IANAL, and everything I'm about to say varies with location - I'm in the US and it even varies by state. People using this need to understand self-defense laws very well because the way you defend yourself may give the attacker the legal right to press charges against you. If you are licensed to carry a concealed firearm, you may need to take a course where they teach you stuff like this, but you can buy knives and batons that have the same legal implications and no one warns you. If someone attacks you, and the attacker can prove that you escalated the situation, or put them in danger, you may be the one facing criminal charges. This device opens up a dimension I'm not familiar with and I doubt has much case law behind it. If someone shows up and injures the attacker and the attacker makes the case that it was all just a misunderstanding or that it was an overreaction, where does that leave you and your rescuer? I'm not saying it's a bad idea or trying to start FUD, but the fact is self-defense is a very complex issue and you need to understand the implications of your actions very well before you're in a position to have to take them.

Although some states don't recognize the latter, but pretty much everyone recognizes the principle of proportionality.

There is plenty of case law about people intervening in situations where they don't know what happened before that point, and it's frequently not pretty. I would expect it to be worse if they responded to such a call.

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.

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 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.

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).

This could work excellently in a comic. I'm not sure how well it can work in the real world. Maybe if they make it really clear the focus is not on racing into battle with the evil assailant, but on just heading over to ask if everything's okay, that could be more useful.

In real life, I can imagine so many disasters unfolding -- like, you sprint into an alleyway in response to a call, and see a bleeding woman on the ground with a burly man crouching over her. Q1: His back is to you -- can you take him out before he realizes you're there? Q2: he's actually a passerby, and the actual assailant fled a minute ago. How long will it take you to figure that out?

Or just -- escalating violence would be fairly common when totally untrained people race in to deal with violence, but (as other commenters are pointing out) the "good guy" and "bad guy" roles in people's heads don't correspond with the legal outcomes of it all.

A hardware token that transmits its location on demand, so obvious and so immediately useful. I think the question of adoption will boil down to whether this can be used in a completely private mode. That is if notification can be routed to a specified list of people only. If this is doable, it can easily become a must-have accessory for children and elderly, but especially for children.

Thus, if someone sticks a gun in your face and demands your wallet, you should hand it over without hesitation—and run.

That depends; statistics say those who resist violent crime have better outcomes. It's something you should play by ear rather than blindly follow the above advice, the statistics are undoubtedly biased by people resisting when it makes sense.

Even if you are at home, in possession of a firearm, and well trained to use it, when confronted by an intruder your best defense is to get out of the house as quickly as possible. In such a circumstance, a gun is a means of ensuring that no one can block your exit.

This above is very iffy advice. Not only do you have much stronger legal protections inside your house, you're likely to have much greater control over the situation, and control is perhaps his main message. You know your house, can benefit from concealment and maybe even cover (that which a bullet cannot penetrate), you don't know the situation outside the house. You might escape only to be surprised by an armed accomplice. Or suppose you do this just as the police arrive; more than a few armed homeowners have gotten shot by police mistaking them for criminals.

You also need to balance this advice about decreasing the risk to your physical skin with the psychological toll fleeing takes.

Nothing good ever comes to people who allow themselves to be moved to a remote location at the mercy of a violent predator.

In my Missouri concealed carry class they ran us through a simulator with police "shoot/don't shoot" scenarios. For mine, I would have been a lot more aggressive and would have tried to shoot at various times if I'd know the terrible statistics of the above which the instructor mentioned after it.

As for his advice to flee and leave your spouse or children to the tender mercies of someone who, as he notes, has demonstrated he wants more than your property, if you have any other option I don't want to know you. That includes your being in such a situation because you decided not to procure one or more firearms prior to the incident.

After I left home, I only procured firearms after I had a significant other to protect, or vice versa. At that point it was an obligation, no matter what obstacles Massachusetts put in place (which aren't really that bad for long guns, although that may be changing depending on the city you live in).

On the other hand, I picked up a very hard rule about hostages from Jerry Pournelle in The Mote in God's Eye: at that point, you mentally treat the situation as if the criminal has killed the hostages, even if you then try to rescue them. In this situation, as the author says, you don't increase the toll by submitting yourself as well. The odds are very high that will make the situation worse.

Final note, underlying a lot of what he says: if someone unknown knocks on the door, I don't answer without having a gun in my hand. If I'm expecting someone, I confirm it's them before opening the door. Or per a rule of Marine general James Mattis WRT to being in Iraq or Afghanistan during our recent unpleasantness, which addresses even more points the author made: "Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet."

Couldn't agree more about leaving your family to an intruder. By all means call the police, and by all means stand and fight.

As for defending the family, going back to frontier times we're not that sexist, e.g. my father taught me and all my siblings how to hunt, fish, shoot and drive, and my younger sister still schools "the boys" when her husband and friends go skeet shooting.

