Apple kills drone warning app

Let’s level for a moment. Armed military drone attacks are terrifying. So you can see why someone might want to know exactly when one happens.

The natural solution, as far as New York University graduate student Josh Begley was concerned, was to build an app. Thing is, he claims that Apple has repeatedly shot down his attempts to publish the app on the app store.

“I just wanted to make a simple app that would send a push notification every time there is a drone strike,” Begley said. “I was thinking about how hidden the drone war is and about ways to play with what happens in the pockets of smartphone users”.

His app, Drone+, tracks drone strikes by aggregating information from the UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism database. It comes with pop up notifications and pins the strike locations using Google Maps. People also have the option of seeing the details of each strike in more detail.

The app has apparently been rejected twice on technical grounds. In the latest rejection however, Apple says that some people might find the content objectionable. That’s a little bit odd. Especially seeing as the app doesn’t show any images of corpses killed by drone strikes. As Begley points out, he’s not exactly providing information that no one else out there is either. So it’s definitely not a security risk.

“If the content is found to be objectionable, and it’s literally just an aggregation of news, I don’t know how to change that,” the student told Wired.

“I didn’t really expect anyone to download the app if it was in the App Store,” he said. “That was the point; I don’t think people want to know when a drone strikes.”

Begley says he’s on the verge of giving up on building for iOS and seeing whether he might have better luck with the Google Play store.