Stalkers Go High Tech to Intimidate Victims

"When a victim first talks to the police, the stalker's behavior may not necessarily look all that dangerous to an outsider," said Cindy Southworth, director of the Safety Net Project, a program run by the National Network to End Domestic Violence, an advocacy group in Washington. Cyber-stalking is the topic of a national conference this month in New Orleans.

"But when you look deeper at the pattern of stalking . . . following, calling and showing up unannounced someplace time and time again to track a victim, it becomes clear that these cyber and non-cyber tactics are designed to induce fear," she said.

With the technology rapidly becoming cheaper and more readily available, police departments, prosecutors and advocates who work with domestic violence victims are struggling to keep up.

"It seems like these stalkers are a step ahead of us," said Amy Santiago, a detective with the Alexandria Police Department's domestic violence unit, which has investigated about a dozen cases. "We're trying to keep up with it, but it seems like every day things are changing."

Victims and advocates said the 21st-century stalking has taken the repeated phone calls in the middle of the night to an entirely new level. A Prince William County woman, who asked that her name be withheld because she feared retribution from her ex-husband, said the cyber-stalking she experienced in early 2006 at his hands shook her even when she knew he was not in the area.

"He would show up to places that I had only told people in e-mails . . . my lawyer's office," the woman said. "I'd sit there and think: How did he know I was going to be here? How? I felt like I was going crazy."

She added that in one situation, she and her ex-husband began shouting when he showed up at the attorney's office, and the quarrel turned into a brief shoving match in front of their daughter. She said that even though she knows he left the area in 2005, she checked her car once a week for GPS devices until late last year.

Generally, the Web-based technology used is spyware -- software that allows stalkers to invade their victims' computers by sending an e-mail. When the e-mail is opened, the spyware secretly latches onto the target. Personal information, as well as keystrokes and a user's Web-browsing history, can be stolen. Documents on hard disks can be scanned.

Stalkers also use GPS devices, on their own or as chips in cellphones. The units can be traced online to track the whereabouts of targets. To keep the systems running, sophisticated stalkers have attached the devices to power sources in cars.

It's not hard to figure out. Do-it-yourself manuals are widely available online. Some sites advertise otherwise legitimate programs for stalking uses. For instance, spyware was developed commercially to help parents keep tabs on their children's Web use and to provide information for advertisers. Now it is commonly advertised on Web sites as a way to snoop on a spouse. "Monitor any PC from anywhere!" one ad promises. "Spy stealthily so that the user won't know such monitoring exists," another says.

State legislatures took notice of online abuse about 2000 and began passing laws that make high-tech stalking a crime. A law President Bush signed last year also prohibits anonymous electronic communications intended to "threaten, abuse and harass." In addition, the Bureau of Justice Statistics has started to track technological methods used in stalking and domestic violence.

Nonetheless, advocates note that legislation might not help because it could limit the ability of authorities to counteract yet-to-be-developed technologies.

To catch up to the criminals, police domestic violence units are being trained to deal with the increasing use of technology and are beginning to ask potential victims whether they suspect that the privacy of their online activity has been violated.

In addition, lawyers who specialize in such cases are beginning to advise clients to be careful how they communicate through computers, to change passwords frequently and to hand-deliver important documents if they are going through difficult marital separation proceedings.

"This happens more frequently than people realize. . . . It's like a virus," said Mehagen McRae, a Fairfax lawyer who said she worked on a spate of such cases in 2005 and 2006. "I tell my clients to act as if the entire world is reading their e-mails and that if they feel as if they are being watched, they are probably right."