PDF: Video Analytics in Public Transit
PDF: Video Analytics in “Smart Cities”
PDF: Video Analytics in Education
Following the great ideas laid out in the above PDFs, it’s of utmost importance for legislators to recognize that “police” increasingly in the surveillance capitalism era extends to an absolutely massive network opaquely termed “private-public partnerships.” So it is important that no person or entity has access to identifiable or otherwise trackable information, including biometrics and device / car identifiers which are easily and instantly sifted out by AI surveillance systems. And in my experience, rarely in good faith or in the service of actually tracking criminals or legitimate suspects who would ever meet any criteria set forth by a court of law.
I have attempted, apparently in vain, to draw attention to what is clear evidence in my own life of flagrantly malicious stalking behaviors executed entirely through the aid of real-time alerts tied to device and vehicle information, pinged the instant they pass beneath any of billions of cameras or towers of wifi boxes … utilizing tools which have branded themselves as being in service of crime prevention. Many legislators and advocates point to “guard rails” and suggest flaws in the system lead to mistakes in how people are treated in society, whereas I continue to insist that this was entirely set up for the sole purpose of deliberate misuse to advance rather warped ideological aims targeting the diverse and often vulnerable populations of urban environments.
Just as I split off a separate page for “Data Brokers” independent of my “Recommended Articles” page - it’s as important if not more - to isolate and single out so-called “Video Analytics” the way the video analytics industry has singled out me. Jump to the “My Objective” page for a short list of players in the video analytics industry.
A lot of the prejudiced trolls who respond, in person, to alerts after these fixed cameras pictured above capture my biometrics & real-time location, like to throw a gigantic performative hissy fit and attempted to maliciously summon law enforcement if and when they see me lift my own camera in kind.
There’s a big problem here. Why do we have such a problem when we can actually see a real human form hold the camera to our face and click the shutter, but not to the fact that people we don’t know at all, and would mistrust and/or despise if we did, who have tremendous power over us due to this fact, are actively videoing, photographing, and rewinding our every move in secret from all of the mounted cameras? And, very likely, do not have our best interests in mind, as evidenced by the fact there is no attempt to notify us of what is being collected and why (it would be stated as “for your safety” if asked though, I’m sure haha). I think it’s because of the illusion that they are passive, and the fact that for most of our lives they were, and were genuinely there for safety reasons. I think that’s the illusion, that people still assume 99.9999% of what goes on under the lens never gets reviewed, let alone rated and acted on, unless something heinous has actually taken place and is under investigation, so we exist with that false sense of trust that nobody is actually abusing that access these cameras provide. Or worse, that there is keen awareness that these things detect and ID them in real-time and that they actually believe the promise that they can detect “bad guys” and get them before they get you. Well, I’m your proverbial “bad guy,” and let me tell you, as a guy whose done very few if any things ever in his life one can categorize as “bad” in the sense that these safety products present me, my life has become a living Hell.
And, the angry trolls who have gone to great lengths to portray my simple and largely passive counter-surveillance as “aggressive” and “dangerous” are the very people presently benefiting from, and attempting in very unethical ways, to protect the unconstitutional, unethical, and unearned power advantage they have over me at virtually all public spaces. They already have closer-than-average ties to complicit first responders grifting off of my already-unjustly-destroyed life and “bad guy” reputation which they themselves go to great lengths to build and maintain. The “good guys” are blind to the inherent evil of this practice, seemingly oblivious to the fact they’ve become everything America should not stand for, physically hunting me with every intention of subverting, rather than honoring and upholding, the very constitution some of these idiots probably even have tattooed / stickered onto their idiotic little biceps and car windows.
