On being mobbed

Bandwidth and television providers like Comcast and AT&T lay coaxial, telephone wire, Cat5, Cat6 and optical fiber. These corporations may claim the wire that runs between your home and the pole but often shift the responsibility for the maintenance or removal of the physical media after installation is complete. Utility companies providing telephone, internet and cable, and satellite television, like those utilities providing electricity, gas, water and sewer, are granted easement to maintain and repair their infrastructure. The easement is typically written into the deeded property and “runs with the land” to the next owner. If not expressly written into the deed, the easement is generally implied. (“Property Owners’ Rights and Utility Easements,” Legal Zoom, https://info.legalzoom.com/article/property-owners-rights-and-utility-easements).

The responsibility of the home owner usually begins at the point of demarcation marked by a “service drop,” a service box, or the point where the service is installed on your home (“Service drop,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_drop). In telephony, this is the “demarcation point” or “demarc” where the public switched telephone network ends and your on-premises wiring begins (“Demarcation point,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_point). A “demarcation point” is usually the “main point of entry” (MPOE) for the service into the house, for example, where I stay in the Bay Area, the Comcast service box that anchored the coaxial transmission line to the house and the network interface device (NID) that brought Cat5 to the house for the Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) service (“Network interface device,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_interface_device). According to Wikipedia, “[t]he telephone company owns the NID itself, and all wiring up to it. Anything past the NID is the customer’s responsibility.”

Depending on the utility and the point of demarcation, the wire utilities staple to your siding and run into the holes they drill through exterior walls is usually granted to you. So long as the infrastructure supports a product and so long as you might be lured back with discounts and bundles, these companies may discourage you from removing the infrastructure and often refuse to help you remove it. Even for services that are increasingly obsolete and unsupported by the infrastructure provider, though the utility may be said to own it they are often unwilling to claim it.

The result is lines cut from houses, coiled and left hanging at the pole; good citizen calls to utilities about cut wires dangling over the roadside; confused requests from home owners and the run-around on AT&T and Comcast forums whenever the question of infrastructure ownership is broached; and service boxes whose utility company owners refuse to remove them, leaving their removal to the home owners who do not. Residents who have no choice other than to assume responsibility for these wires and cables may have no idea who to call to have the old infrastructure removed, whether a licensed electrician or general contractor, or a television, network or telephony installer. In the end, the removal of infrastructure that is installed on your home comes with the risk of reawakening the interest of the disinterested utility company owner and finding yourself charged for its reinstallation.

The benefit of infrastructure dies with the services we terminate. As communications and entertainment technologies evolve and require new infrastructure, the old infrastructure falls into obsolescence. Over time, unused infrastructure becomes a nuisance. But this unused infrastructure that hampers you in changing your siding or painting your house, these wires that cut through your view of the skies, have an effect that extends beyond convenience or cosmetics. If unused infrastructure is a nuisance, it is a nuisance that is attractive not only to your garden-variety neighborhood hacker with the proximity for a physical attack, but to stalkers and saboteurs, to mobbing racketeers who want to flip your home, and to terrorists—domestic and otherwise. Unused infrastructure must be regarded as a significant vulnerability. These wires, cords and cables, these service boxes and NIDs, these communications lines connect the domestic and the private with the unbounded and uncontrolled, the chaos and clamor of the public arena; they enlarge the domestic attack surface, beginning with your home and expanding over the American grid. Mobbers use these communications channels because they provide direct and private access to you. Mobbers use this abandoned infrastructure to transmit clandestine and highly illegal utterances.

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After transitioning the Bay Area house to Sonic, I wanted to see if I could reduce my exposure to infrasound in Seattle by severing the connection between the unused Comcast line affixed to the house, and the pole.

After learning just a bit about these utility installations, I was dismayed to see that the splitter and coaxial lacked the protection of any kind of box. The lines were mounted on the siding of the house. It took some persistence, but within a few days I used the right search string and Wire Free Sky came up in my search results. For less than $200, I had the poorly installed Comcast service and the obsolete POTS box and lines removed from the side of the house. Wire Free Sky (https://wirefreesky.com) freed the wires from the house and used a pole cutter to snip them back to the utility pole. As with the Bay Area house, with the severing of the coaxial cable connection between the house and the pole, the bedtime infrasound in Seattle was immediately diminished.

