Greenpeace has launched an Apple iPhone app to harass tuna companies right from the store or kitchen. The app asks users to take a photo of a tuna can before submitting their email addresses and sending off pre-written emails that include the usual inaccurate rhetoric on overfishing.

The messages do not go directly to the tuna company but instead they are routed straight to Greenpeace. Why? To allow Greenpeace to identify a group of self-identified “activists” who can be added to their support networks and donor rolls.

As usual, it’s not the action that matters, it’s the money. Sign up and you can count on being hit up for donations again, and again, and again.

Greenpeace efforts always come with a mixture of hypocrisy and irony. In this go-round, Greenpeace is using Apple to host its app even though Apple has been invaded, defaced and hassled by Greenpeace protesters for the past two months because its source of electricity isn’t to Greenpeace’s liking.

Greenpeace describes itself as a “direct-action” organization that sparks “ground-breaking change,” delivers its “message direct to the polluters and politicians” is “steadfast in [their] principles” and “put[s] action behind…words.”

But the Greenpeace Mobile Tactics app delivers messages directly to Greenpeace and no one else. It relies on the genius of a company it has vilified so it also betrays Greenpeace’s supposed principles. And it sparks no action leading to any change other than spare change moving from your pocket to theirs.

Raising money and threatening businesses is the only action Greenpeace excels at.

By refusing to contribute a dime to sustainable fishing solutions and instead spending resources on a meaningless app designed to build its membership and coffers, Greenpeace has yet again signalled where its priorities really lie.