Women’s Studies International Forum 96 (2023) 102664

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Women's Studies International Forum

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

Surveillant assemblage: Overt, covert, movement and social surveillance in

domestic and family violence in Singapore
Laura Vitis
Queensland University of Technology (QUT), 2 George St, Brisbane City, QLD 4000, Australia

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This paper explores the role of surveillance technologies in domestic and family violence in Singapore. To do so,
Surveillance it outlines findings from a pilot research project which focused on technology and violence against women in
Technology facilitated violence against women Singapore and involved fourteen semi-structured interviews with frontline workers in the fields of domestic and
Coercive control
family violence, sexual violence and LGBT support. Drawing from Dragiewicz et al.'s (2018) work on technology
Technology facilitated coercive control
Domestic violence
facilitated coercive control, this paper outlines how overt, covert, social and movement surveillance via digital,
Family violence internet and communication technologies was used to control and constrain survivors. This article explores how
the dynamics of domestic and family violence shaped the use of the surveillance technologies reported in these
accounts. It also argues that wider gendered, global and local surveillance cultures generated important per­
missions which legitimated surveillance as a technology of control and reproduced women and girls as nor­
malised surveillance subjects.

Introduction
Over the past decade, there have been dedicated efforts to map the
relationship between technology and violence against women. This has
been evident in studies of doxing,1 online sexual harassment, gender-
based cyberhate (Jane, 2017) and image-based abuse2 (McGlynn
et al., 2017; Powell & Henry, 2017). While these modalities of violence
and harassment are used in various contexts, research on domestic
violence indicates that abusers use a range of technologies to facilitate
coercive control (Dragiewicz et al., 2018; Harris & Woodlock, 2019).
This research has identified technological surveillance3 as a key
concern. Mobile phones, smartphones, GPS, email and social networking
sites enable abusers to surveil women's movements and personal lives,
facilitate threats or abuse and intensify controlling behaviours (Levy,
2014; Southworth et al., 2007; Woodlock, 2015, 2016). Hence, sur­
veillance technologies are important sites of investigation into
contemporary patterns of domestic and family violence.4 As such, this
article outlines findings from a research project that examined how
technology shaped Singaporean women's experiences of domestic and
family violence by drawing on semi-structured interviews with frontline
workers in the fields of domestic and family violence, sexual violence
and LGBT support.
This article has two objectives. First, it adds to the ongoing literature
on technology and violence against women in Singapore. Much has been
written about the use of surveillance in Singapore due to the prominence
of CCTV cameras (Lin, 2019), lateral surveillance5 (Jiow & Morales,
2015, p. 329), symbolic internet regulation 6 (Lee, 2010) and personal
regulation (Ganapathy, 2000). However, there is a lack of research on
the relationship between surveillance technologies and domestic and
family violence. Thus, this article maps participants' accounts of how
men use overt, covert, movement and social surveillance via consumer
spyware, software, live cameras, hidden cameras and phones to restrict
women's autonomy, relationships and decision-making. Second, it adds
to feminist surveillance scholarship's exploration of how surveillance

E-mail address: laura.vitis@qut.edu.au.

1 Posting someone's personal identifying information online to expose their identity.
2 The non-consensual production, distribution and dissemination of intimate images; threats to distribute intimate images without consent; and the unsolicited sharing of one's own nude or sexual images.
3 Covert hidden cameras, email, smart phones, messaging and social media monitoring.
4 Participants provided accounts of women's experiences of surveillance predominantly in the context of domestic violence perpetrated by male intimate partners. However, they also described surveillance being

used in the context of a young woman's experience of family violence perpetrated by her father. Therefore, when referring to this pilot study, I use the broader term of ‘domestic and family violence’. Where the
distinct terms ‘domestic violence’ and ‘family violence’ are used in this article, it is in reference to research and reports that have adopted these specific terms.
5 Surveillance of peers by peers.

6
Such as the symbolic banning of a limited number of pornographic websites.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2022.102664
Received 27 June 2020; Received in revised form 20 October 2022; Accepted 27 November 2022
Available online 16 December 2022
0277-5395/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
L. Vitis
technologies exploit and entrench social inequalities and reproduce
gendered subjectivities (Koskela, 2012; Mason & Magnet, 2012, p. 108).
This article outlines how the surveillance strategies reported by partic­
ipants were informed by the wider deployment of surveillance in
Singapore. Therefore, I argue that domestic and family violence shaped
surveillance technology use in these accounts; however, the gendered,
global and local surveillance cultures generated important permissions
that legitimated surveillance as a form of social control and reproduced
women and girls as normalised surveillance subjects.
Technology and domestic violence
Abusers use digital, communication and internet technologies to
systematically enact control and violence within intimate relationships
(Borrajo et al., 2015; Hand et al., 2009; Southworth et al., 2007;
Woodlock, 2013, p. 7). Through text, email, GPS, the internet of things7
and social media, abusers can surveil and harass with such speed and
frequency that abuse becomes unrelenting, leaving little space for
freedom and respite (Dragiewicz et al., 2019). Despite its apparent
‘newness’, technology has always been used by abusers for control and
surveillance. For example, before the internet, perpetrators used infor­
mation brokers, court databases, voter registries and religious di­
rectories to access survivors' information post-separation (Southworth
et al., 2007). As technologies have always been part of the shifting
modalities of domestic violence, this research begins from the pre­
sumption that these tools do not ‘cause’ violence but allow the perpe­
trator to enact and sustain control in ways that are ‘easy, accessible and
instantaneous’ (Woodlock, 2013, p. 7). By incorporating technology into
existing control patterns, abusers ‘make the most of these technological
opportunities’ (Powell & Henry, 2017, p. 7), and because of this, these
acts need to be contextualised ‘against a shifting backdrop of control and
fear’ (Douglas et al., 2019, p. 17).
