Leonie Tanczer: Technology and Control

Dr. Leonie Tanczer discusses how smartphones, connected household devices, surveillance tools, location trackers and AI can be repurposed to facilitate domestic abuse, allowing perpetrators to monitor, manipulate and intimidate victims through ordinary technologies designed for convenience or protection. She argues that cybersecurity must protect people as well as systems, particularly in shared-device environments where one account holder may exercise disproportionate control. Rather than relying on generic security advice, which can increase danger in abusive situations, responses should be guided by professional risk assessment and individualized safety planning. Tanczer calls for safety-by-design, transparent access records, stronger regulation and a broader concept of digital consent that treats control over one’s devices, accounts, location and data as an extension of bodily autonomy. She also questions whether normalizing parental surveillance teaches children to equate monitoring with love and safety, potentially preparing them to accept coercive behavior in later relationships. Leonie Tanczer: Products that are marketed for protection are actually misused. Things like CCTV cameras that are internet-connected and allow people to install it and monitor a person in a household while they are not physically there. Equally, doorbells, which is so funny because there’s this whole effort of our police forces handing out Ring doorbells, for example, for protective purposes. But again, if you’re thinking of a coercive and controlling environment that is often very gendered—and, let’s be honest, unfortunately, in most heterosexual households, the people that are in charge of digital systems are men. So they are the account holders, they’ve set it up, they decide when it’s going to be disposed of. So, if they are in charge of the Ring doorbell, so to say, they will be able to monitor when you come and go or who else is coming and going. Includes this chapter by Leonie Tanczer: “Technology-Facilitated Abuse and the Internet of Things (IoT): The Implication of the Smart, Internet-Connected Devices on Domestic Violence and Abuse”