Making Personal Safety/SOS functional

hemlockiv

Stock Pixel OS has the Personal Safety app, which adds considerable functionality to the SOS feature (5x-press power button), like sharing location with preselected contacts, and recording video that can be automatically saved to cloud storage.

Perhaps I'm missing a step, but I cannot make these features work on GOS, even with play services/framework enabled. The Personal Safety app can be installed via Aurora Store, but it hangs, crashes, and/or presents a blank screen.

Given that the Personal Safety features:

Provide signicant real benefit in situations of physical danger,
Do not present an inherent data security risk (since location/video-sharing is opt-in, and only gets shared with trusted recipients the user selected when configuring the app), and
Cannot be replicated with currently available FOSS apps (location-sharing maybe, but I haven't found a FOSS app that records and uploads video automatically even while the phone is locked),

it seems reasonably within the scope of GOS's mission to either build in compatability for the Personal Safety app, or better yet, build a Google-free version of Personal Safety as a system app to be available in the Apps repo.

I do appreciate Graphene's commitment to avoiding bloatware, and I know just how many requests you get to include XYZ app with the stock OS. However, for the 3 reasons listed above, Personal Safety should be an exception that is well-worth integrating into GrapheneOS.

I can open this as an issue on Github, but first I wanted to introduce the idea here to elicit thoughts and feedback from developers and the community at large.

treequell

hemlockiv I tried installing the Google Personal Safety app from Google Play Store. It also crashes for me too.

I do agree that the AOSP SOS features are rather basic. But I imagine that the Google Personal Safety app requires privileged access to the phone to enable all its SOS functions. I am not sure that this could work on GrapheneOS.

hemlockiv

treequell I imagine that the Google Personal Safety app requires privileged access to the phone to enable all its SOS functions.

I'm not so sure, actually. The basic SOS function, aka the phone calling, is acactuallincluded in AOSP, and therefore Graphene (search "safety" in your Settings app to find it). Besides, any app can make a phone call, fetch location, or send an SMS with normal (unprivilege) permissions.

It's specifically the implementation of location and video capture/sharing that are currently missing. I haven't tried decompiling the Personal Safety APK, but the biggest privilege-related issue might be video capture while the phone is locked and screen is off.

Also, I haven't checked since I don't have a stock Pixel lying around, but I THINK the "automatic cloud upload" probably defaults to Google Drive. If we made a Graphene version of the app, we could add more cloud provider options, including Nextcloud.

Blastoidea No thanks, I’ll pass.

Thank you for your participation in this discussion. It can be valuable to hear the feelings of individual users regarding their specific use-cases. Rest assured, any implementation of Personal Safety would, as mentioned above, be completely opt-in.

Blastoidea

I use GrapheneOS in order to minimize privileged access to my phone, not incorporate it.

Maybe I’m not understanding something here.

abcZ

Blastoidea Surely you can see the value of sharing real-time location, video, etc. with a trusted contact if you happen to be going into a situation where there may be some risk of danger. Yes, we want to keep that data out of the hands of those who cannot be trusted (like google: https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/1620193873875320834) -- but it would also be helpful to automatically alert and/or send certain information to a trusted contact and/or police if something goes wrong and you end up in mortal danger.

[deleted]

Blastoidea The personal security application is preferred, but all information is end-to-end encrypted. It's a really great app because when you have a car accident or something, it calls the emergency services and sends them your position and medical information, it films... My daughter uses this app when she goes for a run: she programs it so that 1 hour after her departure, the app rings and asks her if everything's okay, and if there's no answer 50 seconds later, it films, calls the emergency services, sends the location... In short, it's absolutely indispensable for my family.

Blastoidea

abcZ
No thanks, I’ll pass.

abcZ

hemlockiv It's specifically the implementation of location and video capture/sharing that are currently missing. I haven't tried decompiling the Personal Safety APK, but the biggest privilege-related issue might be video capture while the phone is locked and screen is off.

There probably isn't much value for VIDEO capture, since more than likely, the phone will be in somebody's pocket or, in the case of a women, purse. AUDIO however, would be a very useful feature to capture, and if I'm not mistaken, can be done fairly easily without unlocking the device.

unwat

This was discussed back in November. Not saying whether the functionality should be included, but getting this specific app to work wouldn't be easy because it needs special privileges to work. They might be able to get it to work by expanding the compatibility layer, but idk. Probably would require someone in the community to step up and make it happen either by contributing to the compatibility layer or making a new app.