Contact-based harassment (CBH), image-based abuse and surveil­
lance are common modalities of technology abuse. CBH or what Dra­
giewicz et al. (2019) define as ‘intrusion’, involves repeated, unwanted
harassing phone calls, text messages, direct messages and emails
(Douglas et al., 2019; NNEDV, 2014; Southworth et al., 2007; Woodlock,
2015). Perpetrators use low-cost, high-volume messaging services to
send repeated, threatening and verbally abusive texts, both during and
after a relationship (Woodlock, 2013). For example, Dragiewicz et al.
(2019) show that abusers will rely heavily on a high volume of un­
wanted messages or calls to maintain an unbroken line of contact before
separation, and then threaten and escalate if the survivor tries to
disengage. Perpetrators can also use social media for CBH by publicly
sharing unwanted, humiliating or harassing posts and sending unwanted
messages to survivors (NNEDV, 2014; Woodlock, 2013). CBH via social
media is made more complex because disengaging can compromise
access to friends, family and work opportunities (NNEDV, 2014).
A unique element of CBH is networked or ‘diffused’ harassment
(Powell & Henry, 2017). Perpetrators can target survivors' friends and
families online and use their own families to enact abuse (Dimond et al.,
2011; Woodlock, 2015). They also use social media to post about sur­
vivors (blaming or shaming them) and solicit support from friends and
family (Freed et al., 2017; Woodlock, 2013). Abusers can also use online
forums to outsource harassment and violence by sharing identifying
information, posting adverts impersonating survivors and inviting
strangers to contact them for sex or to commit rape (Powell & Henry,
2017; Southworth et al., 2007). These online forums and social networks
act as proxy agents of abuse by enabling perpetrators to ‘outsource’ and
‘escalate’ abuse via third parties (Freed et al., 2017). Further, easy access
to family and friends via social media can also be exploited by abusers
7 The Internet of Things refers to the “expansion of internet-capabilities into devices that either did
not exist before…or were previously ‘offline’ tools” such as smart home devices like Amazon Echo
(Lopez-Neira et al., 2019, p. 23).
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Women’s Studies International Forum 96 (2023) 102664
who quickly embed themselves in the survivor's social media networks
to compromise their relationships or hinder their ability to sever contact
(Douglas et al., 2019). Survivors are also subject to a wide range of
image-based abuses, involving the production and dissemination of
intimate images without consent, the use of threats or coercion to obtain
images and threats to distribute images (Henry et al., 2017; Powell et al.,
2019; Vitis, 2020). Image distribution during relationship breakdowns
or after rejection demonstrates how separation and post-separation are
periods of heightened risk of violence and coercive control for women
(Dobash et al., 2004; Royal Commission into Family Violence, 2016;
Stark, 2007, p. 441).
Surveillance technologies are a core part of these abuse patterns. In
this study, surveillance is broadly defined and includes the use of de­
vices/apps/software with surveillance capabilities, and the co-option of
other technologies to collate information, monitor and constrain.
Abusers utilise a rhizomatic array of technologies to create surveillant
assemblages. For example, they might monitor their partner's social
activity and social circles through Facebook (Douglas et al., 2019),
check their text messages (NNEDV, 2014; Woodlock, 2015; Ybarra et al.,
2017) and send repeated messages/phone calls demanding to know
their whereabouts (Dragiewicz et al., 2019, pp. 24–25; Hand et al.,
2009; Woodlock, 2013). Abusers can also harness surveillance capabil­
ities built into devices, apps and smartphones to monitor women's
interior and exterior lives (Fraser et al., 2010; Harkin et al., 2019).
Alternatively, they can restrict access to social networks, accounts and
communication devices and destroy devices, cancel accounts and delete
emails or texts (Dragiewicz et al., 2019). While some may force survi­
vors to provide access to their accounts/devices, normative expectations
around shared passwords enable abusers to gain access without hacking
or force (Freed et al., 2017, p. 8). For example, Hand et al. (2009, pp.
3–4) found that abusers would demand access to women's phones using
social expectations that freely sharing passwords is a sign of ‘trust’ and
hiding passwords is a sign of infidelity. Consequently, Dragiewicz et al.
(2019, p. 10) argue that technology abuse creates an ‘intimate threat
model’, as abusers already have access to passwords/devices and an­
swers to security questions.
Additionally, abusers have utilised consumer spyware by installing
keystroke loggers on computers (Southworth et al., 2007) and covert
apps on phones, devices, cars and toys, which allow them to collect text
messages, phone call records, emails and GPS data (Douglas et al., 2019;
Harkin et al., 2019; Levy, 2014). While not as commonly reported,
abusers can install live cameras in their homes both covertly and overtly
(Douglas et al., 2019; Woodlock, 2013). When covert, cameras are
hidden within innocuous devices like children's toys, smoke detectors,
radios and plants (Fraser et al., 2010; Hand et al., 2009; Powell & Henry,
2017). Additionally, abusers co-opt existing camera technologies like
home security cameras to surveil their spouses (Fraser et al., 2010).
These are examples of surveillance drift where overt forms of surveil­
lance deployed in socially legitimate ways are used by abusers for co­
ercive control (Fraser et al., 2010; Harkin et al., 2019). Importantly,
camera surveillance enables the abuser to record and receive footage in
real time (Hand et al., 2009), further intensifying their surveillant gaze
and collating intimate or personal information that can be used to
threaten and coerce (Douglas et al., 2019).
