Imagine an iPhone app that would give you real time updates about the location of violent gangs that want to rob you at gunpoint and mess your life up as much as possible.  Gangs whose members are known for committing murder and getting away with it.  Gangs that use tazers on old people and children and anyone else they feel like zapping.  How could anyone object to such a useful app?

Several such apps exist and congress weasels Charles Schumer, Frank Lautenberg, Tom Udall and Harry Reid are so upset about them they’re demanding Apple remove them from their app store, because the gangs this protects us from are the police.

The Weasels claim making this information available is a threat to public safety. That requires believing the fiction that the police have something to do with public safety.  Road blocks are nothing more than revenue generators.  The same goes for the enforcement of most traffic laws – they are there to make money, not to keep the roads safe.

A while back I was stopped for not wearing a seat belt.  I was driving from one parking lot to another, down about 50 yards of road, at a slow speed with no one anywhere near me.  I usually wear my seat belt religiously, but neglected it this time.  I was given a ticket, of course.  The ticket was for $25, a slap-on-the-wrist punishment that fit the “crime.”  But there was an $85 surcharge attached to it, making it a $110 fine.  Can anyone, even a congress weasel, claim a 340% surcharge is about public safety?

The next day I was in the same shopping center, wearing my seat belt, and went to cut behind the shops.  I stopped when I saw the area was thickly infested with state troopers, stopping everyone and handing out more tickets.  Since that area wasn’t public property none of those tickets, if they were for moving violations, were valid, and the cops had to know that.  But most drivers wouldn’t, and the cops were using that ignorance to increase the state’s revenue.

The days of the cops being your friends are long gone (if they ever existed). They are a dangerous occupying army, and anyone who values their safety, property, or lives avoid them as much as possible.  Apps like this are not a problem – they are a solution.

– – –

Here’s another article on the subject, along with contact information for both the weasels and Apple.