Australian police suggests app to record consent to sexual activity The police commissioner of New South Wales in Australia has floated the idea of a smartphone app to record consent to sexual activity. In a paywalled story published by News Corporation and broadcast on local radio, Michael Fuller suggested such an application would not be run by the cops nor the government, and could be …
If put in the position of responding to the app, respond No into the app. Now all the evidence in on your side. Don't refuse to respond to the app, because the evidence is then opaque again.
This doesn't stop the No person from 'dallying' of course, but forces the other party to trust that the No evidence won't be abused. No trust... well, probably shouldn't be a-cuddlin' anyway.
And have it later streamed live when one of the parties wants a repeat but not the other?
Rule of life: anything recorded eventually leaks. In this context that also produces another visual, apologies, so let's call it "ends up being abused". Either by the participants, or by recipients.
"And what if you consent but change of mind whilst in the midst of you-know-what?"
I'm going to quote Amy Remeikis' tweet here, just to get the point across:
"You can withdraw consent at any time you want."
That goes for both parties.
"I think it is better to video stream record the entire lot. Y'know, "just in case"."
And would you ask consent for that too? What if the other party decided they didn't want to be recorded in the middle of you-know-what? Would you just ignore it and carry on regardless?
Added for bonus points: It's called sex. Not "you-know-what", not "a bit of hows-yer-father" and not "insert-any-other-childish-term-you-would-care-to-mention-here", when the discussion is centred around consent and rape. FFS, grow up.
>"You can withdraw consent at any time you want."
>That goes for both parties.
Currently both of the couple have to have their own lawyer present during sex.
The rules could change to allow a single lawyer to represent both parties.
Or we could have some independant class of notary available who could take part in threesomes, they would also be able to stamp to approve their consent.
Or we could have some independent class of notary available who could take part in threesomes, they would also be able to stamp to approve their consent.
Alexa/Cortana/Google Assistant/Siri could "actively" take part - they could affirm consent and monitor the activities and if they detect coercion or change during proceedings that go unheeded, call the authorities, giving the location of the participants.
Try reading Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling, he covers exactly this. There is a long contract you have to sign off on, before you have sex, goes into what is and isn't allowed, a list of sexual diseases that the signer states they don't have etc.
Very funny read, a couple of years ago... Now sobering reality?
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Consequences. If these assholes don't keep getting away with it, it wouldn't embolden them to carry on doing it and others that see it happening carry on, if only there were some body that was supposed to enforce these consequences but all to often don't follow through on that obligation...
Both consequences and education, because if you rely only on consequences it's too late.
In my day sex ed was non-existant and we had to work things out ourselves. It seems that later sex ed consisted mostly of explaining the basic mechanics and ensuring avoidance of STDs and pregnancies. What is really needed is to educate young people about respect of their own boundaries and those set up by others. Give them an understading that all that stuff they see on porn sites is not real. And that you are no entitled to sex with your partner whether that be a spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend or simply a date. That No means No and stop means stop. People (and it's mostly, though not uniquely, men) need people to stop behaving like entitled arseholes.
Most of all we need reporting, investigation and prosecution channels that do not deter victims from coming forward, and that give them the benefit of the doubt. One of the reasons I believe police don't treat rape claims so seriously is that even if they are true, they are difficult to prove, and therefore to prosecute successfully.
Parents also need to talk to their kids about getting into difficult situations. Things like going to a party at someone's they don't know with a dodgy friend who drove and goes missing at some point. With pretty much everybody having a phone these days, it's easy to call for a ride. They should also be told not to drink anything alcoholic they didn't open themselves. Mixed drinks being a ripe target for chemicals being added.
Older people, especially women, should be aware of invitations that aren't on the up and up. If they are invited to a guy's hotel room, they should take it as an invitation for sex. They should always meet business colleagues in the lobby and not go back to one or the other's room. It's also important to report assaults immediately. I don't take people seriously when they come forward decades later to accuse a politician or CEO. Regret and assault are different.
I had a friend in Alaska and the common way kids go on dates there is with several couples. The chances for more than a little snogging goes way down.
