[Note 02/19/23: A good companion piece to the New York Times article discussed in this blog is the February 17, 2023 piece, Unwanted Connection: Who Has Control of Your Smart Home? This piece does not address the use of IoT and smart technologies by organized crime or the bad actor who lives next-door but these abuses are implicit in numerous examples given.]
The New York Times article, Thermostats, Locks and Lights: Digital Tools of Domestic Abuse (June 23, 2018) is relevant to real estate and neighbor mobbing. This article describes the growing number of domestic abuse calls reporting the use of technology in domestic violence. A keynote of the abuse is the remote control of in-home devices including air-conditioning, cameras, and speakers. According to victims, the use of internet-connected devices by their abusers was invasive—one called it a form of “jungle warfare” because it was hard to know where the attacks were coming from. This is an integral part of the phenomenology of hacking, drone, and other technology-based attacks.
The tactics likely have universal appeal for the control stalker. Said one victim about her engineer husband, “He controls the lights. He controls the music…. Abusive relationships are about power and control, and he uses technology.” These are tactics that appeal to those who harass people out of their homes, whether or not they are real estate mobbers or a neighborhood watch cum hate group.
“Smart” technology is not required to “invade” a neighbor’s home. Techniques like diversion of video or radio signal, accomplished in the analog world with a directional antenna and in the digital world with little more than a Yagi WiFi antenna, do not require the deployment of smart technology in the home of the victim whose speakers are co-opted. Not to mention the abundant possibilities for directional sound or drones in harassment. As well as being used in real estate, drones are being used in organized crime—for example by Mexican cartels—and in private surveillance. I’ve touched on these methods of harassment in other blogs and will try to return to this later, to provide some links.
Thermostats, Locks and Lights is a must-read for law enforcement as well as for those victims of harassment, like me, whose reports are not being heard. One Silicon Valley victim was even detained at a medical facility for a mental health evaluation after she reported the technology-based abuse. According to Ruth Patrick of WomenSV in Silicon Valley, it’s “easier to believe that someone is crazy” than that they’re the victim of some draconian type of harassment. This is especially true considering the dynamics of mobbing and how it ultimately enlists hierarchical organizations in the punishing of the victim. It may also be true when the person who is astute enough to understand what is happening, and to realize it is a crime that must be reported, is a woman (“The Martha Mitchell effect: When defamation in the neighborhood violates due process in the courtroom“). Ruth Patrick of WomenSV in Silicon Valley commented:
“If you tell the wrong person your husband knows your every move, and he knows what you’ve said in your bedroom, you can start to look crazy.”
Take her words to heart. In my experience, even the attorney you pay a hefty sum to help you may be the wrong person.
You can read Nellie Bowles’ article in The New York Times at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/technology/smart-home-devices-domestic-abuse.html.
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