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07 October 2010

Snap Scouts

Okay so I came across this by accident. At first I thought it was a joke and I laughed. Then I looked into this and realized it's not a joke at all. Snap Scouts . . . sounds pretty innocent, right? Take a look at the picture below.


According to the website: "Want to earn tons of cool badges and prizes while competing with your friends to see who can be the best American? Download the SnapScouts app for your Android phone (iPhone app coming soon) and get started patrolling your neighborhood. It's up to you to keep America safe! If you see something suspicious, Snap it! If you see someone who doesn't belong, Snap it! Not sure if someone or something is suspicious? Snap it anyway! Play with your friends and family to see who can get the best prizes. Join the SnapScouts today!"

Hello Hitler Youth anyone? How dare someone think that it's okay to use our children in this way! And you know, they will likely use them most against us. Take my family for example. We homeschool. Many people consider that to be sort of weird and some people even think of it as abusive (yes, we're denying our children the right to have their heads flushed by jocks and to have inappropriate relations with other 9 year olds between classes). I'm sure that this system could possibly catch a crime, but how often will that happen? According to the website, 600 crimes have been reported already in 3 countries. How much more often will they 'catch' innocent people and send their pictures to be profiled for later use?

Snap Scouts asks their participants to: 'Once you've found something suspicious or caught someone in the act, you can tag it to report what type of crime it or just to let us know it "Looks Suspicious". After you've tagged it, you can enter the name and address of the people in the photo, too. The photo gets submitted to our super secret servers, where a team of trained security professionals reviews every image for possible illegal activity.'

Are you frightened yet? As my husband put it, 'it's like 1984 with a cartoon finish'. And just remember that 'SnapScouts was designed and developed for children to use, before they form stereotypes of other people. They're the perfect reporters, unbiased and unprejudiced by media concepts'. So that means that we should absolutely raise our children to spy on their neighbors because they are such perfect reporters! If this disgusts you, give me a 'heck yeah!'

Mrs. Yoder

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