A collection of resources for law enforcement, citizens, journalists, photographers and anyone else that seeks this type of information.
For Activists, Journalists, Photographers & Auditors
- Know your rights: Photographers – what to do if you are stopped or detained for taking photographs – ACLU
- California’s Largest Pay and Pension Database – Transparent California
Equipment
When available, or when we know, we have added the list of equipment some of the auditors use so you can do some research for your next gig, just look in their profile to find out more. You can view the listings here.
We’re also working on a few different rig setups as recommended for different purposes, don’t forget to bookmark this and check back later. Or better yet, sign up for the newsletter and alerts.
Software
Video editing software
For PC. On PC’s you have free Windows Movie Maker but it seems that as of March 14, 20180 it is no longer available. Some people have still downloaded it successfully and used it without any problems, so your mileage may vary. Please let me know if it doesn’t work for you.
For Mac. On Macs, you have iMovie built in which is excellent and free. If you want to take it up a level, Final Cut Pro X is a natural progression from iMovie. But it’s good for beginners too if you spend an hour or so looking at tutorials.
Mac or PC. Adobe Premiere has long been one of the favorite video editing suites but it isn’t necessary at all. It is very complex, and it can be expensive. It’s an option if you really want to get into heavy video editing, but not necessary.
To record screencasts you can use Camtasia (mac or pc), or Screenflow (Mac only). This lets you record your computer’s desktop and both of these let you capture your mouse movements and edit them separately from your screen. You can record skype calls, or you can record your screen as you show documents, or comment on other people’s videos, or whatever. These are the standard editors to create tutorial or reaction type of videos without a lot of post-processing work. You can export directly to Youtube or you could export a video and then finish editing it on one of the other movie editors.
Youtube Ranking
Tubebuddy. This is an amazing resource to help you polish your videos a little more. It helps you find the right keywords, it can create thumbnails for you, end screens, templates, and it can analyze other videos to give you the right keywords to use so you can rank better in the search results. Check out Tubebuddy.
VidIQ. This is another Youtube helper system. It does a lot of similar things to Tubebuddy, but they also provde really insightful analytics about your audience. Check out VidIQ
Downloading Youtube, Facebook and other Videos
Please keep in mind, you may be subject to copyright or trademark laws when you download and re-upload a video. Use these tools at your own discretion.
Youtube and Facebook each have different methods you can use to download videos. Well, they don’t really have options, but you have options for each platform. If you own the video, of course you can download it from the dashboard management area in each of the networks.
For Youtube
If the video is posted by somebody else, I recommend you use a script/program called Youtube-DL, you can find it here. It could be a little tricky to install, but it’s worth it. It’s the easiest, most reliable and fastest way to download a video without buying any additional software. Works for OSX, Linux, Windows.
For Facebook
Use the same Youtube-dl script I mentioned above. Sometimes you’ll find that some videos can also be downloaded from Facebook directly with a download button in the options. It seems that less and less videos have this option recently though.
For other video sites
Sorry to be redundant, but Youtube-dl also downloads from a ton of other video sites, these are the current ones, but they’re always adding more. You can check out a comprehensive list of supported video sites here. The sites include Instagram, and many news sites. In some cases some sites that aren’t listed work fine so it’s always worth trying this app if you can’t get a video that you need to download.
For Law Enforcement, Security & Government employees or contractors
If you really want to serve the citizens and do your job, become informed. Going through your basic training and refresher courses is not enough. They aren’t teaching you a lot of basics about how the law works, what your rights and duties are and what the average citizens’ rights are.
It is YOUR job to become aware and educated about the issues pertaining to the lawful execution of your duties.
You might have been ignorant at one point… but now you know.
Below you’ll find good links for you:
https://instigativejournalist.com/video/194/
The Declassified 2010 Memo – Department of Homeland Security
For Civilians, aka (everyone else).
If you are just interested in the videos featured on this site, or the people featured on this site, this section is for you. If you’re interested in your rights, protected by the Bill of Rights, but you don’t belong to any sort of law enforcement, or security company, or any of the government contractors then this section is also for you. Maybe you’re curious.
A quick word for reporters and journalists doing research and using this site. If you are a reporter covering a story, I ask of you to truly exercise your freedom of speech when you write your article, I also demand, yes in the full sense of the word, I demand that you present the facts and you keep your opinions to yourself. Unless you’re obviously writing an opinion piece.
A big problem today is the blatant abuse of the platform big media and their affiliates have, this includes the local newspapers and tv channels that are really owned by a larger national, if not a global corporation.
Every single hour they report stories that are riddled with bias, the unapologetic decision of who is right and who is wrong seeps through the writing. This is garbage. Stick to the fats, it’s supposed to be the five W’s, When, Why, Where, Who, What, not the “how I feel about this, and let me change your mind.”
Be a good reporter and tell the world what happened, not how you feel about it. And if you want to expres your opinion, then make it abundalyt clear, no, unmistakably clear that it is in fact your opinion that you’re presenting and not the facts. Here’s an example of this issue we have.
But moving on to why this exists and perhaps I can offer a bit of my perspective.
As you might have seen, there is a bit of a “battle” going on with our rights, our security, our government and just our general state of being, if I dare say… in this day and age.
The battle I think, comes from the lack of understanding. Most of the activists and journalists you’ll find here are concerned that government is overstepping their bounds. I agree with them and I stand with them 100%. The reason I built this site was that I was intrigued by these videos I found years ago.
This is more or less how it started for me as best as I can recall.
I think one of the first videos I ran into was from Adam Kokesh, from there I found Gavin Seim, then I started finding videos by PINAC and all their associates, ran into stuff by Tony Vera, then Tom Zebra, from there I found just a mass amount of videos about the topics we cover in this site. Found News Now Houston, and High Desert Community Watch.
There are dozens of new channels coming online every week, and more and more people are spreading the word.
The word that we have rights and if we don’t exercise them, we lose them. Look at the nightly news and see all the news about our rights being violated. Someone going to jail for saying the wrong thing, someone getting beat up for taking photos in public, someone dying because of a mistaken identity during a warrantless search.
Enough!
So many of the news every day relate directly to a constitutionally protected right being violated. This is a problem.
This is why these people exist, this is why they do what they do. And if you haven’t realized it yet, they’re doing you and I an amazing service. In fact I would equate their activism to the strongest activism movements we have ever witnessed. The difference is that this revolution is happening online, and it’s decentralized, it’s grassroots.
And it is unstoppable.
As more police departments create policies that go unchecked and permeate law enforcement culture, these people are working to stop and reverse that. We have a legislative process for a reason, we have due process, we have rights, but somehow many police departments think that we don’t know this.
Maybe they think that their badge grants them extra rights, and we know that many of them feel they are above the law.
These activists and journalists and photographers are constantly being demeaned by your co-workers, by your fellow citizens, they are often told to “get a job” or “do something with your life.”
In fact they are doing something with their lives, they’re fighting for their right to have freedom, freedom that is slowly being taken away. The irony is that they are fighting for the rights of police officers, and government officials and contractors as well. A cop will not always be a cop, one day they’ll be a civilian again and if they have any sense, they’ll thank people like these.
Our rights are like a muscle, if you don’t use it, you lose it. The least you can do is be supportive, and next time you see something… record something.