Omnipresent, disembodied and unending
Technologies can make abuse ‘spaceless’ (Hand et al., 2009; Harris &
Woodlock, 2019) and the perpetrator ‘omnipresent’ and inescapable
(Dimond et al., 2011; Douglas et al., 2019; Freed et al., 2017; Woodlock,
2015, p. 206). They are used as a bridge to enact control during sepa­
ration, unsettling women's ability to create ‘safe distances’ (Hand et al.,
2009) or ‘safety zones’ (Bruton & Tyson, 2018; Royal Commission into
Family Violence, 2016, p. 17; Stark, 2007). As such, survivors report
exercising hypervigilant behaviours to manage the anxieties associated
with the abuser's omnipresence (Dragiewicz et al., 2019, p. 29;
L. Vitis
Woodlock, 2015).
This not only impacts women's experiences of abuse but also shapes
their ability to leave relationships (Dimond et al., 2011). When abusers
use CBH or monitor messages, social media and emails, leaving becomes
more fraught, difficult and dangerous (Dimond et al., 2011; Dragiewicz
et al., 2019; Woodlock, 2015). To leave, women must identify the scale
and nature of digital surveillance and then laboriously ‘disentangle’
themselves, often without professional assistance (Dragiewicz et al.,
2019). To sever these connections, survivors can sacrifice communica­
tion devices; however, they risk losing important information, contacts
and autonomy (Powell & Henry, 2017). Moreover, the cost is prohibitive
for those who cannot afford to replace devices, cancel and renew phone
contracts or pay for additional prepaid phones (Dragiewicz et al., 2019).
Separation can also escalate the threatening and coercive uses of
technology. For example, perpetrators may threaten to distribute inti­
mate images (Woodlock, 2015) and lock survivors out of accounts
(Freed et al., 2017) to prevent them from going to the police or leaving.
Severing all contact with abusers (particularly phone contact) can
escalate violence or more intrusive forms of stalking (Freed et al., 2017).
Therefore, some survivors report that having a line of phone contact
with the abuser allows them to manage their safety while providing a
sense of control (Dragiewicz et al., 2019).
Surveillance in context
In their work on technology-facilitated coercive control (TFCC),
Dragiewicz et al. (2018, p. 610) argue that digital media affordances
situated within gender unequal societies can amplify abuse. Evidenced
from the examples above, abusers utilise increasingly available sur­
veillance technologies and the acceptance of surveillance as part of so­
cial relations within global and local surveillance cultures (Lyon, 2018;
Mason & Magnet, 2012, p. 155). Global surveillance cultures can be
characterised by the rise of automated surveillance via global platforms
that collate and analyse de-territorialised, liquid and user-generated
data (Lyon, 2018, p. 3). In this context, surveillance becomes a
‘normal part of the modern relational life’, embedded and overt, yet
accepted and legitimated (Levy, 2014, p. 684). These global surveillance
cultures are also imbricated with local surveillance cultures.
In Singapore, authoritarian, lateral and managerial surveillance have
been regarded as productive tools for formal and informal social control
and prioritised over individual privacy concerns (Jiow & Morales,
2015). This is evident in the high saturation of public CCTV (Lin, 2019)
and the increasing implementation of facial recognition technologies in
public spaces (Tan, 2018). For example, Singapore's Smart Nation
initiative in Geylang includes the installation of ‘smart lamp posts’ fitted
with environment/noise sensors and facial recognition software (Gov­
tech, 2018). The appetite for sensor surveillance has been clearly arti­
culated by K. Shanmugam (Minister for Home Affairs and Law), who,
when reflecting on the saturation of public facial recognition in China,
noted the following:
Our capabilities must similarly be that if something happens, we
want to trace the person, we need to have complete real-time capa­
bilities. Where is he? What is he doing? Which car is he getting into?
Which carpark? Is he getting to the exit points? Alert ICA immedi­
ately with video analytics. We are not there yet. We have to get there.
(MHA, 2018, para 18)
Camera surveillance and consumer spyware targeted at children and
domestic workers8 also demonstrate the embeddedness of surveillance.
For example, camera surveillance of domestic workers has become
increasingly prevalent in Singapore, and a study of 735 foreign domestic
8 In December 2021, there were 246,300 migrant domestic workers registered in Singapore (Ministry
of Manpower, 2022), and the majority of these workers are women from Indonesia, Myanmar and the
Philippines (Yeoh et al., 2020).
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Women’s Studies International Forum 96 (2023) 102664
workers showed that 37 % worked in homes with surveillance cameras
operating in living rooms, master bedrooms and the entire house
(Wessels et al., 2017, p. 69). This is an increase from a previous survey,
which found that 20 % of employers had cameras in their homes
(HOME, 2015). Also, the Straits Times endorsed consumer spyware
software (Qustodio Parental Control) designed for parents to covertly
monitor their children's devices to track their locations, calls and mes­
sages (Lee, 2018; Singtel, 2019). This surveillance landscape is also
coupled with lateral surveillance, or the surveillance of peers by peers
(Jiow & Morales, 2015, p. 329) as exemplified in the popular citizen
journalist website STOMP,9 which allows community members to name
and shame public transgressions online (Jiow & Morales, 2015, p. 329).
Taken together, these examples demonstrate how surveillance is
deployed vertically and laterally by the state, employers and citizens.
However, surveillance is not simply deployed because of the wider
acceptance of its tools. It is a set of acts, technologies and discourses
embedded within relationships between power and inequalities (Kos­
kela, 2012). It is a core feature of socially unequal societies used to
entrench and exploit inequalities (Mason & Magnet, 2012). As Norris
(2012, p. 258) argues:
CCTV represents much more than just the ability to prevent and
detect crime. It is about the power to watch, to deploy, to intervene,
to identify and to regulate, often through exclusion…It concerns the
reproduction of order.
