> [The company] appointed investigative agencies to surveil me, initially covertly and then overtly with vehicles and cameras placed outside my house.
Isn't that just stalking? Why didn't they just call the cops?
Isn't that just stalking? Why didn't they just call the cops?
I'll post one such case to corroborate the article, since it was big news in my community: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Hong_Kong_trade_office_sp...
Allegedly involved are Hong Kong government, multiple private security and private investigators from the UK with ex-military/law enforcement background, and a mysterious death after the whole scandal was exposed.
Which sounds exactly like what the article is describing.
The behaviors described are mostly criminal, they have legal recourse, it's not like civil cases where they would be buried from the other sides legal team.
And speaking of the other side they are private companies employing ex intelligence people they don't have the immense backing of a state behind them, if they get caught doing illegal things a few times thats it their whole business could be under threat.
I am guessing they are very chummy with law enforcement, have good lawyers and may be in bed with politicians but the whole thing looks extremely precarious it would only take a couple of cases to stick for real prison time for these folks.
> don't have the immense backing of a state
They had backing of a foreign state power, in this case Hong Kong (and by implication China)
> it would only take a couple of cases to stick for real prison time for these folks
The guy just died a mysterious death once the thing was exposed. He must have wished for prison time.
The private security companies in the case in your link are in my opinion incidental.
In your link a state actor recruited a bunch of people to do it's dirty work. Typical state sponsored intelligence stuff. The security companies were really a former marine and a couple of former Hong Kong cops. They could have been hired ad hoc.
In the politico article it discusses shops run from groups of former intelligence agencies (MI5 and MI6 presumably) running intelligence operations for companies.
It's an entire different kind of thing in my opinion.
Sure if a van rolls up across your home with a bunch of dudes in it you can't know which case you are dealing with, but either way calling the cops is the right way to go.
"In the last year, government ministers and intelligence agencies have warned that foreign states are using the industry to “carry out their dirty work” in the U.K. — sometimes through the surveillance and harassment of dissidents that have fled to Britain as a safe haven."
I guess the article discusses other things too, but even if your argument makes sense here, it doesn't negate the fact that once powerful foreign entities are involved, ones that have enough resources and motivation to hire ex-spies to do dirty work, calling the police can lead to disastrous outcomes.
I guess you're lucky in a sense since apparently you haven't experienced the situations where you know there are times where the normal law enforcement / emergency services process won't work.
I don’t know why people have a mental model of the world that is so incompatible with reality that they’ll post skeptical takes to HN when we live in a world where so much data is available at the tip of our fingers.
For example, "infiltrating an organization" is also just joining it, which is quite dissimilar to say, stalking if all they did was not actually believe in the organization, rather the say, menacingly post men and machines outside of someone's residence for the purpose of intimidation via threat of violence.
Did you find any of that? Specifically in the UK, by private investigation organizations, specifically providing stalking for hire? Confirmed by more evidence then "well someone totally said it happened but we won't say who or by who?"
Please have better faith in your interlocutor. We are not ostriches with our heads in the sand. Say your piece, so that then if we ignore it, you may find fault in good faith after. You're beating around the bush now, as you've been asked for sources plainly and directly, and have refused, which leads me to deploy the following:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens's_razor
> Hitchens's razor is an epistemological razor that serves as a general rule for rejecting certain knowledge claims. It states:
> > What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
> The razor is credited to author and journalist Christopher Hitchens, although its provenance can be traced to the Latin Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur ("What is asserted gratuitously is denied gratuitously"). It implies that the burden of proof regarding the truthfulness of a claim lies with the one who makes the claim; if this burden is not met, then the claim is unfounded, and its opponents need not argue further in order to dismiss it.
I'm certainly not trusting what a random person on the Internet says it came up with.
That isn't to say the core assertion is wrong, but that I'll immediately dismiss one for which "chatGPT said" is the primary evidence.
Again, the only reason we’re having this conversation as though there’s a debate here is that people have decided to believe in one inaccurate version of the world instead of using the extensive tools available to figure out what’s going on. This level of conversation is fine for Reddit, it’s embarrassing for HN where having an accurate mental model of the world (and a willingness to learn an update) is kind of essential.
> so I visited ChatGPT and asked if there are documented cases in the UK where these things have happened, and I was met with a deluge of well-documented cases
does indeed sound exactly like you were using chatGPT as a primary source rather than a search engine, and thus are being met with cynicism.
I genuinely don’t care about being right on the Internet or HN karma, I would be genuinely happy if one reader/participant in this argument came out of it thinking “huh, I can actually do better than this.”