You Can't Hide from this App, Super PACs

Since two judicial decisions were handed down in 2010, super PACs (political action committees) have been allowed to flourish in the political arena, and TV ads have evolved. Gone are the days when the majority of political commercials ended with "I'm so-and-so, and I approved this message." Working independent of candidates, super PACs may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to sway voters, and they are blanketing the airwaves with their ads. It's difficult to discern, sometimes, just who is footing the bill for what you've seen and how reliable their statistics and facts are.

The non-partisan Super PAC App, the brainchild of Dan Siegel MBA '12 and Jennifer Hollett (who created it as part of a Media Lab social TV class), aims to change that. It works like a song identification app, but for political commercials. Simply hold your iPhone up to the TV while a commercial is on. The app records a portion of the commercial then compares the audio to a database of all political ads. According to techPresident, Super PAC App will use a web crawler to scour video upload sites for new TV ads as well as rely on the developers' own efforts and the help of political reporters.

The app will then tell you who paid for the ad, whom they support, how much money they've raised and spent so far, what claims they make, and whether those claims are factual. The last bit of information is derived by linking to objective, third-party information. Users can also rate the ad and see what others think. The creators hope that Super PAC App will offer transparency and knowledge to a wider swath of the voting public.

The free app, which will be limited to presidential candidates, will available at the end of August, in time for the political conventions. See how it works below.