Women's Safety, 888 and Big Tech
I read two news articles recently that made me think about the safety of women on the streets and the harassment of women online, both issues do also affect men but not to the same extent and taking steps to solve them for women helps Both sexes.
One article was by a British TV personality, Emily Atack, now in her 30's. When she was 17 she was in the Channel4 comedy, The Inbetweeners playing a highly sexualised 17 year old (Charlotte Hinchcliffe).
She talks about the barrage of sexual messages and rape threats she gets from men on social media and how many are dads and fathers.
The 888 idea was suggested following the Sarah Everard murder by a serving police officer, and following the Mets response where they said that women should take care when out, seemingly putting the blame of sexual violence on the victims of it!
The 888 number proposal was criticised by women's groups who said that it also put the onus on women to stay safe rather than address the real problem, which is men.
These stories got me thinking about two things. One was big tech and social media again, something I have written about before. The other was, instead of victim blaming and telling women to stay safe what can be done to make men take responsibility and to leave women alone?
Online Safety
First, online safety. Something that’s in the hands of big tech and social media. God help us.
Imagine if I was a tech billionaire. Imagine if I had created a business that grew to be a Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix or Google, and you asked me what my business was about. Imagine if this was my reply….
I have invented a tool that allowed you to make death threats.
You can also send people, people you don’t know, any other kind of threat to.
You can send rape threats, or tell them to kill themselves when they are feeling down.
it allows you to invite violence.
My company allows older men to pretend to be younger so that they can chat to under 16s.
Under 16s can also share explicit photographs with these older men.
Recently I have given parents the ability to control this a little better, but really the horse had bolted before I attempted to close that stable door.
Aside from this, my technology allows paedophiles to thrive, connect and share explicit images.
My company knows exactly who you are and where you are when you make a death threat to someone. But I won’t ever tell the police this Information. I will protect these people. In fact I have given these men tools to cover their tracks.
I also make more profit from encouraging teenagers, when they are feeling most down and vulnerable to kill themselves.
If they decide not to kill themselves I also target them and encourage them to self harm, gain an eating disorder and feel depressed. I get richer from this.
Sleep is so critical to life that the Guinness Book of World records will allow you to jump from a satellite on the edge of space and fall to earth faster than the speed of sound, but it won’t take records on sleep deprivation. But my company will deprive you of sleep and my products disrupts your sleep without any control or regulation.
My companys products allows governments to listen to you and see you even when it’s switched off. My company allows regimes which kill journalists use these products on citizens.
I like living in a democracy but my company helps undermine it.
My company also stokes division and polarisation in society, there is good money to be made doing this.
I encourage racists and far right hate groups. But equally I allow the extreme left to bully and shut down debate.
I will say that my company is doing all it can to change this. But some of my top executives in charge of this area resign as they disagree with me.
You’d think that the rich white men controlling these companies may be more active in doing something about this. But we know from experience that when there is good money being made, capitalism has no room for ethics. It’s about the profit and profit only. That’s the law.
So the question is. Given that my company is richer than many countries, and given that I don’t have any schools or hospitals or roads to build (that burden is carried by national governments not me) why can’t I at least have the burden of policing my own business?
For example, I could:
Stop people from messaging someone who is not following them on the social media platform.
Ensure there is a real, verified human behind every account set up, along with identification data.
Allow specific messages to be reported. These are then reviewed by humans. If they breach the site policy about nudity or threats, then they are suspended from the site with a warning before being reinstated. Attempts to use the same ID to set up a new account can be blocked.
If the threats are serious enough they are referred to an independent body with links to the police and greater powers for investigation. This body is funded by my business.
This body can recommend a longer suspension, a permanent suspension and the inclusion on a social media suspension register. One which blocks the set up of new accounts on any platform.
The individual has the right of putting forward their side and of appeal.
But if a person has been suspended, reported again, and the threats are more serious, and they continue with either racist, homophobic, misogynistic, hate speech, or just continual harassment, threats and unwanted messaging, then this is the final penalty. They are removed from social media for a prolonged period of time. And their name is publicly available on the register.
When Emily talks about her abuse coming from men with wives and children, this may be a decent deterrent as wives, mothers and kids would end up knowing that dad is on the social media banned register and cannot use any social media or messaging platform.
888 Safety Number
I am sympathetic to the criticism women's groups have about the 888 number. So I had a think about how it might work using the technology we have.
