READ: The Skeleton Key To Our Lives: The Risks And Consequences Of Consumer Location Data Tracking

This page is an extension of the “Recommended Articles” page but I feel the data brokerage industry (as well as so-called “video analytics”) itself is the heart and soul of what has happened, and more importantly been allowed to happen (many of those who ought to be regulating are big-time customers!) via real-time geolocation sales to those whose sole intention has been to hunt me down. In simplest terms, consider me a target in the proverbial “war on woke,” and the strategy precisely identical to tactics weaponized against activists and minorities during COINTELPRO.

Visit the “My Objective” page for a more specific “terrible companies list” which specifically names many of the worst offenders in this industry.

A lof of the articles in question that I repost are indispensable to my fight for my own freedom, but I feel they often miss the point by using limiting phrasing like “repressive authoritarian governments” or “law enforcement could misuse …” without enough emphasis on what’s already rampant and widespread, ordinary random goons and thugs, or else snitches and narcs, who are neither government nor law enforcement, wielding these weapons with reckless abandon for any purpose, with unfettered access to my real-time geolocation and the ability to stalk me anywhere I go, and 50% of round trips do happen to wind up leading them to the very house I live in which is of some serious concern. Such has been my experience. I was just thinking about this as of this minor edit (3/13/25) just prior to departing the country finally. I’d signed up for a final half marathon and need to get in a few short jogs this week, and …. I’m just doing them! I don’t want to. I’m thinking of all the routes I’ve done for the past 25 years of my life and … literally cannot think of a single one that doesn’t fill me with a sense of visceral dread, this notion that if I run a certain loop, or drive to a certain trailhead, and back, I’m unwillfully signing myself for more stalking and abuse in the name of “keeping the community safe.” That’s all thanks to utterly reckless and widespread (way way way beyond just the boys in blue, the officials per se) abuse of real-time geolocation stalking facilitated by “smart cities” and data brokers and more importantly, the law enforcement and military agencies, and apparently esteemed community members (it’s been sickening to me to see it revealed who some of the folks I thought I knew personally really are), that go to great lengths to suppress how rampant they know this all to be.

However, in this case the means of achieving the desired ends are exponentially more efficient. Imagine being doxxed by a massive global network of seriously sick Right Wing incels - meaning the usual stuff … where you work, where you live, where you frequent, etc. Scary, right? Super scary! Then imagine that being turned up to the highest level, where not only are those things easily determined, but at any given point in time, at any given place Earth, it is known to these predators where you are at any given moment. How do you expect that this is going to end for me? The workaround, as I understand it, is that “we don’t know who you are,” that they are merely tracking a “device ID” or an “IP address” and its preferences, known associates, real-time location, and historical location trends. This is even worse, as it apparently is both a workaround and a way to further dehumanize targets, reducing them to a highly reductive profile and string of digits, a dot on a mapping app.

Even worse (can it get worse??) is that I feel most of the companies listed fit more into the “gray market” category, and based on my own experience being repeatedly hunted down by thuggish (mostly) Right Wing shitheads each time I turn on a cellular device - there are even worse black market operations trafficking in this information which I feel is heavily used among, to name a few, select individuals who work in private security, military, first responder professions, and transportatoin, notably cab drivers who have an utterly horrific historical track record of widespread discrimination and bigotry. So in many ways, my experience is a simple anecdotal warning of history repeating itself, human nature doing what it does if not held to account, but aided and abetted by an utterly unprecedented new set of weapons. Real-time location data capture, sale, and purchase is, I am arguing, an even more lethal and dangerous invention than even firearms.

I want to also stress the importance of outright bans that involve not just public agencies - everything goes “underground” when it’s understood the only requirement is to not have any of it directly traceable to police, government, etc. - but private entities and private citizens. If you know anything of the weaponization of SARs, the “see something say something” post-9/11 propaganda, which is currently being applied to the next power grab - the “war on human trafficking” - you understand the importance of regulating and criminalizing use of these things by any human being against any other innocent human being, such as myself for any reason - public, private, volunteer, etc. Ideologically motivated movements and attacks are not necessarily confined to police, for-profit companies, government entities, etc. And they are usually borne of moral panic.

