On being Mobbed

But the attitudes and actions of the neighborhood watch association may reflect less on the city than on the culture of the police department that installs the block watch into the community. For this reason, if police reform is necessary to stop police excesses, the existence of corrupt, criminal and vigilante block watches means that the National Neighborhood Watch program must be revamped or withdrawn. Having so far survived criminal harassment involving captains from two apparently coordinating neighborhood watch groups in two different states, I believe the National Neighborhood Watch program makes no sense in communities promoting democratic self-rule and should be dismantled. Unelected neighborhood watch groups that set up their neighbors to be harassed out of their homes as some part of a development plan or out of plain hate have nothing to do with the Constitution or the civil rights that American citizens are guaranteed. Our communities should be supported by agencies of charity, generosity, and trust. The relationship between these neighborhood “cartels” and the police is corrupting—bilaterally so—and gives neighborhood watch groups authority and influence that is undeserved.

It was a dismal realization that the block watch captain across the street, someone a few years ahead of me in the local high school decades back, was indeed involved in ensuring that I am harassed in my Albany home in the same manner I am harassed in the single-family dwelling I rent in Seattle. I can’t imagine why people waste their lives creating this sort of ugliness. Apparently she missed Social Studies class the day we saw films on the Holocaust.

I checked the web for posts about harassment in the City of Albany. There were numerous protests that week about violence affecting the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) population. I’d driven past a large group of AAPI-supportive protestors at the intersection of San Pablo and Marin, close to Albany’s City Hall.

My search on harassment in Albany produced a link to the Berkeley Parents website. As someone who spent most of the last few decades in another state, I often find myself searching the Berkeley Parents website for information local to the East Bay. In March of this year, a writer expressed interest in moving to Albany and asked whether being a woman of color might be an “issue” (https://www.berkeleyparentsnetwork.org/recommend/housing/albany). A respondent offered the following:

My wife is a WOC and she has not had any issues. She is still afraid of the police. From my perspective, I never see the police behind me, so I think the patrols may be infrequent or not on the routes we drive. A POC friend of ours in the University Village was not served in a bar once on Solano and the community is overwhelmingly White, Asian, and wealthy. People are mostly friendly. My wife also heard about a POC in Albany that moved away because he was getting the cops called on him so much by the neighbors. The police told him, in a non threatening way, that he may have to just move to avoid getting the cops called on him.

We are here for the schools and proximity to things we enjoy, and there is more diversity than where we came from. Ultimately my wife has not had any issues but still has a healthy fear of the police, and the station is no more than a mile or two from anywhere in Albany.

I find it disturbing, and offensive, that police anywhere would basically advise people to move to avoid harassment. I’ve heard my share of inappropriate comments from the police in the last years, and as a victim of a neighborhood sociopathy called “mobbing,” have learned that “helpful” comments are sometimes nothing more than skillful social engineering. Police who say such things should be reprimanded. Statements like this make harassment the problem of the victim, and not the offender. One good thing about Seattle’s Parking Enforcement staff was the stance they adopted after dozens of false reports admittedly made by the nasty neighborhood watch lady about the two old cars I began parking in front of the house in Seattle to give me a buffer zone. Eventually, one of the officers told me, they stop responding to complaints about a car when they believe there is harassment. It took longer than it probably should have, but is an appropriate strategy in a city where real estate agents routinely report old vehicles parked next to homes they want to sell, as though Parking Enforcement exists to bolster their sales and as though their clients are ignorant enough to confuse the value of a property with the status of the vehicles that happen to be parked nearby. It gave the nasty neighborhood watch one less avenue for attack; that can mean a lot to a woman who is being battered within the walls of her own home.

Back to the Albany Police and their “helpful” counsel to a person of color whose neighbors were using the police to harass him, there should be a policy of no tolerance for harassment-by-police officer. When police “respond” to nuisance complaints whose intention is harassment, they support hate crimes and predatory crimes like mobbing. That’s not what we pay taxes for. The police need to explain the laws on biased policing and harassment to people to who use the police to express their dislike of living in community with others.

