New voice-activated phone app strives to prevent military sexual assaults

WASHINGTON — A new mobile app launched Tuesday claims to activate at the sound of a safe word and immediately alert a user’s friends, family and 911 in an emergency, as well as share the GPS location and livestream audio and video to selected contacts.

The creators of the app, UrSafe, want to improve personal safety and accelerate response times to sexual assaults and other violent crimes. Service members are a main component of their target audience.

“We’ve seen this crisis taking over not just in the military, but as a society as a whole, with assaults,” said Dr. Anthony Oyogoa, a physician and a cofounder of UrSafe. “We wanted to ask the question: What can technology do? I took the baton, and we’ve gone back and forth trying to create something we think starts the process of addressing this.”

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