Domestic and family violence abusers draw upon the extant
gendered dynamics that render women as surveillant subjects and
contribute to the wider continuum of surveillance deployed against
them. Before digital surveillance, women's sexuality and civic partici­
pation were intensively surveilled through social norms (Koskela, 2012,
p. 49). More recently, surveillance technologies have transformed
women's bodies into sites of risk governance both before and during
gestation (Abu-Laban, 2015; Koskela, 2012; Levy, 2014; Lupton, 2013;
Marks, 2019). In Singapore, racialised and gendered surveillance is
particularly evident in the medicalised control of domestic workers and
the deployment of CCTV in the home to monitor their labour (Huang &
Yeoh, 2007; Vitis, 2020). Therefore, while surveillance in TFCC is situ­
ated within the wider availability of surveillance tools, women are
already predetermined as surveillance sites through gestation and care
work. As Levy (2014, p. 688) argues, ‘it is striking how many technol­
ogies of intimate surveillance construct women in particular as moni­
tored subjects’.
The research
This article presents findings from a pilot project investigating how
digital, image, internet and communication technologies shaped
women's experiences of dating, domestic, family and sexual violence in
Singapore. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 frontline
workers in the fields of domestic and family violence, sexual violence
and LGBT support. The study received ethical approval from the Uni­
versity of Liverpool and participants were recruited using purposive and
snowball sampling. First, participants were recruited directly from
Family Service Centres, Family Violence Specialist Centres and anti-
violence organisations working in the fields of violence against
women and LGBT support. These organisations were contacted through
their public contact information and frontline workers in the service
were invited to participate in the study. Second, participants recruited
directly through these organisations were also invited to recommend
any relevant organisations or colleagues who might be interested in
participating in the study. Interviews focused on participants' observa­
tions of how technology affects clients' experiences of dating, domestic,
family and sexual violence. Semi-structured interviews were used to
9 Created and controlled by Singapore Press Holdings.
L. Vitis Women’s Studies International Forum 96 (2023) 102664

allow participants to discuss their professional experiences working with So he's also monitoring the children at home. The wife is a full-time
survivors in detail. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, housewife. So sometimes at work he would call in to the wife and ask
manually coded and analysed using thematic analysis to produce over­ the wife why is the son not doing the homework, then why is the son
arching themes and patterns (Braun & Clarke, 2021). Drawing from playing, why is the son…So he's monitoring from his office where he
these interviews, I explore the four modalities of surveillance reported was working…it's a form of control. It's all very psychological
by frontline workers: overt, covert, movement and social surveillance. In because the wife felt very stressed and very - being monitored, you
the following section, I examine how these surveillance forms were know.
imbricated within the dynamics of domestic and family violence and (Participant F)
sustained, obfuscated and normalised within wider surveillance
Home camera surveillance was also used post-separation to engender
cultures.
constraints. In one case, an abuser—who had been issued an exclusion
This study focuses on two key gaps in current academic scholarship.
order10—installed a camera to maintain control while he was outside
It addresses the lacuna of research on domestic and family violence
the home:
within the surveillance literature which has been critiqued for repro­
ducing the assumption that private space provides safety from surveil­ after he was… restricted from coming back home—because he was
lance (cf. Abu-Laban, 2015; Wright et al., 2015, p. 98). It also addresses very violent—and because my client was handicapped. She was
the need for additional research on technology and domestic and family wheelchair bound, so the risk escalated quite…because he still has
violence in Singapore as much of the literature mapping this phenom­ access to the house when she's not at home, for example, he installs
enon has emerged from countries outside Southeast Asia. Additionally, CCTV in the living room to monitor my client. Whenever she's not
previous research into domestic and family violence in Singapore home then he'll call again: ‘I don't see you at home in the living room.
(Bouhours et al., 2013; Ganapathy, 2006)—while crucial—has not I have CCTV there. Why are you out again?’
addressed the contemporary modalities of technology-facilitated (Participant M)
violence coming to the attention of local frontline services (AWARE,
In addition to demonstrating how surveillance continues post-
2019, 2022). For example, Singaporean women's organization AWARE
separation (despite an exclusion order), this case also shows how
has noted that the number of image-based abuse cases reported by cli­
abusers exploit how women with disabilities rely on communication
ents has been rising since 2017, and in 2021, 19 % of all new cases re­
technologies (Woodlock, 2015). These reports highlight how CCTV-style
ported to their service involved technology-facilitated sexual violence
surveillance serves as a tool of constraint and control by restricting
(AWARE, 2022). A recent survey of 1000 Singaporeans run by the
women's freedom and spaces of autonomy (Stark, 2007).
Singapore Together Alliance for Action to tackle online harm affirmed
Stark (2007) highlighted how abusers use microregulations to
these reports, finding that 31 % of respondents had either experienced or
maintain control during physical separation. Similarly, overt camera
witnessed gender-based online harms (MCI, 2022).
surveillance is used prosthetically by magnifying the abuser's gaze and
This recognition of technology-facilitated violence against women is
systematising control. In these cases, live camera surveillance allowed
coupled with growing attention to the prevalence of domestic and family
the abuser's gaze to become seamless and unending. For example, in one
violence in Singapore. For example, the Ministry of Home Affairs and
case, a man would watch his wife from his work desk and issue her
Ministry of Social and Family Development's recent Taskforce on Family
‘corrections’ via a phone call or message. This demonstrates how an
Violence (TFV) report indicated that frontline services reported a ‘steady
assemblage of surveillance technologies can be utilised to erode the
increase in the number of enquiries and new cases of family violence’
protective barriers of space and make control more immediate, inven­
between 2018 and 2020 and this increase was intensified during the
tive and omnipresent (Dimond et al., 2011; Douglas et al., 2019; Freed
COVID-19 pandemic (TFV, 2021, p. 9). As such, the taskforce recom­
et al., 2017; Woodlock, 2015, p. 206). These cases highlight how abusers
mended improving community awareness of the dimensions of family
use a perceived territoriality and proprietary custodianship of homes,
violence and developing more research on emerging patterns of family
wives and children to legitimate their actions (Wright et al., 2015).
