The Trap of Surveillance in Relationships — An Analysis
Violence against women is still a major problem in our society. While it feels like this topic could be outdated, it is more up-to-date than it should be. Indeed, new technologies and social media broadened the opportunities of men to put pressure on women. While in earlier times, violence against women was more seen as a physical threatening, at least the physical part has decreased in modern countries. So, the US Bureau of Justice states that the rates of domestic violence declined by 63% between 1994 and 2012. Stronger position of women in society, emancipation and less patriarchism could have been reasons for that. Also, the signs of physical violence are easy to see, a fact that may reduce the number of cases of physical violence. While physical domestic violence has decreased, overall domestic violence doesn’t seem to decrease. So, the National Network to End Domestic Violence aggregated that 88% of the programs against domestic violence report an increase in the requests they receive.
The reason for that is that the violence shifted from physical violence to more mental pressure. A man controlling his partner’s life while making her withdraw from social life is a common problem. After retirement, she is completely at the mercy of him and he is able to do with her more or less whatever he wants because he controls her life. He knows everything about her, so he knows what she is doing, when she does something, and with whom she meets. But how does a relationship get into such a state? And how does new technology support that?
The Process
In many relationships, it is common that a boyfriend has access to social media accounts of his partner. Password sharing can happen quickly. Imagine the setup of a common movie evening: The man might ask his partner for the password of her Netflix account. An account at a video streaming service like Netflix may seem unimportant, but instead, it also contains critical information like a viewing history. Which movies did the partner watch with her (perhaps male) friends? Romantic ones or comedy movies? Did she tell the truth when she said that she went to a movie evening? Nevertheless, this alone is not necessarily a problem — together with other information it may become one.
Those may aggregated from other services. The fact that the boyfriend or husband now knows a password of his partner is so the even more critical problem. Since many people are using the same or similar passwords for multiple services, only one password is needed to gain access to most or all of them including social networks, email accounts or even bank accounts. With the access to the Google account, you are able to view the Google Maps Timeline, a complete history of all locations a person has been to — in the last days but also during her whole life. With access to the mail and social network accounts, you have access to her whole social life including private conversations with other people, interactions, events, and similar information. Complete surveillance of what the woman is doing, who she is meeting, and with whom she has conversations about which topics, is possible.
The Consequences
So what we learn from that is that it is only a small step from sharing one password to a partner that is enabled to surveil his partner’s activities. And this without the usage of spyware, parental control apps or similar tools and even without the other person’s knowledge about the possibility. All of this information can be used to control the life of a partner and already is but also leads to further violence. The woman can be set under pressure not to meet certain people, not to do certain things or not to visit certain events. Stalking and manipulation by the boyfriend or husband may also be part of the violence.
Even if she knows that he sees everything, what she is doing, this doesn’t improve her situation. Instead, this could even increase her withdrawing from social life and friends. Those effects are called “chilling effects” in science about surveillance. It basically means that the bare possibility of surveillance leads to a change in your behavior so you start acting less and try to avoid actions that could cause problems but also actions in general. In our case, an even faster withdrawing from social life and an even greater dependency from the partner is the consequence. She might want to avoid any behavior that could make her partner angry and she wants to prove that she is a good girlfriend or wife.
To summarize, surveillance in a relationship is a powerful tool of violence to suppress a partner. It is today easier and more problematic than ever. There is only a single advice: Specify boundaries that you share with your boyfriend or husband and be aware if he uses that knowledge in a bad way. Acting early is important here — because if someone has already withdrawn from social life, it is hard to escape this prison.
References:
[1] Huecker, Martin R., and William Smock. “Domestic Violence.” StatPearls [Internet]., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2 May 2019, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499891/.
[2] NNEDV. “Funding Challenges for Domestic Violence Programs: The Impact on Victims .” Funding Challenges for Domestic Violence Programs: The Impact on Victims , 2019, nnedv.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Library_Public_Policy_FundingChallenges.pdf.
[3] Penney, Jonathon W.. “Internet surveillance, regulation, and chilling effects online: a comparative case study”. Internet Policy Review 6.2 (2017). Web. 6 Nov. 2019.
[4] Penney, Jonathon W. “Chilling effects: Online surveillance and Wikipedia use.” Berkeley Tech. LJ 31 (2016): 117.
[5] Truman, Jennifer L., and Rachel E. Morgan. “Nonfatal Domestic Violence, 2003–2012.” Nonfatal Domestic Violence, 2003–2012, Apr. 2014, www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ndv0312.pdf.