Ω

Since learning that carrier current communication over the household electric system is the fundamental enabling condition in how I’m being mobbed—in other words, how my home and all my devices and appliances are infested with mobbing abuse and babble—I’ve been keeping something like 80 percent of the household power off.

I came up with a basic day-to-day configuration of circuit breakers that I enable and disable, using them in combination with a couple of decent portable AC batteries to try to minimize the mobbing abuse when I listen to NPR or turn on the Roku. With the right outlets shut down—for example, those that appear to be targeted by the Dobby access points, it seems harder for the mobbers to “get in,” as they put it so adroitly years back when I was informed in the mobbing harassment that they could always “get in anywhere.” If I am not using a device with a tuner that requires a power supply, the electrical demand that may be required to carry the higher frequency harassing communication is curtailed. At least, I think this might be how it works.

Electrical supply is immediate. When devices are plugged in and powered on, your electrical meter responds with current. And when you’re being mobbed, the mobbing babble comes along for the ride. This appears to be true whether they use simplex connections at the pole or WiFi extensions after the meter. If you’re not using electricity, mobbing criminals have to work that much harder. They have to rely on their own systems to push the data into your environment instead of being able to count on your day-to-day use of electricity and conductive copper wires to pull the data in to you. This might be where the magnetic weights or magnetized hunks of metal in your neighbor’s yard come in handy.

In this sense, the “shadow service” of mobbing, as the mobbers referred to it early on, might, within the mobber’s Internet of Malicious Things, be an on-demand service in which the victim receives harassment whenever she uses household utilities. This is mobbing within the IoT ecosystem where utility flows—gas, water, electricity and even sewer—are subject to “flow management” with increasing numbers of smart meters brought online. This potentially means a mobbing ecosystem enriched with highly granular information about the “flows” that are in use in the victim home. In this case, it may not be surveillance from the utility company that you so much need to fear. It could be surveillance by your creepy neighbor. This data could allow determined criminals to map your location and activities without the use of traditional surveillance tools. All they need is access to your usage information, much of which is conveniently available to help you manage household costs. And if they establish a powerline connection with your network, you’re on the same network. As one of the mobbers once said to me, “You’re on our network. Or we’re on yours.” At any rate, access to this data might not even require reading the meter. There’s also the possibility of IoT management applications that try to manage your devices, smart and dumb, once you “share” a network with mobbing criminals. And some smart meters can manage multiple flows, like water in addition to electricity. A router or Internet gateway, too, meters flow and can be subject to malicious injection as well as supporting the home network protocols that mobbers might leverage to get rogue data to you. Multiple metered and managed flows makes it even easier for downstream flow into your home to be tracked or the tracking data that is sent to a management application leveraged to trigger harassment to the source of the usage. At least, these are the possibilities I see, given the reality I’m in.