Firstly, keep the 888 number. When a woman is out and if she feels vulnerable, she can still trigger the alert using an app or a call to 888.
This then immediately logs every mobile number within 1 mile radius of her. This information could be useful to police should they need it.
Secondly, it sends an alert to all of those numbers telling them about an alert in their vicinity (not identifying the person). This could have two effects.
One is that if a man is acting with bad intent towards a woman he is immediately put on alert that he is within the group of phones being tracked and logged.
The other is that it will make every other man and woman alert to people around them and may trigger at least some into a Good Samaritan mode.
This could act as a trigger for men to check the behaviour of other men and call it out or challenge it. This seems to me to be a good first step in putting the onus back onto men into stopping giving women unwanted attention.
For example if they were passing a lone woman apparently being arrested, an incident that most of us would walk by without question, it may make us question it and ask questions, or wait and observe until uniformed officers arrived.
I have noticed recently that Bristol has started putting signs up to try and reinforce this exact message of calling out the behaviour.
Last week I walked by a group of 15 drunk men aged around 30. They walked by a couple of students, no older than 20 and in a really drunken and leering manner one man leaned into the girls face to let them know he found them attractive. I could have called this out but I too would have been at risk of the mob. Better would be for his friends to call this behaviour out and ask him not to hassle women when he’s out with them or ever.
With the 888 number, if a woman dialled 999 after using 888 then her device location is also shared with police, plus the location and identities of the devices that were in close proximity (e.g. Bluetooth range) of her device in the period from using 888.
It’s true that the offender may have his phone switched off. But it’s not going to be beyond the limits of current technology to log phones that are switched off. In this state they can be used to film and listen anyway so it’s a clearly identifiable and useable device. Instead of just allowing dangerous governments to use this technology to kill people it doesn’t like, perhaps we can use this to save a woman’s life!
If I received an alert notification because I was in close proximity to an event like this, I would suddenly be more alert to every man and woman nearby, cars and vans and perhaps their registration. Something which may not have seemed suspicious at the time may suddenly be very noticeable to me or at least, useful to the police if they asked at a later date what I saw during that time.
All of this would be a bit difficult and inconvienent to men in the area who are totally innocent. But that would act as another incentive to call out the behaviour and reduce the number of people who make women nervous when out.
This data could be retained until the woman confirms she is safe. Once done, all the data collected during the event is removed.
Using 888 when you shouldn’t, is treated the same as using 999 when you shouldn’t. Given that the police aren’t involved when using 888, wasted police time would be rare, but perhaps repetitive use of 888 may lead to investigation and if a woman was just routinely using the alert every time she went out she may be referred to women's support charities for counselling or support.
So those are my suggestions for tackling online abuse and the safety of women. None of these ideas seem controversial or ground breaking to me. Nor do any of them seem difficult. None require the invention of new technology and men are put squarely on notice that their behaviour is being monitored.
Political Inaction
The trouble with our politicians is that they have never taken the issue of women's safety seriously.
The prison sentence for rape is less than it is for murder, something which seems strange to me given that one leaves a person alive to live with the consequences of that crime. At the least they should be equal.
Prison sentences for sexual crimes against children are even shorter. Given that (in my uneducated view) I suspect that paedophilia is not something you can be rehabilitated from, I cannot understand why such short sentences exist.
It seems only reasonable to conclude that, as our politicians do nothing to change it, they must therefore be mildly supportive of sexual violence against women and children. It’s no wonder that rumours persists of these child grooming gangs within our political elite circles, something even Trump hinted at.
Remember when Parliament tried to pass a law outlawing upskirting? It was a Private Members Bill, something which doesn't normally pass into law, but on this occasion it was supported by the Government AND the opposition so had total support.
He stopped it, not because he disagreed with the law, but because he does this against any potential legislation that is put forward in this manner.
He’s still in Parliament being paid £80k a year by us and overseeing the Police. Who, by the way, have had over 750 sexual misconduct allegations against serving police officers in the last 5 years.
And the woman arrested during the Sarah Everard vigil (the illegal gathering according to the Met, despite it being attended by the Duchess of Cambridge) has since received over 50 unwanted sexual message from serving police officers (on Tinder - in uniform), similar unwanted abuse as described by Emily.
Emily says that the police say ‘There’s nothing we can do because we can’t go any further with it.’ She says ’They tried,”. Frankly I think this response is far too nice.
Politicians need to force tech companies to do more, and the police also need to do much more.
My suggestions above are easy and could be just the start.
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