Gaspard, the anti-assault accessory: never be alone again

by aesraethr • 12 years ago

16 49 12 years ago

subb• 12 years ago

Is it me or this feels terribly wrong?

gambiting• 12 years ago

The only part that I didn't like was the "rewards for strangers for rescuing you". Not that there is anything inherently wrong with rewarding people who help you,but I feel like it's kind of wrong to have it advertised as a feature.

aesraethr2• 12 years ago

The fact is people dont react when someone need help in the street/metro. With this kind of reward incensitive, it give a "bonus" to make people move.

lucio2• 12 years ago

It is not a money reward

iammyIP• 12 years ago

It certainly seems wierd, like a quick fix for symptoms with some further possible side effects. The site is down atm, i only saw it partially and it got some strange marketing decisions, like the children toy colors, the rewards for rescuers, and the slogan "never be alone again" which i understand more as a threat than a relief. I guess this is aimed at (over)protective mothers and to be used by children or young women, which then poses the question if they can take responsibility for such easy button presses that alert authorities and random people looking for bounty in the vicinity. Overall, i would put this in the same category as the vaginal razorblades (anti-rape thing like a tampon i read about some days ago): good intention on the surface, but not thought-through, adresses symptoms instead of the cause, might even have unwanted side effects that could do even more harm.

incision• 12 years ago

'Anti-assault accessory...Strangers that rescue you are rewarded.'

This is begging for disaster.

I've personally witnessed the ugly mess of an overzealous rescue, a rescuer labeled assailant when the victim changes their mind or late responders are simply confused and of course violent wisdom of gathering mobs.

Digitally amplifying a scream this way is serious business. Assault and attacker, words the site uses freely, are dead serious yet being applied to an easily activated 'bunny' pin with implied 'rewards'.

I hope these folks think heavily about the potential implications - not just intent of what they're doing here.

lucio2• 12 years ago

Give them a chance. It's a very good idea. I see this potentially saving lives. It's like a private-sector freelancer-opened panic button. The mere fact of people arriving running to the scene is a deterrent.

zo1• 12 years ago

And we've probably seen way more incidents where a mini-mob of cops decided it was good to pummel on someone, just because their blue brothers are doing it. Point being, we can't just judge something by the ways in which people will end up abusing it. Almost all things can be overdone and abused by the determined/misguided/malicious. Sure, having a "mob" on speed-dial might be a bad idea, but at the same time we could be throwing out a perfectly valid crowd-source solution to crime. Which is not something I think we should be throwing out lightly in our society of "don't get involved" mentality.

hga5• 12 years ago

One of the things we're taught in lethal force (gun) self-defense classes is to be extremely careful about intervening in situations we know nothing about, it can be very hard to figure them out.

Which is critical not only as a matter of morals, but because it's illegal to intervene on the side of an aggressor. And there can be two stages of that, the first to threaten or use physical force, and the first to threaten or use lethal force. The definition of the latter is complicated, not to mention controversial and subject to second guessing etc., especially when the other person doesn't have a weapon.

The general advice is don't, or as Massad Ayoob puts it, if you were in a hospital and saw a random person needing low 6 figures of medical care, would you give him a check for it? Because that's what it takes to adequately defend yourself against a serious criminal charge.

dragonwriter• 12 years ago

Which is critical not only as a matter of morals, but because it's illegal to intervene on the side of an aggressor.

Which includes intervening, in many ways, where there is no aggressor (as then you become the aggressor, not merely someone intervening on the side of the aggressor) -- a possibility which it is quite likely that the would-be vigilantes who would have the greatest inclination to sign-on to such a system are likely to not consider when responding to a call.

diydsp• 12 years ago

Yes, the obvious scenario is:

1. Creep wants to hurt vulnerable people. 2. Creep buys this system. 3. Creep waits for vulnerable people to be in trouble. 4. Creep shows up on the scene and collaborates with the attacker(s).

sp332• 12 years ago

It also seems easily gameable. One person threatens a gaspard user. The other answers the call, and they split the reward.

JoeAnzalone• 12 years ago

Here's the link to their YouTube video since the site seems to be down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuaCBK1spjU

huhtenberg• 12 years ago

The idea is simple, but it doesn't make it any less ingenious.

A hardware token that transmits its location on demand, so obvious and so immediately useful. I think the question of adoption will boil down to whether this can be used in a completely private mode. That is if notification can be routed to a specified list of people only. If this is doable, it can easily become a must-have accessory for children and elderly, but especially for children.

derefr• 12 years ago

It already exists for the elderly (Life Alert bracelets.)

seren• 12 years ago

I am not sure it could work, people probably won't bother reacting to the help call or at the other extreme, a mob without control will form, but it is interesting because it is capturing both the gamification and isolation trends of our current time.

In an Ingress word, they should create leader boards to find out who is the best vigilante in a given city.

To their benefit I should add they are trying to tackle, maybe awkwardly, a complex issue.

TallGuyShort4• 12 years ago

> Strangers that rescue you are rewarded.

