Siri probably isn't the all-knowing, all-seeing entity you're used to invoking when you catch the sight of police lights flashing in the rearview mirror—but she is listening. “Police” is a new addition to the Apple “Shortcuts” repertoire that allows users to discreetly record encounters with law enforcement officers during traffic stops.

The obvious question is “how legal is that?” And the answer is a resounding “it depends”—on which state you're driving through or whether or not the officer was entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy. Jarno Vanto, a shareholder at Polsinelli, thinks that if the stop happened on a crowded road in plain view of the dozens of cars passing by, then those expectations should probably be kept in check. The same goes if the officer is wearing a bodycam of their own.

“All of these laws that are built around the concept that certain environments and certain circumstances have an expectation of privacy; they don't specifically carve out law enforcement officers from the scope of those laws. But when a law enforcement officer is carrying out his or her public duty to enforce the law, there's a limited expectation of privacy,” Vanto said.

Here's how it all works: “Shortcuts” is a customizable feature that allows users to trigger the functions of multiple apps with the touch of a button or by appealing directly to Siri. Apple uses the example of a “Surf Time” command that would simultaneously pull up a surf report, give an ETA to the beach and launch whatever playlist gets you in the mood to spend two-and-a-half hours pulling sand out of your shorts.

A man named Robert Petersen developed a Shortcut (aptly dubbed “Police”) that eschews tide levels in favor of a sequence that begins with something along the lines of “Siri, I'm getting pulled over.” Any music that's playing gets turned down along with screen brightness. The iPhone is put into “Do Not Disturb” mode and a text message lets a pre-arranged contact know that you're getting pulled over along with the latitude and longitude of the stop.

If coordinates don't paint a picture, the video—which the phone will automatically begin recording—should. “Police” can then send the finished video to another contact or upload it to a digital storage entity like Dropbox, the relative security of which could create potential gaps in the chain of evidence and raise complications if an incident were to wind up in court.

Vanto compared it to the cameras the officers wear on duty and the measures in place to make sure that they can't tamper with the footage.

“Similar care isn't taken for these recordings through the app or the software that enables multiple apps in unison, so there any number of things that could happen or reasonably be argued that someone could easily hack into wherever it goes before it gets shared. There might be issues around whether that's the actual footage or someone's done something to it,” Vanto said.

He sees “Police” and other apps based on automated sequencing systems as something to be considered beyond the recording of law enforcement. An iPhone isn't really getting any footage that couldn't be shot with a dashboard cam, after all. Vanto said that Apple has traditionally been very conservative about people doing anything with its iOS, but Shortcuts opens up all kinds of possibilities that be triggered with a single “Siri.”

“It's easy to forget that there are legal implications to those actions,” Vanto said.