"In the years since, I have tried to reconcile Ernest’s [Hemingway's] fear of the F.B.I., which I regretfully misjudged, with the reality of the F.B.I. file. I now believe he truly sensed the surveillance, and that it substantially contributed to his anguish and his suicide."
Other individuals will imagine persecution. The only interesting number is which percentage of reported cases is correct. Given frequent documented stories about police harassment, that percentage is much higher than the smug articles would have us believe.
- a stalker (who is intelligent, well-off, but has the resources of a single individual); and
- briefly, by a major organization (who has $20B, and can easily afford to e.g. hire a PI, or a grey hat cybersecurity firm, but ultimately doesn't have anyone who wants to harm me per se).
There weren't any special tech devices involved. Just people spreading rumors, harassment complaints filed with various agencies, invasions of privacy, etc. In the organizational case, I simply folded. I gave up credit for something I invented and financial rewards which would be valued at somewhere between $1M and $200M, depending. The harassment stopped.
I've also seen harassment by my local municipal government. Fortunately, I wasn't the target. It's enough to know that:
1) Harassment does happen.
2) It's very hard to prove, if the other side is at all smart.
3) If I described the things which happened, I'd sound crazy.
However, I'm pretty sure this sort of shit is a lot more common than people give it credit for. I'm also guessing if it were done by a covert agency, there would be tech we don't know about.
I'm not sure the overlap between people talking about harassment and actual harassment. There are plenty of mental health disorders. At the same time, if you actually are being harassed, it's not something you talk about, at least without a veil of internet anonymity.
The commoditization and proliferation of private "targeting" takes us backward by three hundred years, to pre-Westphalian conflicts among non-state actors, including vigilantes, pirates and mercenaries. It ignores centuries of progress on law, trade contracts and due process, https://www.byarcadia.org/post/the-peace-of-westphalia-the-b...
> The [1648] Treaty of Westphalia is accepted as the beginning of modern international relations since it introduced the concepts of sovereignty, mediation, and diplomacy ... the foundations of modern international law were laid as governments recognized each other's sovereignty.
Obviously some individuals have been targeted and likely driven into self-destruction while people did not believe their story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/opinion/02hotchner.html
"In the years since, I have tried to reconcile Ernest’s [Hemingway's] fear of the F.B.I., which I regretfully misjudged, with the reality of the F.B.I. file. I now believe he truly sensed the surveillance, and that it substantially contributed to his anguish and his suicide."
Other individuals will imagine persecution. The only interesting number is which percentage of reported cases is correct. Given frequent documented stories about police harassment, that percentage is much higher than the smug articles would have us believe.