If bans of those trafficking in data, which is quickly “evolving” from device, social media, and merely location-based to the literal hacking of our bodies (everything you can possibly think of), is not realistic …. consider “guardrails” - real ones, not the bullshit our own US federal government which is by far the biggest customer of the shady data brokers it swears “the bad guys” are using, suggests. Specifically as pertains to workarounds that allow specific individuals to be hunted without ever formally adding their name to a watchlist, so as to deliberately avoid culpability for … not only watchlisting which has a horrific history in America and the world, but real-time hunting, which has literally no precedent.Case in point, you can’t look up some database and find the name “Joe Leineweber,” as evidence of my targeting by feds, cops, and white trash vigilantes they source dirty work to in countries all over Earth.

Alerts are literally tied to things like device ID, advertiser ID, and increasingly, a voice print, a face print, a gait print, that are stored as data but perhaps can never be unearthed as “Joe Leineweber.” EVERYTHING about this surveillance economy is pretty well designed to hunt down, and guarantee impunity against perpetrators, anyone for any reason, by leaving virtually no trace of targeting despite our own inability, on the consumer side (and by consumer I no longer mean “clicking AGREE on ‘Terms and Conditions’ you have no choice about, but actually walking down public roads, being a “consumer of pavement” or “consumer of groceries” which you HAVE to go get eventually on private property) to do pretty much anything without leaving a trace that their Mechanical Hound can sniff out and feed right back to them. If this sounds insane, bookmark it, copy and paste it, just remember it … and come back to this in a few years. It’s been very frustrating for me, as I’m still being pathologized for merely suggesting that I’m a victim of mere device-level tracking that is malicious and designed to destroy and undermine me, so I have little faith that accountability will ever catch up to far far far worse things already being done to me that will invariably claim my life.

The other massive issue with this industry is what I might liken to gerrymandering. Elections look objective and fair if you don’t understand the underlying trickery. Same with data. I strongly believe the advantage lies heavily in favor of Conservatives in the status quo of 2025, who manipulate the shit out of the inputs to create “future terrorists” and “kidnappers” and “traffickers” out of ordinary dudes like me, and exploit the power of illusory truth to further corner me into this inescapable predicament.

Online Behavioral Ads Fuel Surveillance Industry

NSA finally admits to spying on Americans by purchasing sensitive data

There’s a Multibillion-Dollar Market for Your Phone’s Location Data

The Location Data Market, Data Brokers, and Threats to Americans’ Freedoms, Privacy, and Safety

Using ‘Sensitive Locations Lists’ to Address Data Broker Harm

Why Location Data Brokers Put All Communities At Risk

A surprising number of government agencies buy cellphone location data. Lawmakers want to know why.

Location data poses risks to individuals, organizations

Data Brokers Know Where You Are—and Want to Sell That Intel

I Gave a Bounty Hunter $300. Then He Located Our Phone

Who Is Policing the Location Data Industry?

What goes on in the shadows: FTC action against data broker sheds light on unfair & deceptive sale of your location data

How your sensitive data can be sold after a data broker goes bankrupt

SDKs, The hidden trackers in your phone, explained

I already know the damage done by having your devices real-time doxxed. I’ve paid pretty much the heaviest price one could (by America’s standard … people are regularly being assassinated and detained in other places) in terms of having myself criminalized, “de-funded” and serious damage to livelihood, and in general placed in a constant state of dread, fear, and intimidation which, as interpreted by the painfully archaic “mental health industrial complex,” has all been bundled into a claim they have not once expressed any doubt about ….. that literally all I’ve experienced, and self-reported, is … you guessed it, “all in my head” and that the tracking modalities, and motives of those “sharing” access to where I’m at with the most malicious of intent, are simply “not real,” that “consensus reality” suggests that these things are not even possible.

Well, after reading, are any of you apparent “medical experts” convinced that these are things are not only possible and plausible, but utterly rampant the world over, in fact a major driving force of the global tech economy? Probably not. Fair enough, continue to call me crazy, as long as you also make sure my “crazy” ass can no longer be accessed and fucked with by the World’s Worst People, the vast majority of whom, if I’ve not stressed this enough, meet all of the following characteristics:

Less educated, more Conservative, professional/personal ties narrowly pointing to military, transportation, first responders, private security, property management.

