The nightmare of targeted individuals in the age of paranoia (2017)(roundtable.io)
roundtable.io
The nightmare of targeted individuals in the age of paranoia (2017)
https://roundtable.io/failed-state-update/features/the-nightmare-of-targeted-individuals-in-the-age-of-paranoia
76 comments
Surprised how easy it is for employees to query things without some type of form to fill pointing to a case or purpose...
> “If you only focus on instances in which the NSA violated those laws, you’re missing the forest for the trees,” he said. “The bigger concern is not with willful violations of the law but rather with what the law itself allows.”
Totally agree.
> “If you only focus on instances in which the NSA violated those laws, you’re missing the forest for the trees,” he said. “The bigger concern is not with willful violations of the law but rather with what the law itself allows.”
Totally agree.
They did fill out the forms and that's how we know.
It's a question of culture and effective oversight.
It's a question of culture and effective oversight.
How do you adapt culture to issues like this when they aren't cool and people generally want to avoid and not confront uncomfortable realities?
Ideally there would be multiple spokespeople with influence, low cancellation attack surface, high PR attributes, low hypocrisy attack surface, financial independence.
As the last two years have shown, there are many vectors for discouraging speech and facts which are not sanctioned at a particular moment in time. Yet, the same speech may be permitted, forked and amplified at another point in time, to achieve time-sensitive goals.
Sometimes solutions to uncool niche problems are coincidentally solutions to cool common problems, which can lead to silent acceptance of the "collateral good" uncool solution, while promoting benefits to the larger cool market.
There's also the time-tested approach of comedy and satire.
As the last two years have shown, there are many vectors for discouraging speech and facts which are not sanctioned at a particular moment in time. Yet, the same speech may be permitted, forked and amplified at another point in time, to achieve time-sensitive goals.
Sometimes solutions to uncool niche problems are coincidentally solutions to cool common problems, which can lead to silent acceptance of the "collateral good" uncool solution, while promoting benefits to the larger cool market.
There's also the time-tested approach of comedy and satire.
I find these paranoia articles (especially if written in a rambling style themselves) pretty unconvincing.
Obviously some individuals have been targeted and likely driven into self-destruction while people did not believe their story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/opinion/02hotchner.html
"In the years since, I have tried to reconcile Ernest’s [Hemingway's] fear of the F.B.I., which I regretfully misjudged, with the reality of the F.B.I. file. I now believe he truly sensed the surveillance, and that it substantially contributed to his anguish and his suicide."
Other individuals will imagine persecution. The only interesting number is which percentage of reported cases is correct. Given frequent documented stories about police harassment, that percentage is much higher than the smug articles would have us believe.
Obviously some individuals have been targeted and likely driven into self-destruction while people did not believe their story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/opinion/02hotchner.html
"In the years since, I have tried to reconcile Ernest’s [Hemingway's] fear of the F.B.I., which I regretfully misjudged, with the reality of the F.B.I. file. I now believe he truly sensed the surveillance, and that it substantially contributed to his anguish and his suicide."
Other individuals will imagine persecution. The only interesting number is which percentage of reported cases is correct. Given frequent documented stories about police harassment, that percentage is much higher than the smug articles would have us believe.
I've been a Targetted Individual by:
- a stalker (who is intelligent, well-off, but has the resources of a single individual); and
- briefly, by a major organization (who has $20B, and can easily afford to e.g. hire a PI, or a grey hat cybersecurity firm, but ultimately doesn't have anyone who wants to harm me per se).
There weren't any special tech devices involved. Just people spreading rumors, harassment complaints filed with various agencies, invasions of privacy, etc. In the organizational case, I simply folded. I gave up credit for something I invented and financial rewards which would be valued at somewhere between $1M and $200M, depending. The harassment stopped.
I've also seen harassment by my local municipal government. Fortunately, I wasn't the target. It's enough to know that:
1) Harassment does happen.
2) It's very hard to prove, if the other side is at all smart.
3) If I described the things which happened, I'd sound crazy.
However, I'm pretty sure this sort of shit is a lot more common than people give it credit for. I'm also guessing if it were done by a covert agency, there would be tech we don't know about.
I'm not sure the overlap between people talking about harassment and actual harassment. There are plenty of mental health disorders. At the same time, if you actually are being harassed, it's not something you talk about, at least without a veil of internet anonymity.
- a stalker (who is intelligent, well-off, but has the resources of a single individual); and
- briefly, by a major organization (who has $20B, and can easily afford to e.g. hire a PI, or a grey hat cybersecurity firm, but ultimately doesn't have anyone who wants to harm me per se).
There weren't any special tech devices involved. Just people spreading rumors, harassment complaints filed with various agencies, invasions of privacy, etc. In the organizational case, I simply folded. I gave up credit for something I invented and financial rewards which would be valued at somewhere between $1M and $200M, depending. The harassment stopped.
