The White House has an app now, and Trump wants you to report people to ICE on it
Want to report your friends and neighbors for extrajudicial kidnapping? The new White House app wants you to get in touch.
[Stevie Bonifield in The Verge]
A little history lesson from the Wiener Holocaust Library:
“In Nazi Germany, some citizens passed on information about their neighbours, family, and friends to the Gestapo . This was called informing. Nazi propaganda presented the Gestapo as an omnipresent , all-seeing, all-knowing group, but in reality there was just one secret police officer for approximately every 10,000 citizens of Nazi Germany. The Gestapo were therefore reliant on a network of thousands of informants.
The information passed on by informants typically accused someone of breaking the law or of being a criminal in some way. The information provided was not always based on fact and could often be rumour or suspicion.”
Meanwhile, in completely unrelated news, The Verge reports on a new app from the White House:
“A new official White House app on Android and iOS takes the content from the White House website and copies it into app format. […] A handful of tabs in the app mostly replicate pages that exist on the Trump Administration’s version of the White House website, including news, livestreams, social feeds, and a gallery. A prominent “Get in Touch” button on the social feeds tab includes an option for users to submit a tip to ICE, which takes them to a tip form on the ICE website.”
Wow, am I glad to be living in a time where everything is normal and the historical precedents are not literally screaming at us.
[Link]