Back at the Bay Area house a few weeks later, I tried but could not find a similar service to remove from the house the infrastructure that supported the AT&T and Comcast services. After cutting the coaxial, it had become clear that the AT&T service was also a target of the mobbing. While the overnight infrasound had been ameliorated, the higher-frequency noise was as loud as ever. Moreover, I was more familiar with the locations and paths of the service boxes and wires on the exterior wall and, oddly, the mobbing noise seemed to originate from the AT&T service box itself.

It took a while to find the right people to remove the service boxes and wires from the Berkeley area house. I contacted a contractor or two without much response and finally settled on a network cable installer. Unfortunately, the networking company realized upon their arrival, that my wires extended not direct from the pole but from a midpoint on the line. This meant that, lacking a ladder truck or pole cutter, they had to leave the lines secured to the location of the electrical service drop instead of taking them back to the pole. Even so, the removal of the AT&T NID significantly quieted the higher-frequency mobbing noise that occurs in the kitchen but is not deployed onto wired devices like phones and computers. And since then, I’ve interrupted the continuity of the Cat5 wiring in some of the wall adapters and dissected the coaxial that ran through the basement level and crawl space. With any luck, I can complete the removal of the coaxial and Cat5 from the service drop with a request to AT&T or some company with a ladder truck in the near future. It’s important to note that while some mobbing noise has been ameliorated, the mobbing has not been cured. These are determined criminals. To protect their platform, they need to get the job done.

The AT&T service included the typical blue-and-white twisted pair for DSL to the house in addition to the older POTS service. With the cordless phone and POTS service my elderly relative used in the house, phone phreaking was a typical part of the mobbing in that location. It didn’t take much to consider the additional possibilities that a DSL line presented. Given the fact that it’s a data line, my attention was drawn to the DIRECT-DD-HP OfficeJet Pro 6960 All-in-One Printer whose access point appeared to be positioned at the service drop for the Berkeley area house. As I suspected, that printer model includes fax capabilities that allow for the connection of a phone in the absence of a phone line. The prospect of mobbing by fax looms large; I’ve noticed the constant presence of a printer in Seattle as well. Companies don’t tolerate rogue access points on their premises; why should you tolerate them in your home?

By provisioning signal for services the mobbing victim has refused, crisscrossing current and connecting different services by signal or drop, the mobbers may be making at least a low-voltage mess. Mobbers run bandwidth between unused service boxes, using abandoned and open coaxial to transport or circulate harassment throughout the homes of their victims, and using closed loop services to ingress and aggress upon their victims. Comcast coaxial should never have been installed directly on the siding of my Seattle home where it was bound to be exposed to weather and mobbers alike. The south side of the house is where a lot of the mobbing activity has been focused, probably because of these service installations and their proximity to the wireless gateway and routers on the interior side of the wall. Despite the removal of the old Comcast service, the buzz and sting of low-voltage interference is as prominent as ever on nights like tonight when the parking areas of the nasty neighborhood watch lady as well as the south and north mobbing houses are occupied by “visitors” whose vehicles likely support devices that have line-of-sight access to services and access points for the transmission of rogue signal into my environment and onto my devices. On nights like this one, if I have enabled them for some reason or another, I disable and disconnect my “noisy” Bluetooth mouse and any external monitor supporting HDMI. I check to ensure that I haven’t forgotten to silence the sound on my laptop. I shut off the Oransi air purifier or lower the fan speed and turn off the Presto HeatDish with the parabolic distributor that I purchased after using one at an AirBnB. I make sure unused speakers are unplugged, and when I cannot tolerate the symptoms, I unplug the router. The mobbers may exploit faults in the installations of household services, but with the deliberate use of radio-frequency interference they might also create them. Mobbing service boxes and electrical wires and cables should be treated like tampering, interfering with communications, sabotage, and domestic terrorism under the law. These are the terms that come to mind. This is what is reasonable.

