Digital Surveillance

Technology has made coercive control easier to hide and harder to escape.

Tracking apps, shared location features, spyware disguised as parental/safety tools, and covert cameras in the home are now common features of coercive control cases, including cases involving vulnerable or disabled adults, where a tracker hidden in a purse, bag or shoe – or hidden cameras in the home – can go unnoticed for months.

What makes tech-facilitated abuse particularly difficult is how ordinary it can look. Sharing a location with a partner, or a family member helping set up a phone, are normal and often genuinely helpful things. But they can become a one-way window with no ability to opt out. 

The line between care and control here is often drawn only by whether the person being watched has any real choice. And if they lack capacity to make that decision, whether the tech really is in their best interests.

Tech is often justified because it keeps the person “safe”, but can that purpose be achieved in a way that is less restrictive, and less intrusive into the person’s right to a private life?