I've also seen harassment by my local municipal government. Fortunately, I wasn't the target. It's enough to know that:
1) Harassment does happen.
2) It's very hard to prove, if the other side is at all smart.
3) If I described the things which happened, I'd sound crazy.
However, I'm pretty sure this sort of shit is a lot more common than people give it credit for. I'm also guessing if it were done by a covert agency, there would be tech we don't know about.
I'm not sure the overlap between people talking about harassment and actual harassment. There are plenty of mental health disorders. At the same time, if you actually are being harassed, it's not something you talk about, at least without a veil of internet anonymity.
The commoditization and proliferation of private "targeting" takes us backward by three hundred years, to pre-Westphalian conflicts among non-state actors, including vigilantes, pirates and mercenaries. It ignores centuries of progress on law, trade contracts and due process, https://www.byarcadia.org/post/the-peace-of-westphalia-the-b...
> The [1648] Treaty of Westphalia is accepted as the beginning of modern international relations since it introduced the concepts of sovereignty, mediation, and diplomacy ... the foundations of modern international law were laid as governments recognized each other's sovereignty.
> The [1648] Treaty of Westphalia is accepted as the beginning of modern international relations since it introduced the concepts of sovereignty, mediation, and diplomacy ... the foundations of modern international law were laid as governments recognized each other's sovereignty.
> you just hear a noise. But the noise, it doesn’t sound — you can tell when you hear it, it doesn’t sound like it’s external. You hear it as a sound, it has a clear property, like a noise or a sound, but it doesn’t sound like it’s coming from around you. It’s hard to describe, but it’s real. It’s totally real
Sorry, but the whole story is far more consistent with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia than V2K (Voice-To-sKull?) or any other whacky technologies:
> Major symptoms include hallucinations, ..., paranoia, ...
Those wackos didn't even bother to gather wikipedia-level knowledge on what they're talking about:
Article > Basically, the biggest difference between mental illness and being electronically harassed is, if you have a mental illness it usually shows up throughout your life.
Wikipedia > Symptoms typically develop gradually, begin during young adulthood
How do such ramblings make it to the top of HN?
Sorry, but the whole story is far more consistent with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia than V2K (Voice-To-sKull?) or any other whacky technologies:
> Major symptoms include hallucinations, ..., paranoia, ...
Those wackos didn't even bother to gather wikipedia-level knowledge on what they're talking about:
Article > Basically, the biggest difference between mental illness and being electronically harassed is, if you have a mental illness it usually shows up throughout your life.
Wikipedia > Symptoms typically develop gradually, begin during young adulthood
How do such ramblings make it to the top of HN?
Those seem clearly presented in the article as direct quotes from a mentally disturbed person and from the agent of a grifter.
The article is about paranoia and irrationality. It would throw off the pacing and be condescending to the reader if they were constantly stomping the brake to explicitly refute each one of the steady stream of plainly outlandish claims.
The article is about paranoia and irrationality. It would throw off the pacing and be condescending to the reader if they were constantly stomping the brake to explicitly refute each one of the steady stream of plainly outlandish claims.
> Basically, the biggest difference between mental illness and being electronically harassed is, if you have a mental illness it usually shows up throughout your life.
Read the article again - it's a quote from a snakeoil salesperson they spoke to.
Read the article again - it's a quote from a snakeoil salesperson they spoke to.
>There was a time when this might have seemed funny. But that was before conspiracy theory was weaponized to help win elections, before the whole world seemed to lose its collective mind.
The world didn't lose it's collective mind.
We learned that the powers that be are every bit as crazy as the tin hat people told us they were. The only thing our foil wrapped friends got wrong were the details.
That the Epstein saga isn't a lurid trashy paperback spy thriller but an actual thing that happened and involved both parties presidential candidates in 2016 is the only rebuttal needed to people who tell us to believe the adults in charge.
The world didn't lose it's collective mind.
We learned that the powers that be are every bit as crazy as the tin hat people told us they were. The only thing our foil wrapped friends got wrong were the details.
That the Epstein saga isn't a lurid trashy paperback spy thriller but an actual thing that happened and involved both parties presidential candidates in 2016 is the only rebuttal needed to people who tell us to believe the adults in charge.
> if you have a mental illness it usually shows up throughout your life
That's rubbish. Psychotic illness (and these mind-control delusions are suggestive of nothing so much as psychosis) generally kicks in in the early 20s. Sometimes it's triggered later in life by some traumatic event.
That's rubbish. Psychotic illness (and these mind-control delusions are suggestive of nothing so much as psychosis) generally kicks in in the early 20s. Sometimes it's triggered later in life by some traumatic event.
