NSW to criminalise secret GPS tracking after report highlighting number of devices bought by DV offenders
New South Wales moves to criminalize covert GPS tracking after reports reveal domestic violence offenders are weaponizing surveillance technology against women — a stark emblem of how digital tools enable control, fear, and hidden domination in the modern age.
Ephesians 5:11
Direct Principle“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.”
Why this passage
Paul's instruction in Ephesians 5:11 addresses the ethical responsibility of those who walk in the light: they are not merely to avoid darkness but actively to expose it. The Greek word used — elegchō — carries a legal and moral force, meaning to bring to light, convict, or refute.
This principle applies directly to the hidden nature of covert GPS tracking: what is done in secret, in the dark, against the vulnerable must be brought into the open by those in authority.
The prophet Amos declared, 'Does a bird fall in a snare on the earth, when there is no trap for it?' (Amos 3:5) — a word that cuts to the heart of hidden entrapment. The women stalked by covert GPS devices did not know the snare was set; they moved through their daily lives while unseen eyes tracked their every step, a digital trap sprung in secret.
This is the nature of surveillance unchecked by conscience or law: it reduces image-bearers of God to prey. Scripture consistently calls the righteous to expose what is hidden in darkness (Ephesians 5:11), and the lawmakers of New South Wales, however imperfectly, are being moved to name a hidden evil and bring it into the light of accountability.
Today's Prayer
Pray that God would protect those living under the shadow of covert surveillance and stalking, and that lawmakers everywhere would have the wisdom to recognize and restrain the use of technology as an instrument of oppression.
Further Scripture
Additional passages that illuminate this event, each grounded in a distinct interpretive lens.
“Does a bird fall in a snare on the earth, when there is no trap for it? Does a snare spring up from the ground, when it has taken nothing?”
Why this passage
Amos 3:5 is set within a series of rhetorical questions that establish the principle of cause and effect — specifically, that a trap does not spring unless it has been deliberately laid. The original context is God's sovereign judgment upon Israel: He acts because there is a cause, and the people are ensnared because traps were set for them.
The broader wisdom principle embedded here is that hidden entrapment has an architect. Covert surveillance is precisely this: a snare laid in secret, designed to give the trapper power over the one who does not know they are caught.
How it applies
Domestic violence offenders purchasing GPS tracking devices are, in the plainest sense, setting snares. The victims — women moving freely, unknowing — become prey to a hidden trap.
Amos's principle indicts the deliberateness of this evil: it is not accidental surveillance but calculated entrapment, and the legislation NSW now pursues is a belated recognition that the snare must be named before it can be broken.
“With his mouth the godless man destroys his neighbor, but by knowledge the righteous are delivered.”
Why this passage
Proverbs 11:9 contrasts the destructive power of the ungodly — who use available tools to harm those close to them — with the delivering power of knowledge and wisdom. The word 'neighbor' here extends to intimate relationships; indeed, the closest neighbors are household members and partners.
The proverb recognizes a persistent human pattern: those without the fear of God will weaponize proximity and available tools to destroy, while knowledge — including legal knowledge and exposure — is the instrument of deliverance.
How it applies
Abusers using GPS technology exploit the proximity of intimate partnership — knowledge of routines, addresses, and movements — to destroy and control. The report that prompted NSW's legislative action is itself an act of the 'knowledge' Proverbs commends: bringing hidden data to light so that the righteous may be delivered.
The legislation that follows is not merely policy reform; it is, in the wisdom literature's terms, the community choosing the side of the delivered over the side of the destroyer.
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Source: The Guardian— we link to the original for full context.