Drones are being used by military units to quietly attack targets, and little is reported about it because of how little manpower is necessary to carry out such an operation. So an iPhone app like Drones+, which sends you a notification every time a drone strikes, sounds like a good idea as far as government transparency goes. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t feel the same way.
Over the span of a month, Wired’s Danger Room blog says Apple rejected the app three times, telling developer Josh Begley that the app is “objectionable”, “crude” and “not useful”. The weird thing is that the app is basically just a map and some words.
Begley is confused. Drones+ doesn’t present grisly images of corpses left in the aftermath of the strikes. It just tells users when a strike has occurred, going off a publicly available database of strikes compiled by the U.K.’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which compiles media accounts of the strikes.
Apple’s reasons seem to change every time Begley submits the app, and the consistency of these reasons is questionable. Why Apple would be so opposed to this app is not only bizarre, it’s troubling. For the rest of the story, be sure to check out the full article at Wired.