US Senators ask Apple to pull DUI checkpoint apps
news.cnet.com
news.cnet.com
this technology should not be promoted to your customers--in fact, it shouldn't even be available.
It shouldn't even be available? That sounds sketchy to me. I know slippery slope is a logical fallacy, but if this line of reasoning holds, couldn't you say the same thing about encryption? It enables people who wish to engage in illegal activities to avoid government authority and thus, shouldn't even be available? Scary.
Then why isn't the app called "traffic stop"? Its called "Tipsy" or something like that. It covers only DUI traffic stops. Who is this marketing to? Who is buying it? We all know the answer.
Yes, its good to protect freedom of speech. Its also good to make the streets safer. And DUI is a real problem, not a strawman.
Just like if it were a major, road-blocking accident, the answer for me (and I'm sure many people who were not sober) was U-turn and reroute. There's no reason why law abiding citizens should have to be inconvenienced by these dubiously effective law enforcement efforts, and if there's a tool based on protected free speech that allows us to avoid them, so much the better. LE can catch drunks in other more effective ways that don't inconvenience the law abiding citizenry.
http://www.albuquerquecriminallawyerblog.com/2009/09/uturn-t...
The principle being defended here is that you are free to share that information under the 1st amendment, however the method of sharing may be performed. It's the reason being a member of the KKK or the Westboro Baptist Church and saying hateful things doesn't automatically make you a criminal. Whether you agree with the speech or not shouldn't affect it's possibility to be spoken.
The point is that it doesn't really matter. The very first constitutional amendment ensures that the government's power is limited such that it doesn't need to evaluate the content of its citizens' speech.
Freedom of speech is expressly limited in cases such as hollering "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. How about defeating police efforts to catch murderers? Child molestors? Drunk drivers?
Seems like its not cut-and-dried is all I'm saying.
It's an invariant property of the rule of law that when something isn't explicitly illegal, it's legal. And yes, many "free" western countries do have problems with this.
But you're right that if Apple makes it unavailable, it will have a similar effect as if their customers weren't allowed to use it.
If your goal is to catch people driving drunk, then no, it doesn't make sense to announce the locations of DUI checkpoints. If however your goal is to prevent people from driving drunk in the first place, it might make sense to announce checkpoints at a number of locations throughout the city. If the potential drunk driver knows he can't go too many places without passing though a checkpoint he may decide to just stay home.
1. It hops to discourage people from drinking and driving in the first place by planting the idea that there will be checkpoints. The best time to avoid DUIs is before the driver starts drinking. Ideally, they'll make alternative arrangements to get home from wherever it is they're going rather than taking the car and figuring it out after;
2. To enable those capable of driving to avoid the checkpoints. The premise for this is that those who are drinking and driving either are capable of making this kind of rational forethought or they're not and the police are largely interested in catches those that aren't; and
3. Possibly to divert those that are borderline cases from driving through areas where they might cause the most damage if something does go wrong.
I know people like to see speed traps and DUI checkpoints as cynical revenue-raising initiatives but you'd be surprised to learn that some people just don't want others to act irresponsibly by driving several tons of metal at high speed while impaired, possibly harming or killing themselves or others.
They used to tell me they didn't feel right "baiting" drunk drivers, for instance sitting hidden outside of popular bars and waiting for closing time. They felt like if they observed you driving impaired, you got pulled over, and if you were drunk you got a ticket. To them this was just the right way to act.
I think there is a natural balance between people being outrageously and stupidly human and law enforcement needing to control the population. In my opinion, the balance has shifted too far to law enforcement's side.
I don't see anything wrong with the apps. I wouldn't use one, but I really hope Apple doesn't come down on the wrong side here. The gay thing was bad enough. Simply because somebody is unhappy or raises a ruckus shouldn't mean that some developer's app can't be purchased. That's crazy. If it breaks somebody's phone? Sure. If it hurts the user? Fine. But just because a bunch of senators wrote a letter? Not good.
I note that all of the Senators involved receive substantial contributions from both police management and union groups. I understand that a monitored population is easier to control, and I understand that these groups seek to lobby to make their jobs easier (and therefore the public safer), but there has to be limits to these things. If not for constitutional reasons just because of common sense.
I can't understand that at all. I would agree if it were a victimless crime, or perhaps if they were actually baiting them. But this sounds like a great and efficient use of police time. Are there any circumstances where they shouldn't stop drunk drivers??
