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

'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.'

Why is prostitution on this list? It's not illegal in the UK under certain circs.

Seems especially crass coming after vampirethriller's post.

Can you give some insight into why you have listed prostitution as a crime comparable to rape or murder when it's not even a crime in the first place?

Thank you for sharing that vampirethriller.

I hope you don't mind me repeating it as it seems some posters may have missed it:

'The police still have my phone. They took it 8 years ago.
Held against me in court:
I was on antidepressants
I had an abortion
I was a prostitute
I had photos of myself dressed up for a night out on my phone
I'm tall (so could have fought harder)'

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.

Rape is a serious crime, and often the people involved have some kind of personal connection. Often that is relevant to the situation, or even if it isn't the accused argues that it is.

The right of an accused person to defend themselves is a cornerstone of our justice system. The police and prosecution don't have the option of simply ignoring this.

Are you seriously suggesting that when investigating a serious crime the police can avoid asking for information that would upset people?

There's quite a big case in the news right now about a girl who made repeated false claims of rape against separate men.

Part of the evidence against her is her phone pinging (( she claimed she'd been abducted on one occasion )) showing she'd been in an entirely different location to where she claimed.......There's a lot of evidence on phones, I think it's fair that both are handed in.

Institute
“This isn't true, the justice system is overly harsh on traumatised women.”

The system is completely biased towards the rapist.

You’ve misunderstood. I was replying regarding other crimes. The justice system is biased towards being lenient when the woman is the criminal. If you look at any crime from theft to drugs to assault to murder, women regularly avoid custodial sentences when men who have done the same crime get them. And in cases where both men and women doing the same crime get a custodial sentence, the woman usually gets a shorter sentence than the man.

That is different from the fact that rape convictions are very hard to get which doesn’t do justice to women when they are the victim. However, the system is still biased against men and favour women because in the U.K. (unlike other more progressive countries) female rape is not recognised legally as rape, but as a lesser sexual assault. So while it is very hard to convict a man of rape, it is impossible to convict a woman of rape due to the technicality of the UK rape laws wording.

This happens in domestic abuse too. My friend had to flee with her son to a womens refuge - the only place was in a different region. Then she had to hand her phone over as did her son. She had no income and was paying for a phone she couldnt use to access support, services etc. Her son got very isolated as he couldnt remain in contact with friends. The perpatrator is in prison now.

Little brown dog, your police must be way behind mine technologically if they can’t just copy the phones data in a few minutes and hand it back to you.

The police still have my phone. They took it 8 years ago.
Held against me in court:
I was on antidepressants
I had an abortion
I was a prostitute
I had photos of myself dressed up for a night out on my phone
I'm tall (so could have fought harder)

I feel like the actual issues isn't being found of other crimes but that any conversation you have had with you rapist will be used against you, sometimes rape isn't violent and forced its coercive and just wears you down until you don't care if it happens you just want it over, I was raped in an alley by a boy walking me home at the time afterwards I said to a male friend about it and he said that if I hadn't screamed bloody murder and fought him off of me that it wasn't rape, and I believed him and kept talking to the guy politely for a couple weeks after until I couldn't bear it anymore and realised that my male friend was wrong, now if I had reported it and the police took my phone do you think they'd believe me or do you think they'd use the fact that I was still talking to him as 'proof' that I wasn't raped?

That's a big gamble centered on the opinions and bias of whoever is going through my phone deciding if I'm lying or telling the truth.

Although the justice system is actually very lenient with women. Especially traumatised women
This isn't true, the justice system is overly harsh on traumatised women.
The system is completely biased towards the rapist. I would hazard a guess that the going back 7 years would be to find something/anything to discredit the victim.

If I were raped there is no way on God's earth I would ever report it.

No plan. That’s not right.

They take your phone and you don’t get it back for months. So you have to buy a new phone

It happened to a friend of mine

I don't think it's right or necessary.

It's another way to shame sex workers if they are unfortunate enough to get raped.

I really think we should have mass protests over this kind of thing. Happy to see protests over BLM, well the genuine ones, not the right wing thugs, but it did make me think what has to happen to us women for us to get the same kind of recognition over our issues.
Why are things still moving backwards in 2020 - how is it legal to demand a victims phone and tell them nothing will be done without it?

My Dd's phone was gone for 6 months.
We still had to pay for it in that time.
It's ridiculous.

Have to say this part of a response made me spit out my tea

Although the justice system is actually very lenient with women. Especially traumatised women....

I mean really

The nothing to hide brigade are faux naive. The fact is, defence lawyers could concievably take a search result as innocent as a MN thread discussing rape as 'evidence' you were researching the topic in order to frame someone. There's just no knowing how it could be distorted.

Anything not related to the rape cannot be used against you in court about the rape. It would be inadmissible. They can only use relevant evidence. What they are looking for is evidence of consent to sex. They don’t care about anything else for the rape case.

How about tweets to your pal, in which you jokily talk about getting pissed and picking up a bloke?

"The victim isn't on trial"

In theory the victim shouldn't be on trial - there have been many horrific cases over the years where they pretty much have been actually.

What did people do before mobile phones? It's not something they 'need'. Especially if there is a lot of physical evidence.

So if the victim has a photo of the rapist on her phone, they know each other? What does that show other than that? That would have zero bearing on whether he was guilty or not.

I think the person who said they wouldn’t mind if they had nothing to hide is either extremely naive or wilfully ignorant.

Even if you had a dating app on your phone, it would be used against you

The PP who says the police clone the phone and return it is misinformed. Women's phones are frequently taken from them, imagine how much that limits their ability to contact their support network at such a horrible time. How many phone numbers do you know by heart any more?

In the worst case, women are left entirely without communication. Katrina O'Hara was murdered by her ex after her phone was taken by the police because she'd reported him for domestic violence. She had no way to call for help.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-42602852

I don’t disagree with the ‘ideal’ situation that plan describes

And if i could trust the legal system to use the information in that way then it’d be all good

But we don’t, as others have said we still have a legal system which on occasion seems to believe that the victim is on trial, there is a world of difference between looking at evidence and holding up the pretty knickers that you had no idea were going to be used against you when you put them on that morning

In a just and enlightened society, for example, rape victims would not have to disclose their entire medical records so the defence barrister could try to paint a picture of them as "mentally unstable" and therefore not "credible" as a witness. Evidence of vulnerability and trauma would not be used against victims; we would know that rapists target the vulnerable who are viewed as "not credible" and how trauma manifests.

I agree, and it's being challenged by the Centre for Women's Justice. The investigation is ongoing but has been stalled.

Two rape complainants, represented by the Centre for Women’s Justice, launched a judicial review of the police policy on digital processing last year. The case has been paused pending an investigation into police digital extractions by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Yes, of course. I hate to say, do people not watch police procedurals? I realise they are fiction but looking through computer and phone data is a big deal now, that is also the case in real life.

Apparently that's often not the case. They have a greater claim to privacy.

From an older article:

“On the other hand, we know suspects have much more leeway to refuse to disclose their personal data and in some cases that their phones aren’t even requested,” she said. “Victims are all too often left with the impression it is them and their credibility that is under investigation, not the person actually accused of a serious violent crime.”

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/25/revealed-uk-police-demanding-access-data-potential-rape-victims