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/1199-car-crash-detection

hemlockiv

unwat Thanks for sharing that link! I didn't know it had been discussed before, very helpful. Shame to hear it probably requires tweaking the compat later, as that's WAY beyond my programming ability.

hemlockiv

abcZ There probably isn't much value for VIDEO capture, since more than likely, the phone will be in somebody's pocket or, in the case of a women, purse. AUDIO however, would be a very useful feature to capture, and if I'm not mistaken, can be done fairly easily without unlocking the device.

You're correct that audio is easy to do with 3rd party apps.

The value of the SOS video capture feature is, for example, during a police traffic stop where the user's phone is already mounted on the dashboard (e.g. for navigation). Unfortunately, recording the police is a reasonable safety precaution to take nowadays.

abcZ

hemlockiv Its not legal to mount your phone high enough that it would get a shot over the dashboard since it obstructs your view. For things like this, I'd strongly recommend a dedicated dashcam.

BluishHumility

abcZ Its not legal

The accuracy of this statement is dependent on where you are driving. Nearly half of the US allows windshield-mounted devices. http://blog.imagnetmount.com/windshield-mounting-laws-for-all-50-states-in-the-us/

rawpie

Are there any plans to keep developing this? I live in a dangerous part of town and I love grapheneos, but I still can't recommend it to friends and family because of this one issue of personal safety not working, since it has personally saved the life of a close friend of mine.

hemlockiv

rawpie Since previous discussion indicates that the Appcompat layer would need to be expanded, it's unlikely that this will continue in the foreseeable future, unless you or an experienced programmer you know is willing to undertake the project :/

graphenediscoverer4

So if that PersonalSafety app from google is fixed and doesn't crash anymore on gOS, it means for being able to use it in an emergency case, one has to have their services running on its dailydriver profile ?

Or would it be some workaround like, idk : double tap the back (smart gesture shits) to switch to a non-password userprofile that runs services, and then do the 5 powerbutton-taps ?

Relaks

By the way, the feature of calling emergency services by pressing the power button five times repeatedly does work. At least it did for me. I'm located in Norway.

Just an FYI if people didn't know this. I know it's not a replacement for the Personal Safety app?

Did anyone open a Github issue about this?

graphenediscoverer4

Relaks Does it ask for some dialing to be redirected to the good sub-team or you get straight to someone listnening, even without speaking to the agent at first?

edit : Also, were play services running on the profile emiting the sos ? To know whether it's needed or not

5rlyn

My family recently had in incident where a loved one inadvertently triggered the SOS and then turned off the phone before a location could be sent. Obviously the situation got me thinking.
My compromise was to set up the emergency functionality on my Garmin watch. That way its there but I control it.

Relaks

graphenediscoverer4 It wasn't emitting any SOS. I accidentally pressed the power button five times and a call was initiated with an English voice telling me I would be redirected to the emergency services shortly. I hung up before it actually did. Location: Norway. Google Personal Safety on PixelOS in Norwegian is by default set to 112 (police). I had not nor installed Google Personal Safety before. I was using GrapheneOS. That's all I know.

I will likely be calling the emergency services manually during an emergency so that I can reach the correct number without having to be redirected.

I live in an area of the country where I know for sure that the operators get an immediate fix on my location if I have to call the emergency services. This has been part of my work so I know this for sure. I don't how the situation is in other countries. I do not have any friends so wouldn't benefit from GPS sharing from my phone.

This is my personal reflection so please do not take this as me arguing against you using the Personal Safety app. I'm seeing some threads already on this topic so it might be worth opening a Github issue as a feature request. I'm not sure how much work would need to be put into this from the developers' side, if they deem it as a feature they see as relevant to implement.

graphenediscoverer4

Relaks I had not nor installed Google Personal Safety before. I was using GrapheneOS. That's all I know.

Thank you! I just wanted to know whether the sandboxed play services (you know the app downloaded from the gOS app-base called "Apps") were running on the current profile or not. I'm afraid that a userprofile needs it to be able to emit an SOS..

Also was the current profile using english language in its settings at that time ? To know whether the english voice is part of AOSP, or part of some google services being the intermediary between enduser and local-speaking emergency services...