It scares me, and I already have knowledge but not pure evidence I suppose, of crimes done against me which seemed ideologically motivated. I have observered over time a lack of boundaries or limits to the things a group which perceives me as an “enemy” will go. That’s concerning knowing I’m real-time trackable everytime I press a button or turn a key in the ignition or book a trip or sell a stock or go shopping … in light of the trend of radicalization paired with skills some of these people have, to say nothing of the acts of sabotage already done to my life.

https://apnews.com/article/military-extremism-pentagon-veterans-terrorism-capitol-riot-jan-6-0c1fdd7b6b761e9c9e8556a9b9e45dc9

In the absence of a crackdown, I remain endangered by the data economy, esp when paired with real-time location purchase, sale, and “sharing.” Despite some news about FTC crackdowns, trust that as the target of these weapons, nothing has changed at all in actual “rubber meets the road” practice in this industry.

Also, the next frontier in exposing this corrupt ecosystem is to dig deeper into the demand side, who specifically, esp private proxy actors (markedly harder to track and catch than highly scrutinized government agencies), as well as to stifle the present explosion of the biometrics industry, such that people like me are now real-time located / hunted not only by a device or an account login address, but by our faces, voices, tattoos, gaits, cars, and other objects that are not so easy to opt out of or leave at home.

Random thought - with so many scrapers and brokers and shady middlemen out there, why can’t we buy data about who purchases our data? That should be law, in fact, immediate notifications to the subject about who bought what and for what purpose, particularly in the realm of location brokers. I would even think there’s a valid public safety rationale for knowing at all times who has what information about you, whom they paid, when, and for what price. It all is, after all, at its core, stalking and theft by any other name regardless of what it presently considers itself to be.

https://www.choice.com.au/consumers-and-data/data-collection-and-use/who-has-your-data/articles/data-broking-investigation

https://www.pcmag.com/news/us-yes-were-buying-data-on-us-citizens-including-their-embarrassing-secrets

"The report points out “the government would never have been permitted to compel billions of people to carry location tracking devices on their persons at all times… Yet smartphones, connected cars, web tracking technologies, the Internet of Things, and other innovations have had this effect without government participation.”

If I could sum up the core issues as pertains to data brokers and video analytics (or various other extensions of so-called “AI”), as pertains to my first-hand experience being dubbed the perpetual “threat” which they purport to “prevent” or “deter” from all manner of fake hypotheticals - these would be my Top 6 as of 2025. Note the issues have as much to do with the psychographic profile of the average purchaser as they do with wrinkles in the algorithms, which is why I flatout refuse to acknowledge any notion of so-called “guardrails” on AI public safety tools, as the very concept which it is all based on - mass surveillance crowdsourced to the masses - can yield positive results in no shape or form, period:

#1: One-Way Info Flow

This is the worst part of AI “future tense threat” apps and definitely not a design flaw, but rather intrinsic to making sure these work for the right people against a certain kind of person. Consider the common practics of online stores or brick-&-mortar stores receiving 1-5 star ratings via Amazon, Etsy, Yelp, etc. Anyone can review the company and it appears fair and democratic and yet, it becomes very clear in time that manipulation is rampant; there are negative reviews that read like personal or competitive attacks designed to undermine, just as there are positive reviews with a false “insiders stuffing the ballot box” feel to them.

Well, in the threat prediction / prevention / snake oil industry, it feels like the only acknowledged inputs are the negative ones, the Karens, the bigots, the hot-heads, the angry vigilantes, the haters, the chronic cop callers. And these people, I know from experience, are the same psychographic mix of, say, the average Twitter troll and/or local news Comment Section person. A good parallel for me was my Etsy shop (which I shut down under duress due to online harassment and trolling, like so many other parts of my life due to having nowhere to appeal to who cares), where at least when I did get the 0.1% “bad review as retribution” it could be viewed very clearly as being relative to the 99.9% of good ones. In predictive policing, however, only “accusers” get representation, because people who like me have no reason or belief that they should call 911 to officially report that I helped them out in a pinch, made a nice gesture, or just generally kick ass as a person. (I’m not suggesting we add this, by the way to real life person-scoring).