As far as I can tell there is no analysis (I assume the root word behind the buzz word “analytics”) of any kind whatsoever going on. “Video Analytics” is code for “Private Watchlists.” There’s little information about how you got on, there’s no way to get off, and frankly, rank-and-file staff, home owners, city leaders, etc, all over the planet are freaking stoked about it! Those images above make me uneasy and impart a sense of dread when I see them in public. You people on the other hand are forking over billions of dollars to have them installed and paying a massive premium for your surveillance society. Okay then. All this industry is doing (and there really is no differentiation among the companies other than their logo), according to person-based predictive policing models, is using SOCINT and other analytics to determine who is a critic of American Law Enforcement, pulling anyone who has ever had a mugshot taken for any reason, or in my case overvaluing “Karen Called the Cops” kinds of inputs that are far more rampant in white suburban Oregon than if I had lived in a more fair and just environment - then feeding people’s unique features and indiosynchrasies into databases under the false pretense they are petty street criminals (think petty theft, car jackings, shoplifting, arson, drugs), which then are automated to send real-time alerts to that person’s location - and here’s the crazy part - anytime that person is under any camera anywhere in any country on Earth for any reason, triggering a “summoning” process whereby security, bigoted “Neighborhood Watch” people (isn’t there already serious self-selection bias by simply making “Neighborhood Watch” a volunteer effort??? I think of myself as a colossal loser if I can self-deprecate, but if I ever fell to the level of signing up for a neighborhood watch committee I would call it Absolute Rock Bottom) are encouraged and instructed by law enforcement to stalk that person in public spaces for no reason. These alerts seem disseminated to a closed network that is uniquely Conservative, pro-police, nationalistic, Christianist, and as a general rule on the less educated side. Anyone singled out by “video analytics” really doesn’t stand a chance because it really doesn’t seem to have anything to do with its purported pretenses which are, put simply, “keeping people safe.” In my experience, my face, voice, clothing - all parts of me, and increasingly nuanced details that become increasingly inescapable as the systems “learn” more about me - feed me into endless points of capture - cameras all over society, in the following places:
-Intersections
-Bridges
-Grocery stores
-Department stores
-Transit areas
-Gas stations
-Rail crossings
-Airports
-Hotels
-Grocery stores
-Drive-thrus & fire lanes
-Rresidential, commercial, or industrial zones (and if you think “go into the woods” is safe you should see how I’m treated in National and Municipal Parks)
-Playgrounds
-Public parks
-Recreation centers and gyms
-Public pools
-Track & Field Facilities
-Parking lots
-Libraries (extra special shout to Multnomah County / Intercon, I find it the ultimate debasement when I go into this specific jurisdiction, to a library of all places, the place that should be evening the playing field via access to knowledge, only to find it is the most regressive and Fascist of all the Fascist institutions I could possibly interface with in Portland. “It’s For Your Safety!” (see my previous posts on “safetyism” and “horseshoe theory” which lead me to lean slightly more Libertarian than Liberal after dealing with the utter hypocrisy and disingenuousness of Liberal Establishmentarianism)
-Marinas & docks
-Cemeteries
-Hospitals
-Dental offices
Doctor’s offices
-Any medical facility imaginable (like anything, acupuncture - anything)
-Public utilities facilities
-Anywhere where there are concentrations of children, old people, or women (the sum of which = approx 75% of people … catch-all?)
-Trail intersections
-Highway intersections
-Highways and freeways and overpasses and underpasses of any kind whatsoever all the time
-So-called “drug zones” and “high crime zones” (hint - if you drive through your own city you’re probably in dozens of “drug zones” and “crime zones” on any given commute, especially when you park in a parking lot)
-Car dealerships
-Cannabis shops
-Loading docks
-Elder care facilities
-Schools
-Bus Shelters
-School zones
-Dams
-Malls
-Buses
-Bus stops
-Tourist attractions
-Museums
-Casinos
-Subways
-Statues
-Government offices of any kind whatsoever
-Those little boxes poking out of the ground near sidewalks that belong I believe to ISPs
-External “Boxes” of all kinds - USPS, UPS, clothing donation boxes, dumpsters, electrical boxes, Honey Buckets, even RedBoxes, as in $1.99 DVDs LOL … publicly exposed boxes are something the police and their data washers see me as extremely threatening to.
-Especially on public sidewalks and roads as I pass by these things listed above, and especially if passing by at the moment a fascist surveillance truck with the logo USPS, Amazon, UPS, or any public transit vehicle, and any other various TSA-related services are arriving/departing (there are always at least 5 of them in any plane of sight in any situation imaginable) is arriving or departing
-Jurisdictional lines - random right? Traveling down highways, right when I pass either a (a) “welcome to XYZ City” or (b) "entering XYZ county” or (c) junction where two highways meet, there is a colossally bizarre sudden change in the traffic patterns in around my vehicle, basically involving a sudden wave of vehicles pushing way up ahead of me, like flooring it to nearly 100 mph, and a sudden secondary wave fading back conspicuously, like dropping down to 30 on interstates, behind me … would love to know what that is about and why I also seem ensnared so interminably by the “traffic safety regime” and how best to get off these losers’ radars. Maybe that’s not for video purposes, but there seems to be a reason why they are going to great lenths to isolate my vehicle from others at these very specific points.
