Yelp, the multinational corporation that posts crowd-sourced reviews of business, has teamed up with the feds.
From Yelp’s official blog:
We encourage Yelpers to review any of the thousands of agency field offices, TSA checkpoints, national parks, Social Security Administration offices, landmarks and other places already listed on Yelp if you have good or bad feedback to share about your experiences. Not only is it helpful to others who are looking for information on these services, but you can actually make an impact by sharing your feedback directly with the source.
Yelp also partnered with ProPublica. ProPublica bills itself as a newsroom. It is funded by George Soros, the Ford Foundation, which is linked to the CIA, and received $26 million from secret donors.
DigitalGov claims the Yelp effort constitutes “new ways to use customer insights to improve citizen services,” such as dangerous full-body scans and invasive pat-downs at airports.
Critics will be obliged to reveal the identities to the government, at least in Virginia.
In 2014 a Virginia Court of Appeals ruled that Yelp users have no right to anonymity when they post negative comments on the website.
On Tuesday Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina went on Yelp to complain about the TSA.
The TSA spent $160 million of your taxpayer dollars on body scanners that have a 96% failure rate. Unfortunately, these stories of inept federal bureaucracies have become far too common… The American people are tired of a professional political class that speaks in platitudes and cannot get anything done. Whatever your cause, whatever your issue, whatever festering problem you hoped would be resolved, the political class has failed you.
Fiorina is concerned about the “failure rate” of body scanners, not the fact the machines and invasive pat-downs violate the constitutional rights of citizens.
Polls recorded strong opposition after the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA implemented more aggressive “enhanced security measures” at airports around the country in November, 2010.
A Zogby International poll found that 48% of potential travelers would seek alternatives to flying because of the new measures. 61% oppose the use of scanners and invasive pat-downs and 48% said the procedures are a violation of privacy rights.
Fiorina did not address this opposition or the privacy issue. Instead, she said Americans are perturbed by government that “cannot get anything done.”
The Emergency Election Sale is now live! Get 30% to 60% off our most popular products today!