[Note 04/29/21: I still do not know whether the smart meters that are used by Seattle City Light and PG&E detect the ingress of higher frequency data through the meter itself but I must note that my own mobbing preceded the addition of the smart meter to at least the house in Seattle. That does not rule out the ability of mobbing criminals to leverage the smart meter for the additional capabilities it brings–especially the communications interfaces it adds and the increased potential for interference they bring. There are numerous reports of interference of smart meters with routers, for example, and such electrical disturbances might allow the ingress of rogue data over the router. Radios on all these devices can be exploited and mobbing criminals create and add to radio frequency interference to damage and to harm. An example of this is the Seattle mobbers’ deployment of high-speed video cameras from WiFi extenders that cover the smart meter and the AT&T wireless gateway device to interfere with my analog security camera or Roku. The studies on smart meter vulnerabilities demonstrate the common expectation that the addition of communications increases the available attack surface. Flow management existed before the smart meter. Software management applications, WiFi extenders and access points also existed before the smart meter was installed on the side of my home in Seattle. Criminals who harass people out of their homes appear to be well aware of the potential of any household infrastructure for exploitation. Harassment by broadcast television, coaxial cable and antenna effect provides a clear example of this. And if I am correct on a mobbing hack to introduce data to household power lines and create a power line connection, after-the-meter application of data by access point coupled with a radiator may be another example. Other communications technologies and household services enriched the residential attack surface before smart meters. WiFi has no doubt created a rich platform for attack, and signal boosting devices like WiFi and cellular extenders appear to play a critical role in this pernicious harassment in which boosters are deployed over household service boxes, appliances and wires, including the smart meter and perhaps into the electrical main. The unrestricted use of WiFi extenders makes us unsafe. Comcast and other companies that provision public access points in the routers they lease have created an infrastructure that supports crimes like mobbing and should be held accountable to victims. Ultimately, I believe that the sale of WiFi extenders should be restricted and that their deployment or extension over the property line should be prohibited by law. There is no reason why Dobby needs to deploy an access point next to my television or router. Crimes like baby-camfecting, which could certainly be undertaken as part of a drive to frighten a family out of their home, could easily be effected by WiFi extender and access point. So long as we assume that the criminals who commit such crimes do so from states away, and so long as we ignore the potential of the WiFi networks and range extenders around us, it will be safe for criminals to commit such crimes from next door. We must acknowledge that certain network configurations express criminal intent. Mobbing by WiFi extender and wireless sound would likely affect any and all devices within range, including the devices that are used by children or to keep children safe. The criminal real estate speculators and scammers who use these WiFi devices to hurt people and force them from their homes, those who are hurting me, would probably be the first to object if they found rogue access points in their own homes. This is the predictable hypocrisy, and the irony, of being mobbed in an apparent real estate scam by neighbors including a police-installed block watch coordinator in Albany, California, a city that occupies little more than a square mile where housing is in demand because the township is perceived as being “safe.”]

Actually, I did change out the smart meter at the Albany house for an analog meter a few months back, somewhere along the way to realizing that much of the rogue audio was coming in over electric wiring, its transport aided by home networking protocols like HomePNA and the coaxial, Cat5 and twisted pair copper lines snaking their way through the house. Contrary to what happened when I raised the issue of smart meter security with Seattle City Light, PG&E quickly responded to my request to change the meter and it happened within a few days. PG&E’s policies on opting out of smart metering also make sense, with any account holder being able to make the choice. Seattle City Light makes tenants, even those who hold the accounts and pay the bills, get their landlords’ permission to opt out of smart metering. This means a tenant facing harassment by smart meter from her landlord would have few options besides abandoning her lease to escape the harassment.

Here in Albany, I think opting out of the smart metering program might have slightly quieted the harassment, perhaps by being less likely to contribute to the signal boosting or radio frequency interference in play when WiFi extenders are deployed around your home and multiple transmitters batter you with rogue sound. [Note 05/08/21: A PG&E lineman I talked to indicated that smart meters interfere with each other. I think he meant that it’s their communications interfaces that do so. Since hearing that, I began to wonder whether, within the IoT system, a bad actor could use the communications interfaces on his own meter to harass a neighbor or to increase electrical interference to do so or whether it might be possible for a bad actor to use WiFi extenders that affect neighboring electrical lines as a bridge to take a victim analog meter under IoT management.]

It’s possible that changing out the meter decreased the visibility that PG&E could have had on the tampering if I’d continued to work with them on that. I have not so far not been able to get enough information to know what the possibilities are but if smart meters allow visibility into voltage surges and curious behavior after the meter or can identify the signatures of likely rogue devices whose purpose might be sabotage, surveillance or harassment, they might be useful in helping to identify attacks to household electrical systems.

The likelihood that mobbing is a form of vigilantism or is intended to punish you and shut you up as though it were, becomes more certain as your home is sabotaged at its most basic level. The history of electric power charts the evolution of the modern home step by step, by the creation of lighting systems capable of working in parallel instead of serial, to reliable heating and refrigeration. The complete disregard with which these criminals, their collaborators, assignees and minders assault their victims’ health in this scheme to increase voltage, radio frequency, and electrical interference to harass is disheartening in what it says about a spread of hate culture so vicious that some people parasitically select their neighbors based on the the ease with which they believe they can victimize them. Mobbers’ willingness to lie and defame the victims they verbally abuse and pelt with radiation is stunning.

