Paranoid Technology for Paranoid Times
22nd February 2015
“You’re never without an alibi.”
That’s the tagline of the new smartphone app Alibi, whose splash page is filled with a jerky, lo-fi video of a protest, putting the visitor in the midst of a whirl of yelling policemen, chanting participants, and omnipresent journalists snapping photos. It consciously evokes a kind of paranoia from the outset. Where am I, what kind of an alibi do I need, and how is this technology going to help me get one?
Founded by Jeff Myers and Ryan Salla, the app passively records audio, video, and location data on Android smartphones (it’s not yet available on iOS, and seems unlikely to be in the future given Apple’s store policies of not letting politically controversial tools into their system), and saves the previous hour of information on-demand, so a user always has proof of where they were and who they were with—just in case it becomes necessary. Given the recent killings of Michael Brown and many others in ambiguous violent contexts, Alibi is being pitched as a kind of preventative measure. “If there’s an instance of police brutality and someone has this on, that would be the best scenario,” Myers says.