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The US State Department has so far launched a dozen apps to help aid pro-democracy activists around the world, including a "panic button" app that wipes a cell phone's address book.
In an uncharacteristically cool move, the United States government has allotted millions of dollars to develop technology meant to aid pro-democracy activists around the world, Reuters reports.
A cell phone “panic button” app, for instance, will completely wipe a phone’s address book, and automatically send out an emergency signal to other activists. Under development by the US State Department, this activist app is one of a number of new technologies the US is promoting to help spread democracy in countries with oppressive governments.
“We’ve been trying to keep below the radar on this, because a lot of the people we are working with are operating in very sensitive environments,” said Michael Posner, assistant US secretary of state for human rights and labor.
At the helm of the State Department’s democracy-spreading technology initiative is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who’s pushing the expansion of Internet freedoms to help fuel citizen-led movements that use social networking services like Facebook and Twitter. The plan follows a wave of pro-democracy demonstrations in countries across the Middle East and Northern Africa.
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