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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."

12 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 DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Do you know ANYTHING about Iran? WTF? The Islamic government is genuinely popular. They TRIED to have a revolution a few years ago and it went nowhere. It failed even though Western leftists changed their Twitter pages backgrounds to green in support. I know, I'm as clueless as you - how could such a move have failed?

      You want to know something really chilling? Ahmedinajad won in the 2005 election because he pulled a Bernie Sanders - he promised to give free (oil) money to ordinary folks. 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.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    5. Re:That's nice, but... by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If we've learned anything from the Arab Spring it's that most of the people living there favor these types of religiously oppressive governments, so any overthrow of the existing power structure is more likely than not to end up with something worse taking its place. If Iran were destabilized right now, they'd end up being partially controlled by ISIS. As bad as Hussein or Assad might be, at least they kept a lid on that shit.

      I think a good chunk of the Middle East might be sliding towards some hopeless cycle for the foreseeable future because anyone intelligent enough to see why that kind of system is bad is likely to leave for other, less oppressive countries. The people who could be a catalyst for reform aren't there any longer to make improvements and it's no surprise that they don't want to stick around when it's relatively easy to move elsewhere and end up in a country where you won't be killed for your religious beliefs or stoned to death for your sexual preferences.

    6. 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.

    7. Re:That's nice, but... by Gavagai80 · · Score: 3, Informative

      the same way Communism was outlawed in Russia after 1991.

      That would be not at all, of course. The communist party of Russia holds 92 seats in the Duma, and runs their candidate against Putin in the presidential elections as well.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank
    8. 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".

  3. What's the big deal? by epyT-R · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They're simply enforcing Iran's version of political correctness. As stalwart adherents of PC here in the west, we should welcome such diversity in the behavioral expectations forced on people for the sake of the insecure and easily offended.

  4. Re:Less Obama by dunkelfalke · · Score: 3, Informative

    You have your history confused even more, which is not surprising, due to your your political views and general stupidity. The shah was installed by the Brits in first place by invading Iran and forcing the previous shah to abdicate. Oh by the way, that previous shah was also installed by the Brits 20 years before.
    And Mosaddegh was democratically elected.

    --
    "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap