Sorry, ignorant European here. WDYM a Home Depot employee can access Flock? This thing is not restricted to LEO?
Home Depot and Lowes are the 2 largest US home store ( construction materials, appliances, etc ) retail chains in the US.
They have Flock cameras installed on mobile trailers, parked in their parking lots. The cameras track your vehicle as you are parking, and issue alerts for anyone that has been flagged in the database.
In my case, I have classmates from school, who have friends at the local county EMS operations center, who are using the system to stalk me.
Just 3 days ago, I tried to have a quiet conversation with my girlfriend at a little park, in a small neighborhood. Less than 10 minutes after arriving, a car with 4 or 5 people showed up, positioned themselves within ear shot, and then began making fun of us in order to prevent us from thinking and discussing issues clearly. This event by itself seems innocent and random, except, it happens like clockwork, in multiple locations, and its an established pattern in my life, making it decidedly non-random. The "actors" think of it as street theatre, the police think of it as "policing", and what you get as the target is pure psychological hell.
When a victim begins to try and explain verbally what is happening to them, they relive the trauma of the events that have been "staged" and people assume the victim is mentally unstable. It is the same strategy as kicking a dog in the head repeatedly, until it becomes an agry mad dog, and then putting it down because it was dangerous. Create the problem, then appear to solve it.
What may have started out as a joke now has them guilty of human trafficking, so they have adopted a strategy of "running me out of town" via harrassment.
They know if they emotionally destablise people, they will voluntarily leave or self destruct via drugs, stress, acting out, etc.
This is what "community policing" now means.
There are any number of videos on youtube of people having meltdowns, claiming they are being 'gangstalked', etc. and they seem very disturbed. This is why this works. They disturb you, then dismiss any allegations as you being disturbed.
Watch the movie "Closetland" for how psychological abuse works.
And you blame the "adults of America" that supposedly are "psychologically inmature", which to me looks like an absurd and unsubstantiated claim
The Flock system has these risks built into it, no matter what its proponents claim. A person with one too many beers in them, in any downtown area, in any city, in any country, could say something to offend the wrong person. A person with access to Flock, who happens to be a police officer, who then stalks them.
Your reality is composed of what you have observed, what you have experienced, and what people tell you is real, and people tell 9 lies a day.
Your reality, some part of it, is not what you think. If you place a person in a reality that you control, and then execute a "rug pull" where you drop the veil and reveal a different reality, it causes stress, and stress kills after enough of it.
It's alright if you can't accept that this is happening to other people, but you are doing so because the idea scares you, and its not happening to you, so you reject it, and that is why it works.
Its the new digital Jim Crowe era, and US history is repleat with stories of people whos rights have been abused by others.
For every black person who was denied a seat at a diner in the 50's, there were 10 white people who love the diner and get excellent service every time.
We share a planet, and a country, while our experiences, even in the exact same place, are different.
The wealthy are fine protectors of the status quo, because it serves them. The poor have problems with the status quo, because it doesn't serve them. Same set of rules, 2 different outcomes, for 2 different groups of people.
Fuck off with your condescending assumptions.
Lets say Im your former girlfriend from school, and I have a grudge against you for normal mistakes kids make when socializing in school, and I have access to the Flock system, either directly, or through someone I've known for a long time.
Lets also add, that I have $5 million dollars in the bank, from having been born into a family of privilege, and experienced success in my professional life.
Lets also add, that I'm an unstable malignant narcissist, or covert narcissist, who extracts joy from using power to make others suffer. This isn't a made up diagnosis, this is a real behavior pattern among people in power.
Now, you are doing everything "right." You would never even think of stalking, harrassing, attacking anyone. Just because you don't have these thoughts, doesn't mean that others don't have them. They do. But you dont have a social support network, and you live paycheck to paycheck.
I can destabilize your life in any number of ways with the Flock database, because I know every store you visit, every friend you visit, every park you visit, etc. and theres nothing you can do about it.
I can send my police officer friend, into a store that you visit, like Home Depot, that has flock, and have them tell the security guy at home depot to flag you for whatever reason I care to make up. The uniform provides all the authority, even when the conversation is complete bs. The home depot guy flags you. Now, everytime you walk into any home depot, some random stranger treats you like a repeat shoplifter. They follow you, they say odd things to you. The idea that you are a criminal is "projected" onto you, by their assumption.
I can hire actors using the gig economy websites, and send them to where you are going to be to act out a script, which will cause you to respond in a manner that prevents you from thinking clearly. They will mock your clothes, your hair, etc.
After enough of these "scripted scenes" you realize everyone treats you like a criminal, worthless, useless troublemaker, and not the educated, intelligent, caring professional you are. They projected a new identity onto you.
A person who is aware of what is happening to them, and sees it clearly, has a near 0 chance of explaining it to someone who hasn't experienced it themselves. They sound crazy, because they have been intentionally destablized using the same psychological warfare tactics that get used by the military during wars.
They also begin to behave differently, in order to avoid the stress. In the home depot example, they start parking where the flock camera wont tag the car. Anyone with them asks "why are we walking a mile" and the person says "The flock system is tracking me." A perfectly rational adaptation to the environment, gets perceived as paranoia, because the stress only exists in the targets perception.
This technique works especially well on people who are seeking validation of their own identity from others. If you know who you are, and you have cemented your own identity, it doesn't work the same.
Watch some of Sam Vaknin's videos on narcissism. You'll be amazed that these people exist and enjoy destroying others, and they tend to hold positions of power. Your pain is their pleasure.
My "former classmates" due to some grudge, are using their friends in power, to abuse me. The two classmates spearheading it, know everyone who is anyone in this county, because one was the President of a womens organization, and the other has been a bartender downtown for 20 years.
I'm being harassed by the digital good ole boy network. This behavior isn't new, its just morphed into a sci fi dystopia.
When wikipedia says its a delusion, the predators have free reign, because the victims will never be believed, because wikipedia said they were delusional.
It takes far less time, attention, and energy, to dismiss a claim like this than it does to prove it, so everyone dismisses it.
It's perfect, just like the matrix.
I'm also reminded of the Star Trek episode "I, Mudd" where they short circuit the robots brains with illogical statements that can't be resolved.
Same scenario.
You and I sit here, and make references to literary plots, to attempt to solve a problem.
Predators watch the same Star Trek episode, and say to themselves, "I'm going to start doing that to people."
That sucks though.
You can tell that something has happened to them, but its ephemeral, because its psychological, and what do all of us do when we don't understand someone ?
We dismiss them. We other them. We isolate them. We walk away.
Not as a group decision, but the outcome of our collective individual decisions.
Abuse someone long enough, psychologically, and if they are not educated and self-aware, their behavior becomes erratic and they lose all social support.
It's not unlike veterans of a war, who understand what each other went through, when the public doesn't.
Unfortunately, our society is really good about detecting people who are "acting weird" - and some people decide to harass or bully the weird ones. Feeling like you are being stalked makes it very difficult to act "normally" in all circumstances, which increases the odds on any subsequent outing that somebody will notice and act toward you in a way that's undesirable.
It still sucks, what is happening to these people. But it's not a coordinated malicious campaign against them in particular. It's like you say - the outcome of our collective individual decisions. For most of them, there never was any "targeting."
How did you reach this conclusion ?
> Unfortunately, our society is really good about detecting people who are "acting weird"
Yes, and I can cause you to act wierd, by projecting a false reality onto you.
Alot of what happened to me, happened in the bar my classmate worked at. We were "supposed to be working on music" together, but that was just his cover story. I would go to the bar where he works to talk to him about our project, and he would text his friends/actors to come and act out scripts with me, and in front of me. He controlled the narrative this way. Afterwards, I would reflect upon the events, and how I felt about it.
Just as one example, he had a woman pretend to be interested in me. Then, after investing time in talking to her, taking her to dinner, etc. she publicly humiliated me in the bar. The goal is emotional destablization.
Make you happy, pull the rug, make you sad.
One of the people in charge of county EMS operations aka camera monitoring, happens to be a female, and the bartender had her sit next to me and pretend to be interested in me as well on another occasion. I found her employment info later using google searches to connect the dots.
The terms for people who behave this way are "malignant narcissists" and the tactic is "intermitent reinforcement."
Sincerely, you should probably get back in touch with a medical professional you trust. Maybe I'm reading this situation all wrong, and you really do have dozens of unpaid "actors" spending their lives harassing you for no gain. But probably not.
Everyone has competition in life, except for you apparently.
Everyone experiences conflict in some form or another, except for you apparently.
Perhaps your appearance isn't what you make it out to be.
Also, you altered my statements to create yours. Thats the very tactic I've been explaining.
Nice try though.
"Mimetic Scapegoating, Then Mimetic Desire, Ends in Violence - Sam Vaknin"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42LTRQKkaEs
.. scarcity of objects creates a competitive environment. And since we imitate each other, we have this herd mentality of imitating each other in our desires. This inevitably, ineluctibly gives rise to competition which easily deteriorates and devolves into violence.
Society develops the scapegoat mechanism to redirect violence in ways that are less harmful to itself which in turn inspires the invention of religion to justify sacrifice is how the encyclopedia Britannica describes the situation.
Everyone gets to laugh at the sacrifice, except the sacrifice.
Comedy and tragedy are 2 sides of the same coin, and what determines if we laugh or cry, is our own personal proximity and role in the situation.
It's funny when Dick Van Dyke trips over the foot stool.
It hurts like hell when you do it.
The Jewish community was doing just as well as anyone else in the 20's. By the 30's, propaganda had convinced everyone they were the enemy. These people experienced "normal life" right up until someone decided to make them the enemy, via psychological warfare. They woke up one day with a train ticket to Auschwitz, for "work."
Many of them no doubt, were suspicious, but they were told they were 'crazy' and that 'the government wouldn't do that, the government is here to protect us.' The problem is, that government isn't a thing. Government is a group of people, and groups of people behave irrationally and violently all the time, while laughing and carrying on about how right they were to violently destroy their fellow man.
Go to a European soccer game. Just watch how the 2 sides act towards each other. The fans will attack each other, over their emotional investment in corporations that sell t-shirts.
Try convincing a religious person that God isn't real. They'll kill you to prove you wrong. The lack of evidence either way isn't a factor in their reasoning. The only thing that matters is their personal emotional investment in the idea.
As for me seeing a "medical professional" I'm going to have to schedule a consultation for myself and my girlfriend, because she's witnessed the "acting" as well, and the same bartender used these tactics to attack her brother, right after their father died. The bartender tried the same thing when my mother died. The day after she passed, I walked into the bar, and he started up a conversation saying "Noone gives a shit about some old lady dying." He wanted me to lose my shit and get angry, like my gf's brother did. I gave him no response, because I knew he was manipulating me.
When anyone can watch a youtube video on how to manipulate people, do you really think that noone is using the information to manipulate others ?
Wouldn't a "lifelong bartender" be interested in controlling and manipulating people ? Wouldn't he be an expert at it after 20 years of working in a bar ?
I'm a computer programmer. He knows this. He knows I've spent more hours interacting with computers than people, and he thought I would be an easy target. When you know the characters involved, the behavior patterns emerge.
If said bartender was a malignant narcissist, wouldnt the environment of a bar provide him with endless narcissistic supply ? He's a god in the bar. He can make anyones evening great, or he can text his friend to start a fight and get someone arrested. This is what narcissistic supply is.
"Every Manipulation Technique & How To Combat It Explained"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbkvBLyIAzo
We really need to stop thinking that predators don't walk amongst us, when all of history tells us it has always been the case.
They sell glasses of poison for people to drink.
It was only 120 years ago Congress had to pass a law specifically prohibiting bartenders from drugging people and selling them to boat captains.
How much have people changed in 120 years, behaviorially, at the core ?
Wouldn't the same selfish psychopaths, that sold people to boat captains, still be attracted to the same bar environment, even if their tactics of fleecing people have changed ?
I just happen to have gone to school with the guy. Lucky me.
I simply don't have the resources to fight this as hard as I would like, because it would consume all of the time I'm using merely to pay bills.
Predators don't attack the strongest animal. They attack the weakest.
That said, in the words of the great Tom Petty, "I won't back down."
The strategy that has worked so far for me, is to not internalize the nonsense. Just ignore it. Give it the attention it deserves, which is none.
They use the licence plate hotlist internally to track when "organized retail crime(tm)" shows up and get pings when "thieves" come back to the store.
Thus, any Lowes/HD asset protection employee/manager can log into Flock, and see all of the ones "owned" by their corporation (which is nationwide, and installed well beyond the confines of the store property, often covering entire shopping plazas or parks where they're located). They won't be able to see outside of those bounds, but that's still a SUPER powerful tool if you consider ~1700 Lowes and 2000 Home Depots in the US alone.
And of course, combined with "small town" mentality and "backing the blue", of course someone with a modicum of power (the mall cop AP employee) will LARP up and want to whack out with ICE/the local PD and be happy to help them if it means getting a challenge coin!