Sputnik spoke to Dr Gordon Fletcher, Co-director of the Centre for Digital Business at the University of Salford in this interview.
Sputnik: Today it was announced that revenge porn victims in the UK could be granted anonymity as part of a review of the laws around online abuse. How significant would these changes be to victims of revenge porn?
Gordon: I think there is multiple levels to this story because at one level the intention and the actual changes that have been proposed is in the best interest of the victims but at the same time there seems to be a sort of an issue about where or the understanding about the nature of revenge porn in terms of who and how people are affected by it, which is much closer to home and in the sense anonymity of the public level, and the sort of sense of the legal case is important and it's gotten through, you know, any number of issues that people might face.
At the actual level of personal experience, and obviously, the way in which revenge porn might be distributed, it may be relatively ineffectual.
Sputnik: What effect will this anonymity have on how these cases are reported and in turn how they are dealt with by the authorities?
Gordon: I think it in some respects gives a more equal status to the victims of revenge porn as perhaps or other forms of online abuse, and in fact, other forms of abuse more generally. In that sense, it puts revenge porn in the same category as perhaps more familiar situations from the policing point of view so that police maps simply by that definition, can recognise the significance of the impact on the victims in a way that, like you said, you know, four or five years ago would not have been acknowledged at all.
That's an important statement in terms of this type of decision is actually the recognition of that relationship to other forms of online and offline abuse.
Sputnik: What impact does technology such as "deep fakes" have on granting someone anonymity for these crimes?
Gordon: I think the increasing prevalence of deep fakes is going to open up an entire sort of new avenue of legal questions and legislation and laws in terms of what needs to be policed. In relation to revenge porn, obviously, it simply makes the matter so much more complex, because it adds another layer of complexity and it makes it much more difficult to police and obviously, it raises the stakes in terms of the level of skill and awareness that policing requires in this area as well.
That in itself is again, about the resources that policing receives in the country and about the way in which police train, it literally opens up an avalanche of issues. It's the nature of awareness of the type of imagery that's being produced, let’s leave deep fakes aside for a second, but it's having a degree of awareness with individuals.
I mean, potentially individuals who are unaware that they're being filmed, or people who are perhaps somewhat naive to the implications of being filmed, or the creation of any form of imagery where there's sort of like not the full awareness situation. Policing has to reach out and be more proactive in the sense that it's about getting people to be informed and be educated about the dangers of certain types of activity again, online and offline; but the dangers and the consequences of certain types of activity in the way in which they could manifest later on in life.
The views expressed in this article are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
