Big Brother wants 7 years data if you are a rape victim

PlanDeRaccordement
I don’t have my phones for the last 7 years, I don’t even have the same phone number or email accounts.

Lol. They don’t actually take your phone and keep it.

Do you think you could check your facts before you start sneering all over this thread? Some women have had their phone confiscated for years, and they still have to pay the contract on it.

Report from Rape Crisis;
Information Commissioner agrees police use of mobile phone data is ‘unlawful’
''While suspects are rightly viewed as innocent until proven guilty, it seems sexual offence complainants are treated as ‘suspicious until proven otherwise’ by our criminal justice system.''
rapecrisis.org.uk/news/latest-news/information-commissioner-agrees-police-use-of-mobile-phone-data-is-unlawful/

vampirethriller

The system is totally geared towards the offender

I want to apologise in advance, I don't mean to suggest your rapist was/is innocent but the system is geared towards protecting the innocent from false prosecution. I realise that is of little consolation in your case but please imagine being accused of a crime you didn't commit, being forbidden from finding out who your accuser is or the particulars of what you're supposed to have done and your solicitor being unable to produce an effective defence because they aren't privy to the details of the case either.

So sorry lulubelle.

I’m sorry that happened to you lulubelle.
It is true that the defence barristers will stoop to the lowest level to get an offender off, even if they know they are guilty.
I agree the system is geared towards the offender, for all crimes.
It’s too bad that in trying to avoid convicting the innocent, that some guilty offenders end up getting away with rape.

Here is an article on how fast the police can download all the data on your phone. It’s apparently been in London since 2012, and gradually rolled out in the U.K. the past couple of years?

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/31/police-rolling-technology-allows-raid-victims-phones-without/

“At least 26 forces now use technology which allows them to to extract location data, conversations on encrypted apps, call logs, emails, text messages, photographs, passwords and internet searches among other information. The searches can be done instantly at a local police station and are used by many forces for low level crime - regardless of whether or not someone is charged - and can be used on victims and witnesses as well as suspects.”

“The Metropolitan Police, which was the first force to introduce the extraction devices during the London 2012 Olympics, has admitted that when a single photograph is required from a victim's phone every one is downloaded.”

“Some forces, each of which provide different guidance, have even equipped officers with portable mobile phone extraction kits which can be used on the go.”

Perhaps some posters here are in areas where the police do not yet have updated extraction devices?

Have there been cases of a victim being prosecuted for another crime as a result of information gathered from their phones?

And all her numbers and chats gone

I thought these were backed up online. When I sign into my Google account, it loads them up on a new phone.

A conversation I had with a CBT therapist 3 years before I was raped was used against me and ensured my rapist got off with a not guilty verdict.

The police requested my medical records as standard procedure and always disclose these to the defence.

I would never submit anything that I didn’t feel was 100% relevant (god forbid) if I was ever involved in any kind of legal case again.

She, yes woman barrister, tore me apart on the stand and I’m a very capable confident person who genuinely didn’t have anything to hide yet was left feeling like I was on trial.

The system is totally geared towards the offender

They do though. As I said. My friend had to buy new phone

These are not cheap. And all her numbers and chats gone

Littlrbrowndog,

No idea why the UK police are doing that. They don’t need to keep them for any technical reason. A forensic data specialist can extract and preserve all its data in minutes.

Why do the police keep the phones for months and months plan?

Before someone asks, yes, even if you disable location services your phone is still tracking where it is and the various cell towers are also seeing and tracking your phone.

The sad thing is a tiny minority of women do lie. Yes, it's rare. But I'm not comfortable with both side of any crime not being investigated properly and either side being let down as a result.

Cellphone data can also be used to boost the victims allegation, as say it pinged in her rapists flat and the rapist denied she was there they'd have proof he was lying.

Honestly, we don't need GPS data to prove a victim was where she said she was. What if she had mobile data turned off when it happened? Like anyone on a low income would? Or if she'd run out of phone credit?

Doesn’t matter. You can still track a cell phone even if it is turned off, out of charge, out of credit, etc. It’s saved women’s lives who have been kidnapped and being hauled away in the boot of a car. It’s caught rapists and murderers by proving they were on the scene of a rape or murder by comparing their phones data to the victims phones data.
Even a smart watch or Fitbit can be used to solve crimes.

Respectfully, you are wrong on #2. Multiple studies have shown the exact opposite.
library.college.police.uk/docs/hofindings/r10.pdf
“A higher proportion of female offenders are cautioned for serious offences”
“The available evidence suggests that women are less likely than men to be remanded in custody than men.”
“There are differences in the sentences that men and women receive, but overall, women seem more likely to receive lenient sentences than men. This is so even when previous convictions are taken into consideration.”
To start. If interested on further reading I am happy to post links to more studies.

On #3, yes, but your point agrees with what I have said about rape trials and the difficulty in convicting rapists. So not sure why you are thinking I have said otherwise? I think you are confusing what the police do with the data versus what the defence barrister might do with the data if they succeed in gaining it through discovery? Everything you mention about the aspects of women’s lives being held to a standard are what the defence barrister does, who works for the accused rapist. Not what the police do.