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In winter of 2016, small clusters U.S. State Department employees began to report strange noises like cracking sounds, ringing, buzzing and grinding, and troubling symptoms including dizziness and memory loss (“Microwave Weapons Are Prime Suspect in Ills of U.S. Embassy Workers,” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/science/sonic-attack-cuba-microwave.html). American embassy employees in Havana were the first to complain of mysterious attacks and injuries without impact. By 2018, American embassy workers in China made similar reports (“China Pledges to Investigate Fears of Sonic Attacks on U.S. Diplomats,” The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/world/asia/sonic-attack-china-guangzhou-consulate-.html).

The origin of the “directed” or “targeted” attacks against a group of embassy workers believed to include diplomats and spies, and whether this incidence of “immaculate concussion” was the result of an attack at all, has been the subject of extensive discussion in newspapers, magazines and scientific journals. I’ve written several pieces referencing the embassy attacks on On being mobbed because of familiar themes including the difficulty of recording the sounds of the “attack” as well as the inevitable dismissal of what some called a “sonic attack” as mass hysteria (“Dangerous sounds” in Seattle and abroad, Was the sonic attack of US diplomats in Cuba a drone or “neighbor” attack?, Is it or isn’t it infrasound? Only your mobbers know for sure).

These past December weeks, there’s been a resurgence of the theory that the embassy attack was the result of “pulsed microwaves,” the short radio waves that make radar, rubbery food and cell phones possible, the same radio waves the south house mobbing owner brought into the conversation when he tried to make me look like a paranoid conspiracy theorist by lying and telling my attorney’s gullible investigator I had accused him of sending me “evil messages” in my microwave.

The unceasing verbal abuse of being mobbed within the context of criminal harassment, racketeering and block watch violence is easily distinguished from the Frey effect that is characteristic of the auditory experience of attack by “pulsed radio frequency.” Edi Schamiloglu, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New Mexico explains, “The human head acts as a receiving antenna for microwaves in the low gigahertz frequency range. Pulses of microwaves in these frequencies can cause people to hear sounds, which is one of the symptoms reported by the affected U.S. personnel” (“Scientists suggest US embassies were hit with high-power microwaves–here’s how the weapons work,” The Conversation, 12/10/20, https://theconversation.com/scientists-suggest-us-embassies-were-hit-with-high-power-microwaves-heres-how-the-weapons-work-151730).

Writing in Ars Technica, Beth Mole notes the finding that the diplomats experienced the attacks in “specific physical locations near windows or as originating or emanating from a particular direction” (“US diplomats’ brain injuries may be from covert microwave attack, experts say,” Ars Technica (12/10/2020), https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/covert-microwave-weapon-most-plausible-cause-of-cuba-health-attacks/). This is similar to what I’ve experienced with weaponized digital sound in Seattle’s South Cedar Park. The infrasound or infrasound-like effect that appears to have a strong connection to coaxial cable and may be enabled by its “antenna effect” can be ameliorated by cracking open a window—“breaking a surface” as I have often referred to it on this site.

Based on dozens and dozens of Airtool network frame collections indicating the less than neighborly use of a Sonos wireless sound system, walkie-talkies, phones and television transmitters in my scenario, I am certain of being attacked using sound. The amelioration of the controlled sound is in keeping with the nature of sound waves whose transport is enabled by elements that flow and surfaces that are continuous with the general rule being that if you can see light, you can hear sound. Hence the need to quiet the single glass panes in my windows and protect the joinery around them with acoustic board. This is necessary to sleep at night when my router and the AT&T wireless gateway are shut down and the mobbers have typically resorted to sound of a lower frequency that may literally resound within you when conveyed to you through bone conduction (Mobbing close to the bone: Bone conduction and Is it or isn’t it infrasound? Only your mobbers know for sure). This is what some Seattle neighborhood watch co-captains do to those who rent single-family homes in the neighborhoods they seek to gentrify. And this is why the U.S. Justice Department, instrumental in the creation and funding of the block watch program, should withhold funds from certain cities and investigate their programs instead.

