Homeland Security app: 'See something, send something'

[CaseyJones]

http://dispatchpolitics.dispatch.com/content/blogs/the-daily-briefing/2014/04/4-11-14-safer-ohio-app.html


Ohio Homeland Security officials are asking smartphone users to “see something, send something” with the release of an app to forward reports and photos of suspicious activity.

The “A Safer Ohio” app for both Apple and Android devices is being released shortly before the one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15.

The app now avaiable for free online allows Ohioans to relay both tips and photos of questionable activity to Homeland Security analysts for examination and potential investigation. Here's a YouTube video on how the app works.

Officials hope Ohioans might use “Safer Ohio” to point out anything suspicious they spot at spring and summer events that attract large crowds.

“The public’s reporting of suspicious activity is one of our best defenses against terrorist threats …,” Ohio Department of Public Safety Director John Born said in a statement.

[Suzanimal]

I would love it if people used the app to report cops and government employees breaking laws but unfortunately the only assholes who would use such a thing are probably just tattle-tell, busy bodies - they love this kind of stuff.

[mello]

The next time I fly I can use the app to report how the TSA gives my 78-year-old mother an unnecessary Guantanamo-style frisking.

[Paulbot99]

Don't get it. It's Spyware! ;)

[fisharmor]

I would love it if people used the app to report cops and government employees breaking laws but unfortunately the only assholes who would use such a thing are probably just tattle-tell, busy bodies - they love this kind of stuff.

I would totally do that, if I didn't think it would result in my getting waterboarded, losing a few digits, and my family being reduced to eating out of dumpsters.

[Anti Federalist]

And this goes here:

Contrary to popular belief, the Gestapo was not the all-pervasive, omnipotent agency in German society.

In Germany proper, many towns and cities had fewer than 50 official Gestapo personnel. For example, in 1939 Stettin and Frankfurt am Main only had a total of 41 Gestapo men combined. In Düsseldorf, the local Gestapo office of only 281 men were responsible for the entire Lower Rhine region, which comprised 4 million people. "V-men", as undercover Gestapo agents were known, were used to infiltrate Social Democratic and Communist opposition groups, but this was more the exception, not the rule.

The Gestapo office in Saarbrücken had 50 full-term informers in 1939. The District Office in Nuremberg, which had the responsibility for all of northern Bavaria, employed a total of 80–100 full-term informers between 1943 and 1945.

The vast majority of Gestapo informers were not full-term informers working undercover, but were rather ordinary citizens who for whatever reason chose to denounce those they knew to the Gestapo.

According to Canadian historian Robert Gellately's analysis of the local offices established, the Gestapo was—for the most part—made up of bureaucrats and clerical workers who depended upon denunciations by citizens for their information.

Gellately argued that it was because of the widespread willingness of Germans to inform on each other to the Gestapo that Germany between 1933 and 1945 was a prime example of panopticism.

Indeed, the Gestapo—at times—was overwhelmed with denunciations and most of its time was spent sorting out the credible from the less credible denunciations.

Many of the local offices were understaffed and overworked, struggling with the paper load caused by so many denunciations.

Gellately has also suggested that the Gestapo was "a reactive organization" "...which was constructed within German society and whose functioning was structurally dependent on the continuing co-operation of German citizens".

[moostraks]

*Bangs head on table* Like this won't be abused by vindictive people looking to get even with others. Or narcissistic jerks who are drama queen attention addicts. All they care is they justify their overblown budgets by claiming the need to investigate a ton of meaningless calls on the pretense of preventing terrorism.

[Danke]

Don't get it. It's Spyware! ;)

Oh great. Now you tell me.