The creep next door to the Albany house is typical. When confronted about the Dobby access points he predictably retorted that my elderly relative and I were “paranoid.” His reference to my relative was disturbing, making me worry that the mobbing extended to her. He seems hateful enough that it would not surprise. [Note 08/24/21: One thing that I’ve been leaving out in my description of how the mobbing is configured in Albany, is the involvement of two portable air conditioning units installed from either floor of the house that the creep lives in. The cretins who do this kind of harassment seem to think they’re sneaky in this use of forced air possibly to generate as well as to transport the noxious harassment. In the Seattle there was the exhaust vent raised to the middle of my kitchen door half-light on the south side along with what was probably a fanned smoker out front and slowly turning window fans. On the north side of the Seattle house, there is the constant operation of the air-conditioning system that seems to prime the harassing machine, not to mention a windmill and other motors. In Albany, the portable air conditioners installed in the residence of the creep next door tend to be heavily used when I watch television or listen to NPR and sometimes come on quickly when I open a window on the north side of the house. This is the side of the house with the electric meter and other household infrastructure where the effect of shutting down the outlets at the circuit breaker box is most noticeable. Those who mob appear to be haters through and through. Perhaps a 12-step program would ameliorate the sickness. From what I see of the Christ signs on the vehicles of some who appear to be involved in or aware of this hate activity, the confessional is not doing the trick.]

I’ve been starting to wonder whether the appeal of mobbing for the criminals who mob includes free or low-cost repairs by the developers who might purchase the “cleared” lots or some other kind of bounty. In Seattle it often seemed like free housing might be a benefit for some of the twenty-somethings who were present for mobbing or minding “shifts” at the south mobbing house. Based on what I’ve seen of my neighborhood in Albany, it has seemed like there might be some underworld economy in which those with the appropriate moral flexibility make a living preying on their neighbors. In some ways, especially given the involvement of the block watch and harassment-by-police, the tactics could be compared to those of the Stasi, the East German security force using citizens turned informants in its drive to silence opposition through psychological control and “decomposition.” Except in this case, even if race, gender and politics are involved in the “no-touch torture” of this murder of crows, real estate “investors” share in the bounty. As I write this I recall how the mobbers of northeast Seattle crowed in the early months of the mobbing: “This is a professional real estate hit” and “You’re bad for my business.” I’m sure that anyone who occupies a property that real estate speculators want could be said to be bad for their business.

In addition to minimizing my use of electricity, I also started applying one-way privacy film to windows on the north side of the house. This after becoming aware of the creep next door deploying a red penlight that might have been a laser or infrared for motion detection from a narrow slit in his bathroom window. I put up window film on some windows at the Seattle house soon after the mobbing began when it felt like they must be staring at me through the windows. After reading in the last year or so that window film can block some radio frequency, I decided to allow it to remain on the panes a bit longer. Most radio frequency comes into building structures through the windows. When I looked into window film for the Albany house, I did a bit more research and found that you can get window film that will block almost all radio frequency signal, but it’s about five times more expensive than the typical privacy film. The one-way privacy film seems like a good strategy since it protects by obscuring your location for at least part of the day but could allow you to see, and photograph, the illegal use of laser lights that may be pointed into your home.

Recently a reader wrote to tell me that it wasn’t only tenants who were mobbed, but women, sick people, or anyone who was perceived as having some vulnerability. Given the growing likelihood of cooperation between block watch captains and their allies in two states, perhaps those mobbing me literally hoped to kill two “birds” with one stone—the neighborhood watch of my Seattle lakeside neighborhood hoping to profit from expelling tenants from the neighborhood and the neighborhood watch of this Albany neighborhood offering my family home up for speculation that would somehow profit them. Yesterday I had another exchange with the creep, confronting him once more. He responded with one word: “Move.”

There it is. If you don’t like being criminally assaulted in your home in Albany, California or elsewhere, if you don’t like radiation crawling up the cord of your medical devices, being cut with electrical interference, woken every morning with unremitting verbal abuse coming through your pillow or being burned with lasers and lights, obviously you should move.

