When one is subject to the terror of person-based prediction and prevention safety technologies, there are very, very few entities anywhere on Earth that don’t discriminate against and abuse you. So I list these entities due to their being the highest flyers, abusers who are so bad that they make ordinary abuse look like no big deal.
Obviously, as I live in Portland, Oregon, there are local / regional names disproportionately represented but in general those same industries, under whichever brand names they operate in other municipalities, are all equally culpable, and all treat me the exact same way upon detection in whichever jurisdiction they operate. Pretty predictable I suppose - if you go to any bullshit blackbox algorithm AI security company’s website, these are all the industries on the dropdown menu of “who we serve.” Alarmingly - just as a demagogue finds more success in unification around a common enemy rather than a common purpose - so do predictive analytics and “threat alert” societies.
I believe without sleazy middlemen such as those below, or at the My Objective page, or gargantuan data traffickers like Palantir, LexisNexis, and Babel Street (Babel X) - it’s at least possible I may one day reclaim my freedom of movement without being stalked by these complete losers. The vast majority of the brands below are merely the customers of these and their industry peers, allowing this is extremely ideologically homogenous bloc of industry titans to be the brain that dictates how the rest of the “boots on the ground” treat me (hint - it’s worse that you can ever imagine in terms of both the infinite list of ways I’m “captured” and the manner / kinds of people who then hunt me down, to say nothing of the sickeningly false and Fascist pretenses under which this all takes place).
That said, the end user customers are customers for very specific, intentional reasons. Looking over my list, you can generally tell the small-time local yokel brands are mere end users, whereas the Big Tech brands are the unifying platforms that radicalize and enable all of them to treat me as a threat to their establishments or those of their clients. They have shown up to the real-time location in my neighborhoods, to the real-time location of my face in retail settings, to the real-time location of my home and vehicle in community settings, repeatedly according to very predictable and innocuous “threat” triggers (like updating or merely logging into this page), and I don’t see pressure on middlemen unless we make examples of end users at lower levels first to stifle demand. So yes, I would say one easy place to start would be to look, locally, in my case, at Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue, Washington County Police, Beaverton Police, Portland Police, Portland Bureau of Transportation, Portland Parks & Recreation, Multnomah County Library, really really punish the shit out of them through civil litigation and reputational black eye that make it harder for them to garner support for their future bond initiatives. What this might also do is place pressure in a place it actually does belong. Rather than all professional and social incentives flowing in the direction of being a creepy brownshirt techno-stalker … I think these institutions and agencies enforce a strict informal code of compliance and conformity, a “keep your mouth shut,” “don’t go against the grain,” “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down” kind of conditioning. But there are plenty of people who work within them who agree with me that predictive policing is pure horseshit and who would rather not follow its rules. Who might agree that it’s ridiculous they are being told who to target and where to be and when by an algorithm they themselves seem to not have equal feedback into - meaning, think of Reddit, how people can upvote or downvote content, I get the vibe nobody on the end user side really has a portal where they can supply feedback or fresh information about a “suspected future tense threat” whether that be a person or a vehicle or a home. So despite its reputation for being “smart” it winds up being this inflexible stagnant “false alarm” routine that yields alert fatigue and harshly targets a very specific 1% of people mercilessly and relentlessly in all parts of their lives, right or wrong, due to the same exact people and cars and devices being sold by only a few brokers using very similar algorithms to the entirety of all government and private entities purchasing their services. So I think there need to be other pressures beyond their internal government cultures of conformity that in fact encourage whistleblowing and dissent from within the ranks, to encourage people to dare suggest how awful predictive policing and alert societies really are in actual practice, and who likely feel a little uncomfortable at times hovering over random dudes in their day-to-day lives under the flagrantly false pretext their every errand and vacation and work trip is a “future crime about to happen!!”
