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Comment by incision | Hacker News Reader

>'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.

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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.

> 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.

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).

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.

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

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.

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