On being mobbed

Austria is the new Cuba, at least insofar as that complex of neurological symptoms dubbed “Havana Syndrome.” Reuters reports the emergence of some two dozen cases since President Biden took office, opening a new field of investigation in the controversy over whether the intelligence and diplomatic officers suffer from “directed” radio frequency (RF) attack or mass hysteria (“Austria investigating reported ‘Havana Syndrome’ cases among U.S. envoys,” Reuters, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/austria-investigating-reported-havana-syndrome-cases-among-us-envoys-2021-07-17/). In a recent piece I noted some features of the suspected microwave attacks that parallel radio frequency attack by, at least in part, illicit powerline connection as performed by the mobbers of Seattle, Washington and Albany, California. These include the leakage of radio frequency from power outlets as well as increased symptoms near windows through which radio frequency has an easy path. Of course, when criminals are trying to terrorize someone out of their home and are confident that no one will ever know what was done to her, you can’t rule out an attempt to execute a microwave attack. The kind of people who involve themselves in neighbor mobbing would consider it a feat.

In the last post I made an assumption that removing the Blue&Me infotainment module eliminated USB connectivity in my car. That was premature. I haven’t tested it thoroughly and didn’t think much about USB power and charging, and whether those capabilities might be supported by circuit boards outside the infotainment system of my car. Learning that USB is on the low-priority CAN bus made me think more about recent experiments with using batteries instead of household electricity. It also made me think more about the possibility that mobbers’ application of the back door strategy of rogue data over power extends beyond household electrical wiring and whether, if powered transmitters are commonly used in addition to WiFi extenders, the use of radiating power is intrinsic to the application of rogue sound and can stand alone as a silent weapon.

I’ve continued to experiment with shielding individual devices. Many streaming devices also have tuners, which makes it difficult to even begin to rule out which interface is the target of rogue sound. Roku is one of these. You can get streaming sticks, but those are wholly wireless and do not provide the Ethernet connectivity that I continue to use in an effort to minimize the wireless signal in my environment and the increased havoc it creates. I believe that this type of radio frequency attack is planned with the assumption that the mobbing victim is a naive user of wireless services and especially WiFi. Multiple interfaces on a device enlarges attack surface and increases the difficulty of understanding the entry point of rogue sound or another intrusion. This is also the case with medical batteries on the consumer market, which seem to provide USB as a matter of course.

You might use a medical battery to minimize mobbing by powerline connection and to try to avoid a dependency on a medical device that the mobbers have turned into a radiating device. But even medical batteries offer ports for USB charging and USB is a communications interface. Communications interfaces represent data in and data out, they provide vectors for attack, and enlarge the attack surface of the device (Blue, the mobbers & me (part 2)). In the end the medical battery is another case of all your devices belonging to the mobbers (All your device are belong to us), although in the years since I wrote that post, a lot has come into focus. Like Bluetooth, USB can introduce interference onto the 2.4GHz WiFi band; it is an “interferer.” Everything is a radio, and USB has a wireless extension that is used in printers, for example (“Wireless USB,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_USB). You have to wonder why it seems impossible to find a medical battery that minimizes attack surface by being purpose built to the single purpose of providing a reliable power supply for an A/C device.

An attacker who has been denied the use of your electric wires to harass you can probably use a directional antenna operating as a powered transmitter to send mobbing harassment out at the most common radio frequencies that are supported by the devices in household use. This would include radio frequencies for WiFi, Bluetooth, USB, antenna and digital TV, and so on. With a software-defined radio (SDR), you could probably transmit the same rogue sound at multiple frequencies simultaneously. Or perhaps the directional antenna is used to “tune” on you while you’re in the bed in hopes of finding of nearby receiver. Maybe this is just a simple Proton radio like I had in the bedroom until the mobbers started to use it; maybe it’s a cordless phone and mobbing-ready; it could even be your child’s babycam being accessed from next door by the creep who deployed all those WiFi extenders into your house after you told his builder friend you weren’t selling. Perhaps the best case scenario would be a WiFi router, a television on standby, or a smart phone with microphone, speaker and multiple active interfaces including WiFi, Bluetooth, and cellular. The question is what happens in the typical home when rogue sound can reach every appliance and device over electrical wire and power supply or what happens when a house is blanketed in rogue signal transmitted at every frequency commonly used by every radio? Amplification is a significant part of the mobbing platform–boosting signal and boosting sound; running extenders over your infrastructure and devices to ensure that you hear the input of their open microphones like they’re next to you in bed.

If only I could keep the refrigerator off of household power but battery power is not a good option for an appliance that maintains food safety. Both the north and south mobbing house owners have all the lights turned on that they can, some of these like the string lights on the south mobbing house owner’s veranda that remained lit all day are no doubt WiFi extending lights or sensing lights like the motion-detecting one the north mobbing house owner used to detect the movements of my roommate and I across the front deck or at the porch a few years back. While a City of Seattle inspector “worked with” him to make him remove the light, another lit fixture is there now. They may simply leave their own lights on constantly to compensate for the fact that I use less and less light and even electricity now that it’s clear they are using powerline adapters or radiators to transfer rogue sound onto my electric wires, thereby creating an illicit powerline connection and some facsimile of carrier current communication. The two men appear to be intent on finally battering me into submission as new and rebuilt houses continue to be sold and resold up and down the street. My face felt burned on waking; my eustachian tubes ache and my ears ring. I may well lose my hearing and perhaps my sight because of the ineptitude and bias or perhaps the simple neglect of local police and government when it comes to tech-enabled crime, bias crime, and corrupt neighborhood watch groups like the farcically named “Good Neighbors” block watch of South Cedar Park.

And just now into my still open door I heard another utterance of the oft-repeated demand to “Leave.”

Today I talked to the tenant of a single-family home in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle who told me that in her neighborhood solicitors come to the door to ask residents if they want to sell their homes. I wished I had thought to tell her about the form letter written by the nearby Roosevelt neighborhood watch, ready-made for home owners to send off to the owners of rented homes as a demand to oust their tenants without legal grounds.

And now that it’s grown cool enough so that I’m closing the windows, it seems that the south mobbing owner has managed to get the harassing machine going for the night, the refrigerator compressor is running and the cadence of what may be higher frequency sound has increased in tandem.

The door-to-door solicitation of houses for sale seems to go even further than those who solicit for sales over social networking sites like Neighbors, Nextdoor, and Citizen where joining the network no doubt helps speculators and those seeking to profit from selling their neighbors’ homes to identify their next acquisitions and “personalize” their sales pitch, not to mention encouraging the sale with a bit of social engineering. You can’t make a “reluctant seller” an offer when you don’t know where she is. In a culture of sales that offers “rewards” for marketing to friends, the organizations and groups that were at one time devoted to the community good have been repurposed to create profit. Gone are the days when a neighbor simply wanted to borrow a cup of sugar.