IANAL, and everything I'm about to say varies with location - I'm in the US and it even varies by state. People using this need to understand self-defense laws very well because the way you defend yourself may give the attacker the legal right to press charges against you. If you are licensed to carry a concealed firearm, you may need to take a course where they teach you stuff like this, but you can buy knives and batons that have the same legal implications and no one warns you. If someone attacks you, and the attacker can prove that you escalated the situation, or put them in danger, you may be the one facing criminal charges. This device opens up a dimension I'm not familiar with and I doubt has much case law behind it. If someone shows up and injures the attacker and the attacker makes the case that it was all just a misunderstanding or that it was an overreaction, where does that leave you and your rescuer? I'm not saying it's a bad idea or trying to start FUD, but the fact is self-defense is a very complex issue and you need to understand the implications of your actions very well before you're in a position to have to take them.

hga5• 12 years ago

The general principle is that the first person to escalate to force, and the first to escalate to lethal force, is in the wrong, which can cause the situation to shift.

Although some states don't recognize the latter, but pretty much everyone recognizes the principle of proportionality.

There is plenty of case law about people intervening in situations where they don't know what happened before that point, and it's frequently not pretty. I would expect it to be worse if they responded to such a call.

Red_Tarsius• 12 years ago

It sounds like a very interesting project, but I think the reward system is unnecessary.

A special "helper list" (one or two people from friends and family) should be mandatory, because sending the signal to everyone around you might not result in any help due to the Bystander Effect (Darley, Latané).

For more information -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

mikeash4• 12 years ago

I also imagine there will be a lot of false positives that will inure strangers to responding. It doesn't take a lot of people who are jumpy and push the button when a tree moves in the wind to overwhelm legitimate calls for help. Even 911, which is harder to use, gets drilled into us as being only for emergencies, and has serious legal consequences for extreme abuse, gets a ton of stupid calls.

Anderkent2• 12 years ago

Bystander effect only applies if everyone sees that many other people could be helping, AFAIK. If you don't know how many people around got the alert, I think it's similar to being the only person who did?

vidarh2• 12 years ago

I don't think that's clear at all. Some of the reasons the bystander effect "works" may even be amplified: You don't see if others respond, so you may question whether or not it's a genuine emergency or a false alert, for example.

ianbicking• 12 years ago

I don't think the bystander effect is nearly as significant as common wisdom would imply. People don't respond not because they think someone else will, but because they don't understand what's going on. I live in an urban area, and I pay attention to noises, but almost every time I hear a scream and investigate it's some boisterous teenagers or some similar phenomena. If I knew the person was requesting help – even if I don't know WHY they are requesting help – I would respond.

The wiki page largely confirms this as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect#Emergency_ver... – most of the factors which encourage response by bystanders would be satisfied by this system.

vidarh2• 12 years ago

People don't respond not because they think someone else will, but because they don't understand what's going on.

Well yes, but the reason people don't understand the seriousness is generally thought to be that when in groups people will see the inaction of the group and conclude that if it was something serious, someone else would have responded and/or assume they have intervened (e.g. by calling an ambulance).

In groups people will pretty consistently take longer and be less likely to even notice what is going on, and then take longer and be less likely to respond, even when the situations are otherwise identical, because people are inhibited by social conventions and "social proof".

There are factors that may reduce that difference. E.g. the more clearly it is an emergency. But even situations where people are very obviously in distress can result in inaction - the Wikipedia page has several examples.

Cialdini (in Influence) notes that even specific cries for help in obvious emergencies are often ignored by groups. He himself was actually in a car crash, and realised people were just driving by and ignoring them, until he realised and made use of his own advice: Make yourself noticed, be specific about what help you need, and be specific about who you want to provide it. That is, screaming "help" gets you ignored. Screaming "you in the blue jacket, call an ambulance" gets people to respond. Once you first get a response, you get more response - the bystander effect works to your benefit: people see other people acting, and suddenly everyone accepts it's an emergency and helps.

If I knew the person was requesting help – even if I don't know WHY they are requesting help – I would respond.

That may be true for you, especially if you are alone. But the moment group dynamics are triggered, the odds starts dropping that you will intervene with each extra person involved up until some fairly low limit (at which point the chance of intervention is quite small).

TTPrograms• 12 years ago

It's somewhat unfortunate that as part of their advertise they perpetuate the myth that violence has been growing over any recent period of time: http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Prod...

leephillips• 12 years ago

This is as useless as calling 911. Your only options during an actual attack are either disabling the attacker or escaping, and you have about two seconds to accomplish either one. Anyone who eventually arrives to assist you will only be there to help identify your body, gather forensic evidence, or load you into an ambulance. This site flashes images of self defense weapons and refers to them as joining the violence. They are peddling a dangerous fantasy. I suggest Sam Harris' excellent essay on the reality of violence: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-truth-about-violence

mikeash4• 12 years ago

I find it odd that you categorize "load you into an ambulance" as "useless". Isn't getting help after the fact still extremely valuable in many cases?

orclev• 12 years ago

I think his point was more that if you had an actual weapon you could use it to defend yourself and not need loading into the ambulance in the first place.

Anderkent2• 12 years ago

Except of course the kind of violence that people are often concerned about takes a while, and having a panic button that conspiciously calls for help can be quite useful.

