On October 27th Localization Lab hosted an Ask Me Anything (AMA) with the Horizontal team, developers of Tella, an open source mobile documentation tool.
The AMA was organized to give current and potential users as well as contributors to Tella localization an opportunity to learn more about the tool and ask any and all questions about how Tella works, use cases for the tool and how to support localization of the tool for individuals and organizations around the globe currently using the application for a myriad of documentation initiatives.
Below is a summary of the questions and answers shared at the event. Questions and answers have been edited and at times reframed to present them in a more organized, readable format.
What is Horizontal and what kinds of projects does the organization work on?
Horizontal was launched almost two years ago to do digital security work and does two things:
Provide digital security training (workshops, coaching, etc); and
Develop tools specifically for activists, organizers, and vulnerable communities.
The organization’s tagline is "Leveraging technology for rights and justice" and its focus is specifically on those fighting for justice.
Horizontal is a small organization of seven staff distributed across the globe (North America, South America, North Africa, Europe, and Southeast Asia). The organization was named Horizontal because they hope to work as horizontally as possible, away from the traditional hierarchical models that companies or NGOs usually rely on. Part of the reason the organization staff is distributed is to be as close as possible to the communities they want to work with.
Tella Overview and Features
What is Tella and how does it compare to other documentation tools for mobile devices and desktop?
Tella is a mobile app, currently exclusively on Android (with the hope of developing for iOS soon). Tella is designed for activist groups, movements, journalists, or any civil society organization that is collecting data or documenting human rights in challenging environments where there is a high risk of repression or barriers to internet connectivity. “Collecting data" can be taking photos or videos, recording audio, or filling out forms and surveys.
The objectives with Tella are threefold:
Protect people who collect data from physical repression.
Protect the data itself from being tampered with or destroyed.
Make it as easy as possible for groups to collect high quality data
Tella addresses the above with with several key features:
All data in Tella is encrypted, meaning that without the user's security pattern, there is no way of accessing that data. If you have videos in the Tella gallery, those videos are not accessible from the phone's regular gallery or file system. Users can record audio directly within the app using a voice recorder and take photos and videos using a camera in Tella, or they can import files into the app from their phone's gallery.
The app itself can be disguised. You can change the app name and icon so that it's called "Calculator" or "EasyMath" or "Weather". This is not perfect, because if someone does open the "Calculator", they'll see that it's not an actual calculator. Tella also remains visible in the Android settings. This is a basic layer of protection, but for most of Tella’s users it's proved sufficient.
Tella supports customizable forms. If users work with an organization, they can fill out their organization's forms directly within the app. For example, an organization may ask specific questions on the type of violations the user witnessed, the perpetrators of the violations, etc. Users receive the forms in Tella, fill them out (online or offline), and can send them back to the organization within the app. Their organization can access all the data in an organizational repository that they set up.
Tella has "Verification Mode". In verification mode, Tella collects a whole bunch of verification information (metadata) when the user takes a photo/video/audio, to make it easy for others to verify the origin of the file.
How does Tella work in low bandwidth environments?
The main thing Tella offers to accommodate low-bandwidth and no-bandwidth environments is "Offline Mode". When connected to the internet, you download your forms, and then activate Offline Mode. When it's activated, rather than trying to send forms, they will be saved locally in Tella. When the user can deactivate Offline Mode (when they have internet access again) they can then send any stored forms. You can fill out 2, 20, or 200 forms while offline and they'll all be saved until you reach an internet connection.
In low-bandwidth environments, you can also choose to only send completed forms, without any multimedia file attachments. Any audio, video or photo attachments which are much heavier, can be sent later. Forms are usually super light and can be sent even if the internet is bad. The user simply needs to uncheck the attachments when sending a form, and then return to the form later to send the attachments when there is a stronger internet connection.
Lastly, starting with Tella v1.7, which is about to be released, users will be able to record videos in lower resolution to save space on their device and also to have lighter files that can be sent with poor internet. In the future, Horizontal would like to offer the option to reduce the resolution as the user is sending the file, even if it's a high-resolution video.
When installing Tella for the first time, the app requests many device permissions and the user is unable to continue without accepting them all. What is Tella’s privacy policy and why are so many permissions requested by the application?
Tella’s new privacy policy page is available at https://tella-app.org/privacy for anyone to review.
The permissions requirements were a mistake made on the Horizontal side. They thought that it would be better for users to be asked to give permissions for all Tella features during the installation process so that when in an urgent situation, they are able to use all the features immediately without any delays or pop-ups asking for permission.
Horizontal recognizes that this is not ideal for all users and several have already mentioned that this is a concern. The Horizontal team is going to try to address the issue in v1.7 or very soon in v1.8.
What data collection standards is Tella compatible with?
Tella is compatible with the Open Data Kit (ODK) data collection standard. There are many tools that are compatible with ODK that allow you to create and fill out forms. One such tool is KoBoToolbox, which is the one a lot of Tella partners use because it's free and open-source. Because Tella is compatible with ODK, in theory it should work with any other ODK compatible tool for creating form templates.
For election monitoring projects, is Tella compatible with Election Monitoring (ELMO)?
ELMO is ODK compatible and so should be compatible with Tella. The forms a user creates on ELMO could be filled out and sent back to an organizational or personal repository, and users should then be able to store an organize all of the data in ELMO.