violence (TFV, 2021). These issues and the role of technology in family
Indeed, microregulation of daily life is a common technique of coercive
violence, were also acknowledged in the Singaporean Government's
control because it is legitimated by the normative constraints already
recent White paper on Singaporean women's development (SCWO, 2022, p.
embedded in women's performance of care work which ‘merge with
58). In this context, further empirical research is required to understand
their fear of not doing what is demanded’ (Stark, 2007, p. 411).
the nature of TFCC in the city-state. This study addresses these gaps by
While camera surveillance is common in TFCC (Dragiewicz et al.,
focusing on women's experiences of surveillance within the context of
2019), live and overt camera feeds are not prominent in the research
domestic and family violence and exploring how it produces gendered
literature. Therefore, it is important to determine what sustains this
subjectivities.
modality. First, overt camera surveillance was legitimated as a childcare
tool. For example, in both cases mentioned above, cameras were justi­
Overt surveillance
fied because abusers wanted to check on their children and ensure their
wives met their parenting standards. Indeed, one worker noted that
Nine of the 14 participants interviewed discussed cases where video/
while they were aware of home camera surveillance and its implications,
audio surveillance was overtly placed in the home. In these cases,
its use for child safety was normalised:
cameras were installed in bedrooms and general living areas to monitor
and control women's behaviour or prevent them from leaving. For We are more or less aware of recordings without consent and the
example: legalities behind it…For example, CCTV at home. We know that it's
an intrusion of privacy and that if it's not based on consent, techni­
the man actually put the surveillance in the home, in the hope that he
cally, you have rights to report and also to do something about it
would catch the wife not taking care of the children well…Then the
rather than remain silent… but most of us are in agreement that it's
wife would every time put like a towel over it to cover. Because she
not an excuse for spouses to use as a method of control unless they're
felt that she is doing what she thinks is right. But he is recording it,
really ascertaining that it's for safety purposes, like for children,
and she is worried that he would use it against her.
(Participant A)
In these cases, the abuser installed the camera, watched the live feed 10 A protection order that allows right of exclusive occupation to any protected person of a shared

from a distance and then called their wife if they saw something that residence or a specified part of a shared residence by excluding the person against whom the order is

displeased them: made (Women's Charter, 1961, s. 65).

4
L. Vitis
checking the children. If not, we have our line that's not a method to
be used to gain control for your other spouse.
(Participant M)
This comment illustrates the relationship between home surveillance
and abuse. However, it also highlights how child surveillance can be
used to obfuscate abuse. This was further demonstrated by another
worker who recalled a case where a young woman sought a Personal
Protection Order (PPO) because of her controlling father:
This father has also placed CCTV inside her room, so if she has to
change, she has to go to the bathroom inside the room to change.
(Participant E)
These practices legitimise surveillance as ‘good parenting’ and part
of the parental prerogative. Harkin et al. (2019, p. 2) show that the use
of consumer spyware products for children has a level of cultural
legitimacy and is justified through a perceived ethic of care and
permission for parental control. Not only does this reproduce children as
appropriate sites of technological surveillance, but it also enables these
technologies to be “premised on a morally justifiable ethic of ‘safety’”
while ‘facilitat[ing] controlling behaviour, manipulation, distrust and
even physical violence’ (Harkin et al., 2019, p. 8). The fusion of the
‘ethic of safety’ with surveillance technologies is particularly apparent
in the Singaporean context, where National Telcos now market con­
sumer spyware software to parents to protect and monitor their children
(Lee, 2018; Singtel, 2019). This dynamic is evidenced in the latter case,
where parental demands for control shape the use of cameras in family
violence. Therefore, this specific surveillance modality is legitimated by
proprietary parental expectations and bolstered by industry and tech­
nological affordances (Levy, 2014), enabling home cameras to be
installed without scrutiny and hindering their removal.
An additional justification for overt surveillance is the surveillance of
domestic workers. For example, in one case, a worker highlighted how
the client wanted to install cameras for this purpose:
so the idea was that the wife had wanted to implement, to install the
CCTV in the house to monitor the maid. But because this marital
thing started between the husband and wife, so the husband used the
CCTV footage to present evidence that she had been hitting the
children.
(Participant N)
Camera surveillance of domestic workers has become increasingly
prevalent in Singapore (Wessels et al., 2017). The use of camera sur­
veillance in this context is underpinned by the construction of foreign
domestic workers as socio-sexual risks and is connected to a wider web
of medicalised and managerial surveillance (Huang & Yeoh, 2007; Yeoh
et al., 2010) which ‘circumscribe family formation and close off the
possibility of [their] sinking roots into Singapore society’ (Yeoh et al.,
2010, p. 40). This creates conditions for exploiting workers and a
context where abusers can legitimate and/or co-opt the installation of
cameras.
Covert surveillance
In addition to overt camera surveillance, there were other cases
where clients discovered that their spouses had installed hidden cam­
eras/recording devices around the home. These covert forms of sur­
veillance were used voyeuristically to continue surveillance post-
separation and obtain information to blackmail, discredit and control.
