Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

March 25, 2016

Dodging the Morality Police

Filed under: Geography,Georeferencing,Geospatial Data,Mapping — Patrick Durusau @ 7:54 am

This location-based app helps young Iranians avoid ‘morality police’ by Aleks Buczkowski.

From the post:

Many young Iranians are pretty liberated guys. They like to party and wear fancy clothes but they happened to live in a country where it’s prohibited. There is special police force dedicated to ensuring Iranians follow strict rules on clothing and conduct, called the Gasht-e-Ershad (or Guidance Patrol, commonly known as the “morality police”). Part of their activities include setting up checkpoints around cities and randomly inspecting vehicles driving by.

Now there is a way to avoid the Ershad controls. An anonymous team of Iranian developers have come up with a crowdsource app that allow users marking risky spots on the city map to help others avoid it. Something like Waze but for a much different purpose.

The Gershad app is pretty simple and easy to use. Users can mark where they encounter the “morality police”. The data is added to a database and visualised on a map. The more reports in one place, the bolder the warning on the map. When the number decreases, the alert will fade gradually from the map. Simple as it is.

Sounds quite adaptable to tracking police, FBI agents, narcs, etc. in modern urban environments.

Over time, with enough reports, patterns for police patrols would emerge from the data.

Enjoy!

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