Does Horizontal offer customizable form templates for users who are just getting started using Tella?
Horizontal currently doesn’t offer customizable form templates, however they usually work directly with users to help them create their forms and set up the data collection infrastructure.
When data is uploaded from Tella, how is it stored? What is the backend service & infrastructure the organization uses?
There are two options for the back-end:
Use any ODK-compatible tool, like KoBoToolbox. You can either use the public server provided by the development team (that is hosted at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative), or install your own instance. Horizontal helps partners who work with sensitive data install and manage their own instance.
Horizontal is releasing something called Direct Upload. There is no web app or GUI yet, but it's a simple server-side software to receive files from Tella users. All Tella users need to do is connect to the server in the Tella settings, and then they can quickly upload media files. They can also set up "auto-upload" so that files are immediately uploaded as soon as they are taken, and "auto-delete" so that the files are deleted from their phone as soon as they are uploaded. This is new and not battle-tested yet and is going through a security audit at this very moment.
Is the data encrypted via the app or by default. If by default, are the keys stored locally?
Data is encrypted by the application, and the key is derived and not saved.
Tella currently lets users create a pattern lock to lock the app. Are there any plans to allow biometrics or passphrases to lock the app?
Yes, the next version of Tella will offer PIN, pattern, and passphrase locks. The team is still weighing whether or not to offer biometric locks.
How is the Tella audio recording feature often used?
It's used a lot by journalists who interview people and want to protect the interview when they travel through checkpoints and borders.
Does the audio recording show the peak sound and have the ability to store in various formats?
Unfortunately, Tella doesn’t have have sound peaking. Horizontal really wants to do it but hasn’t found a good library to implement it.
Tella also doesn’t support a variety of formats. The format the app uses is: AAC (ADTS), 44100Hz, mono, 32000b. The app does not do any audio processing or visualizing however the development team is planning to do so in coming versions of the app.
Are there any filters available to deal with background noise while recording?
There is no filter for background noise.
How are the accessibility features in Tella?
Currently the accessibility features are not good. Other than Horizontal’s continuous efforts to make the Tella as easy to use as possible, including for people with little or no tech literacy, they don't have any accessibility features.
Tella in Action on the Ground
What are some of the main Tella use cases?
Tella is deployed in about a dozen countries that Horizontal knows of. There is a really wide range of use cases for Tella: sometimes Tella is used simply as a vault on the user's device, to hide and protect photos and videos; more often, it's used to collect data in a structured way (for election monitoring, or human rights documentation, etc).
Are there any use cases from the MENA region?
Horizontal doesn’t know of any active deployments in the MENA region, however they have heard recently that local digital security trainers were training people on Tella to protect their files.
Tella has also had a few dozen downloads recently from "Israel/Palestine". Horizontal doesn’t know who is using the app there, however they assume it's Palestinian rights defenders. When there are a few dozen downloads at a time, it's usually an organization.
Are there organizations or activists using Tella in Brazil? If so, what is the use case there?
Horizontal has partners who work with indigenous communities, mainly in the state of Bahia, who use Tella to document attacks against defenders and land rights violations.
How is Tella being used in Indonesia?
In Indonesia, Tella is used mainly to document during protests. Excessive force by security forces, assault of journalists, and confiscation and destruction of mobile devices have increased especially with the ongoing protests against Omnibus Law.
Tella has also been tested out at digital security convenings in Southeast Asia as a potential tool to use to document what is currently happening in Thailand, Indonesia and Myanmar.
How does Horizontal measure the impact of Tella?
Horizontal works closely with many groups deploying Tella measures impact based on how happy those users are. There are groups who have kept using Tella for 2+ years, so the assumption is that it works for them. The Horizontal team is also in touch with those groups, or with organizations that support those groups, to hear about feature needs and improvement suggestions.
Tella actually has a relatively low number of users - about one thousand right now. However more and more organizations are deploying it, and reusing it for different projects after initial projects used Tella successfully.
Tella Language Access and Localization
In addition to Bahasa Indonesia, Portuguese (Brazil) and Spanish to support ongoing documentation work in Indonesia, Brazil, Nicaragua and Cuba, what other ongoing projects require language support?
Horizontal has had some projects, particularly on election monitoring, in Russian-speaking countries so keeping the app updated in Russian is a high priority.
French is in use and needed in Sub-Saharan Africa, where some digital security trainers suggest Tella as a tool, particularly for journalists.
Horizontal has heard from friends and partners around the MENA region that they would like Tella available in Arabic.
What are Tella’s current localization needs?
For Tella’s upcoming 1.7 release, translation and review are needed by November 1st!
The languages in need of translation and review support for ongoing projects include: Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, Belarusian, French, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish
Tella is currently localized on a translation platform called Lokalise, not in the Localization Lab Hub on Transifex. For more details on how to contribute to Tella localization, take a look at the Localization Lab wiki.
Get in Touch!
You can contact Raphael from the Horizontal team at raphael@hzontal.org with more questions, if you need support deploying Tella, or if you have feature requests.
You can also join the Tella Team on Horizontal's Mattermost.
Horizontal is starting to work on Tella 2.0 next week, so if you have requests for features, or major improvements you want to see, even pie-in-the-sky ideas, now is a good time to share!