Here are some other examples of crazy shit I can’t do without serious consequences from the US STASI State that might seem ridiculous to you but are my absolute reality.
-Drive ANYWHERE in my own car with plates CU 68077 (Oregon). **An interesting detail I’ve observed lately is strange trashy-looking “back the blue” vigilantes sneaking photos of the back end of my car shortly after I park. I feel that the days of ALPRs, which read license plates only, are over. Those photos, as I understand, are for the purpose of uploading to a “cloud” that transmits alerts anytime my specific car, based on my specific pattern of stickers, scratches, nuances, etc, is detected via some needless stalker tech which would be outlawed if it were ever in my hands to use against those who use it against me - but due to being euphemized as “deep learning” and promoting “smarter, safer cities” apparently city councils are paying out the ass to install all of this with no awareness of who else is accessing the servers holding their vulnerable citizens’ data. This renders all documentation of my abuse untrackable as it becomes a line of code and no cop (or private white trash vigilante) database will ever pull up CU 68077, even as the means of tracking me down are in fact far, far, far more precise than the very “plate recognition” tech that would be more easily indictable. So I guess I’m just going to get chased by a group of bigoted and dangerous poorly educated goons everytime I enter and exit any city’s borders from here on out. Lucky me!
-Log into ANY account ever associated for any reason currently or formerly with phone 971-724-9677.
-Hand my passport to any person in any industry for any reason at any time, also the same passport tied to 971-724-9677.
-Buy, sell, or transfer cryptocurrency for any reason.
-Do anything-you-can-think-of tied to therealjoelein@protonmail.com or toketeenw@protonmail.com. Shipping, traveling (back to the car, the phones), insurance, healthcare, I mean fuck, what CAN you do without entering this bullshit, literally all of these things are forced out of me in order to participate in the Bare Minimum facets of American citizenship………
-Google anything or anyone for ANY reason. If it’s a place (which we all do before we visit a place) there will be an overwhelmingly multitude of “heroes” waiting for me when I finally get there or exit. If it’s a person, holy fucking shit. I can’t even get into this. Some of these people … I’m like “did I google you????” Haha. Like that’s how insignificant a Google query is, I don’t know about you guys and your various Rabbit Holes and how many bullshit factoids (or PEOPLE!) you look up in an online session, but I become aware of “who I’m a threat to” by way of how I suddenly am treated around said person. Or maybe it’s like, you look someone up or reach out to them for a GOOD reason (shouldn’t we always assume that??), like you look up to them or something, or you look up a business because you want to fucking support them… how and who normalized turning these basic ass queries into what they are for me today?
-MAPS! If I not only look a place up, but go so far as to dare MAPPING it, very often I show up to find it has been suddenly closed for no reason, but I presume to protect the public because those who control my reputation via this unregulated industry have determined that me wanting to check how far I ran or how to find the god damned drug store or rec center, let alone download the course or hotel directions for the marathon I’m entered in, is in fact my part of my plot to do terrorist acts against said place.
Once captured by even just one of the surveillance cameras that detects me by my biometric features or devices, multiple people are summoned to then hunt me down and continually capture / track my movements across space and time via covert apps in their cell phones, utilizing the built-in cameras, mics, sensors, and GPS data without necessarily having an overt “app” open explaining what’s being done to me. This is done under the 100% false pretense that my movements through public space, or private space open to the general public, constitutes a “threat” and that my motives might be nefarious, and a danger to the rest of the people in the area. The rationale for this brazen stalking, abuse, and harassment is about what you’d expect from a pack of sick fucks - that they are “preventing and deterring” me from my real objective, which is apparently whatever they say it is - and seems to move to the same beat as the frenetic rhythm of the US government / police’s propaganda cycle - shoplifting, “aggressive” behavior toward staff and patrons, arson, terrorism, vandalism, mass shootings, kidnapping, human trafficking, squatting, burglary, or perhaps just “mental illness,” the stereotype being that I’m so unpredictable that I’m liable to commit any of these acts at any given moment without knowing why or what I’m doing.
