Four U.S. Senators have sent a letter to Apple urging it to pull several apps they claim help drunk drivers avoid the police.
“Giving drunk drivers a free tool to evade checkpoints, putting innocent families and children at risk, is a matter of public concern,” the senators said. “We hope that you will give our request to remove these applications from your store immediate consideration.”
According to the senators, there are “numerous” apps that help drivers identify DUI checkpoints, allowing drunk drivers to avoid them. One app has a real-time database of DUI checkpoints, while another allows its 10 million users to alert each other to DUI checkpoints in real time, the senators say.
The letter was sent to Scott Forstall, who is in charge of iPhone software at Apple.
The four Democratic senators include Harry Reid (D-NV), the Senate Majority Speaker. The others are Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and Tom Udall (D-NM).
Are there really numerous DUI checkpoint apps? And should they be pulled? Last year, I talked to Trapster (likely one of the apps targeted by the Senators), which was seeing a number of police departments using the app to highlight their own checkpoints. It’s just another way of increasing enforcement, the police say.
Here’s the full text of the letter that the senators sent to Scott Forstall:
March 22, 2011
Mr. Scott Forstall
Senior Vice President, iPhone Software
Apple, Inc.
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
Dear Mr. Forstall,
We write today with grave concern regarding the ease with which downloadable applications for the iPhone, iPad and other Apple, Inc. products allow customers to identify where local police officers have set up DUI checkpoints. With more than 10,000 Americans dying in drunk-driving crashes every year, providing access to iPhone and iPad applications that alert users to DUI checkpoints is harmful to public safety.
We know that your company shares our desire to end the scourge of drunk driving and we therefore would ask you to remove these applications from your store.
One application, your company acknowledges in the product description, contains a database of DUI checkpoints updated in real-time. Another application, with more than 10 million users, also allows users to alert each other to DUI checkpoints in real time.
Police officers from across the country have voiced concern about these products, with one police Captain saying, “If people are going to use those, what other purpose are they going to use them for except to drink and drive?” With a person dying every 50 minutes in a drunk-driving crash, this technology should not be promoted to your customers – in fact, it shouldn’t even be available.
We appreciate the technology that has allowed millions of Americans to have information at their fingertips, but giving drunk drivers a free tool to evade checkpoints, putting innocent families and children at risk, is a matter of public concern. We hope that you will give our request to remove these applications from your store immediate consideration.
Thank you for your prompt and careful consideration of this matter. Should you have additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact our offices.
Sincerely,
Senator Reid
Senator Schumer
Senator Lautenberg
Senator Schumer
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
24 responses to “Senators Call On Apple To Pull DUI Checkpoint Apps”
Well, if they want the apps banned… ban Twitter too, well actually the whole internet.
People will still tweet checkpoints, speed traps, bad wrecks etc.
Totally agree with you, and by the way, these senators I’m sure use the same apps to keep their drunk asses from getting nailed by the cops too. Hypocrites!
I understand checkpoints have survived legal challenges, but I will never understand why. They still seem like unlawful detainment to me. I assume the vast majority of people passing through them are law abiding. This means innocent people are being detained with no probable cause and checked for signs of illegal activity via a visual search.
I saw a video once that someone recorded while he passed through a checkpoint. The dialog went something like this:
Driver: Can I just go through without being checked?
Police: No
Driver: So you are officially arresting me then?
Police: No
Driver: Well are you officially detaining me then?
Police: No
Driver: If you aren’t arresting me, and you aren’t detaining me, then I must be free to go, right?
Police: Ummmm…
It just seems like there’s some sort of loophole where you are not free to go even though you haven’t done anything wrong, you aren’t considered to be detained (even though you clearly are), you aren’t being arrested, and there is no probable cause for any of it.
Driving down the road in a legal manner should not result in a stop, detainment, driver examination, and visual search. This is something that should occur in police states, not the United States.
“Drunk Driving” checpoints are used by municipalities to raise revenue. That’s it. They issue citations for tail lights, license plate lights, expired registration tags, expired driver’s licenses, tinted windows, driving without insurance, not wearing seatbelts, oh, and maybe a DUI or two.
This app threatens a way of life, a steady stream of cash. Many of the municipalities surrounding Los Angelus, especially Hawthorne, Inglewood, and Compton are notorious for having regular checkpoints. The obvious sign that they are about revenue, and not DUI is that they are regularly conducted at 6:00-8:00 a.m. from Monday through Friday! Not on weekends or holidays as you would expect!!
They aren’t DUI checkpoints, they are prohibition checkpoints. Very very few of the arrests they make are of people with BAC within the level where most DUI accidents occur. The vast majority of arrests are for contraband such as cannabis.
They are really just anti-freedom authoritarian checkpoints disguised as public safety. However, they do not even do the job they are using as a justification to search people at random.
With the laws passed by this fearsome foursome, they probably should be arrested for LUI (Lawyering Under the Influence). These are the worst of the worst in the Senate. Lautenturd is senile, there isn’t a camera that Schumer doesn’t like, Harry Reid is bought and paid for, and Tom Udall, who the heck are you? Never heard of you.
The real difficulty is proving there is any (greater) efficacy to these checkpoints. There has not been any definitive information either confirming or disputing this. In addition, it’s a common practice for police departments to ADVERTISE when and where they will be staging checkpoints. Based on this, I surmise that the real impact is through raised awareness, not actual arrests.
Besides, didn’t the cops say the same thing about speeding? Not just web sites that show you speed traps, but the use of radar detectors, and even before that they complained about AAA marking speed traps on their Trip-Tiks.
If drunk drivers are looking at an iphone app while attempting to drive. This will make it a lot easier for them to be caught. They are going to get into an accident way before they avoid any checkpoints.
IMHO, its a far stretch for the Senators to jump to the assumption that drunk drivers can operate (let alone read) their iPhones while driving. Duhhhh. These apps are for the sober public and designated drivers. So they can avoid the check points, police harassment, and the unexpected citation for whatever the officers may find (broken light, expired registration, etc.).
I note that all four senators are democrats……..leaders in taking rights away from people while pretending otherwise.
What? Drunk can drive & on the apps?
I’ll believe DUI checkpoints are designed to stop drunk driving when they post them outside the parking lots of NFL games and in front of popular bars at 2am. Until you see them take obvious steps to stop drunk driving, the current efforts are simply revenue generators as Joe has stated below