My objective is simple. To expatriate to a country that can and will guarantee my freedom and safety from surveillance abuses of any kind - public and private. Where I will never be tracked, stalked, “prevented and deterred,” by any agency, company, or civilian. To not be stalked by decentralized “cell phone brownshirts” scanning my every utterance, facial features, location and time on every corner of every “smart district” in the world. To be able to safely and anonymously use parks, retail areas, cars, parking lots, hotels, airports, ride buses and subways, etc, knowing I’ll never be violated by these people. Knowing I can do these things without being treated like the worthless piece of garbage they see me as, in fulfillment of their own bizarre delusions of innumerable “threats,” ranging from terrorism to shoplifting to kidnapping to robbery - that they seem convinced I represent and they alone are here to thwart. That I can turn on a cell phone, use a cell phone, and be a normal part of the modern world without it turning into a weapon that will be used to aggressively hunt me by these people under completely false pretenses which seem to become more vicious and outlandish with time. To not have to feel like my choice is to “keep my mouth shut” or “get out of here” at the community level, only to be bullied and stalked via the same types of people using the same technologies representing the same ideologies, following the same protocols, in the next neighborhood, city, state, or country, etc. Physical relocation is futile when your phone and laptop, face and voice and ID and credit cards are the means by which you’re hunted. I want to be in a place that truly embraces a spirit of Liberalism, not just self-righteous talk masking increasingly discriminatory tendencies in the name of “safety” - where my neighbors don’t spy on me, where I’m not hated, where I’m free to spread my wings, safe to travel, safe to return to work, safe to visit a retail store, safe to call my own mother from abroad, and that world is far from my reality (it is your reality, the vast majority of you are not triggering a silent alarm / alert based on person-based predictive policing and likely think my claims are crazy talk).

Even if America does affect radical change and cracks down on its own surveillance industry, it wouldn’t matter. Have any of you ever been in an abusive relationship? Yeah, it’s like that. So much damage has been done that there’s simply no way I could ever love or be anywhere near this country, even if they gave me my life and freedom back tomorrow. I’ve already experienced too much here. I’ve seen the true soul of the nation and its people, its law enforcement and “justice” industries, its medical and psychiatric industries, transportation industries, labor unions, business and home owners associations that function like organized criminals and thugs, and the cross-collaboration among power structures and their true aims …. and I definitely still intend to leave.

Why am I still here then, you ask? Great question. Two reasons!

One, having traveled the world, the treatment is not necessarily better. As I’ve learned over the past 3 years, including a bona fide escape attempt in 2021 that I cut short following multiple robberies and intense harassment by Mexican police - this combination of tracking tools and threat scoring spans the entire planet. I ran marathons in Rome, Lisbon, Puerto Vallarta, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Curacao, California, Nevada, Washington, and Oregon in 2023. Not a single place was any different from here in terms of the having the exact same AI-enabled cameras, alert systems, and types of people responding to them, effectively converting my trip into a hunting campaign (Joe = prey) by the “people who matter” in various neighborhoods, districts, etc. So it comes down to culture, who has the friendliest people, who is the least abusive in spite of these horrible practices, and more importantly, who is most likely to at some point in the future affect a movement against the use of these private algorithms, identifiers, stalking apps, and community safety networks?

The other is a matter of practicality and many in these would-be destination countries would find this very much a First World Problem which I admit it is: I love my dog! And my dog can barely survive a 3-hour car ride without internally combusting (I’ve never seen any animal get so overcome by car anxiety) let alone an air trip. As I’m unwilling to ever just leave the dude, it nixes any place that requires crossing an ocean from my short-term list, and also nixes the idea of globetrotting, the “digital nomad” plan. So - that relegates my short-term options to, I suppose, Mexico and Canada or another U.S. city (bleh). There are things I really, really like about both countries. Mainly, the “people vibes” in Canada and Mexico are similarly chill. There are hurdles too - it is a fact that I did literally “move” to Mexico in 2021 but was forced back after being extorted for $$$ under false pretenses by Mexico cops twice, and harassed by countless others. It is also a fact that I’m not super stoked on Canada’s weather, especially relative to its cost of living - so that’s my sitch, and in the meantime I continue to travel around in hopes I land on the “sweet spot” —— the place where I feel inspired and excited and welcome, but also safe and respected.

But at the end of the day, what I’ve learned going to these places, as well as Europe which is known to be more anti-surveillance than us, and especially here in my own home city of Portland which purports to have “face rec bans” but doesn’t have anything of the sort in actual practice - is that there are no places I can safely live under my current status. I am the hunted anywhere on Earth and there is no way to “hide” forever, the means of ID’ing, and hence summoning the “hero network” of any community to where I’m at to stalk and harass, are so vast that it simply cannot be done …. and especially if I make attempts to enjoy the lifestyle I try to live, with so much time spent in public places and moving around, putting my face and voice and devices on the radar of this disgusting surveillance behemoth wherever I go, effectively attracting the unwanted and malicious attention of the most disgusting people on Earth.

In wake of an absence of surveillance regulation or crackdowns, I become wholly dependent on my making the right bet on culture, on the people theselves, on pinpointing just the right community in just the right country where those whom I share a community with are not going to weaponize said tech and “safety algorithms,” otherwise my escaping the U.S. becomes simply a lateral move from one pile of s*** to another and that’s what really makes this tougher to execute than it may appear.