Nobody is “analyzing” anything here. These people are cops and their friends, period, and all they’re doing is frenetically capturing and recapturing my biometric features in real-time in real space like manic fiends and zombies, like your cat chasing a laser pointer. They are simply scanning me like a bar code everywhere I go in real-time and summoning self-righteous “blue”-friendly stalkers to stalk me, and the self-reflexive game seems to have no end, it just serves itself like the government and law enforcement agencies that enables it. Period. It’s so messed up, so shameless, and yet so simple. The participants indulge in the “god complex” reward, the sense of power and control they have over me in that moment. Compounding this, they are 100% prejudiced against me, pre-biased by a false narrative associated with my profile, essentially they are the self-righteous good old Christians of society who genuinely believe they are engaged in the work of stopping crime, that I am a “bad guy” and that they are contributing to a bigger effort to keep my evil designs on society at bay. So it amounts to a very steamy and heaping s** pile of prejudice and bad intentions unlike most of you will ever understand, and it’s kind of why it’s so difficult for me to speak out, because it is very bizarre, and yet it’s real, this is the world in the year 2024, and the tyrants are not only light years ahead of the “good guys” in terms of what they’re doing, but similar to the Trump campaign, they are absolutely killing it with regard to narrative control, messaging, and the ability to garner support for this craziness from the masses with minimal resistance (oh and don’t think this is an endorsement of Kamala, she too is pushing her “war on human trafficking” and will quietly enable the same metastasization of these covert industries while presenting the veneer of “inclusion and diversity” while directly harming most of the people who voted for her), these people who feel that people who’ve taken nothing from them have in fact taken everything, that they are under attack from people from me when in fact I’m obviously under attack from them and had no opinion of them or awareness of their existence until they began hunting me.
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/new-aclu-report-reveals-alarming-growth-ai-video-surveillance-technologies
https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/army-robot-surveillance-guards-coming
How does this look in practice? On one hand I’m pissed that I have taken upon myself to run all these marathons. All it does is expose me for the soft, weak, lazy f*** that I am. My times get slower and slower, and all of that is known to the public. And it is easy to nitpick and criticize me for why this is so. I gained too much weight, didn’t train enough, didn’t curtail my drinking, didn’t rest properly, didn’t taper, etc. I suck, plain and simple.
Meanwhile, I could have sold out to the “public safety” regime and simply sat on my fat ass in my car “guarding” things, “tracking bad guys” with my f*** cell phone secretly and creepily, stalking people around public spaces in the name of “crime prevention,” and I could claim to be a success! No effort, tons of credit to claim. Just like the algorithms that shepherd these sheep to my location - JUNK IN, JUNK OUT.
After all, if you follow the slippery logic of the Church of Video Analytics, they can proudly boast of a 100% “prevention and deterrence” rate, as I’ve not once in all of these forays into public space yet been caught shoplifting, attacking a patron or clerk, kidnapping a kid, trafficking in humans, vandalizing or setting fire to government property, defacing a grave, committing a mass shooting, selling or buying drugs, endangering old folks and women, etc … you get the idea … if it never happens, you prevented it, and you prevented it because predictive policing apps placed you at the real-time location of the “threat” …. or to cite a metaphor I previously used on another page, “Brawndo’s got what plants crave, and plants crave Brawndo because Brawndo’s got electrolytes.” Or if that is too opaque, allow me to claim credit for preventing the Apocalypse and World War III, because neither has happened yet, and it’s because I jerk off every night at 8:17pm. Haha. Is that too off-putting?! Do you understand what I’m saying?! By tying Action A to Unknown Future B, and then building some brand (like a data trafficking company heavily tainted by its own biases) or getting a powerful authority (heavily tainted by its own biases) to merely claim Action A prevents Unknown Outcome B, well … in a weird way the more insane the claim, the better job they’re doing! Why settle for shoplifting? Why not human trafficking, “missing persons,” why not random acts of terror, why not targeted acts of terror (which is exactly what they’re trying to set up via the Luig Mangione case), convincing them “Joe Leineweber is going to kill you” in the future tense and daring them to call bullshit? Hint- they NEVER do. Nobody does. They ALL side with authority, they ALL side with Snake Oil, with the Hand That Feeds Them, they ALL side with Facism, with Short-Term Social Acceptance over the Greater Good (which is the disingenous lie sold by feds, cops and predictive analytics companies in America), they all side with the proverbial STASI, and this includes very, very well-educated people, shockingly. The emotional appeals and the undeserved credibility of so-called authorities has a 99.999% win rate over apparently sorry ass disposable and VERY DANGEROUS Me. It’s Powerful Shit I can’t compete with, nor could any of you in the same position.
