Sunday, March 27, 2011

Government to Censor Twitter?

Ok, maybe the post subject is a little extreme, but read this article and see if you could see it happening.

Currently, four Senators (Lautenberg, Reid, Schumer and Udail) do not approve of Apps on the iPhone or the Android that warn drivers that they are approaching sobriety checkpoints. Rather than make it illegal to use such apps, politicians try to strong arm Google and Apple to remove them instead.

The reason they do this is that politicians know there would be little or know way to enforce and also realize the constitutionality of that type of  law in the first place.  Lastly, where would it end?  What would say that they couldn’t edit/censor Facebook postings or Twitter #’s that accomplish the same thing? 

If I were Apple or Google, I would tell them to go pound sand and worry about more important things in the US, like the high levels of unemployment in their states, the number of illegals or the rampant drug use.

US senators target 'drink driving apps'

United States senators have cried foul over applications for smart phones that they say enable people to drive drunk with less chance of getting caught.
Senators Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Harry Reid of Nevada, Charles Schumer of New York and Tom Udail of New Mexico, all Democrats, signed a letter sent to Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, RiM's James Balsille and Scott Forstall, Apple executive in charge of software for iPhone.

"Giving drunk drivers a free tool to evade checkpoints, putting innocent families and children at risk, is a matter of public concern," the letter from the senators states. They have asked the firms to remove the apps from stores, saying they present a real threat to public safety.

The apps apparently allow users to alert each other to the locations of police stops. The letter does not name the apps specifically, but claim they have as many as 10 million users and offer databases of police checkpoints updated in real-time.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, around 10,000 people are killed each year in accidents that involve drunk drivers.

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