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.
To be fair, there's a difference between "you shouldn't do this" and "you shouldn't be allowed to do this". At least in this letter, the senators are not explicitly trying or threatening to ban anything.
'Just asking' is a lot worse than following the legislative process. They are trying to use their influence to accomplish an effectively legislative outcome without oversight. This creates a dangerous gray area between law and intimidation. It's similar to when Visa, Mastercard, etc. were 'just asked' to stop dealing with Wikileaks. In fact, it is common for dictators and totalitarian regimes to rule through 'just asking' instead of law. Not a good precedent.
I was unclear. "You" was referring to Apple, not the customers. They're saying you shouldn't be making this available, not you shouldn't be allowed to make this available. Not even your customers shouldn't be allowed to use this, and I feel there's a distinction between something being generally unavailable and something being illegal.
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.
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?
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.
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.
DUI checkpoints are used as a convenient way to peek inside cars the police would have no cause to pull over under normal circumstances. Then, if they don't like your attitude, they can make up an excuse to turn your car inside out looking for something incriminating.
Avoiding checkpoints if you're sober and don't want the inconvenience of waiting in line at a checkpoint for one. Also see the explanations of other people in this thread describing how announcing the locations of the checkpoints ahead of time can be more effective.
Really? All these sales are to upstanding citizens wanting to save a traffic stop?
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.
The average speed trap doesn't affect traffic (unless you happen to be the person pulled over). DUI checkpoints often have miles of stopped cars waiting to go through.
I see what you're saying, but speed traps definitely cause significant bottlenecks in the DC area, probably because of rubbernecking and braking (or the fact that everyone is speeding).
The same reason it would be nice to know if a traffic-stopping car accident occurred: I would use it for shortening commute times. Why should I wait in line to tell an officer that I'm not doing anything illegal when I haven't been doing anything illegal?
Whatever. There's been more than one time where I was coming home from work at night and after the commute found a DUI checkpoint stationed on the main road right in front of my street. No way I was going to sit through the bullshit waiting just to "prove my innocence" as you seem to imply we all should.
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.
Slightly off topic but still relevant: There's actually legislation in some states that would permit the police to chase you if they see you purposefully trying to evade a DUI checkpoint. It differs by each state(or municipality?), but New Mexico seems to have enacted that:
Nobody is suggesting that drivers should be free to police themselves as far as the legality of the circumstances of their driving. This is simply a matter of freedom of speech -- if you see a police car doing radar on your drive home, and call your friend (after pulling over ;) ) who you know will be driving this way, to warn him, are you breaking any law?
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.
What possible uses does a blog-post explaining your fifth amendment rights have, outside of helping people who have something to hide, hide it from the police?
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.
They do list these stops in most papers and on local TV around the holidays, like someone else commented. Making an app just makes it easier to get the information.
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.
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.
My assumption was always that they did these announcements so that people would be inconvenienced and could avoid the checkpoints. The rationale being that if you're too drunk to drive, you probably forgot about the checkpoint anyway and are likely to get caught.
IANAL, but it is my understanding that police announce checkpoints for legal reasons. And if that is the case and the reasons are based on Federal Law or Constitutional decisions, it makes the request by Senators entirely inappropriate.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
> 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. ;)
It also causes harm to local business whose livelihood depends on selling alcohol. It's a simple fact that if a bar becomes known as a cop campground, people will go elsewhere. The law is not always black and white and cops know this.
True, so we really shouldn't limit it then since it is the public's best interests. We should stop all motorists periodically and check them for warrants, license, insurance, impairment level, maybe take a DNA sample in case they have committed a crime but haven't been caught yet. Probably should also allow searches of people's home and property in case there is criminal activity going on too. Probable cause is very overrated.
I think the point is that, instead of camping out and waiting for them to get into their cars so they can ticket them, maybe something more proactive should be done to prevent them from getting in their cars at all.
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.
I remember when I worked delivering Chinese food, waiting in an intersection to turn left. A police officer was sitting at the light across the street from me. I saw him, turned left and he promptly pulled me over. Turned out there was no left turn at that time of day. I was stunned that he watched me do it and then gave me a ticket rather than warn me, but my care about left turns was much higher because of it. He changed my lifelong behaviour because there was a real consequence (a ticket was very costly to me then at minimum wage). If he'd honked to warn me, I doubt I'd even remember the incident.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
While I'm all for the app, I think this is faulty reasoning. Checking an app for checkpoints and devising an alternate route when you're so drunk that you call an ex-girlfriend at 1AM is one matter, but there are plenty of people with over-the-legal-limit lagged reaction times who shouldn't be driving yet are able to parse out the info from an app.
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.