And while it seems these systems condition people to feel good about doing bad things - you are preventing crime! - they discourage these same stakeholders, employees, homeowners, concerned parents, etc, from acknowledging the monstrous reality of what they are actually doing: stalking, discriminating, sabotaging, bullying, intimidating, pressuring, emasculating, etc, innocent people presented via a disingenuous Flat Earth-esque Black Box “science” that their target is in fact the threat, that their bad deeds are in fact good deeds. The term I was warned about when I first read it in my early 20’s was “doublethink.”
Basically there are multiple layers of manipulation, dishonesty, and abuse, and exploitation going on here - me as the threat, the person using the “threat” apps as the hero, it’s as I was saying to one of these people in Chicago —— as if the people are acting out the biases and partisan aims of, say, Peter Thiel, while being too close to the asphalt to ever see the bigger picture, all they see is the “threat” and the threat is always me, and it’s the perfect Divide-and-Conquer system. I only see this getting worse in time.
The Big Picture here is that “video analytics” is not science. It’s all about classic tenets of Fascism - watchlists, targeted surveillance (for all the wrong reasons, personal / political misconstrued as “public safety” by design), and everything about it is shrouded in secrecy and so-called “blackbox algorithms” because transparency reveals “threat scores” and “prediction” ideology to be about as credible scientifically as the efficacy of drinking bleach to rid the body of COVID-19. There is bias deliberately built into all of this, and both the vendors and purchasers - the entire marketplace - for this technology reflects a very, very biased subpopulation - Conservative, direct backgrounds and/or close ties to military and law enforcement, etc.
I am living Digital McCarthyism, every second, every moment, every move in my vehicle, every move on foot, everything about it is a trophy hunt, designed to take me down, period. All of this is presented by the narrators in terms of my being the threat, and my attackers being the heroes summoned to “prevent” whatever-they-say-I-am-”capable”-of.
These systems also create an abuse cycle by actively, constantly, and I mean constantly, pre-prejudicing people against me in a number of scenarios and summoning them to my real-time location to basically stalk me in and around every premise under the sun. This obviously is a means of engineering constant conflict, and those being summoned are already very overly prone, due to taking an interest in this cult in the first place, to reporting or trespassing me for any act of resistance. So the cycle gets worse, the inputs keep coming, nobody is scrutinizing the absolute fact that I’m basically out here fighting a One Man vs a Massive White Trash Army battle everytime I run an errand let alone take a meaningful trip where cars, devices, and facial features are in actual motion, and I’m losing badly quite obviously, deciding to not do so many countless things I used to do, to avoid being certain places and certain times, to shut down entire hobbies, entire dreams and goals, and just kind of … stay out of public, because there’s no place I can go at this time given the ubiquity of both this technology, these fixed and increasingly mobile cameras, and these brownshirt motherfuckers who thoroughly enjoy the fact that they’ve somehow managed to legitimize this industry in the hearts, minds, as supported by spending patterns, of government bureaucrats and private business owners in the name of “public safety” and the indispensible value of “crowd counting” and “traffic management” and “fall detection” LOL.
What’s most horrific about this and I can’t really talk about it as openly as I would like because I think it comes across as me making excuses for myself - not only is this real-time locating, stalking, hunting, etc, disingenuous in terms of how it’s sold (that I’m the threat), it’s been egregiously weaponized to set me up. I have had my entire livelihood utterly stolen from me, multiple times, and been set up for arrests, solely because I was being tracked in real-time already by either “video analytics” or by device tracking alerts, both of which have literally brought it all to my doorstep and never otherwise would have - I have endured being witness to murder, false arrest, imprisonment, character assassination, deprivation of livelihood, robbery, extortion, and more commonly malicious summoning, only because I was already locatable and actively being hunted via “video analytics” and / or device and vehicle tracking in real-time. There’s absolutely no question about it, and it will happen again and again until something is done to attack the root problem (hint - not me).