Given the proliferation of devices that use microwaves energy, microwave weapons could be as mundane as the parabolic dish of some satellite TV turned against a neighbor or the nightly appearance of “interferers” like the radiating walkie-talkies in my Airtool frame captures. Edi Schamiloglu, writes, “Directed energy microwave weapons convert energy from a power source—a wall plug in a lab or the engine on a military vehicle—into radiated electromagnetic energy and focus it on a target.” From this perspective, the mobbers’ use of radio frequency to aggress upon their victims by boosting signal, vexing with the use of radiating beams, and deliberately creating interference and heat has commonalities with “energy weapons.” And when they are maliciously used by bad actors, perhaps WiFi repeaters are energy weapons.

For an interesting discussion on Allan H. Frey for whom the Frey effect is named, see the New York Times article, “Microwave Weapons Are Prime Suspect in Ills of U.S. Embassy Workers at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/science/sonic-attack-cuba-microwave.html.

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Mobbing is an additive process. Mobbing by WiFi extender adds signal. This is signal boosting. The goal of mobbing goes beyond provisioning you with bandwidth to more easily deploy a rogue access point into your environment for the purpose of broadcasting rogue sound. Mobbers use signal to create havoc, to generate interference and heat, to ruin your equipment and cruelly, and perhaps dangerously, to play with you. They use obscure technologies and techniques to frighten you. They mob in accord with their personality defects. More than harassment, mobbing is the clandestine expression of the mobber’s psychopathy. As one female mobber said for my benefit early in the mobbing, “What else can we do to fuck her up?” When it comes to the mobbers’ Internet of malicious things, there’s not much you can rule out.

Over these years of being mobbed and writing about it, I’ve received comments that sound like attempts at social engineering. Like a comment on the site tonight, in which a woman said that On being mobbed seemed like a fake site whose purpose was to teach people how to harass and that it should be investigated. If only. Any meaningful investigation would surely expose the mobbers. The writer of that comment might have been trying to scare me out of writing about the harassment. But the comment about it being a site to teach people how to harass is an interesting one because it touches on an excuse often given by security researchers to explain why they don’t want to give the public information about an exploit. The common thinking is that divulging information about an exploit is one and the same with teaching bad actors how to effect it. That can mean that the would-be victims of digital criminals don’t get the information they need to recognize the exploit. And if you can’t recognize the exploit, your chances of being able to get help are drastically reduced. That’s how neighborhood watch groups get away with victimizing women in their homes with IoT. That’s how these crooks are able to get the police and the courts to regard victims who report tech-enabled crimes as mentally ill with nothing more than innuendo. Knowledge trumps status. Once we begin to understand how IoT and other tech crimes are effected and expressed, criminals won’t be able to so easily hide behind their credentials. (Note 02/02/21: Without knowledge, bias prevails.)

Some comments can also be informative. Like the time a woman ended her attempt to get me to engage with her by saying “They can make the walls sing!” The proviso sounded like a threat, but made me think about the structure of walls and what could be in them that might allow them to “sing.” A few weeks back, I noticed a reader who searched for posts that talked about using wires to “make noise.” Given the evolution of the mobbing, the notion of “using” wires to make noise was beginning to make sense. This was a case where, on first glance, the phrasing sounds nonsensical. But once you begin to understand how mobbing works, things start to fall into place and comments like these begin to come together like the pieces of a puzzle.

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Powerline adapters make electrical outlets into Ethernet hubs. Like the Eero WiFi repeater, Powerline adapters extend networks. But instead of repeating an 802.11 WiFi signal transmitted through the air, HomePlugAV2-compliant Powerline adapters transport Ethernet signal over the existing electrical wires in your walls. “It might seem like magic, but Powerline networking piggybacks its data signal on top of your home’s 120-volt alternating current that runs through the home’s electrical infrastructure that snakes through your house, making every AC outlet fair game” (“Wi-Fi extenders vs powerline adapters: Everything you need to know,” Tom’s Guide, May 11, 2020, https://www.tomsguide.com/face-off/powerline-extenders-vs-wi-fi-signal-boosters). [Note 03/09/21: In the case of the heat map of the Berkeley area house, I do not know if this is typical of a heat map representation of a power line connection but the cluster of Dobby, XFINITY and xfinity access points on the north side of the house appear to match the count and siting of the outlets that are installed in the kitchen. Similarly, the unknown access point next to the Sonic router might be supported by the outlet that the router plugs into. Note that I moved the location of the router when I transitioned the house from Comcast to Sonic.]