Holy crap. Do we live on the same planet? Being murdered by an unknown assailant who knocks on my door is so far down my list of risks and fears that it doesn't even register. I'm far more worried about being hit by a bus as I cross the street, or my car spontaneously catching fire in my garage. Sure, it could happen, but so could a meteor that obliterates my house, and it hardly seems worth any effort.

I carry daily, but generally don't have a firearm on my person when I'm at home. That said, my front door is down a flight of stairs, and there is a rifle just out of sight at the top fo the stairs.

As for the odds of needing it... well, they're obviously quite low. I live in a low-crime area and a large portion of my income goes to ensuring that is the case. Even so, my town (Charlottesville, VA) is currently in the national news because a college girl was abducted off the street about a block from my office. There have also been a handful of home invasion robberies in nearby towns over the past couple of months.

It seems extremely reasonable to at least have the option of using an effective weapon to defend one's self.

"Any" effort? You admit the risk is non-zero (and it's certainly a lot greater than that meteor), for me the effort is rather low, since I keep that gun handy for whenever I go outside and carry it concealed.

Let's add an additional dimension: this precaution is so easy it would be downright embarrassing to not take it and then get bushwacked.

I'd like to think the risk of killing an innocent is negligible. I'm neither morally or legally allowed to use lethal force unless I (technically a "reasonable person" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person) believe I'm being threatened with lethal force and that's the best option.

My above testimony should be ample evidence that I realize the terrible responsibilities and consequences of using lethal force; I am therefore necessarily hesitant to do so, specifically my threshold is set high to avoid ambiguity. In my case, not having any dependents, and living with someone who's also capable of defending himself, I'm willing to take a certain degree of risk to avoid using lethal force on an innocent.

In this vague hypothetical, I might instead retreat into my house, perhaps warning the possible assailant that I'm armed and don't want to have to shoot him. Someone who (continues to) advance in the face of that (not to mention entering a dwelling with a strong anti-invitation) could be judged a threat.

Although not necessarily a lethal one, but if someone continues to advance on a visibly armed man, the man can at some point presume the one advancing intends to take the gun away, thereby posing a lethal threat. And all this leaves out whatever that person is saying, all part of his demeanor which one uses in judging his intent.

Isn't this a little disingenuous? "Robbed" includes you being pickpocketed, or someone stealing your TV from your apartment while you're at work. If you're going to be raped or murdered, it's most likely not going to be a predator that does it, but someone you know. What's the probability that you will experience violence at the hands of a stranger? That is the relevant statistic

If you're just being robbed, you just give them your money; but if you're about to be raped and/or kidnapped, this could quite possibly save your life.

A special "helper list" (one or two people from friends and family) should be mandatory, because sending the signal to everyone around you might not result in any help due to the Bystander Effect (Darley, Latané).

For more information -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

The wiki page largely confirms this as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect#Emergency_ver... – most of the factors which encourage response by bystanders would be satisfied by this system.

Well yes, but the reason people don't understand the seriousness is generally thought to be that when in groups people will see the inaction of the group and conclude that if it was something serious, someone else would have responded and/or assume they have intervened (e.g. by calling an ambulance).

In groups people will pretty consistently take longer and be less likely to even notice what is going on, and then take longer and be less likely to respond, even when the situations are otherwise identical, because people are inhibited by social conventions and "social proof".

There are factors that may reduce that difference. E.g. the more clearly it is an emergency. But even situations where people are very obviously in distress can result in inaction - the Wikipedia page has several examples.

Cialdini (in Influence) notes that even specific cries for help in obvious emergencies are often ignored by groups. He himself was actually in a car crash, and realised people were just driving by and ignoring them, until he realised and made use of his own advice: Make yourself noticed, be specific about what help you need, and be specific about who you want to provide it. That is, screaming "help" gets you ignored. Screaming "you in the blue jacket, call an ambulance" gets people to respond. Once you first get a response, you get more response - the bystander effect works to your benefit: people see other people acting, and suddenly everyone accepts it's an emergency and helps.

> If I knew the person was requesting help – even if I don't know WHY they are requesting help – I would respond.

That may be true for you, especially if you are alone. But the moment group dynamics are triggered, the odds starts dropping that you will intervene with each extra person involved up until some fairly low limit (at which point the chance of intervention is quite small).

In an Ingress word, they should create leader boards to find out who is the best vigilante in a given city.

To their benefit I should add they are trying to tackle, maybe awkwardly, a complex issue.

You should read the 5th paragraph down.

Feel free to provide me a study where they actually conducted scientifically rigorous tests in public and not just a few guys in a test room. I'd like to see the actual percentage of failures to assist and I'd like to see evidence where this device helps at all. For all we know it could hinder matters, though I would suspect not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility

The only example of a person on the street not being helped is actually completely fabricated by the inept police of the time.