For example, Participant A detailed a case where a perpetrator installed
a hidden camera in the home to record videos to discredit his wife's
account of his violence:
I've got clients who use surveillance…hidden camera, against the
other party… the man was trying to prove that he didn't have any
violence, so he put it there. I think eventually, the wife didn't know,
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Women’s Studies International Forum 96 (2023) 102664
but the wife later found out about it. She was scared because …[s]he
instigated arguments and fights. So she was recorded…I know there
was one in the main hall…Then another one in one of the rooms.
(Participant A)
Covert surveillance at separation was also recognised by women who
inadvertently found that their husbands were recording them at home.
For example, one client, who was contemplating separation, found her
husband had been recording her phone conversations with her mother to
determine whether she was being advised on separation. In another
case, a hidden camera was voyeuristically used during the separation.
this case that the wife doesn't know that the husband put a camera in
the bedroom. Then one day, I think she was dressing, and then she
saw a tiny dot, it's like something there. Then she discovered [liter­
ally a] pinhole camera. Then she confronted her husband, and she
reported this to the police…they were in the process of divorce, and
the husband wasn't staying with her. But the husband wants to know,
still wants to know what's going on with the wife's daily activities…
she felt she has been, privacy has been invaded.
(Participant F)
These devices are used prosthetically (Powell et al., 2018) by per­
petrators to forge new points of connection to maintain control during
separation (Dimond et al., 2011). As Dragiewicz et al. (2019) noted,
separation does not prevent TFCC; rather, abusers use any information,
line of contact, or device available to continue control.
What is also evident in these cases is the potential for surveillance
data to be used to threaten and coerce. For example, Participant C noted
that in one case, a hidden recording device was used to gather infor­
mation about a client's strategy for separation, and Participant A noted
that recordings were used to collect evidence that could be used in future
custody disputes or to discredit a PPO application. Others noted that
their clients expressed concerns that a partial recording of the rela­
tionship would easily discredit their accounts of abuse and reproduce
domestic violence as a ‘symmetrical’ problem between both parties,
particularly when recordings strategically focused on ‘fights’. This af­
firms Woodlock's (2015) research, which found that abusers will obtain
non-consensual recordings (usually intimate images/videos) and
threaten to use them to prevent intervention order applications. Women
are, therefore, particularly disadvantaged by covert surveillance due to
the difficulties of capturing the dynamics of domestic violence in a de-
contextualised visual form coupled with the ongoing perception that
video recordings are objective resources (Koskela, 2012, pp. 50–51). The
perception of objectivity is another technological affordance that facil­
itates and obfuscates abuse.
Whether these recordings are admissible for a PPO application, the
threat and loss of control embedded within covert surveillance are co­
ercive and harmful (Bates, 2017). For example, threats to distribute
intimate images have arisen because they do not require the perpetrator
to have images or follow through to be impactful. Simply alluding to the
potential dissemination of non-consensually obtained personal infor­
mation is coercive (Vitis, 2020), particularly in a wider context where
women's bodies and behaviours are the subjects of disciplinary sur­
veillance (Koskela, 2012). Therefore, the potential for these intimate
recordings to be released into the digital super-public (Powell et al.,
2018), courts or intimate networks places women in a position of serious
vulnerability. This is particularly true because they can be used during
child custody disputes to injure, blackmail and constrain women's spaces
for action (Kelly, 2003).
Movement surveillance
While these cases demonstrate technological surveillance within the
home, workers also highlighted that men would use consumer spyware
(apps) in addition to the GPS capabilities of smartphones to track the
location and movements of their wives and children outside the home.
L. Vitis
For example, Participant M noted that in one case, a client's husband was
emotionally and physically abusive and used a GPS tracking app on
family phones to monitor her:
[The] family decided—they installed a GPS. It was an agreed
consensus kind of thing so that they could check their child's
whereabouts…But then when their relationship soured it became a
tool for the husband to start tracking the wife's whereabouts in a
more manipulative way. She would then call—‘Why are you at, say,
[here] when your workplace is at [X]? Are you not informing me that
you haven't moved in?’
(Participant M)
Importantly, this app was installed with her consent and justified
because it could be used to access their children's location. The legiti­
mating role of parental surveillance was also evidenced in the case
discussed above, where a young woman's father installed cameras in her
bedroom and GPS surveillance on her phone.
he actually tracks her using her mobile phone about her where­
abouts…If there are times if she's switched off her data, he is unable
to track her and then that becomes an issue. If she were to switch off
her handphone or if there's tests or exams going on, that becomes an
issue as well… but she's aware that she's being tracked and all that…
Even when he is able to track where she is, when she comes back
home, he will question her and all that. In this case there's more of
emotion abuse that's going on, like the father is not happy with her if
she goes out with her friends or even if she is staying at school to
study and all that.
(Participant E)
Therefore, perpetrators use consumer spyware to widen their sur­
veillance assemblage and tighten constraints on movement outside the
home. Moreover, both cases demonstrate how abusers capitalise on
normalising locational surveillance for children. The rise of consumer
spyware has been mobilised by legitimising parental tracking as a form
of ‘care’ surveillance, despite compromising children's privacy and au­
tonomy (Harkin et al., 2019). Harkin et al. (2019) show that popular
consumer spyware apps are marketed as tools for child/teen surveillance
and yet covertly and overtly advertise their software to ‘catch a cheating
spouse’. Therefore, these technologies both facilitate and are under­
pinned by the moral and social acceptance of intrusive and non-
consensual surveillance for care work and acceptance of ‘cheating’ as
a justification for technological surveillance. Abusers capitalise on both
these norms.