While consequences are necessary and should be a high price to pay for a perpetrator,it is naive to think consequences are likely to prevent rape any more than they stop murder. i.e. hardly at all.
Crimes of violence are always going to happen, what is important, is to make the reporting and investigation process less intimidating for victims as well as protecting the rigts of the accused who should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Once proven guilty, the full force of the law should be brought to bear.
Rape is effectively a life sentence for the victim in many respects and many perpetrators get off too lightly.
There needs to be consequences on both sides. The consequences for a false rape claim should be the same as a rape claim. BOTH actions destroy people's lives.
While we are at it the term "rape" is gender biased in many contries to mean a sexual assault against a woman.
The CPS has shown that the frequency of "false rape claims" is no different to any other crime, and it always worries me when people bring this into a discussion on rape. For those that do make false claims there is usually some other pretty serious issue going on (previous abuse, call for help, etc, not a lamicious attempt to defame). Implying it's such a big issue that it needs to be thrown into the mix is just an attempt to distract and displace attention from the real problem of male violence.
And rape is never gender neutral, so please don't go down this line. Whether male or female victims, they have a sex and the perpetrator is almost always male (depending on the definition of sex in the country of the offence). In the UK it needs a penis to be called rape. Please stop trying to diminish the facts behind rape.
"the term "rape" is gender biased in many contries to mean a sexual assault against a woman"
and
"In the UK it needs a penis to be called rape. "
Unwanted sexual advances / contact / assault, while mostly originated by men and mostly perpetrated against women, can still happen between any genders, and it would be helpful if, legally at least, the genders of the aggressor and victim are moot.
"There needs to be consequences on both sides."
Yes, there should be consequences for falsely claiming rape, and you know what... there already are. It's called defamation and libel. Incidentally, the standard of proof to win a libel case is that the claimant cannot prove their claim. So A rapes B in a private location with no witnesses, B makes a police report on which they cannot really act if it's a 'he said / she said' thing. If B goes public, A can win a libel case against them easilly, because the standard of proof is heavily biased their way.
Maybe we need to educate girls* in those situations to (1) fight back, hard as they can, and particularly scratch. They might (and probably will) get beaten up, but they might fight their aggressor off and certainly will also have physical proof of assault to show the police, including potentially their aggressor's skin or blood under their nails and (2) immediately there is a case (even a suspected one after a night where they don't remember anything) go straight to hospital to get yourself examined, including blood tests to check for drugs.
" The consequences for a false rape claim should be the same as a rape claim"
Absolute bollocks
*yes, very occasionally boys as well but we all know 95%++ of the time it's a girl who is the victim
"but they might fight their aggressor off and certainly will also have physical proof of assault to show the police"
The defense may try to show she likes it rough, so women that do are in a tough spot if an ex testifies. It might also be a friend that she confides in as well.
I agree that reporting the assault right away is important and any evidence there may be is collected.
"While we are at it the term "rape" is gender biased in many contries to mean a sexual assault against a woman."
I had a (male) roommate that had a few too many at a party we were hosting and wound up being mauled by girl that wasn't the sort that most guys would go after (not even slightly cute, large and not a nice person). So yes, it's does happen to guys. He lost his taste for Rum and Cokes after that night.
I met a woman in a nightclub many year's ago. At the end of the evening I asked if I could see her again. She answered "No". Fair do's, I thought. Then just as I was putting my coat on she gave me a piece of paper "here's my phone number" she said. "What do I need this for?" was my reply.
"Sure. Just give me half an hour to fill out this questionnaire as to what I do and don't consent to doing with you, first."
Also, this takes no account of coercion. "If you want to get ahead in your career..... swipe right..."
I mean... it's good that they're thinking about the issue, but technology is not always the answer.
Yeah because a rapist would never just grab the victims phone and force them to unlock it and then give consent on the app, thereby giving them the go ahead to do whatever they wanted, knowing its unlikely they would get prosecuted for it afterwards.
It sound like the police chief is more thinking about how to make investigating sexual assault easier for the police than anything that protects against people being sexually assaulted or false accusations.
Yeah, the police like clear-cut crimes.
