Video Messaging App Maker Verifies Ferguson Shooting Recording, Including Location
Here’s the official statement from Glide, the company that makes the video messaging app used by the man who inadvertently recorded audio of the gunshots that ended Michael Brown’s life in Ferguson, Missouri: Glide Verifies Ferguson Shooting Recording.
As you may already have seen on CNN, MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,” the local FOX affiliate in St. Louis and Riverfront Times, the Glide mobile app is being mentioned in the current news cycle surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, with a video message created using the app having surfaced as potentially critical evidence.
While tragedy is never good news, and our hearts go out to the family of Michael Brown, this incident underscores how technology is changing the landscape of not only journalism, but also criminology.
A Glide user living nearby (whose identity is being protected) was simply using the Glide app on their smartphone exactly as it was designed - to instantly communicate with a friend through our real-time video texting service. Simultaneously, they also captured audio in the background of the gunshots allegedly fired at Michael Brown.
Because Glide is the only messaging application using streaming video technology, each message is simultaneously recorded and transmitted, so the exact time can be verified to the second. In this case, the video in question was created at 12:02:14 PM CDT on Saturday, August 9th.
We commend this Glide user for turning their Glide video message over to FBI investigators as possible evidence in this ongoing investigation.
The important bit of new information in this statement: Glide is also confirming that the man who recorded this audio lives near the street where Michael Brown was gunned down.