If you're just being robbed, you just give them your money; but if you're about to be raped and/or kidnapped, this could quite possibly save your life.

hga5• 12 years ago

Some caveats to that advice:

Thus, if someone sticks a gun in your face and demands your wallet, you should hand it over without hesitation—and run.

That depends; statistics say those who resist violent crime have better outcomes. It's something you should play by ear rather than blindly follow the above advice, the statistics are undoubtedly biased by people resisting when it makes sense.

Even if you are at home, in possession of a firearm, and well trained to use it, when confronted by an intruder your best defense is to get out of the house as quickly as possible. In such a circumstance, a gun is a means of ensuring that no one can block your exit.

This above is very iffy advice. Not only do you have much stronger legal protections inside your house, you're likely to have much greater control over the situation, and control is perhaps his main message. You know your house, can benefit from concealment and maybe even cover (that which a bullet cannot penetrate), you don't know the situation outside the house. You might escape only to be surprised by an armed accomplice. Or suppose you do this just as the police arrive; more than a few armed homeowners have gotten shot by police mistaking them for criminals.

You also need to balance this advice about decreasing the risk to your physical skin with the psychological toll fleeing takes.

Nothing good ever comes to people who allow themselves to be moved to a remote location at the mercy of a violent predator.

In my Missouri concealed carry class they ran us through a simulator with police "shoot/don't shoot" scenarios. For mine, I would have been a lot more aggressive and would have tried to shoot at various times if I'd know the terrible statistics of the above which the instructor mentioned after it.

As for his advice to flee and leave your spouse or children to the tender mercies of someone who, as he notes, has demonstrated he wants more than your property, if you have any other option I don't want to know you. That includes your being in such a situation because you decided not to procure one or more firearms prior to the incident.

After I left home, I only procured firearms after I had a significant other to protect, or vice versa. At that point it was an obligation, no matter what obstacles Massachusetts put in place (which aren't really that bad for long guns, although that may be changing depending on the city you live in).

On the other hand, I picked up a very hard rule about hostages from Jerry Pournelle in The Mote in God's Eye: at that point, you mentally treat the situation as if the criminal has killed the hostages, even if you then try to rescue them. In this situation, as the author says, you don't increase the toll by submitting yourself as well. The odds are very high that will make the situation worse.

Final note, underlying a lot of what he says: if someone unknown knocks on the door, I don't answer without having a gun in my hand. If I'm expecting someone, I confirm it's them before opening the door. Or per a rule of Marine general James Mattis WRT to being in Iraq or Afghanistan during our recent unpleasantness, which addresses even more points the author made: "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet."

agarden• 12 years ago

The first recommended read at the end of the Harris article, _The Gift of Fear_ by Gavin de Becker, agrees generally with Harris but offers a more nuanced approach. He says to trust your gut. Occasionally cooperating does work. Standing up can also get you out of a pickle. But if you have a bad feeling, run with it and don't look back.

Couldn't agree more about leaving your family to an intruder. By all means call the police, and by all means stand and fight.

mikeash4• 12 years ago

"...if someone unknown knocks on the door, I don't answer without having a gun in my hand."

Holy crap. Do we live on the same planet? Being murdered by an unknown assailant who knocks on my door is so far down my list of risks and fears that it doesn't even register. I'm far more worried about being hit by a bus as I cross the street, or my car spontaneously catching fire in my garage. Sure, it could happen, but so could a meteor that obliterates my house, and it hardly seems worth any effort.

circlefavshape• 12 years ago

the probability that you will be robbed, assaulted, raped or murdered at some point over the next 30 years is 1 in 16

Isn't this a little disingenuous? "Robbed" includes you being pickpocketed, or someone stealing your TV from your apartment while you're at work. If you're going to be raped or murdered, it's most likely not going to be a predator that does it, but someone you know. What's the probability that you will experience violence at the hands of a stranger? That is the relevant statistic

LunaSea• 12 years ago

Swating-as-a-service

jtheory• 12 years ago

It would be exciting to be wandering the streets at night, waiting for a distress call to come in. The moment the bat signal -- ahem, the Gaspard -- lights up, you sweep in and rescue the damsel in distress from her assailant (naturally he collapses like a throwaway movie ninja), and you earn her undying respect and loyalty.

This could work excellently in a comic. I'm not sure how well it can work in the real world. Maybe if they make it really clear the focus is not on racing into battle with the evil assailant, but on just heading over to ask if everything's okay, that could be more useful.

In real life, I can imagine so many disasters unfolding -- like, you sprint into an alleyway in response to a call, and see a bleeding woman on the ground with a burly man crouching over her. Q1: His back is to you -- can you take him out before he realizes you're there? Q2: he's actually a passerby, and the actual assailant fled a minute ago. How long will it take you to figure that out?

Or just -- escalating violence would be fairly common when totally untrained people race in to deal with violence, but (as other commenters are pointing out) the "good guy" and "bad guy" roles in people's heads don't correspond with the legal outcomes of it all.

Xeoncross• 12 years ago

Having someone there to call 911 if the victim is unable would be a HUGE win.

Gaspard, the anti-assault accessory: never be alone again

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