"Having sex without the woman recording consent on the app" is a nice easy thing to prove in court. And it doesn't matter whether the woman actually consented but forgot to record it on the app, or consented on the app but changed her mind, or was coerced into using the app, or had her phone grabbed so her attacker could set the setting on the app, or consented to something different from what happened. All those cases have a nice easy travesty-of-justice outcome that means the cops don't have to do much investigating.
In contrast, the current law is a lot more nuanced.
The zero-tolerance / zero-thought policy is always popular - it's taken over in education here among the left-pondians.
One local suggestion was a student union form to record consent, with the lack of a form presumably being assumed rape.
Before the privacy implications had been considered (interestingly nobody is concerned about privacy if it's on paper) someone asked if it included staff. Would it include staff doing it with their non-staff partners, would it include the extremely aged university president and his wife of 50 years?
How can you realistically prove an "A said" v "B said" situation where there is nobody else present, both went into the situation intending to have fun, there's no recording of exactly what happened (and unless both agreed that would be an offence by itself anyway) and one or the other - or even both - could be deliberately lying after the event? Or at the very least there's been a major misunderstanding between them while they were quite possibly somewhat emotional and not thinking with judge levels of rationally.
And since any pre-existing agreement can be revoked by either party at any time, there's no point to apps or contracts to luck. This is not a situation that technology can really help with, and I'm not certain the law can be of any practical help in preventing this situation either.
Blaming one party afterwards is the point of the law, and for that we have the police to investigate what happened, but how can you realistically prove an "A said" v "B said" situation....
But he's got people talking about the issue, and that maybe is the point of the whole exercise?
The world deals with "A said, B said" all the time.
Every day insurance companies pay out on your assertion that you owned a good which you now don't have, even despite claims of the likely thief that they didn't nick the item. You can see that for property we've built an "alternative justice system" for property theft to make this crime less traumatic for its victims. The question is why we haven't done the same for cases of sexual assault. Despite many sexual assaults being less suited to the criminal justice system than property crime.
Before we go any further, most sexual assaults aren't A-said, B-said. It's common for one of the parties to have a great deal of corroborating evidence, often across some years. Unfortunately it's rare that this is treated as evidence at the time. If a friend discusses an assault with you, then do them a huge favour and make a note of that discussion.
In the criminal court case you have have at the top of your mind the issue comes down to what sort of evidence is allowed. For example, what is the weight for arguing supporting evidence, is tendency evidence permitted, how difficult is it to join cases. There's still a great deal of double standard in dealing with evidence in sexual assault cases: take alcohol, when a victim is drunk that suggests their evidence is less reliable, but the same argument would never fly for the questioning the assailant's denial. Joint cases is even worse: two women discussing the same experience with the same assailant and then going to police to prevent further harm by this assailant is a prosecutorial disaster: the defence will argue that there was collusion to make a false accusation. An argument which would never fly if the occasion was two businessman in casual conversation discovering a fraudster in common.
The bar for a criminal finding of guilt in a sexual assault case is very high: the High Court of Australia in Pell v The Queen said that sufficient doubt was created by the mere habit of the accused Pell standing on the steps of the church after services, and thus likely not in the sacristy raping the boy. This was sufficient to defend against the boy's excellent recollection. The defence didn't have to show that Pell was on the steps on the particular day in question: testimony from witnesses who saw Pell on the steps a few times that year was sufficient.
So it's pretty plain that the full process of the criminal law is a poor fit to most people's experience of sexual assault. Some alternative path to justice -- not necessarily outside the criminal justice system -- is needed.
> You can see that for property we've built an "alternative justice system" for property theft to make this crime less traumatic for its victims
But it doesn't punish anyone except the total set of policy payers.
We don't imprison the thief purely on the basis of filing an insurance claim.
Of course once paypal achieves sentience and a charge-back involves sending a terminator ....
"Every day insurance companies pay out on your assertion that you owned a good which you now don't have, even despite claims of the likely thief that they didn't nick the item."
The insurance company is still going to demand a police report and look at the comments made by whoever did the 30 second investigation and the inventory of stolen items. You could call the police and claim a theft to defraud the insurance company for a new computer, but if you were ever caught, you'd do time. You'd also need to force entry into your home meaning you'd have to do repairs so it looked good. You might even need to turn out all your drawers and make a big mess of the place. People will do this too and there are plenty of analogies that can be made.
No, it wasn't his purpose, because the entire country is already talking about the issue. It is the major running issue in Federal politics, with a rape scandal in Parliament House and a senior minister separately accused of historical rape. It's either a well-intentioned (if slightly ludicrous) response from the Commissioner or he's trying to deflect from his force's inadequate performance on the historical rape.
For background on the historical rape allegation: the Cabinet minister was accused of behaviour in a Canberra bar inconsistent with his goody-two-shoes Christian image by Four Corners (like Panorama). When nothing was done, the alleged historical rape victim was incensed and decided to report the crime, which occurred in NSW. She was resident in South Australia and made the report when COVID was still a problem in Australia. The NSW Police declined to either seek an exemption from COVID travel restrictions and go to Adelaide, or interview her on Zoom with South Australian police present, citing their concern for her welfare. On hearing this, she committed suicide the next day.
The Prime Minister and NSW Commissioner have been hiding behind the ridiculous proposition that because there is no formal statement, the crime cannot be investigated so the Minister must be innocent. The proposition is ridiculous because the victim was a professional historian and put together a 31-page dossier including diary entries from the time of the rape, who she told about it over a period of decades etc., which was sentt to senior politicians of three parties, including the PM himself. It has been kicking around Canberra for months and eventually leaked.
Four Corners then doubled down and broadcast a second program. The Cabinet minister sued them for defamation. The ABC will argue truth, and try to prove the rape in court.
So no, it wasn't an issue not under public discussion!
Very big oversimplification....
She had travelled to NSW saw NSWPlod and was interviewed by detectives 4 times but declined to give a formal statement, so NSWPlod took it no further. She should be counted in South Australia's COVID death count as she committed suicide shortly after completing 2 weeks of mandatory quarantine after her fourth trip.
She was also very mentally ill, and was a fantasist. To paraphrase part of her letter - "We have an understanding that we are to be married, because when I was ironing his shirt he said I would make somebody a good wife"
It is true that she travelled to Sydney, but hardly surprising that she might want to wait and think before finally going ahead with a formal report, given who she was accusing. Presumably during her visit to Sydney (I tnought it was one visit, 4 interviews) the detectives briefed her about the likelihood of a successful prosecution. So then she would go home to Adelaide, think about it and discuss it with friends there before making a formal statement.
I'm not sure she'd even completed the 14 days. The NSW police did say they didn't want to do it over Zoom without a psychologist present. What they conspicuously failed to say was "we told her we'd arrange for a psychologist to sit with her when we took her statement over Zoom as soon as the quarantine was over". Presumably she was already seeing one.
I am not saying the historical rape occurred, and whether it did or not isn't really the issue.
It is the way the Prime Minister passed his copy of the dossier on to the wrong police force without even reading it, and his failure to act on the Higgins affair, and his comment that the women demonstrating outside Parliament are lucky they weren't shot that have landed him in hot water.
"How romantic, mid passionate moment you say, hang on a minute I just need to...."
well, I guess a fairly large %age of lovers do that "hang on" thing for condoms, so it's not really that much of an issue. The real issue as many people pointed out, is that consent can be revoked, or can apply to some things but not others etc
I can't imagine a tabloid in the world that wouldn't pay in precious metals to get copies of the databases. Date, time, duration, special consent and PII of the parties involved. Twenty years down the road one party is a prominent public figure and the tabloid has a complete listing from that "magic summer".
Cory Doctorow put it very well when he said that secrecy and privacy are different. His example was of your own parents; you know they had sex, but you don't really want the details. It may be no secret that two people dated, but how often they had sex and if they chose the hard or soft option is private.
The better option for people is to send a note privately. Something like, "I could be feeling very pliable after a nice dinner and drinks" with a response of "I'll buy the restaurant if I have to". Add a "wink, wink" and the message is as clear as a really clear thing.
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