“Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over" command on iPhone starts recording police interaction

As protests against the racial police violence flares across several countries outside the US, a unique feature exclusively available for Apple users called “Getting pulled over By police” Shortcuts has come into the limelight that starts video recording automatically in case one is pulled over by the cops. Launched in 2018, saying the voice command allows users to conduct the specific task of video recording by default which is directed to the iPhone artificial intelligence capability, Siri.  

Created by an iPhone user, earlier, a ‘Police’ shortcut that prompts an iPhone to begin recording police interactions by the user simply uttering the phrase, “Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over” was launched. It had to be installed from the iCloud first. To do that, the users had to ensure that the ‘shortcuts’ app was installed on their iPhone.

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Although the earlier version of the “Police” shortcut was created by Robert Paterson earlier in 2018, he recently took to twitter to update the users with the newer version from 2020, “Getting Pulled Over By Police”. The command is the function of the iPhone app Shortcut, which allows users to program the phone to do the specific task, in this case recording the interaction with the cops discreetly, with just a voice command. While approached by cops, one can say this command slowly and the phone would begin to capture the incident, according to Peterson’s Tweet.  

Petersen described the features of the shortcut in a Reddit post. He said when the user says “Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over,” the iPhone will automatically pause music, dim the brightness and turn on “do not disturb” mode. The phone then sends a message to a pre-assigned contact that the person is being pulled over, as well as the location of the incident. Further, the front camera is then turned on and begins recording the incident. Once the recording is turned off, a copy is sent to the contact assigned, the volume and brightness are returned to normal, “do not disturb” mode is turned off and the shortcut gives you an option of how to download the video for yourself. 

Peterson surprised with the response

Speaking to a news media outlet in the US, Peterson said that it just seemed a good idea to empower the individual citizen to have a record over what happens during a stop to remove any ‘he said/she said’ scenarios with the police. He added, the idea would prove as popular as it has, he hadn’t thought, and the response has been extremely positive and more than a bit overwhelming. 

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