It was really only a matter of time before someone started using their smartphone to track their significant other’s movements openly. That is, that someone would proclaim, loudly and proudly, that they digitally stalk their S.O., and offer justifications for it. Here’s Samantha Williams at The Independent (h/t Lucy Cummin):
I can’t remember exactly when I decided to start Geotagging my partner, but I do know why. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him; I just wanted to build on that trust with cold hard evidence. [Emphasis added.]
She says that she trusts her boyfriend. Well, that’s not exactly accurate. She says that she doesn’t not trust him.
“Trust.”
That’s not really the same thing as trusting someone, and she gives this away in the very next two paragraphs:
Friends who think my behaviour is creepy, controlling or borderline obsessive have pointed out that just because you know where someone is doesn’t mean they are not in that place cheating on you. That’s true, but this is something which means he’d have a harder time getting away with it.
It is one of those small concessions you make in relationships. I don’t complain if he leaves the toilet seat up, he enables an app which allows me to track his location. That’s just how our love works. [Emphasis added.]
Look, these two can do their relationship however they want. I’m just not comfortable defining “trust” in this way. If you think you need evidence of your partner’s fidelity (or whatever) to feel better, as far as I am concerned you already do not trust them, and there is no app for that.
Ms. Williams’ article was inspired by a piece in The Mirror about a woman, Catharine Higginson, who found out that her husband had installed an app on her phone that allowed him to read her texts, listen to her phone calls, and so on. She offers an explanation that would make PATRIOT Act supporters beam with pride:
While I was very shocked at first about the extent of the snooping I ultimately don’t have a problem with him doing this because I’m not up to anything.
But I can see that for those for whom cheating is in their DNA, they’d panic about being caught out.
In other words, if you have nothing to hide, who cares if someone is spying on you?
Now, I give Mrs. Higginson the benefit of the doubt, because I don’t know her husband and she does. The times she describes her husband using the app were mostly innocent, helpful, and necessary. Mostly.
The app in question, Cerberus, is actually marketed more as an “anti-theft” app, but any app that tracks your phone when it’s been stolen can also track it when it hasn’t. I can see some genuine benefits such an app could offer, but it’s at the price of an enormous potential for abuse. If two people can agree to it, they can do what they want. As Mrs. Higginson says, “it depends on the level of trust you have in your marriage.”
I guess it also depends on how you define “trust” in your own life.
As of right now, most Mirror readers seem to agree with me, at least in a general sense:
