In this “Secure In Mind” episode, it was a privilege to welcome Neil Walsh to the podcast for a second time. Neil is the Chief of Cyber-Crime & Money Laundering at the United Nations Office on Drugs & Crime. Please listen to this episode – the impacts of COVID extend beyond the hospital bed and awareness raising is key
In the space of a circa 40 minute conversation, Neil and I pivot from an opening filled with genuine good humor and laughter about the current niggles that we are experiencing (my talking tongues to wardrobes / Neil’s ill-fitting slacks) through to the seriousness of suffering for so many victims of physical and sexual abuse of (mostly) children and women in a world of lockdown.
We humans are an amazingly resilient species, having managed to survive (for now!) amidst an eternal carousel of quarks and quasars. Our evolution, and indeed evolution as a process, is marked by constant, often painful ascendancies to new levels of physiological capacity and / or cognition and intelligence. Unnoticed by our everyday conscious selves, we are continuously learning and growing at the cellular level. The push and pull of the individual and the greater global society catalysis in our species growth and at this level we can and do actively and indirectly play a part. Fundamental to this is our collective ability to expose our wounds to effective remedies rather than letting them fester… an ability not always leveraged due to fear or uneasiness resulting in avoidance. Shining a spotlight is the only way we can see what needs to be fixed.
The life of victims / responders i.e., law enforcement / or the perpetrators themselves is shocking to many folks simply because it is not part of their day to day. Of course, the life of an impoverished and starving refugee escaping a war zone in bare foot is also a shocking reality. I could go on but the point I want to draw is that these realities exist, regardless if many are ignorant, willfully, or not. Indeed, ignoring or shifting onus of phenomena such as child abuse and domestic abuse to that of a dark deity by using terms grounded in intangible contexts – ‘demonizing’ – does not help to mitigate or effectively contain and prevent it here on planet earth. I raise this point since it is incredibly easy to categories what has been identified in numerous studies as a neurological anomaly as evil – incredibly easy and incredibly true since the word evil is (correctly) attributed to that which causes immense pain and suffering. But just as we have increased life-spans and quality of existence (according to most metrics you can run a ruler over) through science and practicality rather than voodoo or our heads in the sand, so too can we at best prevent and at least minimize this pain-causing phenomenon as well.
In short, child abuse and domestic abuse are devastating issues, currently amplified by perpetrators spending more time at home with their victims and evidenced by a vast increase in new generated abuse material available on darknet and Clearnet platforms. Organizations like UNODC, LE, Intel etc. can and do combat this through the application of multiple, practical strategies – they do an incredible job amid the deluge of horror they have to wade through.
I’ll leave the reader now to press play and let the podcast do the talking as is its purpose. There are links at the bottom of the page. One in particular stands out: it is the result of decades and more spent by UNODC and associated stakeholders (LE / intel / Civil Society / Aid) trying to tackle a societal ill, facing an equal or greater amount of the same problem day after day. This link tries to nip a potential calamity in the bud before it has jumped the cranial firewall of a would-be perpetrator. It is the necessary confrontation of a sickness epitomized in a link borne of prevention, and as Neil comments during the podcast, if this awareness-raising means that even one individual halts an urge before it manifests in the real-world – a real-world with real-world pain, suffering and consequence – then the awareness has served its purpose.
This podcast has a mixed bag of listeners, some of whom know the challenges faced in fighting the above problems all too well. Some of the listeners do not share this level of insight. For both segments, share this episode: not because you enjoyed it – because you may not – but because it needs to be shared to raise awareness to either encourage victims to come forward or encourage potential perpetrators to seek help before, not after, the fact..
The Secure in Mind project
Our mission is to greatly increase and encourage community discussion about technological and ethical issues that have done, are and will impact society on a global scale.
There is a longstanding and distinct disconnect between the way information is packaged and presented to the public and the effectiveness of this presentation in terms of generating informed, considered debate.
If we can take complex, important topics and present them, as best we can, in a manner that can interests people from outside the specialty, then we have surpassed our expectations.
Nick Kelly Bio
Nick is someone who, in many senses, is just like you; a human being trying to make sense of this existence of ours as we hurtle around a ball of gas in a sea of infinite eternity. More relevant though are his vacillations in the world amongst diverse countries and environments
Collaborating, negotiating, elaborating and celebrating with fascinating people from all walks of life including politics, technology, activism, military and intelligence the world over. He brings this unique breadth of perspective to the table and has a dogged interest in pursuing the human story behind the title or policy, appreciating the fact that underneath all of our bravado, political correctness and dichotomous states of creation and destruction, we are, after all, merely mortals trying to make the best of it.