If you’re surprised by some of the brand names on my list, imagine how I felt when I found myself being discriminated against on their premises and in the midst of their staff. Key takeaway from the past 8 years of my life has been a lesson in applied psychology: one thing, maybe the only thing, that both sides of the aisle apparently agree on is that secret watchlists, voyeurism, and stalking are totally good things, and simplistic appeals to “public safety” require no further scrutiny, standards, or oversight. There’s definitely, as far as I’ve seen, a little bit of a dopamine hit these imbeciles get when tasked with being the ‘watchers’ that they don’t readily admit to.
After all, this is all for your safety! I think many also feel obligated to play the surveillance game as it is increasingly bundled into job descriptions and perhaps tied in with federal funding (i.e. Central City Concern) or managerial pressure (i.e. the entire big box retail industry). But no doubt there are many people out there representing these orgs who are totally getting off on the opportunity to go hunt the bogeyman, and it shows - they f***g love the thrill of the take-down.
What I’m going through is very similar to the backlash felt by Civil Rights activists under COINTELPRO. However, it is greatly enhanced by the ability to capture a target’s (re-branded as “person of interest,” “subject of interest,” or just plain “threat”) real-time location via millions of public/private venues hosting sophisticated surveillance installations. I have reason to believe I may actually be a line item on Trump’s Transnational Crime List, and the intentionality of the name choice is not lost on me - a tool in the “War on Woke.” At present, retail stores are a key point of capture and my family does not take me seriously when I insist that it is literally dangerous for me to go shopping or run my own errands under these cameras, and that they should be the ones to go get groceries and home furnishings etc. I think they see this as frivolous, me using them, when it’s definitely not, it’s far easier to just go out and live life than have to constantly beg for a go-between who doesn’t understand and minimizes the stakes.
Oh, and if you did click the “retail stores” link above which alludes to an “organized retail crime” epidemic, don’t forget the click the articles that later pointed out what BS this was (but stopped short of calling out that it was a strategically placed message to manipulate public support for radical unchecked surveillance).
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/12/shoplifting-holiday-theft-panic/621108/
I feel that radical America is now mainstream America. A nation that is increasingly aggressive, paranoid, delusional, mentally ill, self-radicalized, and violent seems to go to great lengths to portray me as the embodiment of those very traits. I strongly dispute this. I believe if I ever got a chance to truly start fresh without any of America’s “violence prevention” idiots constantly draped all over my life, in say, Europe, not one single solitary person would ever jump to the conclusion that I’m a person who needs to be watched, monitored, supervised, delayed, sabotaged, disrupted, etc, in the name of “violence prevention.” I am a true scapegoat, a shamelessly silenced dissenter, a hapless crusader for truth, and the past 8+ years of my life have been a true “witch hunt,” to borrow the preferred terminology of America’s favorite demagogue. Many people representing many entities below are the agents of my demise, most of them very willfully so. They seem to see themselves as God’s Army, and I think the issue of increasingly radical Christian Nationalist extremism ideology in America / the world over the past decade is underappreciated.
2024 edit - one of the absolute stand-outs here has to be this Inter-Con Security. I had no idea what this company was until this year when I suddenly found my car being intensely stalked by their cars constantly upon entering Multnomah County. I live just a shade over the county line in Washington County so it is very obvious how things suddenly change upon crossing this invisible line.
It wasn’t until just now, in October 2024, that I came across the news:
So clearly upon winning this massive contract, this company has taken to illegal stalking of my vehicle (absolutely zero question about it) and also overtly harassing me near library properties, which as the article clearly states is one of their key selling points (librarians complaining about being under attack by “the mentally ill” and drug addicts). As you can see, just one name among the dozens. But I think they serve as a great “proof” that I’m not full of shit, that basically private security agencies, whichever agencies are winning these private contracts with city governments, are very obviously real-time stalking the vehicles and biometrically tied location alerts of people who ***have ever had any history of mental health, drug, or criminal complex involvement,*** no matter how long ago (I copped a “mental health” plea, my only brush with the justice system, nearly a DECADE ago and have had nothing to do with the system ever since, and never will).
