Apple Bans New DUI Checkpoint Apps

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Apple on Thursday banned new apps that provide certain kinds of access to updates about the location of drunk-driving checkpoints, according to the San Francisco Business Times.

The company’s App Store developer review guidelines now say: “Apps which contain DUI checkpoints that are not published by law enforcement agencies, or encourage and enable drunk driving, will be rejected.”

Four Democrats in the Senate — Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ), Harry Reid (D-NV), Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), , and Tom Udall (D-NM), had urged Apple, as well as Research In Motion and Google, to ban the apps because they think the information encourages people to drive drunk.

However, the apps that have already made it into the store, and that enable people to crowdsource live information about DUI checkpoints are still available through iTunes. They include PhantomALERT and Trapster, among others.

Research in Motion had previously removed the apps, but Google had not. A representative said in a May senate hearing that the issue is being discussed “actively” within the company.

Critics of the senators’ point of view note that this kind of crowsourced locating of DUI checkpoints will move elsewhere. Twitter, for example, already features a DUI CheckPoint feed.

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