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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."

7 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. 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".