What I think I’ve gathered from various proprietors and public employees in the spaces where I am clearly being “captured” by AI fixed cameras and subsequently stalked by fascist populist pigs —— I think many of the entities subscribing to these services are ignorant as to what’s going on beyond their point of access. Just because a camera is sold into you as being in the service of protecting your premises - a track, a school, a park, a pool, a house (Ring, Nest) to name a few of the places I might frequent - that camera is feeding everything it captures into a remote server, the proverbial “cloud” (you can even hear this Fascist asshole dogwhistle this in this video assuming strongly I’m just some Ignorant Homeless Drug Addict and he will never be made to account) and then disseminating very dangerous information - in my case the exact location of Joe Leineweber, who is presented as a “threat” - to a vast, unaccountable, and in my lived experience predominantly “law and order” biased, militant, paranoid pack of Christian Dominionist Nationalist thugs who masquerade as good upstanding community members who play “public safety” roles - an impune network of humanity who then set about the business of hunting me down. And the more I frequent a specific destination, the worse it gets, thus serving their interests - sabotaging my “happy places,” my work, my routines, my “chokepoints” like mail and banking and medical appts and grocery shopping, air travel bookings, where I have few to no alternatives - whereas a “smart" and fair analytics system would do the opposite, would not alert others to a “threat” the 10,000th time I went to the same venue to do the same exact things.
I think the most important variable to point out with regard to my video analytics criticisms is that it really matters whose jurisdiction I am in, and nowhere is this worse than Portland, Oregon. I have tested and re-tested this multiple times, just to make sure I’m aware that the only variable that brings this bizarre combination of official police/first responders, and a shockingly poorly educated, angry, and aggressive “army” of apparent informal “partners” of theirs to the direct vicinity of my car and face, are simply driving and walking anywhere underneath smart intersections and “smart city” fixed cameras. This tends to without question be at its worst when traveling into and out of downtown Portland as opposed to other jurisdictions and cities, not in terms of how I’m aggressively hunted, but in terms of the attitudes and aims and prejudices of the hunters. It’s like living in a small white bigoted town. And it becomes abundantly clear that I’m not being tracked, followed, stalked, etc, by a cross-section of the population, but rather, a population of people who work in rank-and-file working class positions in these areas, such as the downtown Portland core, who are overwhelmingly represented in positions like private security, gatekeeper roles, PBOT and maintenance guys, retail and store assistant managers, and related roles - and that does present an issue as there is a resounding tendency of these people to be be, in my opinion ludicrously biased, authoritarian, and “anti-woke” relative to the communities where I have these interactions. For example, at track and field or trailhead zones where I train, my “reported incidents” are never with other athletes, it’s with creepy people who seem to have no clear purpose other than to stare at my car while sitting in theirs, who don’t live or work nearby, who clearly followed me there triggered by a face or car rec alert elsewhere that my car had been. Same went for my street market art booth, where the demographics of my regular customers differed dramatically from the demographic of my serial accusers and complainers. Same goes for local stores, especially local Kroger Fred Meyer up the street where despite having no “security incidents” at other local shops, there is almost always some instance where a bullshit assistant manager is threatening and browbeating me and attempting to aggressively have me removed despite that guy bearing very little resemblance to the overall demographics of the community. So what continues to be apparent to me is that despite it being a “Liberal” city, that Portland has a far bigger and far, far uglier underbelly of resentment from the Clackamas County commuters who hold jobs for the city and surrounding businesses, than say Seattle or San Francisco, where it’s far more difficult to pick up on this, where despite there being evidence of in fact MORE malicious summonings systemically, that the actual personal attitudes of the respondents are not nearly as intensely hostile and bad-faith as in Portland.
This is problematic for me especially as a piece like this drops in local media, with Some Cop and Some “Scientist” proclaiming how successful their “data-driven crime-stopping” model has been. Well, I think there’s a conflict of interest when the guys who came up with it are tasked with evaluating how successful it has been. And if you can’t tell, there are huge questions pertaining to “what about the rest of us who ‘data’ keeps assigning a false positive to?” and “how come that’s been happening to my car and my face for 5 straight years and how is it even remotely possible that that’s indicative of a reliable system?” to say nothing of one which likely is masking politically or personally motivated targeting under cover of apprehending “suspected stolen cars?”
Back to the sheer nuts and bolts, what I know in simplest terms without being an expert on how this works. Just trust that I’ve experienced this so many times that there is zero doubt. And let’s just limit to Downtown Portland, Oregon, but this seems to be carbon-copied to any city, so long as there is surveillance tech built into the infrastructure.