And I answered your question according to the procedures that I’m familiar with in a polite and friendly manner as to the fact that the police can access your data even if you do not have it in your possession. And yet you respond with name calling.

PlanDeRaccordement

Don’t “lol” me like that you patronising twerp.

I’m saying I don’t have access to any of the data. That was all. You really need to step back on your aggression.

But if you are involved in domestic assaults, family courts, murder of various kinds, financial shenanigans, prostitution - all of these kinds of crimes can involve looking into people's personal relationships, financial problems, bad habits, etc.'

Erm, being involved in family court or a prostitute are not crimes.

Plan, with respect, your posts show a lack of knowledge of the law in the UK:

1. There are 3 jurisdictions in the UK, England & Wales, Scotland & Northern Ireland.
2. You are correct that in England & Wales women cannot be accused of rape as rape rape is penetration by a penis. They can, and have been, charged with assault by penetration which carries the same penalties as rape though women are far less likely to commit sexual assaults & when they do, their victim is more likely to be a woman.
3. Women are held to a far higher standard then men and are often imprisoned for crimes for which men usually receive a community disposal; not having a TV licence for example
4. Anyone who has attended a rape trial knows exactly what happens to women and it's obscene. As others have indicated, the minutiae of their lives are exposed, not just the rape but any other sexual or other behaviour which deviates from the image of the perfect innocent victim.

Honestly, we don't need GPS data to prove a victim was where she said she was. What if she had mobile data turned off when it happened? Like anyone on a low income would? Or if she'd run out of phone credit?
All the stuff in a mobile phone, it could help to secure a conviction, but claiming it's necessary or needed is a fallacy because that implies that, before the amazing magical smartphones became mass consumer goods, no rapes were ever prosecuted.
They were. Better than they are now. Presumably because we had more funding for the police and therefore more forensic psychologists to talk to suspects and victims, but I'm going out on a limb there.
The fact rape prosecutions are at an all-time low goes to show that the police are getting far too bogged down in unnecessary crap like whether a woman has a Tinder account or ever Googled "what the fuck even is a rape fantasy" or whether she's got erotic romance in her Kindle account, and not enough time actually investigating crime.
It's as stupid as the fact that poor 17-year-old's pair of knickers were used to get a rapist acquitted in County Cork a couple of years ago.

A phone is a valuable item, some of them cost a lot of money, and they devalue quite quickly, so the police keeping someone's phone means the victim has to get another phone for day-to-day use in the interim, losing money as their proper phone depreciates in value, possibly paying a phone plan for their proper phone, and having had to shell out on another phone especially if they need it for work.

Confiscating someone's phone when they report a rape smacks of a paternalistic schooldays attitude where all rape victims, regardless of age, are incorrigible children.

On a side note, this all seems like a reason to keep an old phone around to hand in instead, and to change phone numbers/providers once every couple of years like we all used to in the Nokia 3210 days.

You can bet that's what the rapists will be doing when they plan these sort of crimes. Which basically invalidates the use of any given phone as "evidence" for anything at all.

I'm not being disingenuous why do you say that?

Your answer is nonsensical. It does not address what you wrote at all, which was:

'Probably not if you report your car stolen. But if you are involved in domestic assaults, family courts, murder of various kinds, financial shenanigans, prostitution - all of these kinds of crimes can involve looking into people's personal relationships, financial problems, bad habits, etc.'.

Maybe you are projecting with this disingenuous thing?

Ok but if your whole argument is based around the phones location being accessed why do they want 7 years worth of data?

I think I know why, to go back and find any evidence of promiscuity, casual sex, enjoyment of any kind of kinky porn or sex ect. It is all about finding a way to blame the victim for what happened to them or somehow imply that they actually wanted it. That is the problem with the system.

I listed prostitution because someone being accused of accessing a prostitute, or being a prostitute, may well feel that the police are asking personal or embarrassing questions, or revealing things that affect their job, their family life, etc. As with the other things I listed.

This is a discussion about the legal system. Maybe try telling people how you would like to allow investigations of crimes where relevant information for both the prosecution and defence might be contained on a people's phones, without having access to people's phones?

Well you didn't say it was wrong when she posted it did you.

And I haven't seen anyone on the thread say that phones cannot be used under any circs.

Show a bit of empathy and don't move the goalposts.

What do you think of the case mentioned where the person's phone showed she wasn't where she said she was?

If the police can't look at the victim's phone, are you ok with saying they also can't look at the accused's phone? To show for example that they weren't where they said they were?

So long as defendants have a right to make a defence, there is a certain amount of leeway required to let them do that and they need access to certain kinds of information. Otherwise you have the kind of situation you see in certain (not very nice) places where the defendant might be able to make a defence, but is given no right to ask for any information or help to do so.

If your issue is with the kinds of arguments that are effective in court, that's not the same issue as how the police and the defence can access information.