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by adamclayman 4227 days ago
Yes!

SmartConsent: A way to engineer an end to campus sexual assault. The rape whistle can be improved upon. Even a very simple reengineered "garage door opener" transceiver glued to the upper right hand corner of every bed on campus would do the trick, and would permit young women and men to call for "Consent First Response" on a Red Alert (physical harm) or Code Blue (perceived coercion) whenever they are feeling uncomfortable and need a discreet first responder to come help sort things out.

3 comments

Here's a more recent video presentation from Shanghai that goes into greater depth on the possibility space:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9oi2xcLlDU

You can skip ahead to about 9 minutes 18 seconds to get a sense of the core arguments that build toward the conclusion that we need long-press-activated, always-on, always-available digital rape whistles attached to student beds and student wrists.

Watch the videos for the caveats, disclaimers, and possibilities. If you're interested in starting, just drop me a line at:

adam@lifesavers.io OR adam@smartconsent.org

I'll help however I can. Dozens of rapes happened this weekend that I could not help stop with smartconsent alerts.

And to be sure, this is a "free" idea that's public domain, as far as I know. All the videos are released via Creative Commons Universal, and all the wiring and prelim code for this project that I have so far or will build is released with the MIT License. If you form a nonprofit or for-profit company to build out and sell SmartConsent, I assert no proprietary interest. I just want to sleep easier at night knowing that I helped get this project and design thesis into good hands.

I've been building a prototype with an Arduino Yun. The code is half-functional at present. The roadmap is very clear. The problem is that I work as a chemistry teacher in 上海, and I can not do this technology justice of my own. You will need to pitch in, Hacker News, to make this a reality.
I've built something similar as a side project for a competition with some friends. I'd love to get some feedback on it.

It's not exactly the same, and was built with a focus on mugging, but it can very easily be adapted to work in other scenarios (or in different form factors).

Here's a video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9Hp6q3PJWg

This is the first time I tried describing SmartConsent. This may be of great interest to you as an early disclosure of the design thesis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAL0qQuK4AY