New South Wales Police Commissioner Mick Fuller has suggested a sexual consent app to allow people to establish and record their mutual consent on a mobile phone before having sex.
In the proposal, users would enter their names, declare that they are of legal age, declare that they understand sexual consent, send requests and swipe to accept. The app would then encrypt and store the digital agreement to be used later “if needed”, as to combat sexual assault and rape.
Andrew Dyer, senior law lecturer at the University of Sydney, said a consent app would do more harm than good. He said not only would it not account for people withdrawing consent part way through sex, but it failed to account for the "subtleties" of sexual encounters.