Of course it is. It's a quote from a seller from a company selling products like these:
https://quwave.com/QuWave-USB-Harmonizer-Computer-&-TV-EMF-P...
I hope the vast majority of people will take the word of people associated with quwave with appropriate quantities of salt.
https://quwave.com/QuWave-USB-Harmonizer-Computer-&-TV-EMF-P...
I hope the vast majority of people will take the word of people associated with quwave with appropriate quantities of salt.
With theses kinds of snake oil products I'm always curious what's actually inside the device. Google doesn't find any links to a tear down though.
Hypothesis: selling these devices is just a disguised way to practice extortion if the party selling it is colluding with the party causing microwave damage to the victim. Whatever explanation given for the device or actual components used are irrelevant because as soon as the victim pays up the harassment stops - which makes them to conclude it "works", but for the wrong reasons.
I read a quote that went something like: Even the paranoiacs know a little something of what’s going on.
Most paranoia is baseless and delusional, but every now and then it has some foundation. It depends on who you are. This is why I don’t want to be famous, or a journalist, or a prominent activist.
I’m a regular Joe Schmo and can barely have any privacy anyways due to the way the Internet has been designed.
Most paranoia is baseless and delusional, but every now and then it has some foundation. It depends on who you are. This is why I don’t want to be famous, or a journalist, or a prominent activist.
I’m a regular Joe Schmo and can barely have any privacy anyways due to the way the Internet has been designed.
This was a fascinating rabbit hole. Here's Myron May - who shot and injured 3 people and then was killed by the cops - describing his "stalking". At first blush, he seems intelligent and rational - but as you listen, it soon becomes clear that he's in profound psychological distress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-8PklxYM3w
He's using all the terminology employed by the targeted individual community - he clearly found "his people" online, and with it validation and an explanation of what he was experiencing. I wonder what role this played in the fact that he never got the help he needed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-8PklxYM3w
He's using all the terminology employed by the targeted individual community - he clearly found "his people" online, and with it validation and an explanation of what he was experiencing. I wonder what role this played in the fact that he never got the help he needed.
There are crackpots out there for sure.
There are also targeted people.
And even the paranoid have enemies. ;)
There are also targeted people.
And even the paranoid have enemies. ;)
Developing paranoid schizophrenia is a very scary thought. I have encountered way too many people on the internet who have the same delusions. They spend so much time on their computer, they can continually harass you and spam you for years on end, if they find anything that particularly ticks them off. I think every community had encountered at least one schizophrenic person who keeps spamming the same incoherent word salads for months or years, and if banned, creating alt accounts constantly.
For those who think this is far fetched and have the freedom to work remotely and want to experience most of the tactics from this article first hand, try moving to The Isle of Man.
If you’re British and work in tech you don’t even need a visa and the tax rates are good. Things will seem relatively normal for around the first year - sometimes longer sometimes less.
You’ll notice subtle negativity from people and think they don’t get it. But that’s what they want you to think. The low tax economy is a privilege the locals keep for themselves. They fund it by creating psychological hell for newcomers they don’t like using most of the tactics documented in the article and bleeding the targets dry. The police and justice system are totally complicit and will overtly signal they part of the game.
You will eventually have legal trouble and find the lawyers (called advocates on the island) do not provide any client confidentiality and lie to you while relaying any information they learn about you (all while bleeding you dry).
The locals all know each other. You will be told this and will initially think it’s quaint.
What they really mean is they are very practiced in messing with your psychology and everything you do will be observed and communicated by “nice neighbours” who are really the equivalent of Stasi informers. Repeating conversations or repeating information they research about your past in parallel stories is also what they do. Not seen the audio projection tech used but there’s a book published by Springer on the technology so it does exist.
Still sceptical? Look up the flag of the Isle of Man and then the flag of Sicily… draw your own conclusions.
If you’re British and work in tech you don’t even need a visa and the tax rates are good. Things will seem relatively normal for around the first year - sometimes longer sometimes less.
You’ll notice subtle negativity from people and think they don’t get it. But that’s what they want you to think. The low tax economy is a privilege the locals keep for themselves. They fund it by creating psychological hell for newcomers they don’t like using most of the tactics documented in the article and bleeding the targets dry. The police and justice system are totally complicit and will overtly signal they part of the game.
You will eventually have legal trouble and find the lawyers (called advocates on the island) do not provide any client confidentiality and lie to you while relaying any information they learn about you (all while bleeding you dry).
The locals all know each other. You will be told this and will initially think it’s quaint.
What they really mean is they are very practiced in messing with your psychology and everything you do will be observed and communicated by “nice neighbours” who are really the equivalent of Stasi informers. Repeating conversations or repeating information they research about your past in parallel stories is also what they do. Not seen the audio projection tech used but there’s a book published by Springer on the technology so it does exist.
