A portion of the $30 million the U.S. State Department has set aside for “Internet Freedom Programs” this year is being used to develop a “panic button” for the mobile phones of protesters and activists in the Mideast and other hot spots.
The panic button app would “both wipe out the phone’s address book and emit emergency alerts to other activists,” Reuters reported. A version for Andorid phones is under way, while a Nokia version “is being considered,” TechCrunch reported over the weekend.
iPhone? No plans for a grant-funded app for that right now, TechCrunch says. Which seems to makes sense when you consider the average protester or activist in Cairo or Sana’a probably is carrying something a little less high-end than an iPhone.
“We’re working with a group of technology providers, giving small grants,” Reuters quoted Michael Posner, assistant U.S. secretary of state for human rights and labor, as saying. “We’re now going full speed ahead to get the money out the door.”
The Internet Freedom Programs seek to “foster freedom of expression and the free flow of information on the Internet and other connection technologies” and the mobile app development seems to fall under a couple of the overall objectives: “Building the technology capacity of digital activists and civil society in hostile internet environments” and “secure mobile communications.”
The government is “supporting a diverse portfolio of innovation rather than just funding big established technologies,” TechCrunch said. “It’s providing knowledge and connections, not just cash. And they are investing to incubate a new community focused on the intersection of technology and human rights.”
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Some are skeptical that the State Department can be nimble enough to drive such innovation, Wired reported.
When venture capital firms find a promising technology, they’re “able to turn lots of focus, attention, people, brainpower and resources to taking that to market, and the State Department doesn’t work that way,” Sheldon Himelfarb, a technology expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace, says.
“It’s really interesting to hear them talk about a venture capital-style approach, but try to unpack that. Apparently, they’re going to give money to lots of organizations in the hope of bringing about breakthrough technologies, but how are they going to bring them to market?”
The dark side of the technologies being deployed? That they might potentially fall into the wrong hands. From Reuters:
Secure on-line tools useful for underground pro-democracy activists might also be useful for drug cartels or terrorist cells, raising new law enforcement and national security issues that need to be resolved, Posner said.
“The fact is al Qaeda probably has their own way of gathering some of these technologies,” Posner said. “The goal here is to protect people who are, in a peaceful manner, working for human rights and working to have a more open debate.”
