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India orders ‘panic button’ for mobile phones in bid to protect women

37 points by gordon_freeman 11y ago

kumarm 11y ago
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.
abhi3 11y ago
Not just that. All smartphones will also be required to include GPS.
awakeasleep 11y ago
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_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00887KUPW/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bd...
gordon_freeman 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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
- abhi3 11y ago
  Is is specified anywhere that it has to be a hardware button or are people just assuming so?
X86BSD 11y ago
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!
- nxzero 11y ago
  Agree, it's a very troubling situation. Unless the general public in proximity to an attack is legally required to respond, seems unlikely to make a difference.
  - X86BSD 11y ago
    The sad thing is even if they are chances are they will not do anything to stop or prevent it. I think people, everywhere, including the US are mostly afraid. I have seen people in the US do nothing when something bad takes place. Most people I think live in fear. They don't want to get involved. It's a very sad state of humanity but it's the climate we live in. I have nothing but the most sincere concern for women in India. I find it so incredibly troubling the attitude that country has of women. The fact that government refuses to recognize a womens right to defend herself with deadly force when gang rapes are a common everyday occurrence is.... soul crushing. A Panic button? Really? That is the best Modi and crowd can enable women with? This speaks volumes about how women are viewed there.
    - d0mine 11y ago
      It is a myth that people don't help each other http://www.citylab.com/crime/2015/08/the-murder-of-kitty-genovese-and-the-myth-of-the-heartless-city/400622/ http://www.citylab.com/crime/2015/08/the-murder-of-kitty-gen...
SeanCrawford 11y ago
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.
univalent 11y ago
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 11y ago
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.
duncan_bayne 11y ago
... 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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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.
    - 11y ago
hodwik 11y ago
India would be better off arming women with handguns. The threat of getting shot dead is a much more serious disincentive.
nxzero 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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.
  - SeanCrawford 11y ago
    I live in Canada and I read the newspapers almost daily. Canadian school shootings are rare, rare enough to be reported coast to coast when they happen. I know of only one this year, in the north. The US truly has more than 10X the number of shootings, as documented in the movie Bowling for Columbine. (and other places) This difference is due to a different gun culture. (I would guess the rape cultures are equal)
dcw303 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
- reustle 11y ago
  > It would be better to leave the details to the phone makers. But then they'd all use different standards, and when it came down to the time you need to actually use it, you're not sure which standards exist?
known 11y ago
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
known 11y ago
Guns per 100 people India = 4.2; China = 4.9; and Pakistan = 11.6;
known 11y ago
https://wh.gov/ioctA https://wh.gov/ioctA (guns) are better

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.

abhi3 11y ago

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

awakeasleep 11y ago

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_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00887KUPW/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bd...

gordon_freeman 11y ago

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 11y ago
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
abhi3 11y ago
Is is specified anywhere that it has to be a hardware button or are people just assuming so?

X86BSD 11y ago

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!

nxzero 11y ago
Agree, it's a very troubling situation. Unless the general public in proximity to an attack is legally required to respond, seems unlikely to make a difference.
- X86BSD 11y ago
  The sad thing is even if they are chances are they will not do anything to stop or prevent it. I think people, everywhere, including the US are mostly afraid. I have seen people in the US do nothing when something bad takes place. Most people I think live in fear. They don't want to get involved. It's a very sad state of humanity but it's the climate we live in. I have nothing but the most sincere concern for women in India. I find it so incredibly troubling the attitude that country has of women. The fact that government refuses to recognize a womens right to defend herself with deadly force when gang rapes are a common everyday occurrence is.... soul crushing. A Panic button? Really? That is the best Modi and crowd can enable women with? This speaks volumes about how women are viewed there.
  - d0mine 11y ago
    It is a myth that people don't help each other http://www.citylab.com/crime/2015/08/the-murder-of-kitty-genovese-and-the-myth-of-the-heartless-city/400622/ http://www.citylab.com/crime/2015/08/the-murder-of-kitty-gen...

SeanCrawford 11y ago

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.

univalent 11y ago

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 11y ago

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.

duncan_bayne 11y ago

... 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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
  - 11y ago

hodwik 11y ago

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

nxzero 11y ago

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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
- SeanCrawford 11y ago
  I live in Canada and I read the newspapers almost daily. Canadian school shootings are rare, rare enough to be reported coast to coast when they happen. I know of only one this year, in the north. The US truly has more than 10X the number of shootings, as documented in the movie Bowling for Columbine. (and other places) This difference is due to a different gun culture. (I would guess the rape cultures are equal)

dcw303 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.
reustle 11y ago
> It would be better to leave the details to the phone makers. But then they'd all use different standards, and when it came down to the time you need to actually use it, you're not sure which standards exist?

known 11y ago

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

known 11y ago

Guns per 100 people India = 4.2; China = 4.9; and Pakistan = 11.6;

known 11y ago

https://wh.gov/ioctA https://wh.gov/ioctA (guns) are better