Technological violence: abuse against women may increase

2024-02-14 19:51:43

Violence once morest women is increasing in Brazil. The country occupies the fifth place in the world rankings – behind only El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala and Russia. Brazil recorded 722 femicides between January and June last year, 2.6% more than crimes of the same nature recorded in the first half of 2022. The state of São Paulo recorded the highest number of femicides (221) of the last five years, when the data began to be released separately from other homicide statistics. In addition to feminicide and domestic violence, women are also the main victims of technological violence.

Search disclosed in 2023 indicates that there are almost 250 million smart cell phones in use in Brazil. In other words, there are more cell phones than people. When taking into account the number of notebooks, tablets and computers, the national average rises to 2.2 digital devices per inhabitant. If, on the one hand, this is a guarantee of insertion in a globalized world, facilitating access to more information, expanding the reach of communication and enabling negotiations with people from other countries, it is also true that technology has been used for a series of crimes once morest women, such as cyberbullying and revenge pornography.

While cyberbullying involves the exposure of derogatory comments posted on social media with the aim of intimidating or attacking the victim, causing pain and anguish, revenge pornography involves the dissemination of sexually explicit media, such as photos or videos, recorded or based on deepfake , without the victim’s knowledge or consent. Another development is sextortion, a term that consists of combining the word sex with the word extortion, and is characterized as online blackmail by forcing a person to engage in sexual or pornographic practices recorded in a photo or video for sending, in exchange for maintaining secrecy. of their nudes, previously stored by the person making the threat. In view of this, women become the main victims of a type of violence sometimes as cruel as a physical attack occurring at home.

According to the lawyer Valéria Freitas de Araujo, violence once morest women is taking on never-before-imagined contours, since in addition to being victims in the real environment (physical world), women are also victims in the virtual environment, in several other ways. “Faced with growing violence once morest women, Brazil has slowly moved towards curbing this practice through more comprehensive and stricter laws. A Maria da Penha Law (Lei nº 11,340), for example, is from 2006 and typifies five forms of domestic and family violence once morest women: physical, psychological, moral, sexual and property. Already the Carolina Dieckmann Law (Lei 12.737) was created six years later, being the first to punish cybercrimes”. The approval of this law, which considers hacking computers and cell phones a crime, came less than two years following the release of intimate images of the actress, who had her computer hacked and 36 photos stolen, in addition to suffering an extortion attempt.

According to the lawyer, women are still subject to a type of hidden violence that can often escalate to verbal and physical violence. “Technological violence also concerns a very common behavior practiced between couples. When a man requires the partner’s cell phone password, feeling entitled to check their social networks, their conversations via apps and email exchanges, this constitutes psychological and technological violence. Women need to say no to this sick behavior and be protected in their rights.”

Valéria argues that this type of violence should not be normalized by women, arguing that they too act in this way out of jealousy or insecurity, or even as a joke. “The right to privacy is a serious matter and it is necessary to face the digital insecurity suffered by people, especially women” – says the lawyer, citing the LGPD. A General Data Protection Law (13,709) was created in 2018 and is now fully in force. Principles such as: purpose, adequacy, necessity, transparency, security and non-discrimination must be observed, under penalty of the treatment being considered illicit, subjecting the agent to administrative sanctions provided for by law and civil reparations.

In the United Kingdom, a study demonstrated that technology has been used in different ways to monitor, persecute, harass and pretend to be victims. For example, software installed on a victim’s cell phone or smart home devices can be used to record their location and conversations. Generally, the initiative comes from controlling and violent partners, or even from ex-partners who wish to prove their point in court, in a possible child custody dispute or division of assets. The government says it is already preparing itself legally to combat emerging trends, including technological abuse. For Valéria Freitas de Araujo, there is no shortage of examples of paths to follow to increase protection for women. “The problem is that the laws are, for the most part, drawn up and approved by men.”

Source: Valéria Luiza Freitas de Araujoattorney.

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