PHASE 1: I enter the downtown core in my vehicle, Honda Odyssey gray/silver with plates CU 69077 and lots of stickers suggesting I hate police on the back window. I do something very legitimate and normal, such as go running, operate my business, or simply walk around and grab a bite to eat, all of which place my biometric features under dozens if not hundreds of surveillance cameras. Let’s suppose it’s the Good Old Days when I used to also carry a cellular device. This is also being detected and located as belonging to me at these places.
PHASE 2: so long as any ONE of these vectors - biometrics, cell phone, or car - are detected in the downtown space, and then detected leaving, which they always are (there’s no way to get out of any city ever without being real-time detected at multiple points, literally, I challenge any of you to try), all 3 become “hot listed,” essentially similar to a Be on the Lookout (BOL) bulletin. This is sent to not only every cop, but other first responders, huge numbers of private security guards and other government employees esp in DOT-related professions, cab drivers, bus drivers, you name it - LOTS of people who are considered “trustworthy” by police and are seen as their eyes and ears who … just so happen in my repeated lived experience to be on a mission lately to punish harshly anyone they deem an “enemy of police,” like me.
PHASE 3: these people are real-time summoned via real-time alerts, to cell devices, for a period of 24-72 hours after I have left the downtown core, anytime my face is revealed under any of millions of AI-enhanced surveillance cameras, as when shopping at big box stores, as when simply pulling my car out of my own home for my next errand, as when visiting my next venue for my next workout. Remember when Bill Clinton called (presumably Black men) Super Predators as a pretext to sell in the idea of “3 Strikes and You’re Out?” Well, allow me to offer my own monstrous portrayal of the kinds of people who stalk me after a downtown trip as - Super Bigots. Super Karens. Effectively, everything I do after being “hotlisted,” as detectable by a multitude of identifiers, brings Super Karens directly into my line of sight, often using their handheld devices to ‘scrape’ my biometrics further and continue to ping my real-time location out to other Super Karens. This tends not to cease until they have finally fabricated some “incident” which is used to attempt to have me arrested or trespassed because, well, remember, these are Super Karens, they already have Crimestopper apps, they already see this as their duty, they already read at a 2nd grade level and aren’t able to process a social dynamic any more complex than “Us Vs. Them” whatever “Them” happens to be in the moment. And the “Them” I have been portrayed as has consistently tracked Portland Media and Conservative District Attorney propaganda perfectly, that of the drug-addicted car-stealing destitute unwanted person, even as in many instances I’m just yards from the house I live in, en route to doing the very things that make me an asset to the community if not for the constant sabotage campaigns, etc. I have also seen other trends ebb and flow, namely that of the “paid protestor” or more specifically the “paid vandal,” the apparent truism following a widely held belief that “dark money” funnels Venmo payments to little people like me to go to downtown Portland to vandalize property and cause “chaos,” a favorite Conservative cliche which says nothing to me but apparently everything to them. I think they long since figured out that I once took many Venmo payments because people liked my kitschy bullshit and handed me money for it on purpose, and maybe that caused them to go harder at the Venmo conspiracy theory.
That’s about it. I cannot stress enough the importance of looking at specific demographics of specific people making specific allegations against me. Honestly they all seem like The Same Guy. They are typically but not always white, they tend to represent a stagnant brand of Portland, multi-generational or else multi-decade residents, seemingly laser-focused on outing “bad guys” (like Antifa, the homeless, “Anarchists,” shoplifters, catalytic converter takers), they are armed with endless anecdotes about crimes they see “all the time” yet can’t produce one single solitary video or photo of said crime / criminals despite having their own cell cams laser focused on me; and it can’t be overstated - conspicuously poorly educated and/or very noticeably “less liberal” which, yes, does stand out when you are moving through Portland.
And I think it’s really important to view many of my experiences and observations as leads if you are in fact a decision-maker or even one of those rare privacy advocates. Even if some of these things seem implausible now, they’re not, and they are happening, and there’s more being done with the information vacuumed up by “smart cities” than those paying these companies understand. The municipal city council and state gov purchaser types I think are largely marks in a bigger game that can pose far, far greater risks to all of our safety than is understood today as little BS petty crime reductions are sold in as a key benefit. Now really is the time for government leaders to reconsider pioneering in the opposite direction, redefining what it is to be “smart” by dismantling their little surveillance bubbles and setting a precedent that bucks this alarming trend.