Still sceptical? Look up the flag of the Isle of Man and then the flag of Sicily… draw your own conclusions.
The historical evolution of these local practices would be interesting, including any agreement to exclude such practices from written history. Is there a process by which some new people are approved, or is the local population self-sustaining from new births?
“In all revolutions the vanquished are the ones who are guilty of treason, even by the historians,” Vest said, “for history is written by the victors and framed according to the prejudices and bias existing on their side.”
The idea that written history is an objective record is something that is loved by modern academics. In places that aren't seen to be "that" important, local social factors can affect what gets recorded. The Russians rewrote their history books. Britain still omits from its education system bits of history that are inconvenient or uncomfortable.
Re: the population being self sustaining, not really. There is a fair amount of inbreeding that is visible in the population but not enough to sustain the population and keep the island running.
Workers are imported and are left to do their thing. Higher incomes or high net-worths are a legitimate target - not just for the financial benefit but for sheer entertainment of the pedigrees.
The idea that written history is an objective record is something that is loved by modern academics. In places that aren't seen to be "that" important, local social factors can affect what gets recorded. The Russians rewrote their history books. Britain still omits from its education system bits of history that are inconvenient or uncomfortable.
Re: the population being self sustaining, not really. There is a fair amount of inbreeding that is visible in the population but not enough to sustain the population and keep the island running.
Workers are imported and are left to do their thing. Higher incomes or high net-worths are a legitimate target - not just for the financial benefit but for sheer entertainment of the pedigrees.
Thanks for adding to the online historical record, a necessary step for rebuttal, corroboration or triangulation with other jurisdictions.
Yep. Or if you're into the blockchain scene it could be argued that this centralised historical record is open to abuse and needs to be cryptographically verified and distributed in order for it to be in any way reliable? ;)
History is littered with mythical black boxes which fell short of hype and promises. F2F humans are gifted with multiple sensory channels of signal for evaluating narratives and records, no need to outsource judgement to shiny black blocks.
Could I black box your hypothesis so its stated functionality can be tested properly? O:->
I moved to the Isle of Man in 2008. Personally I have not experienced "most of the tactics from this article".
It seems that "manxman" may be getting some targeting that I am not.
It seems that "manxman" may be getting some targeting that I am not.
> Still sceptical? Look up the flag of the Isle of Man and then the flag of Sicily… draw your own conclusions.
Do they all have Legge locks on their doors by any chance?
Do they all have Legge locks on their doors by any chance?
> draw your own conclusions.
Sounds like the QAnon mantra "do your own research".
Sounds like the QAnon mantra "do your own research".
Where is this from?
The Air Loom Gang has kept up with the times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Tilly_Matthews
"Air loom"?
There actually is such a thing as an air loom.[1] Air looms make most of the world's fabrics today. They're what made fabric cheap. But they don't go back to 1815. Developed in the 2nd half of the 20th century.
[1] https://youtu.be/s5uGmOrrn_I
There actually is such a thing as an air loom.[1] Air looms make most of the world's fabrics today. They're what made fabric cheap. But they don't go back to 1815. Developed in the 2nd half of the 20th century.
[1] https://youtu.be/s5uGmOrrn_I
Apparently Matthews was an accomplished designer and illustrator and did some fancifully specific diagrams of the Air Loom that was controlling his mind.
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/illustrations-of-madnes...
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/illustrations-of-madnes...
This reminds me of a story involving Terry A. Davis, the late schizophrenic programmer behind TempleOS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
He had a famous video (which I won't link here, as he goes on a racist tirade about incandescent CIA employees) in which his random word generator- which he claimed sent him messages from God- prints the words "China virus election." The video is from 2017. Of course it printed lots of random garbage too, and any impression of prescience is merely coincidental, but certain corners of the Internet did notice and remark on the coincidence.
These dark corners of the Internet, 4chan in particular, have their own large populations of users who sincerely think they're victims of gangstalking. While it's amusing to see them find strange coincidences like COVID and the output of Terry's word generator, it's depressing to see such ill people feed off each other's delusions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
He had a famous video (which I won't link here, as he goes on a racist tirade about incandescent CIA employees) in which his random word generator- which he claimed sent him messages from God- prints the words "China virus election." The video is from 2017. Of course it printed lots of random garbage too, and any impression of prescience is merely coincidental, but certain corners of the Internet did notice and remark on the coincidence.
These dark corners of the Internet, 4chan in particular, have their own large populations of users who sincerely think they're victims of gangstalking. While it's amusing to see them find strange coincidences like COVID and the output of Terry's word generator, it's depressing to see such ill people feed off each other's delusions.
