Community mapping applications come in all shapes and sizes. There are apps to help drivers avoid speed traps, maneuver around traffic jams, and find cheap gas. And now there's one that helps people avoid being pulled from their car by the Ershad—Iran's morals police.

Anonymous developers in Iran recently released an Android app that is intended to help young Iranians share intelligence about Ershad checkpoints. Called "Gershad," the app depends on crowdsourced reports from users to help others avoid being stopped, harassed, or even possibly beaten or arrested for failing to adhere to the Ershad interpretations of Islamic morality.

The app was highlighted by Nima Akbarpour, the presenter of Persian Click (a technology show on BBC's Persian service).

Ershad is Persian for "guidance," and the Ershad patrols are given a great deal of leeway in providing moral guidance to the public. They set up mobile morality checkpoints to check for "immoral behavior"—women wearing too much makeup or failing to cover their heads, men wearing clothing or hairstyles with too much of a Western influence, or unmarried men and women traveling together are a few examples. The Ershad can issue warnings, demand formal written statements of "repentance," or arrest and prosecute people at their discretion.

On their Google Play page, the app developers cite law enforcement statistics from 2014, during which more than 3 million people were stopped and warned by the Ershad, 207,000 people were forced to write statements, and 18,000 were "sent to court." "Why do we have to be humiliated for our most obvious right which is the right to wear what we want?" the developers wrote. "Social media networks and websites are full of footage and photos of innocent women who have been beaten up and dragged on the ground by the Ershad patrol agents."

The use of the app, as some users have noted, is itself a protest against the Ershad. And the developers clearly want as many people to download and use the free app as possible to join that protest. "If a city has a large number of citizens using Gershad and reporting patrols seriously, Gershad will be very accurate... We will try our best to provide good support, but ultimately it is you who decide about success and failure of Gershad."