Powerline for Ethernet requires sender and receiver devices that plug into AC current. The sender is installed near the router and the receiver near the device you want to support. But there’s also a hybrid approach in which the receiver includes a WiFi access point that communicates with the device you want to support. Like the extenders that mobbers use, Powerline with WiFi extends WiFi signal. Potentially interesting for criminals who want to monkey-wrench the IoT ecosystem, however, is the transport of data side-by-side with electrical current and the creation of network connectivity in spaces where it is not supported. Even more interesting is the debate over the potential interference of Powerline networking. Tom’s Guide notes the popularity of Powerline technology in Europe. There’s an opposing movement to ban it in the UK because of interference into the radio spectrum. Interestingly, Powerline adapters cause your electrical circuitry to emit low-frequency radio waves (my emphasis) (“Power Line Adapters Pros and Cons,” 2/23/2018, Home Network Solutions Berkshire, https://www.hns-berks.co.uk/blogs/power-line-adapters-pros-and-cons). I suppose the radiation might be increased at openings in the walls such as those made for electrical outlets. It doesn’t require much of a leap to wonder whether a Powerline network could account for audible harassment on devices that are not Internet-capable or connected. Perhaps Powerline can in fact cause the walls to sing.

The UK-based website Ban Power Line Technology contends that PLC introduces levels of interference into household wiring that disrupt radio communications and pollute interior environments with unhealthy radiation (Ban Power Line Technology, https://www.ban-plt.org.uk/fuss.php). The people at BPLT advocate the installation and use of data cabling to preserve radio spectrum. Securing a Powerline network when the adapters are installed in apartments or condos also presents a problem. Andy O’Donnell writes in Lifewire that Powerline devices come with a default network name to ensure interoperability between sender and receiver. This means that if the inhabitants of apartments sharing building wiring use Powerline adapters from the same manufacturer without changing the default network name, you may be sharing a network too. (“How to Secure Your HomePlug Powerline Network” March 09, 2020, Lifewire, https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-secure-your-homeplug-powerline-network-2487487). With Powerline technology over household wiring, when you share the walls you share physical media.

BPLT argues that Powerline signal doesn’t stop at the fuse box or meter and that a security flaw in the technology can allow the establishment of a PLT network between your house and the house next door over a power line like the ones affixed to my home and the houses of the mobbers that meet at the pole (“How to create a PLT network between your house and your neighbour’s,” https://www.ban-plt.org.uk/videos.php). There is also the potential for data leakage on unencrypted Powerline networks where your main breaker is essentially your gateway device. If data exfiltration is a concern, data injection may also be (“Are powerline ethernet adapters inherently secure?” StackExchange, https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/9725/are-powerline-ethernet-adapters-inherently-secure). Between radiation, interference and the potential security issues, Powerline technology is bound to be attractive to mobbers. It would not surprise me if the mobbers had found a way to create a Powerline network and share it with me. Flanked by mobbing houses on both sides, one could host the sender and the other the receiver.

My environment here in South Cedar Park has been purposefully enriched, perhaps even saturated, with radio frequency. This based on heat maps showing the Eero WiFi repeaters configured around and over my home that ensure access to me for the delivery of criminal harassment over WiFi.

These heat maps appeared with others I did myself using NetSpot’s heat mapping capabilities in the recent post Mobbing by WiFi range extender. The Eero WiFi extenders appear to be deployed in a mesh network topology with the 2.4GHz band configured as an open access point. The 2.4GHz band is typically used by “noisy” common household devices that include “noisy” devices, also known as “interferers.” My Airtool frame captures show the Eero 2.4GHz networks host a lot of broadcast traffic. The 2.4GHz signal is able to permeate walls of older traditional houses supported by non-metal materials like wood.