Here is an Ask HN in this line.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30214652
Instead of assuming randomness coming from computers full of black-box microchips, assuming malicious interference may be just a better option - survival wise.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30214652
Instead of assuming randomness coming from computers full of black-box microchips, assuming malicious interference may be just a better option - survival wise.
Thanks, another data point for future audits. Such incident report claims can be aggregated in an open-source, CC-licensed index, to improve visibility for defensive analysis and benchmarking of potential responses.
In the case of TempleOS, a hand-built operating system where every aspect of the software was written by Terry himself, I think it's safe to assume no outside factor twiddled those bits.
That was a lovely bit of counter intell psyops by Ada Lovelace & the clackers ...
Still imortilised to this day in the innermost ring of GCHQ.
Still imortilised to this day in the innermost ring of GCHQ.
I've spoken to people like this before. It isn't pure mental illness, the one person I spoke to the most a few years I ago, I am convinced a few assholes stalked/RATed her and that led to all kinds of paranoia and eventually to delusions and what you would call "mental illness".
I have first hand experienced some of this as well but I knew the individuals and their intentions and I learned to tolerate it as a temporary thing and move on with life. It really really messes with your head when you incidentally and actually find a RAT, for non-technical people they have no idea what that is, they just know somehow their most secret moments are known to strangers.
For those unaware, there communities of "underground" creeps that RAT people (usually women though) and share this shit between each other. I'd imagine these are also the same peope that are into gore and other messed up stuff?
In short, other disturbed people sometimes (but not always) cause people to think they are victims of gang stalking and sometimes they are not wrong.
I have first hand experienced some of this as well but I knew the individuals and their intentions and I learned to tolerate it as a temporary thing and move on with life. It really really messes with your head when you incidentally and actually find a RAT, for non-technical people they have no idea what that is, they just know somehow their most secret moments are known to strangers.
For those unaware, there communities of "underground" creeps that RAT people (usually women though) and share this shit between each other. I'd imagine these are also the same peope that are into gore and other messed up stuff?
In short, other disturbed people sometimes (but not always) cause people to think they are victims of gang stalking and sometimes they are not wrong.
What is RAT?
Remote Access Trojan - malware which, usually as software, needs to make its way to the victim computer.
Hypothesis: the people responsible for the electronic harassment of "targeted individuals" use a variant of RAT done in hardware with its own radio and working even without Internet, inserted during processor design, making harder to uncover it, but it can be done.
Consider:
"It's not technically hard to make a device that complies with the FCC that listens to nonpublic bands but then is quietly waiting for some activation trigger to listen to other bands," said Eduardo Rojas, who leads the radio spectrum lab at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. "Technically, it's feasible."
To prove a device had clandestine capabilities, Rojas said, would require technical experts to strip down a device "to the semi-conductor level" and "reverse engineer the design." But, he said, it can be done.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/23/politics/fbi-investigation-hu...
Hypothesis: the people responsible for the electronic harassment of "targeted individuals" use a variant of RAT done in hardware with its own radio and working even without Internet, inserted during processor design, making harder to uncover it, but it can be done.
Consider:
"It's not technically hard to make a device that complies with the FCC that listens to nonpublic bands but then is quietly waiting for some activation trigger to listen to other bands," said Eduardo Rojas, who leads the radio spectrum lab at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. "Technically, it's feasible."
To prove a device had clandestine capabilities, Rojas said, would require technical experts to strip down a device "to the semi-conductor level" and "reverse engineer the design." But, he said, it can be done.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/23/politics/fbi-investigation-hu...
If present, such implants could be detected with a radio-frequency meter that is logging all measurements 7x24, with post-collection filtering of RF noise on public licensed and unlicensed bands.
If present, such a receiver/transmitter would have needed to co-exist with changes in public cellular radio bands, e.g. the transition from 2G to 3G to 4G LTE over the past twenty years.
If present, such a receiver/transmitter would have needed to co-exist with changes in public cellular radio bands, e.g. the transition from 2G to 3G to 4G LTE over the past twenty years.
Unlikely to be caught if the measuring instruments themselves are compromised and made to fake data related to that - just like our eyes have blind spots and the brain does some faking.
The effects of sabotage can't be faked - people only need to listen to the victims, because waiting until they themselves are victimized is a losing proposition.
The effects of sabotage can't be faked - people only need to listen to the victims, because waiting until they themselves are victimized is a losing proposition.
If consumer-level RF meters were sabotaged to ignore specific bands, expensive professional-level SDRs would be less likely to have the same blind spots, if only because they are used in a wide range of applications by professionals who also have reference equipment for calibration of questionable meters.
If consumer-level RF meters were sabotaged to ignore specific bands, professional-level SDRs could be used to identify those bands. That may be faster and less work than detecting any hypothetical implants, and would itself be a significant discovery of interest to the global engineering community.
