 A suspicious husband or wife can now examine the route history of a family car or the location data of a smartphone to track a spouse’s movements. We tend to think of location history surveillance as a uniquely 21st century form of snooping. In an amusing article in the MIT Press Reader, Dartmouth scholar Jacqueline D. Wernimont writes that such surveillance is older than we think. For example, The Hartford Daily Courant in 1879 reported: “A Boston wife softly attached a pedometer to her husband when, after supper, he started to ‘go down to the office and balance the books.’ On his return, fifteen miles of walking were recorded. He had been stepping around a billiard table all evening.” In a twist worthy of today’s spy agencies, Wernimont also reports that a U.S. admiral in 1895 gave junior watch officers common pocket watches with pedometers hidden inside. The results showed that the ensigns had been asleep or resting most of the night. A night watchman at a railroad yard was given a pedometer to track his movements. It was later discovered that the night watchman evaded his responsibilities by sleeping while the pedometer was attached to a moving piston rod. The use of pedometers was an early precursor of surveillance tools used today by employers to track the movements, browsing, communications, and daily routines of their workers. Wernimont writes: “As the pedometer became a vector for surveillance by those in power, people who were able quickly developed hacks designed to frustrate such efforts.” The problem with modern technology is that it is much harder to thwart, or even anticipate when and how one is being watched. No piston rod will save us. Comments are closed.
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