that this shouldn't be completely open and public instead, if nothing else it makes suppressing the info impossible.
This isn't going to solve the stated problem at the top: Staged scenes.<p>They are quite common in certain areas and even journalists fall for them all the time, this smartphone app will only be worse.
Is there a GitHub repository for this? There are non-obvious features that I think it would be very good for it to have.<p>One of the core problems is that reporters might have their phones confiscated or destroyed, or the reporters might even be killed. The best solution is live uploading, but network infrastructure usually isn't good enough to stream video (especially in crowds where several people might be trying to do it at once). What I think it should do, is use the connectivity it has to live-upload limited information strategically.<p>First it should upload the location, time, device ID, and a hash of the video recorded so far. This is only a few hundred bytes (could fit in an SMS), and creates a record that video was recorded, which could be used in combination with testimony to support a claim of destruction of evidence. Then it should add, based on the amount of bandwidth available, low-quality audio, higher-quality audio, and selected still frames from the video.
The pics are encrypted with a public key and buried in an online database where lawyers review the images and won't release them except to 'proper authorities'. Not sure if that's a good thing, the user seems to lose control over their own media they can't make copies.
What will they do to mitigate that fact that the war criminals will be doing network traffic analysis?<p>Pulling updates from the Play Store for the app or pinging its service while being at the wrong place at the wrong time might cause you to disappear.