The enclosure of the Seattle house in rogue signal, combined with the constant barrage of sound, has a jamming effect so strong that it’s difficult to upload data from this house. Wikipedia makes the point that Bluetooth and WiFi can be blocked with very low power (“Radio jamming,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_jamming). I use Ethernet and keep WiFi off as much as possible but, in Seattle at least, AT&T supports only a wireless gateway.

Confronted with the transmit power of multiple-input, multiple output (MIMO), directional mobbing devices like the Sonos, and the onslaught of signal, it can be difficult to distinguish being mobbed from being jammed. Mesh networking can be traced back to the development of packet radio networks in the 1970s by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Mobile mesh networks were engineered over decades to enable device-to-device connectivity in “comms-denied” environments, perhaps not unlike my home (“How the U.S. military helped develop mobile mesh networking,” The Last Mile: Off-grid communications news & perspectives, July 30, 2020, https://thelastmile.gotennapro.com/how-the-u-s-military-helped-develop-mobile-mesh-networking/). Not yet having published the final part of Infrastructure crimes: Mobbing with interference; extraction by heat, I don’t believe I’ve written here about obvious” signal jamming that is heard on the receiving equipment versus “subtle” signal jamming that is not heard though it blocks communication just the same. Sun Tsu said, “All warfare is based on deception.” This is also the case for property war, in which denial of service (DoS) is hidden in sonic attack. Jamming requires only a stronger signal. Boosting provides the signal strength the mobbers need.

“Obvious” jamming, that is jamming with sound, is jamming you can hear and is most typically delivered as random noise, tones, signals characterized as sparks, gulls, random pulses and wobblers, or recorded sounds. Mobbing by verbal abuse over cell phone, walkie-talkie, VoIP, smart speakers like the Sonos or television transmitters would of course fall into the category of recorded sounds. Jamming by recorded sound can include “[a]ny audible sound, especially of a variable nature, [that] can be used to distract radio operators and disrupt communications. Music, screams, applause, whistles, machinery noise, and laughter are examples” (“3-2 Types of Jamming Signals,” in Communications Techniques: Electronic Counter-Countermeasures, FM 24-33; 17 Jul 1990, United States Army).

Note that when I refused to leave my home at the outset of the mobbing, one of the harassers told me that they record nothing. That was almost certainly a lie told in an attempt to discourage me from trying to collect evidence. Despite the live contributions some mobbers make to the verbal abuse in addition to monitoring the system, the mobbers appear to be using IoT sensors to automate the harassment, at least in part. The sheer cost of mobbing a reluctant victim for an extended period of time weighs against the exclusive use of live harassment, despite the liability. Not to mention the fact that recording is an essential part of the playback process.

The mobbers also use subtle jamming, perhaps when they’re tired of talking or decide to simply leave a radiating device or other transmitter open and on the veranda. “Often, we assume that our radios are malfunctioning instead of recognizing subtle jamming for which it is” (Ibid). The monkey-wrenching by radio is not limited to DoS by jamming, obvious or otherwise. Some of the mobbers have appeared to delight in interfering with the key presses required to navigate an automated phone system or have used interferers like walkie talkies from locations close to my windows to make it impossible for me to complete a phone call. The guise of a “party line” at the outset of the mobbing is an example of similar interference into a cordless phone connection that was also likely supported by the 2.4GHz band.

Boosting is an everyday strategy for ensuring that signal gets to where it needs to be. “The basic principle behind signal boosters is simple: A big antenna is better than a small one” (“The Best Cell Phone Signal Boosters for 2020,” PC Magazine, July 29, 2020, https://www.pcmag.com/picks/best-cell-phone-signal-boosters?test_uuid=001OQhoHLBxsrrrMgWU3gQF&test_variant=b). A “leaky feeder” also boosts signal in “comms-denied” locations. A leaky feeder is coaxial cable that is designed to radiate. Also called a “radiating cable,” a leaky feeder is a coaxial cable whose insulation is breached by slots at specific intervals. Radiation leaks through the slots and enables the coaxial cable to perform like an antenna array. The typical application for a leaky feeder is a communications system (“Leaky feeder,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_feeder). In mobbing, a leaky feeder could support communications between mobber and mobbing victim.