I have somehow someway been rated via these data launderers as a threat to - get this - attack retail employees when they are in transit between their place of work and their car. Yes, really and truly, no female has ever walked the 10 yards from building door to car door in America alone, not without 1-3 Good Honest Men sitting in their trucks witnessing the act, so long as Joe Leineweber’s face has been detected in her vicinity. Americans, this is why you are so fucking pathetic and I’m ashamed to be associated with you. You pride yourselves on being complete bitch ass pussies and try to condition others to be scared so you can pose as their saviors. Which perhaps not coincidentally is why you have ostracized me in such a way, you little cunty bitch ass stalkerware addicts. And yet there is this obvious knowledge I have that not one of these employees arrived at this conclusion themself, nor do they appear to have a reverse feedback mechanism, to vote or rate me otherwise and report their repeated non-threatening and totally normal interactions as a way to vote me off of these watchlists, which as far as I can tell amount to life sentences upon being determined a “threat.”

As such, the way these are set up obviously apply a value to the word of the kinds of people who go out of their way to file official complaints and reports with government safety bureaus much, much more highly than normal people who don’t operate this way, who in reality represent an overwhelmingly massive majority who would have had me pushed way way way off the “threat” status I’m under if they were ever given a chance to rate me in the first place.

#2: Overly Dependent on Cop Data

I believe my official death certificate should state that my cause of death was “anecdotes.” AI snake oil public safety apps are extremely problematic in that they seem to almost exclusively rely on police data. I have been living in extremely touchy, American, Karen-on-Steroids kinds of environments, Enhanced Sheriff’s Patrol District zones, HOAs, the kinds of places where going running after dark doesn’t put me at risk of being mugged by thugs, but by being reported as a suspected criminal by 6 bigots who all go to the same church and stalk me through the same apps. I’m oft reported for “aggression” for the simple act of snapping a shutter on my camera or speaking English words toward a person. So that is simply not fair, that my ‘data’ does not match up with that of others, yet it affects how I’m treated everywhere despite being borne of the unique suburban American dynamic that overpoweringly controls my life. Case in point, I get treated like a very, very dangerous person when traveling in places like Latin America. Yet I know none of this would have ever happened if I’d simply existed in Latin America in the first place starting 10 years ago. There never would have been the first police report, the first conflict, and all the ensuing conflicts which built off of that based on this pattern of malicious / prejudice “incidents” reflective of group bullying but made to appear as an escalation of my own behaviors. These are just facts. Cop data is about the dirtiest input possible in an algorithmically defined system, especially the kinds of reports I’m routinely subject to which I believe are often made with that specific knowledge, that no arrest will or can be made (I’m never doing anything wrong), but that the report itself, attached to my name helps establish a pattern to tip the algorithms ever closer to making me out to be the most dangerous maniac in the history of man whenever I’m seen under any of these AI-powered bullshit machines.

#3: Bad Guys in Good Guys’ Clothing

This especially applies to the horrible industry which traffics in real-time geolocation data. I can’t unequivocally prove (and all evidence I supply will be forever suppressed anyway), but I do know, of flagrant abuse of geolocation data to frame people for crimes, by knowing their locations and subsequently planting false patterns of crime in their wake.

Imagine, say, the political pressure cooker that was Portland, Oregon, my home city, over the past decade (2015-2025) during which I personally have experienced massive unrelenting abuses of my real-time location data. I believe there was a massive effort by political opponents to paint Liberal activists, and Liberal city leadership by extension, as fomenting lawlessness and domestic terrorism. These claims are laughable if you live in Portland, about as sleepy a big city as exists in our country. But there were pretty intense ideological motives to make the “Liberal Cesspool” tag stick.

I discovered repeatedly during this era evidence suggesting that wherever, let’s just say, Person A’s cell phone or car traveled, that perhaps hours or a day later there might tend to be what appeared to be evidence of petty crime sprees reflective of a Conservative person’s stereotype of a Radical Portland Bogeyman - busted out windows, graffiti with explicitly “anti-American” messaging or threats against law enforcement, arson, and general small-time property destruction and/or threatening messaging, even “missing persons” reports … in places where these things are not typically found … places that Person A frequents … and this just felt super fucking fishy.

Or in other instances in a foreign country, imagine corrupt cops interested not in ideological gains but financial ones. And they get real-time alerts via these predictive policing apps based on fraudulent portrayals of Person A as a “threat.” Two of these are financial alerts, as in - ATM withdrawals; and real-time location alerts, via face, car, and phone. So these cops become aware that Person A just withdrew $1,000 cash over two days, subsequently track said person to their campsite, and set up a pretextual “arrest.” The ransom, due to specific knowledge of how much cash Person A is presently carrying, and/or Person A’s disreputable status as a “person of interest,” is set considerably higher than the typical tourist “propina” situation, and Person A is fleeced for nearly every dollar.