If consumer-level RF meters were sabotaged to ignore specific bands, professional-level SDRs could be used to identify those bands. That may be faster and less work than detecting any hypothetical implants, and would itself be a significant discovery of interest to the global engineering community.
I guess one of the goals of a such a program would be for nothing the target believes about their harassment to be correct.
Unfortunately, crazy people who believe they are on the receiving end of targeted harassment are more like people who are fixated on the possibility that they might have a deadly illness than they are like people who believe they are Elvis. I think there's a movie on Netflix about how they messed with the guy that leaked/blew the whistle on the internal report on the toxicity of something in cigarettes.
I guess if the silk road guy can try to hire an assassin, so can anyone.
I guess if the silk road guy can try to hire an assassin, so can anyone.
This phenomenon is real and you are correct.
It's also known by those who use targeted harassment because it gives them perfect plausible deniability.
Think about it from the side of the guys who stand to gain from targeted harassment. It's not really worth it for harassing people working at a low level in organisations unless they're a real problem. But think about it from the perspective of targeting people with wealth, political/social influence or those with skills.
If you can make the target look crazy it becomes easy to get what they have or make them do what you want (eventually everyone breaks)
It's also known by those who use targeted harassment because it gives them perfect plausible deniability.
Think about it from the side of the guys who stand to gain from targeted harassment. It's not really worth it for harassing people working at a low level in organisations unless they're a real problem. But think about it from the perspective of targeting people with wealth, political/social influence or those with skills.
If you can make the target look crazy it becomes easy to get what they have or make them do what you want (eventually everyone breaks)
If the victim is actually sane, they'll be able to collect objective evidence that can be verified by 3rd parties. It's going on persistently, after-all, so there's no shortage of events to record. Even if it's just written notes, others can easily exclude the made-up inferences and look only at the raw observations - if any exist!
>they'll be able to collect objective evidence that can be verified by 3rd parties.
Really? Do you actually think a random person you grab off the street could, on their own, be able to do all the necessary forensic analysis necessary to detect an implant? Hell, we haven't even managed to get our hands on the NSO implant, we usually only end up with the first few stages of the exploit because the rest gets covered up. Even when we do get these exploit stages, it often takes days or weeks for experienced engineers to tear them apart and really understand what's going on. These sorts of things are absolutely not trivial and I have zero expectation that anyone could so easily drum up evidence proof of compromise on their own.
Really? Do you actually think a random person you grab off the street could, on their own, be able to do all the necessary forensic analysis necessary to detect an implant? Hell, we haven't even managed to get our hands on the NSO implant, we usually only end up with the first few stages of the exploit because the rest gets covered up. Even when we do get these exploit stages, it often takes days or weeks for experienced engineers to tear them apart and really understand what's going on. These sorts of things are absolutely not trivial and I have zero expectation that anyone could so easily drum up evidence proof of compromise on their own.
No. I'm talking about recording what they actually observe. Even if it's "I heard a sound like zzzt at 2:00pm that lasted for 3 minutes" or keeping a log of Geiger counter data. Lots of notes like that would end up revealing some kind of consistent picture. But saying "I'm being targeted by groups of people using radiological weapons" is just making things up. You can't know that much detail.
Perhaps an open-source forensics guide for collection and custody of evidence that would be considered substantive?
I think there's a growing need for options in this area generally.
The issue is that even indy media sources have become broken in recent years. The Intercept of Poitras and Greenwald isn't the organisation it was when they founded it. Yet unless you are well informed or take the time to research it, the brand carries more weight than the reality.
Even with a large body of verifiable evidence, finding the right way to expose a story in the age of information overload and saturation is challenging.
The issue is that even indy media sources have become broken in recent years. The Intercept of Poitras and Greenwald isn't the organisation it was when they founded it. Yet unless you are well informed or take the time to research it, the brand carries more weight than the reality.
Even with a large body of verifiable evidence, finding the right way to expose a story in the age of information overload and saturation is challenging.
Not if they're so confused that they wind up trying to collect evidence of microchip implants or space lasers!
> ... all sorts of groups have the mandate (and the technology, and the budget) to target anyone who pisses them off. Many of these people are “ex-cops or former agents. They know these tactics. I don’t think there’s a single entity that coordinates federally all this stuff that’s going on.”
WestWorld S3 featured an Uber-like gig economy app for crime, inspired by blockchain dark markets, https://www.unfinishedman.com/the-westworld-rico-app-is-comi... & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsj4LDu1__Y
> The closest thing we’ve got right now is a prediction market called Augur. It essentially allows people to place bets on the outcome of events – any kind of events – and with a little bit of tweaking, well… I probably don’t need to explain how that could be applied to a real-life version of Westworld’s RICO app.
