
US Senators ask Apple to pull DUI checkpoint apps - LordBodak
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20045942-37.html
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thecoffman
While I certainly don't condone driving while impaired - I feel like the
government trying to outright ban legal technologies that allow citizens to
avoid government authority sets a dangerous precedent.

 _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.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's going a bit far. People May use encryption for illegal activities. What
possible use does the DUI checkpoint software have, outside of enabling drunk
drivers?

~~~
JoelSutherland
Maybe I'm sober and don't want to wait in traffic. Or maybe I'm drunk and
don't want a ticket.

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.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Which is being stretched pretty thin to include "IPhone App" as "speech". But
ok.

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.

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lylejohnson
Where I live it's customary for the police to announce the locations of DUI
checkpoints on days that people are especially likely to be drinking and
driving (e.g. New Year's Eve). For awhile I didn't understand why they would
do this (and I know a lot of people who still don't get 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.

~~~
cletus
I believe it serves several purposes:

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.

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DanielBMarkham
When I was a teenager I knew a lot of cops.

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.

~~~
ekanes
> 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 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?

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tptacek
There are a lot of people (I'm not one of them), particularly movement
libertarians, who believe that blood alcohol limit laws are unreasonable.
Different people metabolize alcohol differently, what you want to eliminate is
the actual impairment, etc. If you're one of those people, camping out to
catch people just over the limit is an injustice, as it'll tag lots of people
who are innocent of impairment.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
When I drink, I stay home.

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.

~~~
ekanes
> Most drunk people drive fine for hundreds of trips.

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. ;)

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WillyF
Considering that flashing your headlights to warn oncoming motorists of speed
traps has been ruled by at least one court to be speech protected by the First
Amendment, you have to think that an app like this would too.

<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.

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aresant
The application with 10,000,000+ downloads they are referencing is Trapster.

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?

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tomjen3
It used to be that Danish police would tell the radio stations where they
would conduct station people with radar guns to check for people driving too
fast.

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.

~~~
bricestacey
I believe they still do this in the United States. At least, they did last I
lived in north Florida.

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warmfuzzykitten
Are they going to ask that browsers be removed from phones because they can be
used to access web apps that might allow drivers to avoid police? Why don't we
instead remove colossally stupid legislators from office?

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bambax
How much simpler it would be for Apple to simply follow the law instead of
trying to devise its own set of rules...

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.

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saidulislam
this is stupid as hell! there are so many other freakN priorities than sending
a letter like that to Apple or anyone. What's next? Are these senetors also
going to write to radar or laser detector makers/companies too saying you guys
shouldn't be making those devices? I don't drink and I don't condone drink and
drive either. Here are the things the senetor should think of

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!

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waterlesscloud
The real problem with a closed app ecosystem is that once everyone realizes a
tight control mechanism is in place, all the usual suspects (senators etc) are
going to come around trying to claim some power for themselves.

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tyhjmhytgfv
In the UK they got TomTom to remove the speed camera database from it's sat
nav.

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.