Finally, it’s super key to understand that these video analytics companies create an illusion of choice, they all do the same thing and more importantly are all based on the same servers and algorithms. Trust me I know. Meaning simply - I’m not a dangerous person, I’m not a theft threat, I’m not a danger to kids, I’m not a reckless driver - yet remarkably, somehow, every single one of these third parties has against all odds arrived at the exact same conclusion that in fact I am all of the above. How can that be? And what is this really about? And why does it seem like the data only flows one direction? Meaning simply - it seems that inputs are solely based on shady inputs probably made by police officers and security guards themselves. Ever had a shitty security guard follow your ass around, you turn around and tell him to get off your nuts, and he immediately tells you you’re trespassed? Those are the white trash assholes who feed inputs about me that change my life all over Planet Earth in the Algorithmic Safety World and it’s totally ridiculous. And yet it seems that none of the people who are then summoned based on these alerts have any opportunity to alter the algorithm via their own feedback. Case in point - say I’m a regular at certain places, downtown Portland, various retail shops, various parking garages, various public buildings, various hotels, etc - well these are all places where I can bet 100% on having obnoxious numbers of security guards, cops, EMS personnel, floor managers, and even non-uniformed creepy vigilantes summoned to my precise location over and over again, especially if ambulatory and moving about in space under multiple cameras, for no good reason. This utterly sucks ass when I’m in a new jurisdiction or place, but there are plenty of places where the same exact people get the same exact alert fatigue from the same exact BS and go through the same exact motions of pretending to protect the poor defensely women, children, property, groceries, etc, from me when I show up. Some get to see my patterns, my demeanor, my conduct, my work ethic, my rapport with customers, etc. They may also have the occasion to witness some small conflict with security and recognize that I’m responding negatively to discriminatory surveillance itself, and rightfully so, not “creating a disturbance” in a vacuum as any abusive security guard / floor manager might make it appear and yet - they clearly have no portal of their own through which to supply this feedback, a dissenting opinion, any form of input that could sway an obviously terrible algorithm back in a direction that more closely resembles the Actual Truth more than the clearly partisan attack disguised as a “threat score” that has been applied to me by this entire, very very Blue-friendly, secretive, shady, and overwhelmingly American Conservative special interest-friendly industry.
If there ever were a silver lining to the video analytics movement, it would be what I assume it’s already doing for the corporate suite, who now have access to every square inch of space on their premise and every “person of interest” who passes through. Something I notice as a “person of interest” is an excessive reliance by frontline personnel, at least in the USA, on faulty anecdotes - dare I say bald-faced lies? “I was attacked last week!” “I saw a guy run out with a lawnmower under his arm today!” Or my favorite “A homeless guy stabbed a security guard in the eye the other day!” This one was true, but when pressed for details, it was revealed that this happened in 2021, on the other side of town, and … this lady wasn’t there, it was just a news article she read 3 years ago and has been parroting in order to promote why her customers are dangerous threats haha. So it comes unraveled … they don’t have evidence, despite all having cell phones to film this apparently never-ending stream of sensational violence and lawlessness. Not one video, just a butt load of anecdotes. What I’ve picked up on, and I think any now-turned-off NextDoor user knows this, is a rampant culture of very dark crime-oriented tall tales involving nameless faceless bogeymen, bogeymen who always get away, and who serve as examples of why “the Liberal city leadership just let’s em do whatever they want!” or “the police don’t do nothin’ about it” or “we’re not even allowed to touch ‘em!” The falsehood is always that “bad people get away with crime, society lets them, and good guys have to foot the bill and let them walk.” All not true, as I know well, as I have to face several cops within seconds of checking out - paying - under the pretense I might have possibly shoplifted. Well, I think to the corporate suite some of that anecdotal repetition was perhaps taken way too seriously, and now they have the ability to ground-truth things as I have, to actually see how infrequent these crimes actually are and how at odds the truth might be with what has long been claimed to be the reality of the situation. Maybe it even inspires some faith in people, that we’re not all out to get their stores, and thanks to my being an unwilling human tracking device this can now be proven and reproven and reproven by simply toggling that little rectangle around my face and pulling up the thousands of time-stamped images / clips of me going about my exciting tasks of checking which cut of meat is on sale.