Other variations on this theme can be seen in The Adjustment Bureau (2010), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZJ0TP4nTaE and Daniel Suarez's Daemon (2011), where an AI coordinates and coerces a network of strangers to implement narrow tasks which lead to complex outcomes. Daemon was cited by Vitalik Buterin as an inspiration for Ethereum and DAOs.
In the real world, we have Cass Sunstein's "nudge" theory, https://www.newstatesman.com/encounter/2019/05/cass-sunstein..., predictive policing in Pasco FL, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24363871 and Austin TX, https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2020-07-24/apds-secret-...
> secret citizen spying program that's active in the Austin area and across the country ... Threat Liaison Officers (TLOs), who report suspicious activity or behavior ... each TLO must sign a nondisclosure agreement with ARIC, including those not working in law enforcement, essentially creating secret citizen officers. These informants, known as For Official Use Only TLOs, are able to access the fusion centers' national intelligence database (excluding personal identifying information). The FOUO TLOs include private security officers with local hotels, malls, large venues, and local semiconductor companies.
DOJ's prosecution of former eBay executives for journalist cyberstalking concluded this year with guilty pleas, https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/14/23073054/former-ebay-exec... & https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/former-ebay-executive-ple...
> eBay’s former director of global resiliency ... pleaded guilty to taking part in a bizarre harassment campaign, which involved sending live cockroaches, spiders, a bloody pig face mask, and other strange items to a Massachusetts couple ... Harville wasn’t the only higher-up involved, either — Popp served as eBay’s former senior manager of global intelligence, Gilbert was the ex-senior manager of special operations, Baugh worked as eBay’s senior director of safety and security, and Stockwell was a former manager for the company’s Global Intelligence Center.
WestWorld S3 featured an Uber-like gig economy app for crime, inspired by blockchain dark markets, https://www.unfinishedman.com/the-westworld-rico-app-is-comi... & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsj4LDu1__Y
> The closest thing we’ve got right now is a prediction market called Augur. It essentially allows people to place bets on the outcome of events – any kind of events – and with a little bit of tweaking, well… I probably don’t need to explain how that could be applied to a real-life version of Westworld’s RICO app.
Other variations on this theme can be seen in The Adjustment Bureau (2010), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZJ0TP4nTaE and Daniel Suarez's Daemon (2011), where an AI coordinates and coerces a network of strangers to implement narrow tasks which lead to complex outcomes. Daemon was cited by Vitalik Buterin as an inspiration for Ethereum and DAOs.
In the real world, we have Cass Sunstein's "nudge" theory, https://www.newstatesman.com/encounter/2019/05/cass-sunstein..., predictive policing in Pasco FL, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24363871 and Austin TX, https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2020-07-24/apds-secret-...
> secret citizen spying program that's active in the Austin area and across the country ... Threat Liaison Officers (TLOs), who report suspicious activity or behavior ... each TLO must sign a nondisclosure agreement with ARIC, including those not working in law enforcement, essentially creating secret citizen officers. These informants, known as For Official Use Only TLOs, are able to access the fusion centers' national intelligence database (excluding personal identifying information). The FOUO TLOs include private security officers with local hotels, malls, large venues, and local semiconductor companies.
DOJ's prosecution of former eBay executives for journalist cyberstalking concluded this year with guilty pleas, https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/14/23073054/former-ebay-exec... & https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/former-ebay-executive-ple...
> eBay’s former director of global resiliency ... pleaded guilty to taking part in a bizarre harassment campaign, which involved sending live cockroaches, spiders, a bloody pig face mask, and other strange items to a Massachusetts couple ... Harville wasn’t the only higher-up involved, either — Popp served as eBay’s former senior manager of global intelligence, Gilbert was the ex-senior manager of special operations, Baugh worked as eBay’s senior director of safety and security, and Stockwell was a former manager for the company’s Global Intelligence Center.
For some reason "security" and "intelligence" lures the most suspect people you really don't want in those positions.
>America is a de facto surveillance state, where we’re all victims of decentralized, lone wolf Stasi. Most of us just haven’t realized it yet.
The article gets one thing right, regardless of your opinion on the rest.
If you are blind to this as of now it is your own doing
The article gets one thing right, regardless of your opinion on the rest.
If you are blind to this as of now it is your own doing
Why are they using these atrocious AI generated images? seems there are better ways to convey unhinged people
This article was long winded and indirect in a weird way I’ve never seen before. It wasn’t gpt 3, was it?
More interesting: in the future with gpt5 and image generation tech, how will we know if anything is real ever again online? Actual question
More interesting: in the future with gpt5 and image generation tech, how will we know if anything is real ever again online? Actual question
> More interesting: in the future with gpt5 and image generation tech, how will we know if anything is real ever again online? Actual question
Another question... Say we discover a new planet in 2030. Countless low quality, click/ads driven websites are going to report about it using gpt-4 text and dall-e 4 pictures.