Coaxial cable is shielded and designed not to leak. According to a 2009 article in Electronic Design, “coaxial cable remains the transmission line of choice for RF, video, and microwaves to 40 GHz” (“Coaxial Cable—Still The Best Way To Make An RF Connection,” Electronic Design, May 6, 2009, https://www.electronicdesign.com/markets/energy/article/21778661/coaxial-cablestill-the-best-way-to-make-an-rf-connection). Based on the significant amelioration of overnight infrasound in the Bay Area as well as in Seattle, however, it appears likely that old or open coaxial cable acts as “leaky feeder” transport for low-frequency sound into the interior or may receive and distribute the low-frequency sound by means of “antenna effect,” even if the router is powered down or the service terminated.

Reliance on leaky feeder systems in house mobbing also makes sense when you consider the use of leaky feeders in boosting signal for cellular communications. It may not be a coincidence that harassment over cell phone is also called “mobbing.” Coaxial cable that has not been slotted can be used as a WiFi antenna (“Is leaky coax OK for distributing Wi-Fi signals?” Network World, October 2, 2006, https://www.networkworld.com/article/2307514/is-leaky-coax-ok-for-distributing-wi-fi-signals-.html). An interesting example applied here in Boeing town, is the use of leaky feeders to support GSM and 802.11 networks on passenger aircraft. Touting its own product in Microwave Journal, W.L. Gore & Associates claim that GORE Leaky Feeder Antennas significantly reduce dead spots, enabling passengers to connect to wireless networks throughout the cabin” (“Leaky Feeder Antennas for Airborne Wi-Fi,” Microwave Journal, https://www.microwavejournal.com/articles/20780-leaky-feeder-antennas-for-airborne-wi-fi). Leaky feeders are widely installed in mines, underground railways, and in other scenarios offering inadequate support for WiFi access points. (Potential antennas include Cat5, Cat6, coaxial, and more. See Instructables.com (https://www.instructables.com/FM-Antenna-over-Ethernet/) or YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo0EIzMTFnQ), or search for antenna solutions using the network media or conductive material of your choice.)

Boosting is also a strategy used not simply in jamming but in digital surveillance and harassment. It’s possible that the use of WiFi extenders, with uncontained radio frequency, enables surveillance of communications over the GSM network, for example, in addition to ensuring the necessary bandwidth to host interfering devices and connect to a victim network. “Sharing” a network by boosting likely ensures the range for surveillance and harassment by both sound and radio frequency. SureCall Flare 3.0 is a cellular booster intended for installation in a car. The interior antenna is omni-directional for coverage within the vehicle, but the exterior antenna is directional (“SureCall Flare 3.0 Review,” PC Magazine, July 28, 2020. https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/surecall-flare-30). Such boosters might have applicability for mobile mobbing.

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In a climate of aggressive speculation it’s a good idea to consider removing unused infrastructure, whether you rent or own. And if you do remove that coaxial and Cat5, if you do remove those NIDs, tell them why. Tell Comcast they should take responsibility for the installations they do and the age of the deteriorating coaxial cable. Home owners shouldn’t be expected to understand the ramifications of the infrastructure that utilities provide or to bring up issues that utilities neglect. Tell AT&T and tell Comcast too. Tell them why you’re removing their coaxial, their NIDs, and the DSL lines too. And tell them what can happen to people who live in the homes that host their abandoned lines and boxes, tell them about me. Because given neglect, incompetence and corruption, the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police Department appear to be willing to let good people be harassed to their deaths rather than address the excesses of criminal real estate speculation and the corruption and abuse of the federal block watch program funded in part by the U.S. Justice Department that wasn’t created to be used as a tool in the arsenal of dirty tricks that speculators play.

