It had been months since I last wrote my blog on cyber
crimes against women because of my other commitments. I had been travelling to Meghalaya,
to Bhubaneswar and to Kolkata for attending seminars and workshops on cyber
crimes as a resource person to talk on cyber crimes against women. Yes, all three included taking flights and
then taking taxis to respective accommodations. This is the first time that I
was continuously travelling with one or two weeks gap and I immensely enjoyed
my journey with my new smart phone. On previous occasions I could never use the
camera devices within the flight because I was not that comfortable either with
the journey in the flights or with handling camera along with my books, papers
and flight documents. I was a novice. But this time, I was smarter. I kept the
mobile smart phone handy and could capture some wonderful moments in the
flight. Well, and why not when I got the lyricist Illayaraja as my VIP
co-passenger.....like all others, I too got a selfie with him and proudly
circulated it among my friends (obviously after taking his permission). In all
these three occasions I immensely enjoyed the learning sessions in other
speaker’s sessions and I loved arguing about my understanding of laws related
to S.66A of the Information Technology Act and other related provisions. I loved roaming around in the cities either
by walking or by taxi. The most surprising for me was definitely the taxi
system in Kolkata since I never thought like other cities Kolkata will also
have luxury cars turned into taxis putting a great competition for our good and
old Yellow taxis.
Then happened the Uber taxi rape case in Delhi with this
unfortunate yet brave woman who was molested and raped by this rapist taxi
driver who was driving the taxi operated by Uber.
No, I did not use any app for booking my taxies and it was
quite new for me as well. I was still following the old rule of booking the
taxi from the hotel or getting a taxi from the shopping mall by either
directing talking to the driver or through prepaid taxi-counters. The Uber cab rape case made me think twice as
what I should learn about using technology while travelling. Let me tell you,
that the one and only “page” I follow for road safety is the page by Safetipin.com
, even though I have never contributed
to the site and I know the data thus
provided in such apps for positive gain
of the society, may be misused by
miscreants as well. But Uber case was
altogether very different. The cab was registered with the company who runs it
from their head office in the US and through the mobile app, one can book the
cabs in selected cities in India. What the customer generally gets to know is
the number of the car, the photograph and cell phone number of the driver. This
particular cab did not have certain basic security features including the name
and photograph and the photocopy of the driving license of the driver. The
victim was raped and as has been reported by the news media, the driver
allegedly threatened to kill victim if she dared to report. Note that Uber was supposed to supervise whether the
driver and the cab were well monitored through GPS . But in this case, the car
did not have the GPS and the driver did not have any sign of it in his mobile
as well. The victim however showed her smartness in using the smart-phone for taking photograph of the number plate of
the car and using it as an evidence for lodging the FIR to the police. I can’t stop praising
her guts as even after being molested and threatened, she was not cowed down by
threatening and could click the image of the car, which was used as a vital
evidence to nab the offender and also take action against the Uber . The
company was also pulled in by the prosecution and Uber services were banned in
couple of cities in India as they failed in providing proper safe services due
to their lacklastering verification process. This can be a fine example of tort
liability for every law student in India. But what the Uber cab victim could
not do the other few women did in different parts of India; consider the Rohtak
sisters whose video of hitting some boys because they were allegedly disturbing
the two girls went viral in the internet. Even though later it was claimed by
some that these sisters were not defending themselves, but actually beating the
boys for public attention, it further created a trend among many to use smart
devices for capturing the victimisation or post victimisation scenes. Consider
the video of this young woman who was ‘protesting’ body touch by a co-passenger
in the Indigo flight recently; the video went viral in the internet. It did not
show the complainant, neither the act of touching or molestation, but the
alleged harasser and some passengers who were ready to leave the flight. Again,
this video claims further benefit of doubt as has been stated by the person who
was being protested against. True, no woman can immediately switch on the
camera devices to capture the moments of molestation if she is being touched or
molested, but when a man or other bystanders take the video or capture images,
that may have a better chance to defend the victim’s claim than this one.
This digital trend similar to “naming and
shaming”, is the trend of “sharing, showing and shaming”. The newest of this
trend is the circulation (initiated through WhatsApp ) of the images of some men who were allegedly
raping a woman (and now the images are floating in the Facebook and other
social media and news channel as well). Activist Sunitha Krishnan spread the
images for tracing the rapists. I am not aware as how the rape scenes have gone
viral from the rapists or the bystanders, but definitely if the allegations are
real, then this is another case of rapists behaviour of what I call “rape while I tape”,
meaning recording the rape for his own pleasure which
is an example of extremely sick mentality.
But my question is how far “sharing, showing and shaming” can be
beneficial to victims, as well as the society? Not always it can be beneficial.
It can be risky as well . I agree with Professor
Danielle Citron, writer of the book Hate crimes in Cyber space, which I had the
privilege of reviewing, where she discusses about risks involved in naming and
shaming (pp.109-111). Similarly, in
cases of “sharing, showing and shaming”, the victim woman may use her devices
to record the traces of victimisation, but it further needs to be forensically
proved and again, the burden of proof lies on the victim as well as the
prosecution. The ‘perpetrator’ can always claim to be portrayed wrongly. Further,
tell me how many of the police officials who may be contacted with such digital
records taken by the victim herself, would believe the victims? I tell it from
my own experiences of dealing with victims of crimes including cyber crimes,
not many police officials are even able to safely record the images from the
victim’s devices. It may bring further secondary harassment to victims when she
is ridiculed by the moral police groups or supporters of the alleged harasser.
But brave women, I salute you for what you have done and
wish that your struggle is rewarded. This reminds me of the hard truth again
...... technology is a double edged weapon and it may not always help the women
even when it is used with immense hope that it would actually help.
Please Note:
Do not violate copyright of this blog. If you would like to use informations
provided in this blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article,
please cite it as “Halder D. (2015), “When technology can(not) save the brave women" “ 6th February,,2015, published in http://debaraticyberspace.blogspot.com/