These are bad but not worst cases, which are also routinely carried out through the abuse of these “public safety” tracking tools. Those would be assassination, forced disappearance, imprisonment and kidnapping, and these are very real, actively occurring themes which are specifically done through the use of these apps, not some hypothetical doomsday set far off in the future.

#4: Massively Bad Self-Selection Bias

People who are drawn to purchasing data, especially video analytics and car/device trackers which encourage users to literally rewind and watch other people’s private lives without their knowledge or consent, represent a very particular subset of the population which is not in any way representative of a fair, balanced or ethical cross-section of humanity.

On top of the aforementioned self-selection bias which skews in favor of Pure Evil, of bigotry, of those who lust for power, of nosy without bounds, of very, very stupid Republicans, there’s also the issue of “public safety” or “personal safety” branding and the kinds of lame folks commonly drawn to such roles in communities as “protector” or “crime stopper.” Some are deeply insecure and afraid of their own shadow, some are gossipy little locusts who just can’t get through the week without crucifying a local pariah, and still others harbor a hero complex, this outdated belief that they must physically, proactively, aggressively protect homes, businesses, people, etc.

So that will forever be an issue with public safety stalker apps, that no matter which of these profiles fits a given end user, most fall under the broader umbrella of Total Fucking Losers often unaware of their own bigoted sentiment and how by singling out people as “future tense” threats, they continue to undermine the fundamental tenets of Liberal Democracies and amplify the power of mindless Crime & Punishment bully factions which have never been more enabled to act on their prejudice as they are today through these apps.

#5: Vicious Pre-Prejudicing Cycle Becomes “Reality”

The problem with alerting multiple people across multiple industries and in multiple geographic spaces throughout a given day to a single person being a “threat” is that it negatively conditions their behavior toward me; and leaves me perpetually vulnerable to the absolute worst among them, that person with the worst judgment, the least emotional control, the greatest propensity for abusing power and discretion. The privilege of stalking me with impunity is theirs, as these apps literally instruct people to go to the real-time location of their “threats.” Often this is on private property (think “chokepoints,” like stores and parking lots, the kinds of places that are only technically “private” but overtly open to the public and necessary sooner or later to each person’s survival, as in a grocery store property) where the stalker has the upper hand as an employee or owner. and the burden of self-defense is perpetually mine to bear alone without backup.

By applying “person of interest” or “threat” stigma to my face, device, or car, already, the person receiving the alert is far, far, far more likely, I would argue inevitably, going to report anything I do or say that they don’t like, that they never would have noticed in the first place, especially if an act of protest or defiance in the face of blatant discrimination, as some form of “incident” and this produces, and sustains, this absurd cycle. Basically, if you are a self-respecting individual, and you are aware of being discriminated against in these environments, and aware of the very tools by which it is done, and you make an attempt to draw a line in the sand with Becky the Assistant Manager, she will punish you (at least presuming this is set in the USA and Becky is a Republican) for your resistance, and her “official report” will follow you apparently to your next errand and to all other errands you make thereafter, forever tagged and flagged as some sort of ambiguously hostile hostile little Trouble Maker.

There is no jury, no judge, no evidence required, no due process, just Joe at the mercy of Becky’s worst prejudice and/or personality flaw and/or mood swing, and the enablement of her like-minded peers who share in ownership of predictive policing apps for a reason which I argue has little to do with keeping communities safe. Nothing about this is remotely fair.

#6: Lame Complainers Rewarded; Nearly Zero Input Opps for Cool People

I believe this is encompassed in the other 5 bullet points, but in short, these AI public safety apps clearly overweight negative inputs, people who file formal complaints, and seem to supply no opportunity for positive inputs about people. I believe many who have filed frivolous complaints about me repeatedly, especially in suburban and rural Oregon, did so well aware of this, that we exist in an algorithmic public safety environment where those calls are part of a “long game” of steadily consistently elevating my so-called threat score, and this is problematic because there seem to be no programs that track the complainers themselves, so there are massive vulnerabilities (again I would argue by design) to data fraud. I believe malicious inputs are overly weaponized by Conservatives against Liberal targets in America.