This is incredible. I don’t even know these people. Again and again, I have wondered what is wrong with them.

And then last night in bed, I was either located or attacked by a laser or some blinding light that coursed over me and then left. Perhaps this is what happens when you deny mobbers access to your wires. Today I wrote the City of Albany to ask about the codes that govern the encroachment of light, sound-enabled or WiFi-enabled smart lights or not—from other properties. Many smart lights are being designed as WiFi extenders with motion-detecting triggers and can support other rogue devices in mobbing. When lights hot enough to burn are pointed at you in your own home, it’s time to find a way to discourage their operation, even if you have to deal with the issue of criminal utility sabotage by WiFi extender at the same time.

I recently reread another post in which I observed that mobbing was a platform from which to hurl abuse at victims. Often the goal has seemed to be to test for the desired response—one indicating that they’d located the “friction point,” as one of them once noted, that would bring the victim of mobbing harassment to crisis and propel her from her home. This was with reference to an emotional response, but with weapons like WiFi extenders and lasers the mobbers seem to probe for physical response. In this regard, mobbing reminds me of how children who grow up to be serial killers often start out practicing acts of mutilation on domesticated animals. My landlord once told me that real estate speculators would “do anything.” But who would imagine that anyone would do this?

The moralism of the mobbers’ invective could be more easily dismissed if it were not for the fact that apparent licensed medical practitioners involve themselves in the crime. Mobbers may try to manipulate their victims or to arouse emotions in them that will allow them to be manipulated out of their homes. This includes shame or guilt over past events, broken relationships, lost jobs, ad infinitum. It is remarkable to hear repeated references to religion or to abortion in mobbing and to be accused again and again of killing children. Early in the mobbing, they crudely probed to elicit emotional response—to find out if I’ve done things I feel bad about so they can then exploit them. However, the involvement of multiple licensed medical practitioners who make high salaries and are presumably less likely to resort to criminal activity for the sake of money makes me wonder about vigilantism and whether anti-choice groups find mobbing to be an effective way to punish, and even to “rub out” pro-choice women. From the start, the mobbing has included a motley crew of those with military background, developers and the real estate interested, and those driving vehicles marked with Christ signs.

Neighborhood watch programs may encourage biased policing as the local police benefit from the “pro-police” stance of these groups in exchange for turning a blind eye to neighbor watch rule that undermines the values, codes and laws of the larger communities. Retired law enforcement officer John Thompson explains the divergence between the intention and the reality of the neighborhood watch: “Now, a lot of people just say, oh, we’re a neighborhood watch. And they turn into a vigilante group. Well you can’t control that. But that’s not sanctioned by anybody. It’s not recommended” (https://people.howstuffworks.com/neighborhood-watch-programs.htm). The 2012 death of Trayvon Martin in Florida at the hands of George Zimmerman provides an example of the excesses of the block watch. Zimmerman, a block watch coordinator, was accused of racially profiling Martin, he followed Martin against the advice of 911 dispatchers, and he carried a gun against program recommendations (https://www.cnn.com/2012/03/23/justice/florida-teen-zimmerman/index.html). His acquittal on all charges remains controversial.

If neighborhood watch groups gone rogue can’t set back civil rights, if they can’t take back women’s right to vote or obtain a mortgage, if the new economy has left them behind, they can still enforce their own laws, morality and codes in neighborhoods where white men batter their neighbors with laser lights shining into their homes, where neighborhood watch captains thwart victim reports of their activities by using police to intimidate them, and where minority reports of harassment to police are met with the advice to move. It doesn’t take much to wonder whether block watches use criminal harassment to excise those who do not share conservative values and to change the balance of power in the neighborhood.

It does no good to gather near Albany’s City Hall to protest hate crime when the Albany Police install and back a block watch whose captains run scams and vigilante actions. Biased policing is enough of a problem without tolerance for the misanthrope and misogynist installed with the watch group from block to block. Cities should stop participating in the National Neighborhood Watch and municipalities that break their contracts with residents for egalitarian government by installing these shadow governments should be sued. If women armed with legal contracts and the rule of law are not safe in the City of Albany, how can anyone be?