Does anybody really need an app to locate the nearest Starbucks in Milwaukee?  I mean, sure, it saves you from having to ask the guy standing three feet away from you, or swiveling you head from side to side and possibly straining something, but the task is readily accomplished without resort to cutting edge technology.

Others, however, have no analogue.

From  Common Dreams, our government is busy playing venture capitalist to encourage the creation of new apps designed to foster democracy around the world, with or without a mocha frappucino.

WASHINGTON – Some day soon, when pro-democracy campaigners have their cellphones confiscated by police, they’ll be able to hit the “panic button” — a special app that will both wipe out the phone’s address book and emit emergency alerts to other activists.

The panic button is one of the new technologies the U.S. State Department is promoting to equip pro-democracy activists in countries ranging from the Middle East to China with the tools to fight back against repressive governments.

Now that’s an app.  While the government may be thinking Tahrir Square, what about Washington Square Park?  The cops swoop in for a drug roundup and, bing, you hit the panic button.  No evidence here, officer, as all the street corner sellers scatter.

The U.S. technology initiative is part of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s push to expand Internet freedoms, pointing out the crucial role that on-line resources such as Twitter and Facebook have had in fueling pro-democracy movements in Iran, Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere.

The United States had budgeted some $50 million since 2008 to promote new technologies for social activists, focusing both on “circumvention” technology to help them work around government-imposed firewalls and on new strategies to protect their own communications and data from government intrusion.

Forget satellite borne lasers and missiles and think twitter as the critical technology for the development of freedom around the world.  While the efficacy of communication trends is secondary to the groundswell of opposition to dictatorial and oppressive regimes, it’s hard to coordinate an uprising without a way to communicate.  Think of what Ronny Reagan might have done if only he had an iPhone.

The irony, of course, is that this tech is being developed for revolutionaries around the world, but certainly not intended for domestic availability.  While the government is gung ho for freedom when it comes to unfriendly regimes,  not so much when it comes to free and unfettered communication at home.

The F.B.I. has been quietly laying the groundwork for years for a push to require Internet-based communications services — like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, BlackBerry and Skype — to design their systems with a built-in way to comply with wiretap orders. On Thursday, the bureau made its first full airing of the “going dark” problem.

“Due to the revolutionary expansion of communications technology in recent years, the government finds that it is rapidly losing ground in its ability to execute court orders with respect to Internet-based communications,” said the F.B.I.’s general counsel, Valerie Caproni.

There’s a lesson in here somewhere, though it may be no deeper than to order a new smartphone from the Verizon store in Bahrain rather than the one on the corner, the shiny new one with the panic button.  It might be useful to include an app that causes the phone to immediately start audio and video recording and transmitting the recording to an offsite server where it can remain, safe from being doctored or deleted.  Now there’s a useful app.

What this panic button concept suggests, however, is that there are potential applications that can have rather broadbased appeal and some dubious uses aside from their intended uses.  The millions being developed now for pedestrian commercial purposes barely scratch the surface of what we may look forward to in the future. 

How about some apps designed for the criminal defense bar?  Maybe a panic button that immediately connects to a criminal defense lawyer to assert a person’s right not to be questioned without a lawyer present?  And tells the nearest Starbucks to deliver a piping hot mocha frappucino to the local lockup?

H/T Ed at Blawg Review