This is the same City of Portland that elected pro-business, super Conservative Law & Order son-of-a-federal-prosecutor Renee Gonzalez over Joann Hardesty (https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2024/10/editorial-endorsement-november-2024-for-portland-mayor-vote-gonzalez-as-top-choice-rubio-second.html), the only local politician to actually defy radical Right Wing cop unions. And that, I have learned, is precisely what “real Portland” is always and has always been about. It is why I feel like this dude is absolute spot-on (https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/29/opinions/portland-not-so-liberal-opinion-janmohamed/index.html). His Portland is also my Portland, and has been for a long time. As compared to California, and most major US cities, to say nothing of the world in general, it’s a toxically xenophobic nativist little shit hole and more of its power structures and power familes who really have framed this “Portland is falling apart and we must re-fund ‘public safety’” narrative are in fact extremely Conservative. They will continue to run this place into the ground because they are incapable of contributing anything positive as so many of the cities talented artists and small business people, whom they don’t care about, are.
You might notice as the list scrolls down that the nature of the industries and entities changes. This is because I’m no expert, I’m just a dude whose biometrics and device and car IDs are held captive by the “smart city” industries. I learn as I go and draw attention to abusers as I encounter them. It’s clear to me now that the more small-time local names are merely the customers and clientele of the relatively few data agencies trafficking in real-time location, theft of files and digital activity, manipulation of traffic systems, and last but not least, theft of biometric data which conflates me with a “threatening person” similar to a terrorist alert. These brokers and shady “private” companies which are basically all backed and founded by US federal investigative agency and military alumni, disperse this disinformation to idiotic and malleable frontline personnel who literally intercept, stalk, disrupt and sabotage all aspects of my physical movements in society; enabled by largely incompetent municipal bureau leaders and elected officials who deplete tax coffers to contract to these third parties, most of whom seem to have spent their entire careers insulated by bureaucracy (typical career path = school > more school > grad school > government jobs > higher ranking government jobs … but limited “real world” experience beyond this to appreciate the reality of what they are buying versus what they are being sold and how it affects us).
These people are further pressured by the general public, who demand “safety” as spurred by sensational headlines, rather than taking responsibility for it themselves by being better parents and encouraging kids to pick up paint brushes and saxophones and baseball mitts rather than firearms and knives. And quite predictably, the promises of the “smart” solutions solve neither the petty minutia (traffic management haha) nor the bigger picture of violence and decay, “human trafficking” and “missing kids,” but they do invariably rob us all of our humanity and these is only the early stages. Before long it will come to light how so many people were disappeared and killed because of “smart city” technology but apparently that day is not yet arrived.
The real elephant in the room continues to be - with so much military backing behind the services and algorithms and tracking tech that purports to identify signs of radicalization and people who pose a risk to the public, and so much military represented among end user demographics - why are the very people who we apaprently trust to tell us who is a threat to America … the greatest threat to America? It’s not only blatant systematically entrenched projection and denial of their own in-house issues and dirty laundry, it presents a serious threat to we, their arbitrarily arrived at “threats” who become subject to these radicalized people’s distorted views and beliefs.
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/02/military-veterans-extremism-attack-new-orleans-vegas/
I just want to really make clear what a vicious cycle my life is. Somewhere out there, somebody I can’t see is paid to watch over what I’m typing right now on this page, and that person probably has a military background. Now s/he calls themself “SOCINT Analyst,” and invariably this person will flag me, Joe Leineweber, as on a so-called path to radicalization based on the content of this page, which is a criticism of the very industry and tyrannical job description this person holds. This then serves as a basis for innumerable acts of discrimination and stalking and harassment in the name of “disrupting” or “preventing” or “deterring” the fake attack that this highly partisan so-called analyst claims I’m capable of. That person is doing so to both link criticism of surveillance itself to “extremism” and “radicalization,” while simultaneously shielding his/her “brothers and sisters” who match profiles described at the above links from the scrutiny they rightfully deserve. I’m their scapegoat and their example. Don’t criticize us when we are wrong is the message. It seems they have a propensity for caring little about the actual lives lost and more about pumping out media soundbytes warning about the profile of the "next shooter” which always seems to go way out of its way to obscure said elephant (people who write in journals and travel often seem to be the current object of their misdirection campaign haha).