Participants also reported that repeated messages and calls were
used to restrict conditions of movement and freedom within public
spaces. As noted above, accusations of cheating were used to legitimate
locational contact-based surveillance:
So the husband keeps sending the SMS to the wife, ‘are you with
someone, are you with someone?’ I think the wife is very trauma­
tised…Yeah, yeah it's quite frequent. Because when the couple goes
to work… the husband will send an SMS, he said, in the beginning
the husband wanted to test whether the wife would respond with
SMS, if the wife didn't respond with an SMS in time, the husband
would say ‘maybe you're with someone’, so the husband would send
more SMS to the wife. So the wife feels very, very triggered, very
frustrated. ‘Because I'm at work, why don't you trust me?’
(Participant B)
The clients were distressed by the scale of the controlling messages,
which compromised their access to public spaces, relationships and
autonomy. For example:
Because she's a full-time housewife, they have children, and some­
times she wants to find some time for herself to meet her friends.
Then she would try not to let him know because otherwise he would
be questioning ‘who are you seeing, where are you going, what are
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Women’s Studies International Forum 96 (2023) 102664
you talking about[?]’… Then she would in a way like sneak out, and
then spend a short time with her friend. …So he will start messaging,
‘where are you now’ and all these things. Then because the two—his
parents are staying with them—so his parents sometimes would tell
him your wife went out, you know. He started to suspect where did
she go. So she would sometimes have to make up some reason, ‘oh I
went to get groceries, I went to do this and that for the family’.
(Participant F)
In these cases, immediate and expected contact enables perpetrators
to close the distance between survivors and instantaneously extend their
controlling behaviours. Moreover, the above case demonstrates how this
surveillance is legitimated by the gendered assertion that women's place
is in the home. Therefore, while consumer spyware cannot be under­
stated, more commonplace technologies like messages were also used to
surveille in deeply constrictive and psychologically impactful ways.
Social surveillance
Besides monitoring women in the home and public space, partici­
pants highlighted how perpetrators restricted access to support and so­
cial connections to expand their surveillant assemblage and compromise
‘spaces for action’ (Kelly, 2003). As Stark (2007) notes, when women
seek spaces of freedom, abusers routinely target and attempt to destroy
those spaces. This was evidenced in several cases where men used access
(given or taken) to emails, social media and phones to read messages and
find out who the survivor had been in contact with. For example, one
worker noted a case where the client's husband used social media to
monitor her social life, friends and movements:
There's one whereby the husband check on the wife activities with
friends…So on one that she will, he will go onto her Facebook to
check her account…But he will go onto the website to check on the
wife's activity. Who she go[es] out with. To look at the photos and all
these things that, who she took photos with. That's want to keep track
on what's happening… track conversation of the wife with her mum.
(Participant C)
Importantly, some argued that these abuses were legitimated
through the presumption that shared access is a sign of openness and
fidelity in intimate relationships:
It's expected that the wife has to show her phone to the husband and
he needs to check. I find the phone is a very personal thing…this
expectation. It's like, ‘if she has nothing to hide, nothing to fear, why
must she keep her phone away from me? Why must she set a pass­
word for it? Why must it be extra protected? Why can't it be taken
away from her?’
(Participant E)
As is evident here, this behaviour is scaffolded by a wider surveil­
lance culture and beliefs that intimate access is proof of trust. This af­
firms Dragiewicz et al.'s (2019) argument that intimate partners' existing
access or knowledge of ways to gain access to accounts creates an inti­
mate threat model of technological abuse.
Participants also reported cases where women had to account for
their social media usage. In these cases, abusers mobilised gender norms
to make accusations about their online conduct:
Also, cases where if there's videos, audio messages which is recorded,
that can also be used as ‘look, I found this on your phone’, and then
the wife is being questioned about it…Something that she went out
with her friends and she took a video. There's this client where she
went out clubbing with her friends and then she took photos and a
video of her friends enjoying themselves. She's with a group of fe­
male friends certainly but then that became an issue. It's like, ‘why do
you have to go out with your friends? You have a family to look
after’. All these kinds of expectations that come in.
L. Vitis
(Participant E)
These gendered expectations were also evidenced by another
participant who highlighted how a client's husband hacked her Face­
book account and computer to read her emails. He used this information
to accuse her of cheating and called her a ‘slut’ for having friendships
with men. He also used these accusations to undermine her reputation in
her largely Christian community and compromise her relationship with
her in-laws:
Yeah and he would show this to the wife's family and I think to all
their friends, ‘see my wife is unfaithful’. How, as a Christian…she's
not a good Christian…So he would try to not only show it to the wife,
he would show it to the people that are close to them. He would try to
convince them, ‘oh my wife did this thing to me’.
(Participant B)
While social interactions were monitored on social media, partici­
pants noted that men also used consumer spyware to record information
(text or phone calls) from women's smartphones. For example, one
worker discussed a case where a woman—whose husband was physi­
cally violent and controlling—placed an app on her phone that recorded
her location, phone calls and text messages. He justified this by claiming
that she was cheating. In some cases, women were unaware of consumer
spyware on their devices and only realised when their husbands started
turning up at places mentioned in their messages. As one participant
relayed, this led a client to remark that there was ‘no way out’ from her
husband.
Importantly, this software can be installed and run without the sur­
vivor's knowledge. For example, one worker recalled how she discov­
ered this accidentally during a client meeting:
I managed to sit in for the session because they were struggling with
this particular handphone device. What we found out later on was
the husband installed this tracking app in her phone, searched it,
whichever, whenever she receives a call or a text it will be recorded
and then sent to his phone. Based on what I know of the case, there is
physical violence happening in the family…Then he was also sus­
picious of her having an extramarital affair, so he decided to do that
to her phone. She didn't know, I think, until the second or third
month when he started confronting her about how come this person
has been texting such-and-such. She was like, ‘how do you know
about my texts, or how do you even know that I receive such a call?’