I am not a conspiracy theorist. It is with great reluctance that I was forced to come to terms with the fact of being criminally harassed in my home, and that I was being harassed by home owner members of a neighborhood watch group in Seattle and by licensed medical practitioners. In my case, it is clear that the involvement of medical practitioners is not incidental. Multiple licensed practitioners are involved. (Note 07/09/24: I have always believed in the fundamental goodness of government, and if I have not assumed the benevolence of others, I have at least assumed their indifference. Having to confront the absolute malevolence of others is deeply saddening. As Salman Rushdie observes in Knife, “If you are turned into an object of hate, there will be people who hate you.”)

What has happened to me is an example of medical practitioners who are involved in criminal harassment and domestic terrorism. It is a case of doctors using their licensure as a cover for vigilantism, domestic terrorism and hate crime. Their affiliation in neighborhood watch groups embeds their criminal acts into community organizations and institutions. These groups use block watch programs supported by our federal dollars to promulgate hatred and to commit hate crime. The U.S. Department of Justice in part funds the block watch program and should investigate the perversion of these programs that are intended for community good into cartels, rackets, vigilantism and hate groups. Technology allows them to follow their victims to cities like Berkeley, California, where hate groups are typically not given a comfortable berth. Given the fact that I am followed when I work in the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area investigatory agencies might have a stronger interest in beating back hate than Seattle City investigators who might be embarrassed by their own relationships with the local block watches that enact this hatred. Perhaps some Bay Area agencies could do us all a favor by taking an opportunity to investigate a local stalking and follow it back to its source in the northwest. If the City of Seattle can’t tip off the FBI about hate crime, perhaps the City of San Francisco can help. Allowing hate groups from the northwest to follow their victims makes it easier for these groups to establish themselves in areas that should be less hospitable. Cities in which authorities are uncomfortable handling these neighborhood hate groups should refer the problem to the FBI, which is better equipped to deal with stalking crimes, computer crimes and felony crimes that cross state borders.

Unfortunately, those who rent their homes are seldom given the latitude to select or change the infrastructure that supports household services. Many landlords defend their lack of willingness to upgrade rental properties, or even to permit a tenant to do so with the rationale that whatever it is, “It’s good enough for renters.” This lack of regard increases the ease with which tenants can be victimized by predatory crimes that exploit infrastructure. And when the predatory crime is mobbing, the damages may accrue to tenant and landlord alike. By addressing the vulnerabilities of residential infrastructure, landlords can protect themselves as well as their tenants. There’s also the consideration that in a wired world, you’re only as secure as your neighbor. The stronger your signal, the greater your attack surface–the risk to which you’re exposed (“8 reasons to turn down the transmit power of your WiFi,” Metis Fi, https://metis.fi/en/2017/10/txpower/). Providing no alternative to wireless gateways, customer-hosted hot spots and guest networks, and routers that support WiFi, makes paying customers into patsies and ensures that our national infrastructure is not secure.

Sadly, this is yet another blog entry written to help the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police learn to tell the difference between the victims of tech-enabled crime and the criminals who prey on them. Any city as clueless as this one should not be allowed to call itself a “tech town,” whatever that is. By listening to tenant complaints of civil harassment by a neighborhood watch, the City of Seattle could have discouraged a years-long litany of felonies tantamount to domestic terrorism. Any city that looks the other way, and even prosecutes the tenant victims of this kind of domestic terrorism at the behest of speculators who attempt to hide their activities by accusing their victims of harassing them, is no sanctuary city. The involvement of co-captains of Seattle block watch groups in tenant harassment and what appears to be a real estate scam founded on the use of tampering and tech-enabled crime should trigger an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, ironically one of the creators of the program.

I’ve worked on this missive far longer than I intended to do. I’m going to publish it now and perhaps clean it up a bit more later on. As always, I am not an expert in these technologies that I write about on On being mobbed. These entries undoubtedly include some technical inaccuracy. I welcome clarification and correction from subject matter experts who are interested in helping to expose and prevent such crimes in the future.