Sex Offenders' App - Discuss

[Stuart Cosgrove]

Apple's US iTunes' store is offering a GPS app that allows you to see a list of sex offenders based on your current location, or it allows you to manually enter an address. The app then searches the database and lists the sexual offenders based on their proximity to the location you gave.

You can click on any of these names to get a picture of the person, their information like date of birth, height, weight, and a picture. And you can also see the specific sexual crime they were charged with.

A service already exists for America's Most Wanted too.

I know this is a deeply divisive issue - and emotions run high - but my heart sinks when I think of who and why people might use such a technology.

That said I don't have kids.

I'd welcome other views on this one.

[Vincent Gibson]

The question is - if there was one for Scotland and it was free to try on your phone , would you?

[Joe Tree]

Do the locations of offenders who also own iPhones update in real time?

I think it's healthy to debate the pros and cons of making this sort of information publicly available (I would probably argue against), but an iPhone app? Jeez.

[Innes Smith]

I wonder what the green pin signifies? Is that for a Vulcan paedo?
I can't wait to get 'Witchfinder App'; then those pointy nosed concubines of the devil will be getting a right good ducking*.


* Innocent Defendants may be at risk of drowning - but, hey, you've got to break a few witches to make an omelette, right?!

[Anne Bonnar]

@ Matt "I feel that an app like this endangers life". Very protective parents would say the opposite and arguably would use the App for their own info only.

Personally I find the app extremely distasteful

[Matt Johnston]

The proposition for OpenDataNI is information that is not personally identifiable. While I don't want to live next door to a Kiddie-Fa-Diddler, I feel that an app like this endangers life and if we wanted to punish them with death, we should have kept the death penalty.

For Open Data - no individual should be personally identifiable.

[Ewan McIntosh]

Someone pointed out on Twitter, too, that perhaps being the 'Featured Member' this week is not such an attractive proposition next to this blog post ;-)

[Ewan McIntosh]

An example of information being made free without thinking about who would use it for what effect. America's Most Wanted is actually a different thing, I reckon, since it's helping use the crowd to spot and call in the police on dangerous individuals. But this is for people who have been convicted. It serves only two purposes:
* to help me work out where I do not want to live with my family
* to help me send the boys around, if that were my wont
* to help sex offenders from out of town find out where they can get involved.

The first is potentially useful (although every area of every ilk has its share of undesirables I wouldn't want to live near), but the other two options aren't what freeing information up is about.