If thieves predictably showed up at a store to steal something, should the police not camp out and take advantage of their predictability?
Contrary to popular libertarian thought, I'm happy with new laws as long as they are consistent. If we want to do things to reduce risk of death while driving I don't especially like having government rules, but I'll take them as long as they are self-consistent.
The thing with drinking and driving is that, contrary to popular belief, you don't drink four beers and go run over a school bus full of orphans. Most drunk people drive fine for hundreds of trips.
What the actual situation is that drinking increases your odds of having an accident. It does not make it a certainty. Not by any means.
So as long as we equally prosecute all of those things that increases the odds of having an accident by the same percentage by the same punishment, I'm happy with a compromise. That means cell phone usage, arguing while speeding, etc. If it's as dangerous as X and society needs to intervene, it's as dangerous as X.
Of course, framing the issue this way brings up the great problem with DUI -- it's an emotional, moral issue that somebody wants the law to fix. We are "offended" by the drunk driver running over the orphan in a way that we are not by the cell phone user doing the same thing.
When people talk about "legislating morality", they are not talking about pulling words from some holy book and trying to make a constitutional amendment out of it. I wish that it were so simple. Instead, it happens when people of all faiths, including atheists, become morally outraged at some sort of behavior and seek to punish it in a way different from other behavior with similar effects on society.
I'll probably get downvoted into oblivion for this comment, but all I'm pleading for is a little dispassionate logic here. I fully understand this is a very emotional issue for lots of people. (And I sympathize with those people) In no way at all do I condone drinking and driving.
I don't know that this is true, but even if it was I don't know that it's useful information in terms of minimizing harm, just as pointing out that some people smoke their whole lives, live to be 90 and die in their sleep.
The devil is in the averages. The data shows that drunk drivers kill more people than sober drivers.
About the rest of your post, no downvote from me, you make a great point. You're right that society treats drunk driving as worse, but don't forget that texting while driving is a (relatively) new problem. Drunk driving used to be fine by society, and then values changed. Texting while driving is now undergoing a similar change, we're just much earlier in the process.
In principle you're right though, if texting while driving kills people (and it does) then we should treat that as aggressively as drunk driving.
Perhaps the difference here is that you can camp a bar, whereas it's harder to camp texters. ;)
There is, of course, the argument that punishing people that try to drive after drinking too much may get them to change their behavior. Regardless, doing it this way makes one wonder if income from tickets, rather than safety, is the real goal.
About income from tickets vs safety, catching people who are in the act this way is both. It's not like they get the ticket and then let them drive away. When you catch and prevent someone from driving drunk you improve safety as well.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1493749
If Congress or a state legislature tries to ban these apps, I think the laws will probably get overturned. However, if Apple decides that they think these apps are in poor taste and shouldn't be part of their ecosystem, I'm fine with that. They've blocked apps that are far less offensive to me.
The other interesting question is liability. If a driver were to use one of these apps to circumvent a DUI checkpoint and then kill or injure someone in a car accident, I wonder if the app maker (or Apple?) would bear some liability. I don't think that free speech would offer much protection in this kind of case.
Trapster was designed from the ground up to be a platform for drivers to share relevant geo data.
The Trapster moderators have worked to curb DUI checkpoint sharing since its inception but users find ways around it.
So really this is a platform discussion - is it the platform's responsibility to proactively moderate the content?
If so doesn't that have wider implications for Twitter, Facebook, etc?
Since the goal was to prevent speeding, it didn't matter if they slowed down because they wanted to avoid a ticket so long as they slowed down.
These days they don't do so anymore because it is a nice way to pad government coffers, but it would be nice to build such an app.
Is the content legal? Then it's available on the app store. Is it illegal? Then it's not.
Does it offend some group or the other? It doesn't matter. Does it cause displeasure to a bunch of lawmakers? Tough luck.
But when Apple starts to pull apps that offend minorities, it has to take all those requests into consideration, and produce justification as to why it pulls this and allows that.
1) If a person is so impaired to drive, he will be even more impaired to operate and understand an app on a tiny freakn device.
2) Maybe the police shouldn't setup any checkpoint. Instead the check should happen in random places on the street.
3) Think of legislation or creating better safety standards for Cars, so the manufacturers are forced device cars that can detect impairment of the driver and not start at all. This option can create more jobs, inovations, etc.
These morons are freakn shame to our democracy!
Instead there was a 3rd party site where you could download an updated database of accident black spots - the ones where they put speed cameras.