Parking Snitch App Allows You To Rat For Cut Of Fine

A parking snitch app has been proposed for the busybodies of Winnipeg, Canada so that they can use their smartphones to rat out fellow citizens who have parked illegally. Co-founder Chris Johnson of the app developing company announced Tuesday that the new SpotSquad app would allow you to snap pictures of people parked in handicapped spaces or beside fire hydrants — and then send the information to police in exchange for a percentage of the fine.

“If you can snap a picture and make $8, who’s not going to do that?” Johnson asked.

However, the cheeky Canadian also acknowledged that he hadn’t yet signed an agreement with anyone to make sure that you’d actually get a piece of the money if you reported the parking violator.

There was no word on whether or not the city of Winnipeg was actually interested in releasing an army of wannabe meter maids on the world, but Johnson hinted that several private parking lot operators might be interested in the parking snitch app.

SpotSquad calls it “crowdsourced parking control,” which sounds nicer than vigilante parking control but possibly just as dangerous. I realize you fine folks in Canada don’t like to blast off your firearms quite as much at each other as Americans do, but I wonder if you’ve really thought this thing through.

Do I really want to wonder about taking out my cell phone on the street and some dude thinks I’m about to report him for illegal parking and it all leads to a Hollywood-style blaze of gunfire?

Come to think of it, maybe they haven’t thought about it all that deeply. According to Team SpotSquad, the parking snitch app was “imagined, validated, prototyped, and built out in a single 55 hour weekend-long event.”

But maybe I’m a little too old-fashioned, and crowdsourced parking police is just what Canada and even the world is waiting for.

What do you think of the SpotSquad parking snitch app?

[parking ticket photo by John Roman Images via Shutterstock]