Now how do we train gpt-5 and dall-e 5 to know about that new planet, yet somehow sort between what's "real" about that planet and what's poorly generated by inferior AIs (by that I mean inferior to the new version of the AI we're trying to train)?
Do we now need an AI to first determine what's real and what's not to know how to correctly train the new AI without using polluted data?
Mind blown.
Another question... Say we discover a new planet in 2030. Countless low quality, click/ads driven websites are going to report about it using gpt-4 text and dall-e 4 pictures.
Now how do we train gpt-5 and dall-e 5 to know about that new planet, yet somehow sort between what's "real" about that planet and what's poorly generated by inferior AIs (by that I mean inferior to the new version of the AI we're trying to train)?
Do we now need an AI to first determine what's real and what's not to know how to correctly train the new AI without using polluted data?
Mind blown.
It's ML memes, which - unlike human memes - are not naturally rate-limited.
without having read it yet, I'm going to say I'm already prone to thinking certain kinds of blog writing are gpt3 and it's insidious and enormously destructive of what's left of the human ecosystem on the web that we have to seriously ask that question.
What may happen is that everyone begins to realize that the shit they read every day is pointless garbage that doesn't actually pertain to them at all.
Case in point: I crossed the border into Canada this week and woke up one morning with some extra time for google news doom scrolling before I got out of bed. It took about halfway through the scroll to realize I was logged out and that all the crime and politics headlines I was reading were about things that had happened in Canada. Which meant nothing to me and which I would never have heard about otherwise. (And yet there was a whole different galaxy of stories that had clearly been going on for some time). This was like in the 80s when you'd intentionally turn on the local TV news in your hotel room to see local broadcasters wherever you were visiting, except it wasn't intentional. And yet I realized my brain could not give two fucks before coffee if these stories had been generated by an AI or they were irrelevantly Canadian, I just needed to doom scroll some shit before breakfast. But after that I stopped reading the news and just enjoyed being in a country where nothing much happens. So my prediction is that the moment people realize they're reading AI-generated news, they'll just tune out completely. It would be like suddenly realizing you've been listening to CBC.
What may happen is that everyone begins to realize that the shit they read every day is pointless garbage that doesn't actually pertain to them at all.
Case in point: I crossed the border into Canada this week and woke up one morning with some extra time for google news doom scrolling before I got out of bed. It took about halfway through the scroll to realize I was logged out and that all the crime and politics headlines I was reading were about things that had happened in Canada. Which meant nothing to me and which I would never have heard about otherwise. (And yet there was a whole different galaxy of stories that had clearly been going on for some time). This was like in the 80s when you'd intentionally turn on the local TV news in your hotel room to see local broadcasters wherever you were visiting, except it wasn't intentional. And yet I realized my brain could not give two fucks before coffee if these stories had been generated by an AI or they were irrelevantly Canadian, I just needed to doom scroll some shit before breakfast. But after that I stopped reading the news and just enjoyed being in a country where nothing much happens. So my prediction is that the moment people realize they're reading AI-generated news, they'll just tune out completely. It would be like suddenly realizing you've been listening to CBC.
Very simple - you won't be able to tell the difference. Philip.K. Dick painted this future so well in his "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" novel.
The article was previously published in 2017, before gpt 3 existed:
https://theoutline.com/post/995/targeted-individuals-paranoi...
https://theoutline.com/post/995/targeted-individuals-paranoi...
Was it? How do you know that there's not a goverment conspiracy to backdate this article so as to pretend it wasn't written by GPT-3?
What, a Wayback Machine copy from ~ the original byline[1]? Brewster Kahle is in on it too? This goes higher up than I thought[2]...
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170318075738/https://theoutlin... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/b7bhdu/a_jfk_conspir...
What, a Wayback Machine copy from ~ the original byline[1]? Brewster Kahle is in on it too? This goes higher up than I thought[2]...
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170318075738/https://theoutlin... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/b7bhdu/a_jfk_conspir...
How do you know they didn’t sent someone back in time to post the article? How do you know it’s not one of GPT-3 descendants? ;-)
That would at least explain all the (overtly) AI generated imagery around the article.
It would also be pretty hilarious to have an article debunking claims about secret technology being secretly written by an AI.
It would also be pretty hilarious to have an article debunking claims about secret technology being secretly written by an AI.
I guess everything going to be modern politics - tune in to the media source that confirms your existing biases and feel good at the social validation that others think like you do.
Nothing is real at a quantum level.
Nothing is real at a quantum level.
it doesn't matter. if the content is good, doesn't have glaring logical errors and even some people agree with it, its real enough.
Real enough for what?
for driving clicks. because sadly that's what matters on today's internet.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog...