
India orders ‘panic button’ for mobile phones in bid to protect women - gordon_freeman
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/04/26/india-orders-panic-button-for-mobile-phones-in-bid-to-protect-women/
======
X86BSD
For those who have never been to India, this is like yelling "FIRE!!!" in a
crowd of 1 million people where the nearest fire truck is outside the crowd.

If you are in dire need of 9/11 equivalent services there, your done. Period.
No one will reach you in time.

If people there really cared about women, they would pass a version of the
second amendment and allow women to protect themselves from brutal savage
attacks with deadly force.

Acid attacks. Rape. Gang rape. All of the above.

This "panic button" will do absolutely nothing. No one will monitor it, no one
will respond, you will die.

Give women the ability to protect themselves!

~~~
ngoel36
Or educate men in society that these things are wrong.

~~~
winstonewert
You really think the problem is that men don't know the raping is wrong?

~~~
chongli
Yes, actually. In an interview from jail[0], one of the men who participated
in the 2012 gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh blamed the victim for the
attack[1]!

[0]
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1144346...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/11443462/Delhi-
bus-rapist-blames-his-victim-in-prison-interview.html)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape#Incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape#Incident)

~~~
oldmanjay
Are you familiar with criminals who take responsibility for their actions?
I've never heard of such a thing, so your implied conclusion seems idealistic

~~~
sridca
> [Nikhil]: Or educate men in society that these things are wrong.

> [Winston]: You really think the problem is that men don't know the raping is
> wrong?

> [ChongLi]: Yes, actually.

> [OldManJay]: Are you familiar with criminals who take responsibility for
> their actions? I've never heard of such a thing, so your implied conclusion
> seems idealistic

Nikhil and ChongLi are doing nothing but regurgitate the faulty feminist
narrative that they have fondly taken on to be common sense.

Both American and Indian societies already teach its members that rape,
murder, theft and other crimes are "wrong". This is called social
conditioning, and is put into effect from childhood onwards. Social
conditioning does not of course necessarily stop the criminals like Elliot
Rodger (murder) and Mukesh Singh (rape) from conducting their crimes.

The narrative of "Teach men not to rape," that these people ignorantly spit
out, is based on the faulty premise that the said men have not been taught not
to rape (and kill, maim, and so forth).

> [ChongLi]: In an interview from jail[0], one of the men who participated in
> the 2012 gang rape and murder of Jyoti Singh blamed the victim for the
> attack[1]! [0]
> [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1144346...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1144346..).
> [1]
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape#Incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape#Incident)

With a little intelligence and sensitivity, it is not difficult to prober
further into the underlying motivation of these criminals, and without
understanding the underlying motivations you cannot effect change. Here's a
clue: Mukesh Singh (one of the perpetrator of the Delhi gang rape event) had
this to say in that interview: _" A decent girl won’t roam around at nine
o’clock at night … Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in
discos and bars at night doing indecent things, wearing indecent clothes."_.

~~~
mahranch
Your comment presumes an equal education (that rape is equally "bad"), it
presumes that both cultures are taught the same thing. They are not.

In fact, it is currently legal to rape your wife in India.

[http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/05/asia/marital-rape-
india/](http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/05/asia/marital-rape-india/)

Think about that for a moment. What kind of effect do you think that would
have on their rape statistics? In the U.S, Marital Rape accounts for half of
all reported rapes. In India, those rapes aren't even being reported because
they're not illegal.

~~~
sridca
Your comment does not address the key points in mine.

There is no doubt that marital/ spousal rape needs to be criminalized.
Criminalization, of course, is not going to entirely eliminate it - which
brings me to the point I'm trying to make: when both social-conditioning and
law-and-order have failed, what's the solution?

Feminists, including Nikhil and ChongLi, advocate further explicit
conditioning (which ain't gonna have much effect on the criminals who already
care less about their own social conditioning). Without understanding the
criminals' underlying motives, people wanting to effect change will only go
around in circles. Where is the proof that the feminist approach works?

~~~
jarfil
Social conditioning has not failed.

Right now it's telling men in several societies that "it's the right thing to
rape your woman" since it's your property, and that "a woman needs to be
protected by her owner-man in order not to get raped by other men" so raping
her is not the rapist's fault, it's her owner's fault for not protecting her.

This conditioning lets men with rape fantasies to explain everything else away
and act them out with no perception of wrongdoing.

~~~
sridca
Your comment does not address the key points in mine.

There is no doubt that marital/ spousal rape needs to be criminalized.
Criminalization, of course, is not going to entirely eliminate it[1] - which
brings me to the point I'm trying to make: when both social-conditioning and
law-and-order have failed[2], what's the solution?

Moreover this is not a gender issue, as the likes of you ignorantly make it
out to be (in an fervent attempt to distract via identity politics), as the
reverse is equally applicable -- such as, to use your phraseology, letting
women with divorce-rape fantasies to explain everything else away and act them
out with no perception of wrongdoing[3] -- where the aforementioned question
continues to hold.

\--

[1] The West has historically had the idea that by marriage a woman gives
irrevocable consent for her husband to have sex with her any time he demands
it ... and even though marital/ spousal rape has recently been criminalized
(made a crime in all 50 states in the US by 1993, for example), it has not
entirely eliminated it.

[2] The very fact that marital/ spousal rape continues to be prevalent even
among countries where it has been criminalized suggests that both social-
conditioning and law-and-order have failed, in regards to entirely eliminating
it. Hence, my question: what's the solution?

[3] Some unscrupulous women in India are wont to extort money and harass their
husband's entire extended family. [http://www.498a.org](http://www.498a.org)

------
kumarm
India is a country where government will do everything except implementing the
existing laws.

Just Yesterday a Minister's (From souther state called AP) Son who tried to
kidnap a woman in broad day light in his car was let go by courts due to lack
of evidence After everything was Recorded in CC TV footage and was telecast in
every local channel when incident happened.

So Apparently as long as you are politically connected You can rape, Kidnap
Women in India. But if you are a legitimate business, you are in trouble.

------
awakeasleep
It seems like the interesting portion of this will be how the response to that
panic button is organized.

Nothing is mentioned about that. it’d be really easy to send a geolocation to
an endpoint somewhere.

It almost seems like a practical joke without going into the effort required
to coordinate the response. Might as well require these on all keyboards.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00887KUPW/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bd...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00887KUPW/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8)

------
univalent
This is just a publicity stunt. The country is simply too large and public
spending on law enforcement and emergency services too small for anything like
this to be effective. They could start by increasing the penalties for sex
crimes and spending more money on effective prosecutions.

------
jasonmp85
Coming to rape trials near you: "Your phone was beside you all night. Why
didn't you press the panic button?"

We'll know when societies are actually serious about protecting women when
they direct more of their efforts towards changing the men who rape them.

------
hodwik
India would be better off arming women with handguns. The threat of getting
shot dead is a much more serious disincentive.

------
duncan_bayne
... for a very odd definition of 'protect'. 'Protect' in this case is a
handgun.

[https://www.gunowners.org/wv26.htm](https://www.gunowners.org/wv26.htm)

"... raw data from the 1979-1985 installments of the Justice Department's
annual National Crime Victim Survey show that when a woman resists a stranger
rape with a gun, the probability of completion was 0.1 percent and of victim
injury 0.0 percent, compared to 31 percent and 40 percent, respectively, for
all stranger rapes (Kleck, Social Problems, 1990)."

~~~
vacri
Kleck is a ridiculously biased researcher. Some pearlers from his past include
claiming that every survey-claimed DGU equalled a life saved[1], and that
Australia would become a 'Wild West' in the wake of the '90s gun bans -
Australia continues to be considerably safer than the US, twenty years down
the track.[2]

[1] Apparently "I claim I brandished my gun and a robber left me alone" is now
a life saved, not a wallet saved.

[2] The actual 'Wild West' in history was a much safer place than the movies
would suggest, but I doubt Kleck was trying to evoke the historical image
rather than the myth.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Vacri, that's not surprising - the level of anti-gun bias in academia suggests
that there ought to be some pro-gun bias in there too.

But that doesn't change the results of those findings, which are: if you want
women to be able to actually prevent stranger rape, allowing themselves to
carry guns is by far and away the most effective solution.

Of course that doesn't address other social costs involved in having most of
society carrying weapons. As Rand put it:

"Handguns are instruments for killing people — they are not carried for
hunting animals — and you have no right to kill people. You do have the right
to self-defense, however. I don’t know how the issue is going to be resolved
to protect you without giving you the privilege to kill people at whim.".

Just bear in mind that one of the social costs of _disarmament_ is that women
are denied an effective tool for self defence. Panic buttons on cellphones
really don't cut the mustard here.

~~~
vacri
> _Just bear in mind that one of the social costs of disarmament is that women
> are denied an effective tool for self defence._

This is just sloganistic nonsense. If this were the case, then here in
'disarmed' Australia, rape would be rife. Whereas over in the US where self-
defence is a frothy notion, there isn't much difference in rape rates, a four-
times higher murder rate, and a six-times higher incarceration rate.
Meanwhile, over in South Africa, where there are guns aplenty, rape has a
runaway crime rate.

The idea that guns make you safe isn't born out when you do comparisons like
this.

But regarding Kleck, he's pretty much the go-to guy for the pro-gun lobby. And
the pro-gun lobby in the US is pretty aware that good studies will show the
flaws in what they say - which is why they apply pressure on the government to
refuse to study the problem. If the numbers really would show a consistent
story for the pro-gun lobby, they'd be welcoming studies with open arms. But
as it stands, when someone posts a study supporting the pro-gun side, there's
a better than even chance that you'll find Kleck's name on it, I find.

~~~
duncan_bayne
I'm Australian too, you know. But my politics often lead to me being mistaken
for an American Libertarian. Flattering, I guess :)

You're conflating several issues here though. Kleck was simply looking at one
scenario: attempted rape by a stranger, when the victim had a firearm and used
it. The stats on that are very, very firmly supportive of the idea that
handguns are a good defence.

I'm actually agreeing with you on the other social costs of an armed society,
mind you. I don't think you read my post very clearly, and attributed to me a
bunch of common positions (for Americans) that I don't actually hold.

~~~
vacri
> _and used it_

You couldn't get more biased than this kind of selection for that sort of
study. It's like saying that the chance of spending time in a holding cell is
very high, if you only look at subjects who have just been arrested that day.
And it's symptomatic of how Kleck is used - he does a study that is heavily
specific to the conditions, and then it's quoted free of context from day 1
and generalised to things it shouldn't be generalised to.

Similarly, 'carrying a gun' is very different to 'carrying a gun _and using
it_ ' \- you have to be able to access and use the gun at the right time, and
you don't always have the drop on your attacker. I once did a bouncer
certificate course, and the instructor said that in a study in Sydney, the
most use of a gun in an encounter with an armed security guard was the guard's
own gun used against them - people were getting the drop on security guards
and turning their guns on them. And one place where women tend to meet their
rapists - bars and clubs - is a place where guns are usually restricted even
in US states where gun freedom is common. Texas, for example, has a 51% law,
meaning if a business makes 51%+ of it's income from alcohol, you can't carry
a gun there. Women in these higher-risk places can't legally carry this
supposed magical defense item. Specifying "and using it" ignores all the
issues around actually getting the gun into play at the right time, which
aren't trivial.

Ultimately, "carry guns" is a bad argument to make for personal safety,
because it's treating the symptom, not the cure, and short-circuits discussion
to actually cut social problems off at the source, I find.

Re: the nationality thing - I never suggested you were American, but that's
the place in the modern Western world that is doing the "guns as defence for
normal citizens" thing (and it's where Kleck does his stuff). That's why it's
a US-centric counter-argument. :)

------
known
Need to buy a gun that does not require a license
[http://indiansforguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4001](http://indiansforguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4001)

Ministry of Home Affairs limits right to self-defense to only VIPs
[http://www.gunowners.in/](http://www.gunowners.in/)

Arms license [http://mha.nic.in/armslicence](http://mha.nic.in/armslicence)

------
dcw303
I'll skip over discussing whether this will be effective and go straight to
the implementation required:

> a panic button configured to the number key 5 or 9 and all smartphones to
> have a feature that will engage when the on-off button is pressed three
> times.

I find it interesting that a government department has demanded so specific an
implementation. Do they think that prescribing that level of detail makes them
look more authoritative? It would be better to leave the details to the phone
makers.

I don't think Apple or Google will respond with much enthusiasm to that level
of micromanagement.

~~~
gozur88
You need something simple and standard for emergencies, in the same way you
have a three digit emergency number in the US and UK (and, I assume, other
places). If every phone is different nobody will bother learning the sequence,
or they'll remember the sequence they had on their last mobile.

Most people stop thinking when they panic. I used to manage a group of
computer operators. One day one of my employees collapsed. I directed her
coworker to call the emergency number while I was checking for breath and a
heartbeat.

Since it was a military base with an obsolete phone system, the emergency
number wasn't 911, and even though there was a huge red sticker on the phone
(which she'd used for years) with the emergency number, the coworker kept
punching in 911 over and over, getting more and more panicked when it didn't
connect. She froze up so badly even when I told her what to do she couldn't do
it - I had to take the phone from her and dial myself.

She would have been fine if 911 actually worked, though, because that's the
emergency number that had been drilled into her since childhood.

That job (because of that incident and another when the fire suppression
system went off) taught me all those stupid-seeming standardized emergency
systems really can save your life. Even if you're the sort of person who can
keep your head in an emergency, you may need help from someone who can't.

------
SeanCrawford
It would have to involve pressing two buttons. Putting 9-1-1 on a single
button over here has resulted in a lot of false calls, sometimes from simply
sitting on a coat containing a phone.

------
gordon_freeman
It would be interesting to see how companies like Apple will comply with this
request. AFAIK, the feature would be embedded in hardware by pressing power
button 3 times it would trigger the GPS and connect to law enforcement. If
India can convince all OEMs to implement this feature and implements
infrastructure around it nationwide then I agree it has the possibility to
reduce rape incidents tremendously.

~~~
iotakodali
I don't know where you get your stats from, but I have a Indian city full of
panic buttons and nothing happens when you press them. The possibility of it
reducing rape, nobody knows for sure. India's emergency response isn't great
and won't be in the near future. Have you even considered the number of false
positives you would get with the population we have in our country

------
nxzero
Here's additional information on the issue of rape in India:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_India](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_India)

~~~
refurb
The data on the wikipedia page raises a question. It shows that the number of
rapes per 100 000 is about 1/4th that of the US.

Now I assume a lot of that is due to unreporting, but is rape really that much
more common in India? Anecdotal evidence suggest it is.

It reminds me of crime in Canada vs. the US. The US has almost 10x the
population, so if you think about something like school shootings (of which
there have been quite a few in Canada), you'd expect 10x of them in the US.

~~~
nish1500
I am quite sure a much larger number of rapes in India go unreported. Women
are discouraged from reporting such cases, specially in rural areas. Most of
India is rural. The few which do get reported are probably the ones affecting
mid-to-upper class people in cities, or the few brave women who dared.

------
known
[https://wh.gov/ioctA](https://wh.gov/ioctA) (guns) are better

------
abhi3
Not just that. All smartphones will also be required to include GPS.

------
known
Guns per 100 people

India = 4.2;

China = 4.9;

and Pakistan = 11.6;

