On being mobbed

[Note: Perhaps a security expert with an understanding of how household infrastructure, appliances and devices can be monkeywrenched by radio–not to mention forced air–could run down a list of easy “Santa exploits.” ‘Tis the season.]

The holidays are upon us. It’s the time of year when your lowlife mobbing neighbors complement indoor clandestine harassment with a pint of rum-laced ‘nog and a panoply of seasonal harassing activities “in plain sight.” Come the holidays, Mr. Betcha Think I’m Sneaky and his slimy predator friends, under cover in the role of fun-loving family man, bedeck their lawns, their porches, their branches and boughs, and even their rooftops, with the trappings of Christmas. It’s a wintry wonderland as they festoon every corner of their home, and especially those corners close to the vulnerable infrastructure of the neighboring homes they’ve promised their speculator friends, with WiFi-extending LEDs, as they set up projector displays with motion detectors that somehow catch you in blinding light as you come out the front door, as they plant those radio-controlled reindeer, those animatronic elves, and that buoyant Santa as close to the perimeter of their property as possible.

Months back, I wrote the City of Albany about the use of WiFi extenders and the vulnerability they represent in the residential arena. I did this to try to protect myself as mobbers used technology and utilities to batter me in my home. Real estate mobbing as I have been mobbed appears to be founded on the support, and even the active participation, of city-appointed block coordinators and captains. This may be a primary factor in the construction of mobbing as highly efficient and even lethal.

The City of Albany expresses on its website a goal to have a block coordinator on every block. No person who values the civil rights of themselves and others would want to share a block with a city employee on the prowl for nearby properties to turn over. The involvement of the block coordinator is a primary factor in why those of the mobbing kind are emboldened to commit this predatory crime, why a predatory crime like mobbing is tolerated in a civil society built on principles that are diametrically opposed, and why mobbing is so exceptionally egregious.

Another important factor is technology. Mobbing is enabled by the ease with which wireless technologies and their convergence into Internet of Things (IoT) devices allows for neighbor attacks. These attacks are made good with the use of Comcast and AT&T hotspots, with WiFi and cellular repeaters including power-line extenders that some radio organizations, for example, have warned against, and by signal boosting beyond what some countries allow. Surely cities that want nothing to do with this kind of corruption can create codes that made it harder to configure mobbing. Real estate speculators have learned how to marshall common devices in potent attacks on your rights and on your home and, critically, they get access to the devices in your environment by extender. These criminals are not just “turning your devices against you.” The clandestine nature of their attacks combines with the use of IoT devices and technologies to undermine household systems, medical devices, and residential utilities. The example of the bad actor who accesses your smart refrigerator and tampers with the temperature to ensure your food spoils falls short of illustrating the seriousness of the vulnerability and, in fact, such examples don’t address clandestine attacks from next-door. These are acts of sabotage that harm and can slowly kill.