He said, ‘I have evidence’, and then he replayed it for her and she was
just shocked.
(Participant M)
This case affirms how abusers use surveillant technologies to create a
sense of both omniscience and omnipresence, which in turn compro­
mises women's ability to seek help and leave abusive relationships
(Dimond et al., 2011; Douglas et al., 2019; Freed et al., 2017; Woodlock,
2015). Moreover, it highlights how this is supported by the wider ar­
chitecture of consumer spyware products, which claim that users should
not use their software without consent yet enable them to collect private
social correspondence via WhatsApp, Facebook and SMS records (Har­
kin et al., 2019). In doing so, these products contribute material and
discursive resources towards legitimating narratives that controlling
surveillance is justified for ‘infidelity’, in addition to legitimating the
perceived right to surveille women's spaces of sociality (Harkin et al.,
2019; Levy, 2014).
Workers also noted that abusers moved from monitoring phones to
restricting phone use. In one case, the abuser would routinely monitor
his wife's phones for evidence of cheating and demand that she uses the
phone on speaker in his presence. Similarly, another worker reported
that men had cut phone contracts and confiscated their phones as a form
of isolation. For example:
7
Women’s Studies International Forum 96 (2023) 102664
That means they are not allowed to contact certain people. It be­
comes something like isolation. Yeah, they isolate the person. So to
an extent there was a case where there was confinement. That means
where the wife is not allowed to text anybody, including friends. The
husband would check her handphone every time he comes back after
work. If he sees that she contacts someone, she will get into trouble.
He might be physically abusive.
(Participant O)
Importantly, restrictions emerged as part of an increasing pattern of
controlling behaviour. As one worker noted:
the perpetuator has a tendency to be more controlling, so there were
times when he would confiscate the phone [off] the client to limit her
interactions with friends and with [systems] and all of that…For this
family, because I've been working with them for some time, so there
are originally some precursors to before that he would take the
phone away. So things like he would be a lot more suspicious of her
interactions with people around her, which he got a lot more jealous
about, with the way she interacts with other people, the way she
talks to people, when she goes on social media…finally it was during
an argument that he would take her phone away.
(Participant L)
These cases illustrate the relationship between escalating micro­
regulations and the risk of physical violence. The escalation described
above also aligns with research on intimate partner homicide, showing
that stalking and intensified control over devices is risk factors for fatal
violence (Domestic and Family Violence Death Review, 2017).
Discussion
Overall, participants reported that consumer spyware, software, live
cameras, hidden cameras and phones were used to create surveillant
assemblages and restrict women's autonomy, decision-making, re­
lationships and movement. While this research cannot make any claims
about prevalence, it does indicate that the experiences discussed by
frontline workers are consistent with research on domestic violence
across the globe. This work has consistently shown that technology
entrenches forms of coercive control and hinders women's ability to seek
respite and separation (Dragiewicz et al., 2019).
While some workers indicated that they were confident in their
ability to explain the modes of surveillance and provide advice, others
indicated that they were unfamiliar with the technologies used by
abusers. As observed elsewhere, workers provided with technological
abuse training are more confident in their ability to provide technical
advice and assess risk (Dorozenko & Chung, 2018). Therefore, workers
who provide support to survivors—particularly those who work with
clients applying for PPOs—should have access to training opportunities
for TFCC and eSafety strategies to better assess risk, implement safety
plans and ensure that survivors are not responsible for developing these
skills in the absence of technical support. As noted above, the Ministry of
Home Affairs and the Ministry of Social and Family Development's
recent taskforce (TFV, 2021) identified several areas of improvement in
violence prevention and support. Among the wide-ranging recommen­
dations, there was an emphasis on advancing public and practitioner
knowledge of family violence. The taskforce recommended increasing
public awareness of the different patterns of family violence by
refreshing public awareness campaigns and emphasising non-physical
abuse (TFV, 2021). In addition, the taskforce recommended devel­
oping standardised assessment tools to improve frontline workers'
abilities to identify and respond to family violence (TFV, 2021). In line
with these recommendations, this study highlights that advanced
training in TFCC and eSafety strategies for frontline staff and their in­
clusion in assessment practices would be a welcome development. It
would also be beneficial to update community resources on the defini­
tions of domestic and family violence to include patterns of TFCC to
L. Vitis
broaden the public's awareness of the relationship between technology
and abuse (NFVNS, 2018).
While these forms of surveillance have been documented elsewhere,
the prominence of overt camera surveillance at home is an important
finding of this research. Particularly as these cameras were sometimes
installed to monitor children or domestic workers. These examples
capture what Harkin et al. (2019) describe as the co-option of the
legitimacy of care surveillance to enable abuse. As such, these accounts
demonstrate how the social acceptance of surveillance assists the nor­
malisation of controlling behaviour. Their legitimating functions also
illustrate how the use of surveillance in domestic and family violence is
shaped by an interplay between gender norms, patterns of coercive
control and global and local surveillance cultures.
This study had several limitations. First, its findings are limited by
the sample size. It included a small sample of 14 frontline workers in the
fields of domestic and family violence, sexual violence and LGBT sup­
port. Second, it focused on instances where women sought service
support, applied for a protection order and usually came into contact
with service providers in relation to a wider pattern of physical violence.
Because of this, these findings cannot be generalised to the broader
professional experiences of frontline workers or personal experiences of
women seeking support. Therefore, this study is limited in its ability to
capture the full extent of surveillance in domestic and family violence.
However, these findings highlight some key issues around the use of
surveillance technologies in abuse. As such, they demonstrate the need
for further research with a larger number of survivors and frontline
workers to better understand the nature and prevalence of surveillance
technologies in Singaporean women's experiences of domestic and
family violence.
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