Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Iranian App Helps Users Avoid Morality Police (reuters.com)

Posted by timothy on from the when-software-is-good dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Young people in Iran are using a new app called Gershad (a contraction of 'Gashte Ershad', or 'guidance patrol'), to avoid the 'morality police' by sharing the location of checkpoints with other users. At checkpoints strict Islamic dress and behavior codes are enforced, and their ad hoc nature can make them difficult to avoid. Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said of Gershad, "This is an innovative idea and I believe it will lead to many other creative apps which will address the gap between society and government in Iran."

11 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. That's nice, but... by jcr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What Iran really needs is a revolution to overthrow those theocratic motherfuckers.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    1. Re:That's nice, but... by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A revolution? Fuck, a revolution is what got them into that shit, you really think you can motivate them to try again?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:That's nice, but... by cold+fjord · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It might be a while. The Obama administration left the last big attempt at reform to twist in the wind.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    3. Re:That's nice, but... by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Uh...it was a revolution that got them in this mess in the first place. Jimmy Carter was completely fooled by the Ayatollah Khomeni, and thought he was a decent fellow who wanted a grassroots revolution. 35 years ago, under the Shah and his Savak secret police, Iranian - no, scratch that, Persian women walked freely in the streets dressed however they liked. After the revolution? Let's just say that when they renamed the country the Islamic Republic of Iran (its official name still today), they weren't screwing around. Carter had the nerve to lecture the Ayatollahs on Islamic law, telling them how Allah does not justify cruelty to women. As if HE had memorized the Koran.

      And you know the real losers of the Iranian revolution? The liberals. After accepting their help to overthrow the Shah, the Ayatollahs - in a completely unanticipated and surprising move that nobody, and I mean nobody saw coming except everyone in the world - liquidated the liberals in the same way they liquidated the hated Savak. Useful idiots, as always.

      What happened afterwards? Everything everyone said was going to happen. Soviets invade Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq go to war, Pasdaran copy Communist technique of clearing minefields with human wave attacks, and Morality Police hit the streets telling women to cover up. And it was all America's fault.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    4. Re:That's nice, but... by nomadic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      " The man is legitimately popular and he has Morality Police on the streets, with the full support of the people who voted for him. It can happen here, people."

      First, he doesn't have anyone on the streets, because he is no longer president of Iran. Secondly, he was widely unpopular, particularly with the increasingly powerful educated urban population, who got Rouhani elected.

    5. Re:That's nice, but... by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > The problem for the Iranians wasn't the revolution, but the hijacking of the revolution by the Islamists.

      Revolutions are almost always hijacked, usually by the most fanatical of the revolutionaries. It's _amazing_ that US politics were so thoughtful and cautious in the first 30 years after the American Revolution.

  2. Morality Police - coming soon to the USA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    With our wonderful influx of immigrants who don't wish to assimilate with our western culture, you can expect this here soon... just as Sharia law has already wormed it's way in Seattle and other liberal havens. And you can thank LIBERALS for this when it happens. The irony.

    1. Re:Morality Police - coming soon to the USA... by _merlin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You've already got your own morality police: the feminists, SJWs, etc. turning campuses into "safe spaces" and branding words and behaviours "problematic".

  3. Meanwhile, back in reality by Snotnose · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The head nutjobs are saying "This is an innovative idea and I believe it will lead to not only arrests for having the app on your phone, but by poisoning the data we can catch even more infidels".

  4. Re:Bernie Sanders 2016 by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah, because this place will be so much better with Slashdot, Google, Facebook, Comcast, Ford, Intel, Microsoft, etc, running the government...

    Fascism is for the historically ignorant.

    TFTFY.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  5. Re:Less Obama by cold+fjord · · Score: 1, Insightful

    No, what Iran needs is for our Right Wing politicians to stop meddling in their politics. They were well on their way to modernizing until we decided they were just a little too 'commie' for our tastes and disposed their democratically elected gov't.

    I can help you with that point of confusion. The person that overthrew the democratically elected Iranian government was the Iranian Prime Minister. He dissolved parliament, was ruling by decree, faked an election, and caused the legitimate head of state (the Shah) to flee. The US and UK assisted in restoring Iran's legitimate head of state to power. It's history, I suggest you look into it.

    As to being "too commie", most of the world has rejected that. It sucks as a form of government and delivers substandard results, usually with great loss of life and enormous oppression. Communist regimes were pretty much environmental horror shows with poisonous legacies that will last for decades or longer.

    I'm willing to go so far as to agree that Obama is currently the greatest American president currently in power. He isn't a great American president. The true miracle is that things haven't turned out worse given his close relationship with the man that wrote Prarie Fire .

    Your ideas about "pointless war" so "they could line their pockets" and "use fear to control America" doesn't stand much scrutiny. If the "mighty" MIC was so powerful, how did it go from 40% of GDP at the end of WW2 to only about 4.5% GDP today? What other institution would you consider super threatening if it lost 90% of the resources it used to control?

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell